Michigan! Oh How I Will Miss Thee!

My husband has been offered a job in Arizona and we feel that this is the next chapter in our families life. Even though we know it is the right thing it doesn't mean I am not overwhelmed with sad emotion right now. I love Michigan so much. I grew up here, moved away, came back, moved away, came back again and now we are leaving again.


I am terrible at good-byes. T-E-R-R-I-B-L-E! Each move gets harder and harder as the girls get older. It is especially hard for me to leave the school our girls have attended since we moved back 2 1/2 years ago. How do you thank people who have laid such a positive foundation in your children's learning. I fall short of word to express my gratitude to them. On the bright side, I will always know our girls will have very fond memories of their time and learning there.


My husbands been the Bishop of our congregation the last year in a half. This calling has brought many blessing into our families life. Often times when he has been gone for many nights a week I have literally felt the prayers of the members of our congregation give me the strength to do what I get to do. How do you thank people for that. It has been such a blessing for our family. I am grateful for the experiences we have had while living here again.


Our home. Ah our home. I often joke I have a love/hate relationship with it. We bought our home 8(+) years ago. 2 week before Emma our oldest was born. We have been through a lot together. When we lived in Nebraska for almost 2 1/2 years, we rented our home out. We left with 2 kids and came back with 4. The home is only 1875 square feet and it is a cape cod bungalow style. No basement. Not too big. I have had to use my creative juices majorly in this home to make it be functional. One of the things Emma expressed on what she loved about our home and what she will miss is how cozy our home is. Cozy is a great word to describe the home. In the winter it seems a bit more cozy than I would like, because we are not able to get outside as often.


Once warmer weather rolls around(as in, I don't have to put on several layers of jackets and snow pants, mittens, scarfs,hats etc.) I start shoving kids outside and making them play out in our nice big back yard. Oh how I love our backyard. Equipped with 2 tire swings and a ladder you can climb up to swing down from with the rope swing. My husband has over at his blog a little clip of the girls doing mud swinging. Beautiful mature maple trees. our strawberry patch I planted 6 years ago. Wild blackberry bushes. At least in Arizona I will not need to bundle children up in snow gear to play outside. That is a huge undertaking, let me tell you.


So many memories. As hard as it will be to say good-bye to Michigan again, I know that Arizona is where we need to be next. So we will pack up everything and "Go and DO!" and enjoy this journey and make new memories and grow in love as we serve those who I get to know in Arizona. So here's to a fun new adventure, hormones and all!


By the way I am due in November. What are we thinking!!!!!!!! You don't have to tell me we are crazy, I already know it, and we wouldn't have it any other way.

Time Fly's When You Are Having Fun!

Happy 11th Wedding Anniversary and Happy Birthday to our little family!

Time really does fly when you are having fun.

Family Night Activity

A couple Mondays ago Lucy was in charge of our Family Home Evening (FHE) activity. She chose to go swimming. We have some friends in our congregation from church that practically beg us to come and swim because they want their pool to get used. We don't mind because the girls LOVE to swim.






I am not sure how these girls became so fearless, but I went down this particular slide once and it was my last time. It is too steep of a drop for my liking. And a bit to narrow for my voluptuous hips.

This slide reminds me of a much larger slide I went down nearly 15 years ago at Seven Peaks
in Utah. Our family was on the last week of our 3 week cross country camping vacation and some friends of my parents, who lived in Utah, suggested this particular water park.


Driving up I was filled with great anticipation. I enjoyed swimming and water slides. Little did I know how these water slides would impact my feelings of them for the rest of my life.

If you click on the Seven peaks link right up there, it will take you to the tour of the park. You can view the different water slides available. I can't remember if it was the straight down blue one (sky Breaker) or the yellow one (jagged edge) but this is how the story went.

My twin sister, and little brother headed up the more than 6 story high stair way to the very top. Those slides didn't look to steep from ground level looking up. It looked like FUN! So up we went.

Once up there, we may have realized that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to go on the BIG slides. We tried getting our little brother to go down first , but he was pretty panicky. My sister and I were pretty scared ourselves. Somehow I was the one who ended up going first.

Instructions from the water slide attendant : Cross your arms and lay them over your chest. NO MATTER WHAT, KEEP YOUR LEGS CROSSED TOGETHER! And stay flat on your back.

Okaaaayy?!!?

My heart was pounding so hard. I crossed my arms, tightly crossed my legs, scooted to the edged of the slide to start dropping, and the next thing I knew the force of gravity had ripped my legs apart making me vulnerable to what naturally will happen to anyone who does not successfully KEEP THEIR LEGS CROSSED NO MATTER WHAT!

I get down to the bottom of the slide in the 4.5 seconds it says it takes to get to the bottom, only to find that my bathing suit has been wedged so tightly in between my cheeks that it causes a burning sensation. I get up only to find that my bowels had been filled with, not mercy, but high velocity water.

My sister had gone right after me and we both realized that we needed to quickly get to the bathroom. So we waddled to the nearby bathroom to spend the next several minutes getting rid of the unnaturally given enemas.


We both laughed hysterically through our pain. My brother got off the ride jumping up and down saying "ow, ow, ow, ow!"


Needless to say we stayed on the much smaller less dramatic dropping water slides for the rest of the day.

So even though our friends water slide was not over 6 stories high, more like 7 feet, steep is steep to me. I am not one for the free fall feeling. But if you are the "thrill seeker" type or if you want to clean out your system, then I recommend you try out the Seven peaks water park.

No particular subject

i keep on getting lots of great ideas to write about and i think in that moment "oh this will be a great topic to write about, I most definitely will not forget about it!"


and every single time i forget. what is worse is i have not corrected this problem i just continue to think i will remember, and then i forget. whatever.


as excited as our home is to welcome a new person to the fun, i wanted to document some of the true feelings i have had about adding a different gender to the group.


i was completely terrified. was being the key word in that sentence. for some reason going out to utah and being around all of our family helped me switch my thinking. i now find myself thinking about our little boy and anticipating his arrival.


speaking of arrivals. Monday on labor day, yeah i just about went into labor several time. our home was built in 1940. it is old. anyway, you know the girls and i were pretty much gone for the whole month of august. jared was gone at work and then to various church meetings and so forth so he was not at home often as well. this is the only explanation i can think of for what i found monday afternoon when i was ready to load in my last load of laundry into the washer.


there was a little mouse that scurried about. i screamed a scream that made me feel like the baby was going to shoot out of me. i do not do well with scurrying things. not one bit. i paused for moment to make sure the little thing was not going to jump on me. it moved again and i screamed again as i leapt to leave the laundry room.


i then yelled from the back door to jared, who was dutifully obeying his wife who had told him to finish his shed project, to stop what he was doing and to come quickly. he ran and came to save the day.


i told him the new top priority was to kill the mouse and to make sure that any further invasions of a mouse would ensure that upon entering our dwelling they would suffer a slow death from poisoning. i will spare you the details of how he handled the situation, but i will say that he was successful.


i was so worked up about the whole thing. i just don't like surprises like that. my body certainly didn't either.


the second time i almost went into labor happened later on in the day when i was going through the girls clothes to prepare for this cooler weather. i was moving some things and this BIG spider comes out of nowhere. I nearly popped the baby out again. especially when i went to kill the filthy thing.


i may or may not have cried several time on monday because my body was so stressed out from all of the surprises. unwelcome ones might i add.


anyway...... the girls started school tuesday. girls as in emma and sera. they were sooo excited! lucy and kady are doing mommy school. we did this last year and had a great time. eliza is on the verge of walking, but has been for the last 3 months. we shall see when she crosses over from babyhood to toddlerhood.


here is a random question. are there others out there besides me who does not measure the amount of water when you cook your pasta? i thought this randomness sunday evening as i was preparing some egg noodles to accompany out delicious dinner. i thought about if there was anyone out there who actually measures 4 quarts of water to boil their pasta in. if so i have nothing against you i am just curious if people really do this.


Sera was in charge of closing prayer for our family night on Monday. As she prayed she somehow included how she was thankful to God for GPS's. mind you, we have never had one and do not recall ever talking about them. but i am sure for many out there GPS's is something you are thankful to God for.

Good-bye Why-homen-ing

So on our way out to Utah I was safely able to capture the girls excitement as we left the great state of Wyoming. I especially love how Kady said Wyoming. Enjoy!