Ladybugs, Dad's, and Floating cake

I've actually got quite a bit on my mind right now... mostly a lot of little things. So, I'll try to empty my thoughts as I write. Our poor kids have been stuck in the house a lot the past few weeks.. yes, we did go to Tucson last weekend, thankfully, but other than that, we haven't been getting out to do the routine errands and playgroup activities. We've just been way too distracted and disorganized trying to get our home in some sort of order and trying to take care of all the stuff that goes along with moving. For example, I spent 7 hours last Monday cleaning our old house from top to bottom... there's something a little disheartening about moving all your stuff out of a place and realizing how dirty the house was. Granted, the place hadn't received much cleaning attention in the past month as we prepped to move, traveled a bit, packed everything up and then left it vacant for over a week before I headed back to clean it... but I would have liked to think my baseboards and walls weren't so gross. Anyway, 7 hours after arriving to the house, it was pretty darn clean. I hope the new people moving in appreciate it. :) A couple days later Ben went over to the old house and finished up the move out tasks - taking down the scary old trampoline, removing the swings and ceiling fan, and getting a couple last minute things out of the house and garage. We turned in our keys and garage door openers and can now officially be rid of the old place - it's a little stressful trying to settle into the new house, while still having the old house on our minds as something to deal with. Now we can really just focus on settling in. We went to our new ward for the first time yesterday and LOVED it! Ben and I were nervous before heading over to church - your first time in a new ward somehow feels like a job interview or something. I mean, nobody know who you are and what you're all about - we could potentially be in this ward for a long while (depending on where Ben gets a job coming out of residency) and we want to make a good, honest first impression. That's understandable right? We'd like to be social, active, contributing members in our new ward and it was pleasing to discover that this new ward is very outgoing, fun, and welcoming. There seems to be lots of activities going on (I'm already planning on going to an Enrichment and Primary activity this week) and everyone we talked to was very nice and easy to talk to. We hope to really begin to feel at home here - this ward has a lot to live up to, since our last ward was so amazing! But, I'm happy to say that we think we'll fit in well in our new community.

Ben started his first day of residency orientation today. I hope he comes home feeling good about how the first day went and positive about the experience that the next 3 years will bring. I'm excited about the changes, but I'm also not the one that has to go to work and stress about trying not kill somebody while utilizing newly acquired medical knowledge. It's got to be a little overwhelming starting out as a new doctor - I mean, I remember my first day of teaching quite well, and I was beyond nervous and stressed, but I wasn't holding people's health in my hands. Anyway- I have faith and confidence in Ben. He's going to be a fantastic doctor.

Since we hadn't been getting the kids out much, we took a moment to do a fun cooking project last week. Emma and I made little ladybug cookies while Ben was hard at work hanging curtains in our family room. It was really fun because I didn't have anything invested in these cookies - meaning I wasn't planning on giving them out to anyone, and I was really able to just let Emma do it all. She loved the freedom to be able to do all the stirring and decorating. So, these are really easy if you want to make these with your kids - we just dyed some frosting with red food coloring and spread it on little vanilla wafer cookies. We used mini chocolate chips for the spots and then a junior mint for the head. (We got the idea from this cookbook which we also used a while back when making the teacup cupcakes).

We had a great Father's Day - Ben got a yummy breakfast made for him in the morning and was then showered with simple gifts. Emma made him a card and gave him "tickets" to take him on a date to get ice cream sometime soon. Becca made him a paper airplane card (with a little assistance) and the girls both gave him treats of jelly belly's and swedish fish (some of his favorite candy's). I gave him a pepper grinder and a little coupon book for various services like getting his car washed and such. Ben likes to cook and has been wanting a pepper grinder to help in seasoning steaks and such - I love that he appreciates a good cooking tool! :) We went to Ben's parents house for dinner and celebrated Father's Day as well as the Summer Solstice. It's tradition every year at this time to float a cake. It's weird, I know. But the kids think it's very amusing (and so do I). We read favorite poems and enjoy the summer evening while watching our lighted cake float around on the water. It's always a pleasant summer tradition. I most enjoy eating the cake afterwords and always find it lucky that the cake didn't somehow sink.











And it just wouldn't be right to post about Father's Day without putting in a tribute to my own wonderful dad! So, here's the slideshow I sent out to honor him. He's really the best. (Note: you can turn off the music by clicking once on the little speaker picture at the top of the video).

In case this post isn't already long enough, I just have to share this silly Becca story - we were eating pizza for dinner a few nights back and part way through our meal, Becca says "eww! poop!".. then she picks off one of the little balls of sausage from her pizza and sets it to the side. You've got to be kidding me! She actually thought there was a little piece of poop on her pizza... and then, of course, she proceeds to finish eating her slice of pizza. If you found poop on your pizza, would you just pick it off and keep eating?

Home Projects

We are slowly settling in at our new place. It seriously takes forever to get fully unpacked, reorganized, and be able to really go about a regular daily schedule again. We haven't yet had a normal day since we moved 2 weeks ago, but we're getting lots done everyday and getting close to being somewhat finished with the moving tasks. Our moving day 2 Saturdays ago went very well. We had been moving boxes of stuff with our van the entire week before actually getting a moving truck to get the big stuff on the weekend. So, when our fabulous helpers (thanks Mike and his dad and brother, Andrew, Forrest, Scott, and all of Ben's fam!) came on Saturday morning, it was just furniture to be moved. We started at 8am and by about 11 we had already unloaded everything on the other end. It was very quick. And Ben's parents took our girls overnight on Friday (after graduation), so we were able to get a lot of the last minute packing done that evening and were able to move without our crazy little girls. :) Since the move, we've been busy, busy, busy. We installed our appliances the day we moved in (fridge, stove, washer/dryer).. however, the stove turned into the biggest thorn in our side! We lucked out and bought a stove the morning of the move at a garage sale just a couple streets over from us. It's a nice black glass-top stove, only a few years old and matches the rest of the kitchen appliances nicely. However, it had a 3-prong plug as opposed to a 4-prong (which we needed). This was no problem, in theory. Ben went to Home Depot and bought a 4-prong plug and was just going to switch it out. However, one of the screws completely stripped in trying to remove the other plug attachment. So, our stove turned into a giant paperweight for the next 5 days till we finally were able to get it working. We ended up having to order a whole new bracket part for the back of the stove, all because of a stupid screw that wouldn't come out. Anyway- the stove is working now, thankfully... and Ben's learned all about the mechanisms of a stove. In fact, we're getting a crash course in home and appliance repair, as we no longer can just call our landlord to fix stuff or install stuff for us. I don't mean to sound complaining, really - I love owning our own home and learning about everything that comes with it. It's a tremendous blessing and a growing up process as well. The next project is to get a garage door opener installed. Good thing I have a clever husband to do these things for me. :) My clever hubby has also successfully installed blinds throughout the entire house, started in putting up curtains, got our electronics all functioning, including getting a home network installed and running, and hung pictures in most of the rooms. I've been mostly unpacking, organizing, taking care of the kids, and running a tremendous amount of errands in order to get settled in. I say, give me 2 more weeks and we'll start having our life back again. :)

We LOVE our new neighborhood! It's quiet and pretty and the neighbors all seem nice and normal - I've always wanted 'normal' neighbors and not ones that feed and attract all the stray cats, so that we have cat poop constantly in our yard, and not ones that are continually fixing and washing their many huge trucks in their driveway. It's nice to be living in peaceful, clean surroundings. Our next-door neighbors even came and introduced themselves and brought us cookies. So nice. We have a great park within walking distance of our home. We took a break from the unpacking one afternoon and spent some time over there. The kids definitely have been spending a lot of time in the house lately, so this was a good reprieve. Yesterday, they got ice cream from the ice cream man - it seems that the ice cream truck is driving through the neighborhood every other day. The kids get very excited when they hear it coming, so we had to go try it out - they got some big fudgcicles, because my girls are chocoholics like me. :)

We seriously lucked out and scored a beautiful antique piano for free! A nice lady in our other ward was giving it away, and apparently I was the first to call on it, so I won! :) Thanks to Dustin for helping Ben get it in the truck and moved into our house - pianos are heavy. And it's so nice to have our own piano. It makes me want to practice again. I'm pretty rusty - maybe once I get the unpacking done, I'll work on playing some hymns. That would be good. Maybe I should first stop blogging so I can get some stuff done.

The El Conquistador

We spent this past weekend in Tucson with Ben's family for a little summer resort time! Someday, when I hopefully have more money, I want to really live it up at a bunch of resorts. Currently when we go, we don't usually enjoy the luxurious spa services or golfing because it's so darn expensive. But I think I NEED a massage when I go to a resort and I'm sure Ben NEEDS to golf on a fancy course. Don't you think? ;) I say this in jest, of course. We really had an awesome time - we stayed at the Hilton El Conquistador and it's the best - we spent many hours at the great pool area, enjoyed the awesome breakfast buffet a couple times, ate out at a yummy bbq place, and afterwards the kids had fun with the "old west" themed games, played card games, watched movies, and enjoyed each other's company. I really enjoy spending time with Ben's family. They are just FUN. :)

Dr. Dangerfield

I can't believe the day finally came! My cutie Ben is officially a doctor! I'm so proud of him. I actually teared up a bit as they read his name and he walked across the stage. It's been a great 4 years. It's been hard in some ways, but honestly, I really enjoyed our time in medical school (I feel like I went to med school too). We've had amazing friends and an incredible ward. Our little family has grown too - we've gone from a family of 3 to a family of 5 in the past few years and it's been awesome! Congratulations Ben - you've somehow pulled off becoming a doctor while still being an incredible daddy and hubby too. What an accomplishment!

At the commencement banquet the night before graduation

Us with our great friends Craig, Aubree, Taya, and Ryan



Our cute family :)

Ben with his mom and dad

Ben with his sister and nephew

Emma and her friend Addy

Angie, Craig, Ben, and Ryan

A last minute vacation

As I mentioned earlier, we took a rather spontaneous trip up to Utah a couple weeks ago. We were bored the morning of Memorial Day and were trying to decide on something fun to do. We bounced around many ideas and in the end we decided to travel up to Utah to see my family. So, a few hours later we were packed and in the car - we stopped over in Vegas to split up the drive, mostly because we had a late start getting out of the house. We did Hotwire for a good hotel deal - we saw that we could get a 4 star hotel just off the strip for 65 dollars - that sounded great! So, we booked it and it ended up being the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. Well, the Hard Rock is known for being... well.. not so family friendly - it's more targeted towards young single adults who like to party. We felt quite out of place bringing our 3 kids through this place. But, the room was nice and the pool was awesome! So, we enjoyed ourselves, even though we stuck out a like a sore thumb. We drove the rest of the way to my family's house the next day and stayed till the end of the week. It was a great visit! We saw lots of my fun brother (who's living in Provo), and spent a lovely afternoon with my grandparents in Salt Lake. I love my family! Thanks for having us so last minute - we love to spend time with you! :)

I haven't posted any videos in forever! Below are a couple of fun ones from our trip. The first is of Emma on the rope swing at Great Grandma's house. The second is of Emma and Ben rolling down the huge hill at the Thanksgiving Point gardens and proof that Ben is a really fun daddy. :)

We have keys!!

Well, the moving process is in full swing! We successfully closed on our new house on Tuesday, got the keys that evening and immediately headed over to move in our first van-load of stuff. :) We're a little excited, yes. The girls ran around the house and backyard... and stairs, of course. I'm probably going to go crazy with the stairs, so some ground rules will soon have to be set - like no hanging/climbing on the banisters. And when Jacob starts crawling and climbing himself, the baby gates will be making a quick appearance. We really couldn't be happier with the house - it's way nicer than anything I thought we'd be able to find for our price range. Ben will have to drive 30 minutes to get to work everyday - so we actually moved further away from the hospital than we were in our rental home... but in the end, we couldn't pass up getting a nicer home a little further away, and with lovely Arizona mountains and cactus surrounding the community. It's lovely. For anyone looking to buy a home, now is the time - there's all sorts of good stuff up for grabs! We feel very blessed. We're taking loads of boxes over to the house each day and by Saturday we should only have the furniture left to take over in the moving truck.




First time entering the house with our own set of keys! It was rather exciting!




You can see that the kitchen is in need of a stove and fridge. We've successfully purchased a fridge off craiglist, which is now in our garage (We also bought a washer and dryer off craigslist, which we'll need to install in the laundry room upstairs).. still looking for a stove. We better hurry - there's only a couple days left till we're living in the house, and I don't want to microwave everything. :)


Family room


The stairs that the kids love to play on... ugh


The living room, with a little dining area and bay window just to the front of the photo, which you can't really see


I think we better get some window coverings on that window, or our neighbors will have quite the show to watch!




The loft area at the top of the stairs

I'm trying to get caught up with blogging before we have to pack up the computer. I still need to post about our rather spontaneous trip to Utah. And, oh yeah, Ben graduates tomorrow morning! So, lots of posts soon to come, if I can do it amidst packing. :/