First few Days in NC

So for the first few days that we got to NC we stayed with my SIL Jerusha and her family. 

We enjoyed visiting and watching some softball. 

Alaina's team had lost every game this season but managed to get second place in the playoffs. 

It was such an exciting night. 

 Ayla got bored with the ball game and decided to just roll and play in the dirt.

 After a few days we got the keys to our house. The first day we were there and put the washer and dryer in, we found this little guy in the wall of the garage where we needed to hook up the washer.
Ya, I always have my eyes open now when I go out to do laundry. Have I mentioned I hate snakes!!!

 We also wanted to make some quick changes.
For example the locks.
I was feeling handy and decided to give it a try myself.

 This was our first official dinner in our new house. You can see all the boxes behind us. We were still unpacking...um we might still be unpacking. :O/

 While we were busy unpacking, Kael decided to lose a tooth. He is starting to look like a snaggle tooth look.

 After being here for a week, my dad had to fly home. He was such a big help while he was here. We really appreciated all that he did for us.

and we are off...

so they day we loaded the truck was a stressful one. 

we had way more than we thought and our truck was packed to the BRIM!! 

our neighbors got to keep half of our stuff because there just was not enough room. 

i tried not to be sad about some things... but it's just stuff right. 

so we finally finished packing around 6:30. (we were thinking we would be done around 2)

our plan was to drive to Indianapolis the first night and then knock out the rest of the trip the following day. 

 Don't they look excited to be heading out. 

 Garran and my dad were in the Budget truck behind me and the kids. 

 Here was our last family picture in front of our house. 

When we moved here, we only had three kids and I was pregnant with Ayla. 

In three years we went through and accomplished a lot. 

Time sure flew by. 

 We also got a picture with our neighbors. They were so great to us while we lived there. We are surely going to miss them. The kids would go over and visit and steal cookies from their kitchen. They were great to live next door to. 

After two long days of driving we finally made it!!

I was so happy to see that North Carolina sign. 

I was ready to be out of our van for a while!!

Mother's Day Weekend.

This Mother's Day was bitter sweet. 

Sweet because my in-laws came to visit for the weekend and help us prep the house for the move. 

Bitter because we will be moving farther away from them and other family. 

That part of moving is never easy. 

We got a lot of painting and work done. 

 We took a quick break to snap a picture. I am always forgetting to get in the picture, so this time I had Garran take one. 

 Of course I wanted a picture with Grandma and Grandpa and all the kiddos. 

 We really appreciated all the help Garran's parents gave. We painted and cleaned, hung blinds.. We got a lot done. 

And of course on Mother's day, I wanted a picture with me and my babies. They are all getting so big. Not really babies any more. But oh how I love them all. 

Happy Mother's Day 

to 

my mom, garran's mom, and all the other wonderful moms I know. 

Hope everyone had an amazing Mother's Day!!

our bags are packed, were ready to go....

well we got everything ready and on Thursday morning this great group of guys showed up and had all of our stuff loaded in about an hour and a half. it went so smoothly i could not believe it. we really appreciated all of their help. it would have been much harder with out their help. thanks so much to the following fellas!!
mike j.
anthony n.
derek j.
phil c.
carl h.
elders
mike L.

Goodbye Parties!

some of our church friends decided to throw a farewell party for us at church the night before we left. it was hard to say goodbye to everyone. we have lived there for almost 10 years. that's a lot of fun and memories!stacy, briea, me and jenelle posing real quick. i am not sure what jenelle's husband is doing back there ;0)krista giving us a side view of her baby bump. she had her son the exact same time i had kael. so we were pregnant together and used to work out at the Y together during our pregnancy. her son is exactly one month older than kael!
these are just party goers...moana, joan, jean, jamie, melissa, baby hartson and josh!these are my friend jamie's children and my children. we wanted to get a group shot of them together. jamie and i have a history. i met her when i first moved to iowa. she was recently engaged and living in a house with three other girls. well when she moved out, i took her spot in the house and we have been friends ever since. of course we did a silly one too. please excuse Kael's gym shorts and Garran calls them. he had a small accident!

small world

this was cullans last day at his preschool. he really loved it there. he had some great friends and really enjoyed his teachers Mrs. Marston and Mrs. Kutz. He wanted me to take his picture with them, even though he does not look overly excited about it. I hope he has such fun teachers this next year.

ladies night

before i left, i got to go out to dinner with some great friends to relax and have a little fun. we went to Tony's. i have some wonderful and hilarious memories here with some of my friends and so we decided this was the place to go for our little farewell dinner. it was so much fun. i really appreciated these ladies coming out to have dinner and say goodbye. i will miss all the laughter and fun times i have had with these women, but I am sure to keep in touch!
(women in attendance: niki j, heidi c, jenelle s, stacy p, jen b, amy b, annie w, lindsey e, susie j)

so long!

we are unplugging tonight...but don't forget to check back in a little while. hopefully our internet will be up and working at the new place sooner than later!! wish us luck. I am hoping the move goes well!

is this for real?

i am  having one of those days. i don't know if it is just from being exhausted or what, but things just seem surreal today. i look around my house at all these boxes and think, really? are we really moving far away in just 10 days. i guess it is not super far away, but it is three hours from everything we know right now. all our friends, all our kids friends, cullan's school-that he loves. i usually get excited about moves and changes. those sort of things keep life interesting  i think. however i have to admit that now, having kids, and having friends who you have known since we were all single, and they have kids. there is this desire to plant some roots and let your kids grow up with these kids. i am sure we will love living in our new home, but today i am feeling sad about leaving our home now.

new place

today it became official. we just got back from finishing up some last minute stuff. this is our new place. well new to us and new for the next three years of our life. at least until grad school is over and we move on to a new home. the kids were excited to see it and pick out which room they wanted. i'm sure their minds will change but by the end of the month we will be living here.this is what our kids are most excited about. this is pretty much in our back yards. probably 100 yards or more from our back door. so while we are sad to be leaving all our friends here, we are excited to be moving to a nice place!

i have our new address if anyone needs it. just message me and I will get it to you!

the move

well today we got the call. the place we really loved came open much sooner than we had planned. so our next few weeks will be insanely busy ones. sorry if there is a lack of posts. i will try to keep everyone updated. sickness has been attacking our house, so at the moment it is day to day.

stress

well we spent all day Monday in Illinois looking for housing. we think we have found a place that we would be really happy with and that would work well for our family. now comes the waiting. waiting for all the paperwork to go through, waiting to hear if we will get approved sooner than later, waiting to hear exactly when we will be moving. i think i have mentioned in early posts that waiting is not always my strong suit. i am getting better because I realize that this is all out of my hands at this point. the papers are all filled out and we are just waiting to here. AHHH! I am already in the mode of de-junking things so that we will only move things that we really want to take with us and not move clutter. I don't know if that is an issue with anyone else, but we tend to always have clutter somewhere. anyways say a little prayer that our housing situation works out!!

the future!

well a decision has been made. it was not easy. we really loved the idea of living in the mountains and the appeal of being back towards where we are both from. alas, after much prayer and discussion among ourselves and others in the field we have decided to go to ......they made us the best deal. it has a great program and garran really enjoys the professors and other graduate students there. now that we have a location, we will soon be announcing when we will be moving. we feel really good about our decision!!

decisions...decicisons

lets see. we will start from the beginning.we started out very early. i think we left around 6:00am. this was the sun coming up as we were headed to Illinois.i love this bridge. it is in dubuque iowa. it goes over the Mississippi and it is just a pretty bridge.
it only took us about three hours to get to northern Illinois. here is the sign as we were pulling onto campus. this is the art building at NI. garran really enjoyed meeting Michael Barnes and getting to know the other professors and grad students there. he said he really enjoyed himself and that he would enjoy going here if that is what he decides.
of course we picked a hotel that had a pool for our kids. they all love the water. they are like little fish. here are the boys getting ready to head down to the pool.and of course i had to get a shot of our little princess in her bathing suit. she looked so sweet walking around in here little suit!
we stayed the night in DeKalb and then woke up early the next morning and headed to Tennessee!

sad

I'm sure that the title might be a little confusing. this should just be a sweet picture of my son. however for me it is almost hard to look at. for the last few days Cullan has been wearing this hat around the house and even out sometimes. it did not even dawn on me why he has been doing it. he thinks its cool because his friend Oliver does it. it makes me sad that Oliver has to wear one. it makes me sad that Cullan has no real understanding of what is happening. he just thinks that Oliver is great. I am so happy that they have the chance to be friends and spend time together. I am grateful that we have gotten to be friends with their family for almost 10 years. We will miss seeing them when we move and will cherish all the laughs and memories we have made.

education update~

well as most of my blog readers know garran has decided to pursue more education. for a while we have been going back and forth about where we should go to continue his education. so finally the other night we sat down and picked eight schools we will be applying too. i know a few of you have been curious. so here is the list, in no special order. although i can tell you that i think number one is his top pick!

1. University of Tennessee Knoxville
2. University of Iowa
3. University of Northern Illinois
4. Indiana University
5. Arizona State University
6. University of Georgia
7. Western Carolina University
8. BYU

ok so there it is. one of these places will be our new home before to long.. well it will still be a while but whatever. these are the schools we will be applying to. wish us luck!

grad school blah~

so i thought i would be helpful and try and get some information together about the schools that garran is thinking about applying to. just so we know when their deadlines are, what their requirements are, especially portfolio wise. argg. can i just say i was not anticipating this being so stressful. one of the schools we will need to have everything sent off before christmas. plus applying is expensive and i hate it. why should we have to pay almost 100.00 per school for the possibility of getting one little sheet of paper either saying yes or no. on top of that i think i am just feeling stress because in less than a year we will hopefully move and i have no idea where because it all hinges on where we get accepted to school and where garran decides to go. in a way i wish we could just be done in may, but i know that we need to keep going for garran to have the opportunities to do what he really wants to do. plus we have come this far, why not keep going right! sorry for my whining.. gotta run to get cullan at mom school! happy thursday to everyone!

if you know someone..

my friends are trying to sell there house. they would like to have people look at it as soon as possible. if you know anyone that may be interested, please refer them to this site. it is in a great neighborhood and they are asking a very reasonable price. the more this gets around the better!

1033 kingsley

thanks cg

A Week in review!

Well were are all moved in.. we have some incredibly friendly neighbors.. I will leave it at that. We have more space which is nice. Things have gone pretty smoothly except for our Internet. However now that is taken care of, so all is well again. I am loving our bigger kitchen. We have already put it to good use. We made chocolate chip cookies as a family. Everyone had a part. They were a thank you to our friends that watched the boys while we packed up the u-haul.

They boys thought it was a blast.

We really are enjoying our new place. We have so many unexpected visitors from our new ward (from church). It has been a pleasant surprise! We enjoy having the company, it is a nice welcome. It really makes us feel apart of things. So anyways I know we have missed a lot because I have been checking everyone blogs. But it is great to be reconnected. Yeah!

Were Back!!!!

Finally I got our Internet working. I was about to take a bat to anything that had to do with our computer or Internet, but today I finally got it working. Oh how I have missed my email and blogging. I have new pictures to post so I will do so soon. Hope everyone has been well.