::We're Here::

Well we made it! A long time ago actually. I just haven't had much access to the internet or much time to mess around since we got here. Right now I'm borrowing somebody's network from down the street somewhere. It's a little untrustworthy, but so far so good.
We spent the whole week getting everything out of the truck, unpacked, set up and organized. It's been tons of work. Remember how we sold a whole bunch of stuff from our old house? Like our bed and fridge and washer and dryer and that kind of stuff? Well we took that money and went to Ikea and got a new bed for our bedroom--a cool modern low profile one--and a dresser. We also got Max a new bed and a rug and a few other things. He's been sleeping on a double bed up until this point, and it's a pretty huge bed for such a small boy. We moved that bed to the guest room (yay, we actually have a guest room!!) and now with his smaller bed there's more space in his room for toys. It's nice to think that maybe the bulk of his toys can be stored in his bedroom now instead of in the living room. We'll see if that works out the way we're planning it. It's amazing the stuff you can get at Ikea for a relatively small amount of money. It's great to be relatively close to one.
We like the house a lot. It's a similar age to our last house. It's got one more bedroom than our last house and all the rooms are just a little bigger. The kitchen is nice, there's a pantry! The only bad thing about the kitchen--and really about the whole house is the fridge. It's old and it's nasty. That's not the worst thing about it though. When it fires up to cool itself it sounds like an idling diesel engine. It's SO loud. It can be heard through closed doors, and in the basement. Kris even went upstairs (the upstairs people haven't moved in yet) and he said he could hear it up there too. We called the landlord and he said that we just needed to get used to it. He said it sounded "like a baby's gurgle." Yeah, if the baby was the size of Las Vegas. And drank petrol instead of milk.
We'll keep working on him. I think we'll get it worked out eventually. It's just going to take some persistence. In the meantime we might need to wear earplugs....
I'll have some pictures of the house all set up tomorrow hopefully, I'm just not sure if the internet is going to be trustworthy enough to get them uploaded. Hopefully.
We're going to Utah on tuesday to meet up with Max and visit with the fam. It's been really nice to be able to do all this work without worrying about him, but we miss him. We're looking forward to seeing him and Sultan when we get there.
So I'll have pictures soon, if not tomorrow, tuesday!

.::More Progress::.

Today would not have been a day that Max would enjoy. We started at 9AM, and we finally stopped driving at 9PM! (with a few breaks in the middle of course).
We made it most of the way through Pennsylvania, which gives us a very manageable 6 hr drive to make tomorrow.

Indiana and Ohio all basically looked the same, landscape wise. We stopped for lunch at a Wendy's in mid Ohio which I was very allergic to. I think everybody in there having lunch had just been out taking care of their livestock. Which is perfectly ok except that I'm like deathly allergic to horses, and probably cows as well. We ate in the car.
It's been SO cold on this trip. It's very unseasonably cold in the midwest right now, I'm not sure why. And it's cold out east here too--maybe not unseasonably, I don't know. What I do know is that we packed all the wrong clothes. So we're cold. But we're almost there, so that's ok.

The Pennsylvania landscape is very pretty. There are rolling hills, rivers, little valleys and lots of trees. So far it's been really fun to drive through. This drive is long, but it helps that we get to see so many different states. Especially a LOT of states we've never seen before at all.
Here's Kris filling up the incredibly huge tank on the truck. It's a diesel. As you might imagine, gas for this trip has been quite the expense. Bad time to move across the country, right? Oh well.

We may not have internet for a while--we don't have it set up at the new house yet. So I'll post more if I can, otherwise I'll just have to leave you in suspense!
Oh, and to my friends concerned with my driving safety, don't worry. I'm about the scardiest driver that there is. I just pick up the camera, and let it take it's own pictures. I'm not driving down the road looking through the viewfinder, ok? :)
Pretty, huh?

::Progress::

We made it to some small town outside of Indianapolis. Like Cloverville or Cloverbloom or something. Kris says maybe it's Cloverton. Oh, nope. He just checked and it's CloverDALE. I haven't seen any clovers out here though. It's very po-dunk. We're lucky there's internet, that's for sure.
Anyway, we're very tired so we're excited to get some sleep so we can get on with the long drive tomorrow!
Max and his grandparents made it back home to UT, so we're happy about that.
I don't really have a ton to say about today, so how about some pictures?

Can you see the sign on the side of Kris's truck? Where the heck is Hustonia? Missouri somewhere I think maybe...I thought the sky was pretty.

More truck. I think this is probably Illinois somewhere. It's green, isn't it?


this is a cool bridge that I think is over a part of the huge Mississippi river. That was fun to see, sorry no pictures. The river was way too distracting.

Good night....graduation pictures still to come...and graduation party pictures...and moving pictures....

::On Our Way::

Well, Max just left with his grandparents for Utah, and in a few minutes Kris and I are going to leave to start the long drive to Providence (Kris in the truck, me in the car. yuck.)
Kris graduated last night and it was great. I have pictures that I'll get up here as soon as I can. Hopefully tonight if we can get ourselves a hotel with some decent internet access.
We're thinking we might make it to Indianapolis by the end of today. We'll keep you all posted.
If you're bored give me a call. :)
Oh and HAPPY MOTHERS DAY to my mom and Kris's mom and all of the sweet mothers out there!

.::YAY!::.

Yay I actually graduated tonight. It was great. I'm so tired now I can hardly keep my eyes open.
My graduation was just with the graduate students and undergrads from the business school. We actually walked about halfway across campus to get from our building to where the commencement was happening. It was a fun little parade. For some reason we had a bagpipe player leading the host. Kris took some great pictures for me.
Here we come!

Here's Max watching the parade as we came up to the building where graduation was happening.

Here I am trying to get Max's attention, can you see me?

He sees me!

It was a good length for a graduation. It was about an hour long.
I'm lucky that Kris's parents and grandparents and Kris's sister Kari and Kelly and Lechelle were all there. So I had cheers when I walked across the stage and that made me happy!
Max did great during the whole thing I guess, good thing Kris has an entertaining phone.
I'm so happy to be done and proud that I could stick it out and make it happen.
Thanks to my cute little family for always being my support!



Kris graduates tomorrow! WOO HOO!

::Happy Spring and Happy Birthday Mom!!::

In celebration of spring, and my mom's birthday (which was yesterday) and the fact that we're ALL done with school, here are some fun flower pictures I've taken in the last month or so. I do love flowers!




This is a great little tree on our street.




Cool daffodils of course!




Thank goodness for neighbors with lovely yards.




and some LOVELY tulips to finish up.





mmmmmmm. So nice.

So happy birthday to my sweet mom, and happy spring (almost summer!) to everybody!

.::Bubbles with Kelly::.

A while ago we had a very lovely day. It was the first nice one in a while. Kelly came over in a break between classes to hang out with us. I had been promising Max for weeks that he could go blow bubbles as soon as the weather was nice enough--so we took both the bubbles and the uncle out to the front porch.









I think a good time was had by all. Well, Kelly had a good time until Max poured half the bubble bottle down the front of his jeans. Unfortunately he had more school to go to that day, but fortunately he's a good sport, so he just turned Max upside down, and I think that made him feel better. (and he went and tried to wash out his pants, poor guy)

Being upside down didn't seem to slow down the bubble blowing.

Then Max thought it might be funny to blow bubbles at poor Kelly. That went on for a while.

Then Kelly finally decided he was bubbly enough and went inside to relax.
Max blew bubbles until the neighbors started harassing us too much and I made him come inside. (We won't miss the neighbors when we go.)



It's so funny to think of how bad he used to be at blowing bubbles. We'd go out, and he'd end up as soapy as could be, with soap all over his lips. He'd blow and blow and never make a single bubble.
Not so now! He's just such a big smart guy these days.



Yay for bubbles, and uncles and nice days.

~ N, O, P ~

My poor blog has been suffering because of moving preparations and everything that's been going on, but I finally pulled this post together! It takes me a long time to get these school posts together....but here we go!

N week:
during Nuh week they talked about noses, nurses, numbers, nuthatches and nutcrackers. They ate nachos, mixed nuts, fig newtons, nutella (mmm) and nectarines.

Here's some noodle art he made that week. Cool huh? Noodles glued to some pretty hip paper.
By the time we took the picture he had forgotten all about it. He's like, "what's this??"


O week:
During this week they talked about opossums (we know all about those out here in Missouri!), orangutans, octopuses (octopi?) and sea and river otters. I love how they talk about animals. The kids learn all sorts of things about them like where they live, what they eat and if they're warm blooded or cold blooded, etc. It's fun to quiz him about the animals when he gets home.
During this week they ate oatmeal cookies and oranges. I know they had more snacks than that, but that's all I could get out of Max that week.
Some O art:

(orange)

This is my favorite. It's an octopus. Isn't it great??

P week:

During puh week(s--I think there were two) they talked about polar bears, peacocks, prairie dogs, panda bears, plants, penguins, porcupines, puffins and tree pangolins (wow, what the heck are those?! I need to go look them up I guess.)
They snacked on pistachios, pretzels, pineapple, pickles, peppers, plums, pecans, papayas and had a pizza party.
Here's some P art for you.

"Polka Dot Painting"


"plants"


my favorite the "Peacock" so cute!

More school stuff to come....if I can ever get to it!

::Such Happy News!!::

I have a new nephew as of this morning! What a great May Day gift!
Look at him, isn't he adorable?
His name is Christopher but his parents like to call him Scooter. He's my sweet brother Cammon's and my sweet sister (in law) Lorri's first baby. I'm so excited for them!
It was a long day for all of them I think, and they were all very brave (especially Lorri), and we're just all so glad he's here!
I'm just so sad I'm not there to take pictures. And hold him. And smell him. Soon enough I keep telling myself.
I sure love youguys! Congratulations!!
(beautiful brave mommy and sweet little boy)
(adorable Cammon and new little son!!)
I'll post some less brand new pictures once I have access to them for sure.