Wrapping Up

We are on the countdown to our move date, and we are wrapping things up in Utah.  Less than 2 weeks until we haul our lives to Oregon.  Brad is taking the moving truck to Oregon NEXT WEEK!  It is hard to believe.

As I said, we are wrapping things up here in Utah.  We signed our papers yesterday to close on our home, so as of tonight it is officially no longer ours.  That is hard to believe as well.  We have been living with my parents since mid May.  Ellie and Christian love all the fun activities that come along with living at Grandma and Grandpa's house like playing with their fun toys, helping Grandpa in the garden with digging and planting, and sharing a room downstairs in their house.  A couple weeks ago, we sat down and wrote down some of our favorite memories of the house and tried to write down the many improvement projects Brad and co. have undertaken.  The list was not short...

We also went over to the empty house last week, the day before we thought we were going to close and took a bunch of silly family photos.  I just wanted to share a few.... or a lot.

 in the family room downstairs

 Downstairs bathroom

 crawl space

 Downstairs bedroom

 Staircase

 Brad attempting to teach them how to plank in the living room.

 The kitchen desk

 The kitchen sink

 Christian's bedroom

 Master bedroom

 upstairs bathroom

 the coat closet

Our first home

We are also trying to wrap up loose ends with our doctors in Utah, so today we visited my OB doctor and Christian's allergist. Christian is still allergic to peanuts and tree nuts as we have known for over a year now.  We recently added kiwis to his allergy repertoire after an eventful birthday on Conference Sunday.  We also requested to have him tested for shellfish since we will be an hour from the coast.  We are glad we did because we get to add lobster to the list as well, so we will just be avoiding shellfish all together.

As for my doctor visit, I am now 14 weeks along.  Baby looks healthy, and there is a good chance we should expect a new brother come November 23.  My gut said boy, but I never really trust my gut, I guess I should. We are very excited to add another rambunctious boy to our family, and now the boys will outnumber the girls.

Brad is also trying to wrap up everything with school.  His grades were posted last week which gave him authorization to take all his lovely tests.  He has signed up for 2 of the 3 exams he has to take in order to be licensed in Oregon and Utah. Tuesday he took his law exam, and we just found out today that he passed.  Phew!  One down, two to go.

Still so much to do before our Oregon adventure begins.

Christian Man

Christian Man had his second birthday over the weekend.  That boy is growing up.  His vocabulary is really starting to take off, and I find it very amusing to try and interpret his choppy sentences.  Brad and I have both said that we never really had this toddler talking phase with Ellie, so it is fun to experience it.  We decided to go to the Hill Aerospace Museum in Roy on his birthday.  He is a big airplane fan.  Any time we are outside, and he hears a loud noise, he searches the sky until he finds the plane.  We invited cousins over for hot dogs during the first session of conference, then we headed to the museum.  Christian and all his cousins loved running from plane to plane at the museum.  It was so nice that there were so many planes outdoors where they could just run and have fun.  We came home and had cake while watching the next session.  What fun.  

The cousin's eating a typical 2 year old's favorite food: hot dogs, jello, and juice.  

All the cousins lined up for a picture.  This was a difficult undertaking with all the excitement of aviation around them.

Ellie and Ainsley.  Oh those girls... they were great a posing for their picture.

Christian also invited Uncle Mikey and when he wasn't running from plane to plane outside, he wanted to be carried by Uncle Mikey.  

These two guys are best buds, and they were so much fun to watch in the plane museum.

When I asked Christian what he wanted for his birthday a week or so ago, he said "birfday candles, blow away!"  So it wasn't a surprise that the candles were blown out before a proper picture could even be taken.

Our happy family
(note from Brad: Who can name the two planes behind us?
Arguably the two coolest airplanes ever!)


 I love this picture of Christian.  He got the McQueen car for his birthday a year ago, but his genes just would not allow him to use use it to its full extent.  Around the end of January, his legs were finally long enough to reach the floor and now that car just zooms around our tile and laminate floors on a daily basis.  He loves it.

 This is how we found him the other day... in his boat... no pants...

(PS This is his favorite shirt.  He calls it his "mush-sash" shirt.)

The Semi-annual post

It's here!! What is becoming our semi-annual blog post has finally arrived.
Not a whole lot has happened around here.  Brad is still in rotations, Teri is still working with gross holes in people and the kids are growing fast.
Here is a quick photo recap:

Hello Kitty costume from Halloween

 Panda Bear

 Gingerbread House made at Grandma and Grandpa Winter's annual Gingerbread Party

 Prepping for the cold

 Christmas Morning

 The lawn mower that he now calls a vacuum.

 

Princess Bike.  She has already made major improvements on the bike despite our ice covered sidewalk.  

 

The most desired gift from Santa was an Ariel shirt.  She put this outfit together by herself.  She insists on wearing flip flops in the house even in the dead of winter.  Sun glasses are a frequent accessory as well.  

 The redecorating of the Christmas tree on New Year's Eve.  Anything she could find in her room was free game for the event.  We had multiple ribbons from her dress ups, a slinky, a toy microphone, stuffed animals and a few other miscellaneous items. 

We had a great Christmas and New Year's.  Brad had two weeks off from his pharmacy rotations, and I had a lot of time off of work, so it was a great holiday with lots of time together as a family.  Brad is back into rotations this week and I am back to my normal work schedule next week.  I have great goals to keep the blog better updated, but we will see how that goes.  Until next time!

Our First Camping Trip

Both of us (Teri and Brad) grew up camping.  We figured we were pros at it and could manage to take our little family camping for one night without a problem... We are so novice!  We had a great time and made some great memories, but we definitely will take more time to plan next time.
First off we did not reserve a camp spot.  Bad idea for the last weekend before school starts again.  We drove through six or seven camp  grounds before we found a spot.  This spot happened to be a mile away from the nearest water.  We went up into the Uintahs by Mirror Lake.
We got there in time for lunch... we forgot to pack the lunch meat.  As good as lettuce and mustard sandwiches sounded we improvised with hot dogs on bread... Yum.  After lunch, we set up the tent.  At least we tried.  There were no stakes in the bag, and this tent requires stakes to stay up.  So we quickly made stakes from sticks.
Anyway, long story short we forgot to pack several useful cooking utensils and paper towels.  We all had a great time and will always remember our first camp out.

 Yummy camp food!!

 Yum!

 The kids loved the fire... and the flashlights

 This is how real men camp

 Throwing rocks in this stream was the favored activity

 Christian had so much fun exploring the woods

 Provo River Falls

 We broke one pole and cast out a total of 3 times

 Ellie was excited to catch "the biggest girl fish in the lake"

He will grow up to be a mighty fisherman

Christmastime

This is a long time in coming.  I have been so bad at keeping the blog updated, and for so long I attributed it to the lack of a computer that worked well with blogger.  Well, that changed in August with purchase of a new laptop right before school started for Brad.  Unfortunately, at about the same time that our computer joined us, the camera went ca put.  And really, blogs aren't all that much fun without pictures to go along with the posts.  And so the blog has been neglected even further.  So here we are, and guess what we got for Christmas!?! If you haven't already guessed it, we got a new camera!  Hooray!  Actually, it has already been sent back, if you can believe it.  There was a blotchy spot on the lens, but we should have another newER camera by the end of the year. Hooray again! Christmas was great.  Sadly, Elllie suffered through Christmas with a stomach bug that has since been passed to everyone in the family, except me (Teri).  I'm just biding my time until it's my turn.  I think at this point it is inevitable.  Some of our favorite gifts were a new piano bench for Mommy (had built by Bradly Dean, himself), binoculars and many a Minnie Mouse toy for Ellie, wrapping paper for Christian (oh yeah, he liked the stacking blocks Santa got him too), and a fun Woot shirt for Brad.  All in all, it was a wonderful day spent with those we love.  Merry Christmas!

My new piano bench.  Now the piano just needs to be tuned.

Mr. Christian Man enjoying the wrapping paper

Ellie and Christian trying to share the tent.  This is hard to do when Ellie is unwilling to let Christian touch her. 

This is a cute little video of Ellie checking out her stocking.