Thanksgiving 2011!

We had the privilege to have a visit from the Leggetts for Thanksgiving. They were so fun to hang out with! We had yummy food and lots of good times!

And Andrew turned 11 months! He got some teeth, and started crawling really good. He is growing so fast :)

Halloween 2011

Little Andrew turned 10 months today. The little peanut (who isn't very little anymore) has two bottom teeth, learned to army crawl, and pull himself up to his knees along the furniture. He is officially EVERYWHERE, now. His favorite things are playing with cables and touching the fireplace. Why, oh why, do babies not play with their toys? Anyway. Since he turned 10 months old today, he was also in his "costume". Not much of a costume because he was in bed at 7pm. So the onesie that says "This IS my costume" was his costume for this year. Next year he'll get something special and he gets to go trick-or-treating with daddy and brother Jacen.

This year Jacen went as Yoda. He even got a light saber to go with his outfit. He returned with a whole bunch of candy... and we only had 2 trick-or-treaters knock on our door, so we have a ton of candy left over. UGH!!!

This past saturday, we took a day trip to Cincinnati, Ohio. It took us 1 1/2 hrs to get there, and let me tell ya... What a BEAUTIFUL city! I LOVE big cities and tall buildings. It looked just like what I had seen in movies. We were going to the Duke Energy Children's Museum but Jacen had (still has) a cough, so we ended up just walking around downtown. It was chilly, but wow! I was in love! I even took time to take a picture of the Tiffany and Co. store. Had never seen one before.

We'll be going back around Christmas time as we were told that they have lots of things for kids to do up there.

In other news, I was accepted to the University of Louisville. Now I just have to pick a different major since mine from the University of Utah doesn't exist here. That's a MAJOR setback for me. It doesn't help I'm having a rough time adjusting here. Good thing we've made wonderful friends that keep us occupied on the weekends, but during the week it's really rough as we still are down to one car and I'm stuck at home during the weekdays. Hopefully going back to school will change that. January can't come soon enough.

9 months old!

Ahhh... Finally. Our house is coming together. We had this white loaner fridge for 4 weeks before Whirlpool decided to hurry up and send us our real fridge. We got our fridge put in place and now our kitchen is mostly done! I still need a few decorations that show the kitchen has some red, but other than that, it's all good.

The boys are really becoming way good friends. Jacen loves to plaster kisses on Andrew's forehead whenever he gets the chance. Jacen makes Andrew laugh so hard- especially in the car. It's pretty funny. I cursed about the fact that I had gotten pregnant with Andrew last year, but I can actually see it isn't bad- they keep each other entertained, and that's one less thing mommy needs to do.

Then last week, the moms in my ward had a playdate at Gallrein Farms. You all know I'm not an outdoor person, let alone a farm person. I have set foot in a farm maybe 2-3 times prior to this one in my life? Anyway. I figured it would give me a chance to get out of the house and let Jacen look at something besides the TV screen. I very much enjoyed chit chatting with the moms in our ward. I'm so thankful for their friendship!

Jacen was a little scared of feeding the goat (ram?!), but with a little encouragement in the form of shoving, he finally let go of the carrot right as the goat slurped it up with its tongue. He thought that was so cool.

But what he thought was the coolest were the chickens. He was fascinated by them. He thought chickens ate pieces of grass, so he decided to keep throwing little tiny pieces of grass into the coop, hoping they would come running to eat them... it didn't happen. But Jacen sure had a good time looking at them.

And big boy Andrew! We found a FANTASTIC pediatrician (thanks to a friend in the ward). I thought no one would outdo Dr. Witt, but this new doctor, Dr. Donovan, is absolutely amazing. He held Andrew for most of the appointment- Dr. Witt had never done that with either one of the kids. But anyway. Andrew weighs 20.5lbs and measures 28 inches long. In the last month, his two front bottom incisors broke through, he decided sliding across the floors instead of crawling would be a great form of transportation, and just tonight, he waved "Bye-bye" for the first time! Daddy is really upset about him growing up, but that's life. Andrew is sleeping all night for the most part and that makes me very happy!

In other news, I started a job working as a Unit Secretary, Nurse Assistant, and Monitor Tech at Baptist Hospital East. I'm still in orientation and will be for at least until end of next week.

So far, so good...

The last two months and more!

Life just flies right by a LOT of stuff has happened... so I will start from the top.
Victor and Brooke got married on June 18th, and it was great being there for their special day! They're so cute and complement each other so well :) Congratulations to them both!

And like I had mentioned in my previous post, my dad was able to come up and we had a blast with him here! We wish he and Neiva lived closer to us. Maybe one day.

Then Andrew turned 7 months old! He started to sit pretty well on his own and still no teeth... He got pretty good at sleeping through the night, but we were about to move, so there was no sleep training in his crib quite yet.

We then headed to Louisville, KY to pick out a house to live in. We were here for 4 days, and we had a house picked out on day 2. Not bad! We feel that we were guided by the Lord to be in the town and house we chose to be in, and I can't believe all the interesting things that have led us here. Truly NOT a coincidence! But we got to do a lot of sight seeing on day 3, although not as much as we had hoped. They were under a heat wave and every day was above 100F with over 80% humidity. It was brutal. We could only be outside for 10 minutes before we had sweat pouring down our faces. Jacen had stayed home with aunt Brooke and uncle Victor, and we brought Andrew with us. He was a little trooper.

This bridge is one of the bridges connecting Indiana and Kentucky (I-64). It's a cool bridge. Too bad we can't go over it for a while now because they just found it's cracking and they'll have to fix it, which may take months... maybe a couple years. It's caused a lot of havoc because it's the main bridge that connects both states.

And our house! We found it in a city called Shelbyville, which is about 30-35 minutes away from downtown Louisville, and only 22 minutes away from where Elijah works (Jeffersontown). It's almost half way between Louisville and Lexington. We like the house and the neighborhood but the cell phone reception and internet connection out here are horrible because we live in the middle of nowhere. Our ward, thankfully, is only 2 minutes away, but we're told that our ward encompasses 4-5 COUNTIES. We made some good friends and their house is about 25 minutes away, and they are in our ward. LOL I'm grateful for starting to make friends, because I'm really having a hard time adjusting here.

 That's downtown Louisville, looking from the River Walk. It's a pretty place. They have a playground there and some cool fountains.

Anywho. Back to before we left on our move. I ended up having to have emergency surgery 4 days before we left for our move, and that really kinda messed things up. My IUD perforated the wall of my uterus and got lost in my pelvis (which explained the severe pain I had for about one week following insertion), so my OB was nice enough to fit me in his surgery schedule and waited for 5 hours before we were ready to get an available OR at IMC to pull my IUD our laparoscopically. He is the best OB ever! I highly recommend him to anyone. Thanks to everyone (especially Brooke, Victor, Susan and Roy, including Sadie who threatened to slap me on loading day if I were to lift one finger!) who came in and helped me finish packing my house the day after surgery so we could load the moving container the next day. What a crazy weekend that was!

 The night before we moved we got together one last time with Sadie and she brought Sam along with her, so we had to take a picture of the buddies. Too bad Porter wasn't there otherwise we would've gotten a picture of all 4 boys together. And not surprisingly, they were both wearing green.

The next 4 days after that were HORRENDOUS. The first day in the car was especially difficult because not only did I sob as we were leaving Salt Lake valley, but the boys did not like being in their carseats for that long. We stopped our first night in a little city just an hour into Nebraska... that was probably the happiest I had ever been to be in a hotel room. Poor Andrew had been screaming in the car for the last 2 hours and it was hard driving and not being able to help him. Also being post-op, I had to be careful not to lift our suitcases, so that was hard on Elijah. On our second night, we stopped in Kansas City for the night, and wow! We really loved that city. We even saw the Kansas City Temple on the freeway at night. So pretty.
The second day of driving was probably the worst because we weren't done and the kids again were hating every minute of it. Andrew had figured out that every time we put him in his carseat he was going to be there for a while, so he'd cry as soon as we put him in it. Ugh. Terrible, terrible, TERRIBLE!!!

This is the St. Louis Temple, which was also right off the freeway. We loved St. Louis... such a pretty city. Funny because Elijah and I have contemplated moving there in the past and driving by just solidified our love for it! We plan on doing a Mormon tour in Missouri sometime, to visit Adam-ondi-Ahman and such.
Then FINALLY we got to Louisville on thursday afternoon. We decided to leave early on thursday because we figured the boys were at their crankiest after 6pm, so if we could be out of the car by then, our drive would be so much better. And it was. We got to our hotel in Shelbyville at 5pm and it was heavenly. That stupid drive was over!!!
The next day was chaos as we had to sign papers for the house and get keys, get a fridge, and ended up unloading the truck (which was awesome, I highly recommend ABF for long-distance moving) that got here at noon. About 20 people from the ward showed up to help us unload, and I wasn't even here- I was at the grocery store buying stuff and when I came back, everything had been unloaded and half the furniture had been put together! It was awesome! Thanks, Shelbyville ward! They have been so welcoming and friendly. If it wasn't for this ward, I'd be crying every day.
And Andrew, in the middle of all this mess, turned 8 months old! He finally got his own room, and now sleeps in his own crib- ALELUIA! He still has no teeth, and is finally showing some interest in wanting to crawl. I'm dreading the day he does start... I really like that he's content wherever he's sitting. He is always so cute and flirts with all the ladies. I worry about him as a teenager.



Our house is 99% set up. We need a couple furniture pieces and I need to hang pictures on the walls... But I had everything out of boxes 24 hours after we moved in. I was impressed with myself LOL :) I will get pictures of our house once I get everything else settled in.

It's been hard for me to adjust here. There's nearly nothing around us and I'm very lonely most of the time. Elijah and I had to sell his car before the move, so now we're down to one car, which makes it hard for me to be able to get out every day, because if I ever need to use the car, I need to take him to work, and I don't necessarily enjoy it. But life goes on I suppose.

I'll be applying to the University of Louisville within the next couple of weeks. More info to come soon!

Life just turned 180 degrees!

What a month! It flew by so fast. June was insane!
We first had my dad here from Brazil visiting for my brother's wedding, then my mom and brother came into town from Texas shortly after. My brother Victor and his cute wife Brooke got married on June 18th! They had a gorgeous Temple ceremony and a super cute reception at the backyard of her uncle's house. I'll post pictures when I get a chance to steal them from Facebook!
Also, it was my dad's first time meeting Andrew, and it was so adorable.

Then, after working for Intermountain Healthcare for seven years, I decided to quit. Life at home was getting crazy with Andrew not taking bottles anymore from daddy on the nights that I have to go to work. Jacen started to wake up during the night (again...) and so Elijah got really sick and tired of me working. And a new scheduling system came out and I was short half of my shifts and couldn't really get them. So I figured it was time to stop working. And when I put in my notice at work, I felt at peace and knew things would be okay. The only thing was that I had NO idea what was coming our way....
Four days later Elijah got called to talk to the owner of the company he works with and we took an offer to move to Louisville, KY at the end of August for him to open a new office for the company. Elijah is THRILLED! I am scared, nervous, happy, sad... all at the same time. I'm going to miss my family and friends so terribly. We don't know anyone there so it'll truly be an adventure! It's such a bummer to move from the house I LOVE. We'll be going to Louisville in a couple weeks to find a place to live. Hopefully we can find something decent!
And Andrew turned 6 months old. Happy half year birthday to him! He's so cute. Just last week he decided he wanted to learn to sit. We put him on his bouncer and that's what he did:

So I thought... maybe you want to sit on the floor? That look totally says, "Hmmm... excuse me?! I need to sit, please!" Then I put him on the floor.

He LOVES to sit.
And here are his 6 month-old pics. They were both too cute not to post one or the other.

Jacen is so loving with him. He's really learning to play with him well. He tickles Andrew's feet and loves to kiss his forehead. I know they'll be good buddies.
And last but not least... we had a blast on the 4th of July! I had to work, but we headed to Elijah's mom's house and hung out with our friends (which we consider family!) and ate some yummy food!

Here are the three dads, all holding their babies!

Jacen playing with his friends :)

Here are the grandpas...

... and the grandmas :)

We sure will miss celebrating the holidays with them. We always have so much fun!