The Move

I know those few of you who read this blog, and don't already know, are wondering where Joe's new job will be. We will be moving to...the bay area! Near San Jose. I don't post specifics since this is a public blog but feel free to message us somehow if you want more details. We'll be moving after Joe takes the bar, so early August.

We are excited for this next phrase of life. Excited about the job, bay area weather and being closer to the beach. Not so excited about paying twice as much for a smaller place and leaving friends here. We're still trying to find a place to live. Luckily we have some awesome friends who live in the area and are offering their expertise (Thanks again, Steph!).

I took a trip down there last Saturday with the kids. I was quite worried about it and almost backed out but I'm glad I went. It wasn't bad at all. I got to drive around some different areas for as long as the kids would let me and then we went to Half Moon Bay.

We love the beach....

I got this video of Elizabeth playing in the waves. I love her little excited dances waiting for them to come. I still feel like that sometimes...

200

I looked as I was writing this and realized that this is my 200th post! In honor of this momentous occasion. . . . . . here is more of the usual. :)

No really, though. Two hundred is a lot and I'm proud of myself for sticking with this long enough to get there.

I just wanted to record some more events from our lives lately.

Joe and Natalie went out together the other night so it was just Lizzie, Nate and I at home. We had great fun. We need to be better about having more one-on-one (or one-on-two) time with the kids.

How lucky am I to get to spend the night with these two?

Elizabeth and I posed for a picture and this is what came of it:

I had no idea she was making that face.

It reminded me of pictures like this. . .

. . .and countless others.
Like father like daughter. :)

That night we were playing Set and as we were looking for matches she said, "I'm keeping a sharp eye!" She has been using all sorts of funny phrases lately. One day I was looking at some clothes online and she came up and asked, "Do you see any that interest you?" I don't know where she learns these.

The other day Joe was asking her to do something and she kind of sighed and said, "If you exist. . ." (instead of "if you insist").

Here's a shot of my thumb for any of you gruesome types who enjoy this sort of thing:

About 5 more days until the stitches can come out. It doesn't even hurt anymore, except for when Nathaniel occasionally uses his strong little fingers to grip my finger right on the cut.

And finally, we have some news. We decided recently that Joe is going to be doing an international study in Ghana for a month this summer. He'll be going alone around the end of May. It will be hard but I'm excited for Joe to get to have the opportunity. Thank goodness for Skype! We'll definitely be making use of that while he's gone.

I'm back!

I got back from my London and Paris trip late Sunday night and have spent the last few days recovering/unpacking and organizing our house, not to mention enjoying time with Joe and my kids. I wanted to post a few pictures from the trip. I am relying on my sister for pictures since unfortunately I dropped my camera (which was actually my mom's camera since I didn't want to take my big one :( ) on literally the first day of the trip and it didn't work after that. So, these are a few pictures of some of the highlights that Katie was able to e-mail me.

As for the trip, we had an amazing time! We saw a lot in the few days we had and loved both cities. I had so much fun talking and hanging out with Katie. We saw the sights, ate delicious food, saw the show Wicked in London, and struggled to communicate in Paris. I took French in high school although I didn't learn much. It was a lot of fun for me to try to speak and understand the language again. I was scanning every sign and listening to conversations trying to pick up words I knew. I didn't pick up much and it made me want to study the language more.

We were also pretty proud of ourselves for mastering the complicated bus and metro/tube routes, or at least getting by. (Tip for London travel: You can go in opposite directions on the London subway and yet both will be called "Westbound"???) It was pretty physically tiring with walking everywhere and climbing to the top of everything but it was mentally and emotionally recharging. I came home excited to jump back into my responsibilities as wife and mother. I must admit, though, that even after only a few days back in the grind I am starting to feel the serenity wearing off. I know I will have to work hard to keep my focus.

So, without further rambling, here are the pictures:

Us in front of Buckingham Palace right before the little changing of the guard parade Warwick castle. We had to climb a really steep, claustrophobic spiral staircase in a tower to get this view but it was worth it.

A view of London from the London Eye

Us on the London Eye

Me on the second story of the Eiffel Tower

Us in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles

Me on the grounds of the Palace of VersaillesMe on a boat on the Seine with the Eiffel Tower in the background. For the first 10 minutes of every hour at night it sparkles like this (hard to see).
Us with a man pretending to be Quasimodo. He was scaring random people on the street for the enjoyment of the people standing in line for the towers of Notre Dame. He got me pretty good. :)
Me with the bell of Notre Dame
A view of Paris from the top of Notre Dame

Me in front of the Arc de Triomphe

Me eating escargots on our last night in Paris! It actually wasn't so bad if you can get past the texture. I ate all 6 of 'em!

We Found a Home!

After over a week of searching for a place to live, our search officially ended today. We found a nice house to rent not too far from the campus. It's big, a lot bigger than our house even. It's an older home but in good condition with new carpet and flooring. It's a good deal and we're very excited to move in on Saturday. So, our next week or so will be full of moving in. Then, a week from Friday I leave for London! For those of you who don't know I'm going on a 9 day tour of London and Paris with my sister. I can't believe it's almost here. I'm really excited to go but a little nervous about leaving the girls for so long. Hopefully they'll still like me when I get back. :) Anyway, big things coming up for us. Wish us luck!

We're Alive and in California

Our east coast experience is, sadly, over. Basically, there were some major ethical problems with the sales office there. Joe tried to continue to sell in a way he felt was honest but it became more and more difficult for him to do that, so, we left. It was difficult of course but we feel good about the decision. I think he will post about this in the future but I'll just leave it at that for now.

So, after me flying with the kids and Joe driving our stuff back across the country, and some stops in Utah and Idaho, we are now in California ready to get settled for law school here. I'm excited to be back and hoping that we can find a place to live soon so we can unpack. Elizabeth wants to "go home" and I couldn't agree with her more.

Here are some highlights (and lowlights) of the last few weeks:

-Hanging out with Richard in a hotel hallway while the kids nap inside our room

-Joe hitting a deer somewhere in Illinois (he was fine although the car is kind of crunched)

-The girls actually doing pretty well on our flights home (what a blessing!)
-Snuggling with my girls during the flight while they slept (even though I had to hold the same position for hours--it was still worth it)

-The girls and I enjoying our first swim of the summer and having a blast with cousins

-Visiting grandmas and grandpas!

-Natalie finding a word for grandma/grandpa and constantly greeting them with "Hi muh-guh!"

-Eating endless Winco fudgesicles and talking with Joe's mom until late at night
-Singing every song I can think of during the drive to CA
-Being back in sunny California!

Quick update

Things have been crazy here lately and I wanted to quickly update things a little bit while I have a chance. We are in the process of moving right now. There are boxes everywhere. We are doing the PODS thing so we are just waiting for some help to come tomorrow before we move everything that will go into storage for the summer into the pod. Then, we will pull a little trailer behind our car with the stuff we're taking with us. Our target departure date is Monday, although we could hold off a day if we had to. The big news is that we are no longer going to Michigan. We will instead be in Virginia this summer because of a change in sales offices. We're excited to see the east coast but not so excited for the even longer drive. We're taking a good-sized detour to see my brother in Wisconsin but we figure it's probably our only chance to go there and visit them. And, it will be good for the kids to have a break in between the legs of the trip. So, that is our news. The next post may be coming from Virginia! Wish us luck with our cross country drive with two young kids! (what were we thinking? :)

I also have to say congratulations to Joe for graduating with his undergraduate degree! He's done! (at least for the summer) And today we celebrated with a lunch at McDonald's. What a treat :). What can I say, the kids were antsy and needed to run around. It didn't help things that it was briefly snowing today.... :(

Our Plans

I've decided that I'm going to be a better contributor to our blog. Ash has encouraged me quite a bit, but I've not made finding the time a priority. Here's to hoping I can be a little more participatory.

We're right in the middle of deciding where to go to law school for the next 3 years. We applied to 11 different schools in 11 different states, from California to New York. To date I've been accepted by 7, wait-listed by one, and rejected by one. The other two schools should be responding in the next week or two.

The most welcome news was actually our only rejection...from BYU. We were pretty sure that we wanted to go elsewhere, but the cost of BYU being so much less than most other schools, the fact that we will have to sell our house if we leave, the school's growing respectability, and other such things made staying here in Utah seem like the most reasonable thing, and perhaps what we should do. We had actually already put our house up for sale, because, again, we were pretty sure that we were going elsewhere. But, having the decision made for us so that we definitely have to move has taken a significant weight off our shoulders. We now feel fully confident with moving forward and moving on.

The four schools that are still in the running are in the Houston, Albuquerque, Sacramento, and Cleveland areas. Houston and Sacramento are the front-runners, but we'll see.

Since this is the last summer that I won't be interning for some law firm or doing some other law-related thing, we decided it would be fun to do something a little different. Richard is going out to the Flint, Michigan to install security systems, and we've actually decided to tag along. I've already had my summer-sales experience*, so I think I'll join him in being an install guy. I am not a real techy-type guy, so this will doubtless be a good experience for me. Richard has more experience in this kind of thing; I'm looking forward to being his understudy. I'm planning on having lots of fun this summer...hopefully I'll get some work done, too.

I think that's about it for now. We'll post more about future plans as things unfold.

*I honestly think being a door-to-door salesman (salesperson) is an experience that most people would gain a lot from. I know I did. There's a lot of valuable experiences separate and distinct from what one gets from door-to-door missionary work. Maybe I'll write a whole post on this subject sometime...