The Big Move

In October, Paul flew out to San Antonio, Texas to interview with a company for a Project Engineer position. The interview went well (although very rushed) and they told him that they would be in contact by Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving came and went and we didn't hear anything from the company so we started looking for part-time jobs that we could supplement Paul's income with to get by until we found a full-time position.  Paul was getting ready for finals when he finally heard back from them on December 2nd.  He negotiated an offer with them and it was full steam ahead.

Our apartment complex required that we give at least 30 days notice so we gave it right away as his starting date in San Antonio was slated for January 7th.  I started packing furiously, but the HR department took a long time to get the paperwork Paul for the physical and background check (because we were approaching Christmas vacation I assume).  Paul completed the physical and paperwork and sent it back but we didn't hear anything back.

I found a place to live on the 21st, which was a huge stress-relief right before Christmas.

At this point I had to reserve the moving truck in order to get our things delivered by January 7th. We waited and waited. We were completely moved out of our apartment and were occupying my parent's basement before we found anything out. On December 28th he finally received an email that the paperwork looked good and that they would overnight a check on Monday the 31st and that it should arrive on the 2nd due to the holiday.

On December 31st our truck was picked up and began transit.  Then we got a call from HR saying that even though the Dr. at the clinic had cleared Paul for work, there was protein in his urine and that he would need to have tests done to get to the bottom of the problem before officially hiring him on.

Enter major freak-out. enough said.

After talking to the safety division of the company, they decided to have compassion on us and just clear him anyway...seeing how our stuff was already gone and we had paid a deposit on another place and had been told previously that everything looked fine.  At some point we will have to figure out what was up with his test though.

Paul went to work at the school for the last time on the 2nd, came home and slept, and the check arrived.  After some very tearful (I mean, wailing and gnashing of teeth...it was quite dramatic) good-byes to my family, we got into the car at around 8:30 pm.  James fell asleep within 5 minutes.  I fell asleep after a few hours and apparently missed a few blizzards and boring towns.  

We had breakfast in Roswell, New Mexico at a very odd McDonald's (but what isn't odd about Roswell?).  Can I just say that New Mexico is the most boring state? Not a very interesting drive other than the snow. The drive was very long and James didn't whine at all, didn't have any toilet accidents, and was pretty much an angel. 

I can't really remember what time we rolled into San Antonio, but we stayed with our friends for a few days and they had hot food waiting for us. We went and signed our lease and got the keys to our new place, but the heat wasn't working and it was 50 degrees inside...which just isn't bearable.  It took us a day to get a repairman out and get it fixed.  Our friends took us to the Alamo and the Riverwalk, which we just loved! We will be going back there soon, I'm sure. We moved in to our townhouse on the 5th and went to our new ward (which is awesome) on the 6th. James went to his first day of primary and LOVED it.

View from our window. You can see Paul's work in the distance. He's working on a major medical center out here.

First day of Primary

Stocking up on some much-needed supplies

Not so sure about this Davy Crockett thing

Frighteningly in his element. No one buy him a sling shot. Seriously.

At the Riverwalk

Our living room. It's so pretty!

Alamo

On the 7th, our stuff arrived (and our mattress!! At this point we'd been on the air mattress for 15 nights). Paul was at work so I didn't even bother opening it up until he came home. Miraculously nothing was broken. We unpacked about 2/3 of it with just one other person.  I stacked a ton of boxes in the dining room.  Around 3am I got a weather alert on my phone warning of flash flooding. I didn't think much of it.  In the morning I was unpacking boxes when I stepped in a huge puddle which had saturated many boxes of canned food and narrowly missed the large box of books right next to the puddle.  

The next day I noticed a leak under the sink in the second bathroom.  I put a bucket under the sink and it was such a slow leak that I didn't think it could do much harm, but I called up maintenance. Apparently maintenance was very busy with roof issues from the crazy rain and they never got around to me.  An email had been sent out to the ward to come help unload the trailer, but we had it all taken care of other than the piano by the time they all arrived.  It was nice to see missionaries again. I honestly haven't seen them other than passing by the MTC since I moved to Utah 7 years ago.

I woke up the next morning to find at least a gallon of water on the floor in the bathroom! I had checked the leak the night before and there was maybe a tablespoon of water in there so this was shocking!  Called maintenance again, and apparently my case was dire enough to show up for this time.  Turns out the entire pipe was cracked on the seam, but how that much water got on the floor is a mystery to me since none of us used that bathroom and water would have to travel down the drain to overflow.  Very odd.

We haven't had any problems since and I'm hoping it stays that way! 

We have a few more obstacles to get through before we can put the move behind us, but that will come with future paychecks.  I will catch up posting about the holidays later.  Our New Year starts in February (since we just couldn't put any of our goals into motion with all the craziness going on this month!). Most importantly, we are safe. Missing family, but grateful to have a job! It's a tough job market out there right now.  Just ask the girl who applied for 175 jobs for her husband and only got one job offer.  It must be where we're supposed to be.

It Came to Pass...

Last night we finished the Book of Mormon. This is our second year in a row successfully getting through a standard work (last year was New Testament).  I can't tell you what an accomplishment this is, although those of you with little kids probably understand.

I almost gave up this year. 

At one point Paul and James were rough housing and laughing (how DARE they, ha ha) and I quit. I thought, maybe when Paul starts acting his age and James is older and can sit still for longer than 3.2 seconds we'll try again.

For a week.

But then I realized that if I quit, I wasn't teaching James anything good. So we resumed with a different attitude and I'm so glad that we did.

Every night for the past month it has been James who has reminded us that it's time to read scriptures. He's been engaged by them! My little 3 year old has been listening and asking millions of questions about the scriptures. It makes our scripture study last at least twice as long, but I don't mind answering his questions like: 

What does 'it came to pass' mean?

Who is so and so?

Those guys were naughty, huh?

Why do they say 'it came to pass' so much?

And his constant repeating of what we read to try to understand the language of the scriptures.

We all would have missed out on so much if I had just quit because it was hard.  I know that there will probably be times when I feel like quitting again, but for right now I'm just grateful that we were able to finish it and we are so excited to start our Christmas advent tomorrow!

Fall

So...Autumn flew past quickly!  The last few months are sort of a blur. It seems like the bulk of our time has been spent applying for jobs, interviewing, and looking for more jobs to apply to. It's been harder than we anticipated. I thought for sure we'd have something lined up by now, but no such luck....yet. We fee fortunate that we still have a job after graduation, even though it's not the best.

We actually bought him an Iron Man costume this year, but he wanted me to make him a Captain America costume instead.

Anyway, we did manage to get out a little bit and have some fun. We took James to the Red Barn in Santaquin, Utah. We went on a hay ride, picked out some pumpkins and dug for treasure in a huge sand box (we didn't find anything).  

Later that week we went to Grandpa and Grandma Willardson's for some trick-or-treating with Lorelei. They were so cute and had so much fun together.

For Thanksgiving this year we went to my parent's house.  It was a lot of work, but just as good as always.  We spent the night on Wednesday so we could have plenty of time to cook. James had so much fun watching the Macy's Thanksgiving parade with family.

I honestly can't believe that Christmas is here! 

The Summer

I haven't been very good at blogging lately as we've been so busy. We had such a fun-filled and busy summer this year. I'm sorry for the lack of pictures in this post.  Here is some of what we did:

Participated in the Provo Library's Reading Program
James' 3rd Birthday Party
Took a trip to California to move my Grandma to Utah
Went Swimming and went to the splashpads
Had lots of BBQ's
Campout in Spanish Fork
Spent time with friends and family
James got his first (hopefully last?) stitches
Said good-bye to some dear friends
Watched lots of fireworks (from our apartment complex...you can go ahead and be jealous now)
Helped a lot of people move
Drive-in Movies
Went Day Camping
City Summer Festivities
Went to the Brigham City temple open house
Oh, and I've lost 22 pounds. I wish I could say that that was all I had to lose, but I'll probably be on this diet until March.

It was a really great summer and we had so much fun, but we are really excited for Fall, Paul graduating, moving on to a new job (and possibly a new state!), and of course, Christmas.  It's pretty stressful right now with so many different things in the works with job hunting and trying to come up with ideas for Christmas, but we are VERY excited to be done with school. It's been an extraordinarily long journey.

Figaro

August 4th, 1997- August 29th, 2012

  

Figaro, my faithful little kitty of over half my life, ended his journey.

He is resting under the tree where he spent most of his time.

Rest in peace, baby boy.

A James Post: In Which I Brag About My Kid

So, it's been a really long time since I did an update on James so I figured I should change that. 

He's about 35 pounds (feels like fifty), 38 inches tall and has a seriously huge head (we had to buy him a helmet for 8 year old's).


He's a mama's boy. Majorly. It's ok with me. I love that my 3 year old asks me if I'll snuggle him multiple times a day. I know this won't last forever so I take advantage of it. It's nice to take breaks from housework to just sit on the couch holding my big boy while he chats away. He randomly says that he loves all day long. He's made up a little jingle that he frequently sings:
I love Mommy, I love Daddy, I love James....over and over and over. He's one of the sweetest kids I know. He really cares about people and their feelings and is extraordinarily well-behaved.

James knows most of his alphabet by sight and can count to thirty. He can spell his name (verbally, and recognizes it visually) and is learning to spell simple three letter words. He's doing such a great job and I'm so proud of him. He is struggling with drawing/writing. We can't tell if he's left or right handed or both. I've tried to just step back and let him use whichever hand he wants, but I feel like he's a little confused sometimes. He eats and brushes his teeth with his left hand, which leads me to believe that it's his dominant hand, but then he'll throw and draw with his right. I really have no clue! Hopefully we can figure it out before he goes to school. Until then, his drawing skills are pretty limited..but, he's only 3, so we have some time.

We finally ditched the pull-up once and for all. I was using it at night because he kept falling off of his toddler bed and crawling into our bed in the wee small hours and I really didn't want him accidentally peeing in MY bed.  My sister just got married and my parents gave us her bed. It's perfect because it was a top bunk so it has rails on both sides! He LOVES his new bed. He can sleep in all the weird positions he wants and loves having all that space to himself...in underpants. Yay!

He really wants to be a big kid. He talks about how he's going to grow up all the time. His current dream is to play soccer. He REALLY wants to play games with older kids. He gets so excited when the opportunity presents itself that he mostly just runs around like crazy with bouts of insane laughter. Every time he eats he informs us that the food is traveling down his throat, into his tummy, down his legs, and into his toes (which he calls turtles...why I don't know) and because of this process he states that he is getting bigger.

His favorite person right now is his Peepaw (Grandpa Willardson).  He loves to terrorize him by blowing bubbles at him with his bubble gun, talking his ear off, and just chasing him around.

He plays very well on his own. His imagination just astounds me. I'm so glad that he can sit down and entertain himself for hours on end...because the other hours on end are spent asking me millions of questions. And questions are great! Really! But after hours of questioning your nerves sort of...yeah.

He is super friendly, unlike me. I'm a major introvert and that kid is really pushing me out of my comfort zone. He says hello to everyone he meets in this loud, obnoxious little voice; he waves and smiles and draws a lot of unwanted attention. BUT, I'm glad that he's not shy. Being shy really sucks. They call it "painful" for a reason. No, really. It is. So I'm glad that he's not like that because I think he'll have an easier time at life.  He loves people so much. As an introvert, I recharge by being alone. Being around people excessively is very draining and quiet, alone time is my recovery. James is just. the. opposite.  If we don't go out enough he starts getting really grouchy. He NEEDS people, which is just weird to me. I have to work really hard to find a happy balance between our different personalities and needs. He's always teaching me something or another.

He loves church and is so great about saying prayers (although he currently thinks that it's hilarious to begin his prayer (Dear...) and end it right afterwards (In the name...).  He is a great helper in FHE and loves to sing primary songs before bed. He finds scripture study to be boring and struggles to stay reverent, but he at least tries. We get compliments for his good behavior constantly.

He loves to make people laugh. He loves making up knock-knock jokes that make no sense. His punch lines are often missing, but his laughter is so contagious that it doesn't really matter.  He loves helping in the kitchen. He has his own apron and helps prepare dinner every night (adding at least a half hour to prep time, but he loves it). He sets the table all by himself and is a really great cleaner around the house. He will clean any given room if asked and will do so almost perfectly. It's quite impressive.

He is my practically perfect child. I have very little problems with him and feel really lucky to have him.

California Trip

On July 5th we woke up early and loaded our stuff into my grandma's van and headed to California.
She can't really take care of herself anymore and so my parents have been slowly moving her to Utah.
We decided to go with them. My dad PROMISED that there wasn't much left to do and we could go see the "sites." ha ha.

Paul and my dad took turns driving the truck and my mom and I switched off driving the van.
James was amazingly good. He didn't have an accident (pants) the whole way. I was so proud of him! Granted, my grandma had to go to the bathroom every  2 miles so...

Turns out there was a LOT of work to do. It's a good thing we came because I don't think my parents would have been able to finish it by themselves. James really loved being able to hang out with his "pee-paw"  for 4 days straight. He told me after we got home that he is "pee-paw's little buddy." Melt my heart.

So we did do a few things while we were there. We went to see my grandfather's grave and we went to see the Sundial Bridge. Paul cleaned off the patio and made a nice space for us to relax while we were there. 


There was plenty of drama to keep us entertained.


On the way home we weren't so lucky with being accident-in-your-pants free. Poor James needed to go about 10 minutes before we got to every stop. Luckily I had him in a pull-up. He was quite distraught. It was when we were in the middle of the Nevada desert that he informed us that he needed to go #2. So we pulled over on the side of the road and James had his first successful roadside experience. 


Later that day we got pulled over by a highway patrolman and miraculously were left with a mere warning. Considering my maternal parental unit was going 90 and my grandma didn't have recent registration or insurance paperwork, it was pretty much a miracle.


Poor Paul had to go to work the next morning and barely had 4 hours of sleep. He is pretty much amazing.

The trailer full of stuff.

My three favorite guys

Watching Disney movies and being awesome

Walking on the Sundial Bridge