A Sneaky Thanksgiving!

Stephen and I have been quite open with the fact that we are NOT night drivers - seriously - we are not good at it.  My first experience realizing Steve was not a night driver was back when we were dating.  We were coming home from Provo to Mapleton...that's about a 10-15 minute drive people...and about halfway over Ironton Hill Steve said, "Hey, I may pull over and let you drive Stace - I'm getting pretty tired."  This is at about 11PM.  I knew then - this boy was not to be trusted driving late at night.  It was later confirmed over and over again when Steve would get all excited to watch a late night movie only to fall asleep two minutes in without realizing it.  He doesn't realize he's falling asleep and continues (to this day) to deny it whenever it happens.

I, on the other hand, have freak out attacks when I drive at night as I try to solely focus on keeping my eyes open which stresses me out the entire time.  Truth be told - the only time I've ever felt comfortable sleeping in the car while someone else is driving is when my dad is at the wheel - dad's just make you feel safe don't they. :)  

When we found out that Stephen actually was getting Friday off as well as Thursday for Thanksgiving, we thought - hmmm - maybe we could head back to Utah for the holiday!  Steve wanted to make it a total surprise, but I slipped the info to my dad just to make sure life wouldn't become complicated by us showing up - but he did a great job keeping it quiet until we arrived. :)

The only problem with this plan was - if we were going to make the most of this trip and not spend Thanksgiving Day entirely on the road - we would have to drive through the night.  After much thought - we decided to give it a go.

I researched tips for staying awake - finding some interesting advice.  Did you know you shouldn't drink caffeine, or eat sugar, or salty things?  They all contribute to you hitting that wall after they wear off.  You're supposed to drink water - consistently, eat tangy foods like oranges or lemons to keep your tastebuds awake, and consistently snacking on crunchy things help as well.

You'll be surprised to know we didn't drink any caffeine that night - my saving grace was actually a bag of beef jerky - it woke me up right during those sluggish hours when you want to die - between 2 and 5 AM.  We had planned to stop if we were feeling tired, but that beef jerky came to my rescue. :)

Our kids did well - though they crashed at 10 and then woke up for another few hours at 2 when we had stopped for gas.  Ruby was seriously little miss bubbly - I wished we could have made her drive since she was so awake.

When we got to Steve's parents - it was a quarter to 6 - we were not planning on being there that early, but somehow made record time.  At 6 Steve called his dad, all chipper, asking why there were so many cars outside their house.  After it dawned on Don (hee hee), he woke up Claudia and they came and peeked out their window at us.  It was so fun to see their faces!  We settled in - and slept till just after 10 when Steve's sister Meghan was calling from her mission..  We chatted with her for a while and then got ready and went to surprise my family.

We drove up to lots of surprised faces again.  My mom was so confused why my dad was trying to set up an extra table since they weren't going to have that many people, and then hugged the grandkiddies to death when we realized we were there.  I was so happy to be there too - my grandparents came and I got to visit with them as well.  We had a yummy dinner complete with our traditional Turkey Bowl (bowling on the Wii).  Steve won with the highest score, but Rachel and my dad were the only ones who managed to get Turkeys (three strikes in a row).  

The clan!  Ruby is handing me back her food - little stinker.

Ross likes turkey but not stuffing.

Ruby just wanted juice.

Turkey Bowl winners!  Note Rachel holding a pumpkin since no turkeys were present (I guess we ate ours already).

We got home and put the kids to bed early - I was SO tired, but we had babysitters at our fingertips - so we snuck away to see Interstellar - eh - it was interesting and then went weird - and it was crazy long!  Fun to go to a movie though.

The next day I did some serious Black Friday shopping - setting our kids for Christmas AND birthdays.  Steve may or may not have had a spending heart attack (mostly in behalf of me since I was enjoying every minute of it), but we got through. :)

My parents were fabulous and watched the kids while Steve and I went to the Temple - and loved it.  It's always so good to go.  We came back and visited some more before again - stepping out to see Mockingjay - which was also good.  

Saturday we hung out with my family, eating leftovers, playing a rousing game of Mall Madness - Dain won...ever since I started playing that beloved board game with boys - they always win.  It must be that carnal instinct to get in and get out quickly.  I have never beaten Steve in that game...and I have a feeling I never will.  We played Farkle too - always a goodie - and I got to see my cute Nephew Jaxton as well.  I've decided he's a little angel baby - so chill, sleeps a lot, and just hangs out letting you hold him.  I hope he's rubbed some of that chill off on this new little guy coming soon to our family. :)

That night we headed up to Temple Square to see the lights - along with every other possible human being who lives on this earth.  It was crazy!  We finally made it in and had a great time seeing all the lights everywhere and getting our traditional picture in front of the temple.  We got back quite late, but pulled ourselves together to leave the next morning.  

Ruby LOVES her Daddy :)

Our crazy clan!

Grandkids picture with the Grandparents!

Rach, Dain, and cute Jaxton who's enjoying the lights!

Ross's face cracks me up here!

Ruby got banned to the stroller - so we tried to distract her with the fun nativities they had around.

Me in my whaleness mode - I'm 31 weeks now! 

 Ross was just sick about leaving...literally.  How is this always our lot when we travel?  Ruby took her turn when we moved out here to Colorado.  I guess Ross wanted to relive that.  He threw up around 2AM - so we threw in some wash and then tried to get more sleep.  We left about 6AM and Ross had a few repercussions throughout the morning - thank heavens for that big gulp cup we snagged at the gas station - it was well used.  Ross actually did fine - even trying to keep watching whatever movie was on in the midst of puking.  CRAZY.  He took a nap later in the car and then seemed right as rain after that.  Ruby went a bit bonkers being in the car that long, but still managed to do okay.  We got home that night and were SO happy we had made the trip - it was a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend and we are so thankful for such wonderful families.    

 

Getting Situated

Well I have much happier things to report.  We do in fact have our heat turned back on, I got my nice hot bath, chocolate birthday cake, cute notes from my kids, and no more utility issues. :)  Hooray!

My homemade chocolate birthday cake - yum!  AND the heat was just turned back on - hooray!

We have managed to have most of our house situated other than the need for a kitchen table - our card table is just not doing it for me and I'm ready to have an actual table to put dinner on or do projects on.  Steve, of course, sees no real big hurry for a table - he's blessed to be more of a low maintenance guy than me - but seeing how my workspace consists of our home - this is something I'm fine being high maintenance on. :)  So the hunt for a kitchen table continues.  Steve does a fine job making the money and I do a fantastic job spending it. ;)

It stayed cold for the first of the week and then has warmed up the last few days which has been nice.  We've investigated our back yard more, and those mangy birds that poop all over everything somehow managed to stick around through the massive freeze - boo!  So the poop is back and we're looking for a pellet gun to take care of the problem.  

Ross and Ruby started going a bit stir crazy with being cooped up in our house with me trying to unpack and get organized - so we ventured out a few times even though it was cold.  We got to know some more friends from our ward with a play date at McDonald's Playplace.  Ruby especially loved it when she discovered the shoe cubby....she has shoe addictions.  I kept catching her trying to put all the shoes on.  I think I had to put back like 10 pairs she was trying to confiscate.  Crazy girl.

This girl sure likes sunglasses

Her hair is really trying to fit in to ponytails - we're almost there.

Helpers washing dishes - we had to do an outfit change after this since they were both soaked.

I also went to a craft show with some ladies and had fun looking at everyone's booth - lucky for Steve I only had $6 cash on me - but I found a great bow and arrow set for Ross for Christmas and the cutest Christmas skirt for Ruby.  

I found out the community building here is open on Thursdays for an hour for little ones to run around in the gym with balls and toys.  We happened to be the only ones who showed up that day, but Ross and Ruby LOVED having that huge space to run around kicking the balls and shooting them in the basket.  Ruby spent the last half hour walking up and down the bleachers and Ross insisted we try out sitting in a million different places.  

We went to the library again where I've found Ruby does not prefer their story time (I think she prefers the up close and personal reading of books and more animated voices used to read them), but she is more than excited for the craft time afterwards.  This week we made turkey puppets - she sat there and colored hers for about 15 straight minutes.  Ross preferred gluing all the pieces on and then hunting for books to check out.  We got some good ones. :)  

I'm kind of in shock that November is already almost over and Thanksgiving is THIS week.  CRAZY.  This pregnancy has flown by - though I'm definitely in the phase of not remembering what it's like to NOT be pregnant.  I'm 30 weeks now and we are STILL trying to come up with names.  Did I mention we finally told people what we are having!  We cheated and opened the envelope the night after we had our ultrasound and then finally told our families at our Halloween party.  It's another boy!  With our cute sassy Ruby, I'm thinking another boy may help restore the drama balance - let's hope. :)  We are trying to come up with names and having such a hard time - boys names are so hard to decide on!  I have a ton of girls names that I love, but we've had to do some serious digging for boy ones.  We've discussed the idea of sticking with R's - even though Ross and Ruby were not intended with that purpose.  Steve tells me if we choose another R name then all of our kids have to be R names - which I disagree, but he's the more picky one about names anyway. :)  Some in the running are: Rowland, Joseph, and James.  We're family oriented name people - we liked Russell until we realized it's WAY too close to Ross - tricky tricky.  I'm sure we'll figure it out soon.  

As for how the pregnancy is going - I'm noticing being pregnant for the third time is taking more of a toll on my body than usual.  I'm pretty sore all over, tired all the time, and I keep having people be surprised when I still have 10 weeks left to go.  I'm mentally freaking out with having three children.  Having two wasn't as stressful as I thought it would be which makes me nervous for three - especially with my Ruby who always has her own agenda which usually includes escaping/running away/doing exactly what you've asked her not to do.  Thank heavens for moms who come to help when you have children - I have the sweet set up again for 4 weeks of help - YES!  I love moms!  In the mean time - I've been sewing an advent calendar which has been fun - and reminds me how I don't know the lingo of sewing in the slightest - I need a dictionary! 

Ross has turned in to quite the helper.  He LOVES to help carry things, open doors, clean, put things away - you name it - he loves to help.  He's gotten a lot more in to pretending and setting up scenarios with his toys and loves to look at books and have them read to him all day long.  He and Ruby sharing a room has been quite interesting.  Ruby goes down first - has her unhappy freak out moment till she settles down and then Ross goes in to bed.  The other night as Ross was getting into PJs he said, "I'm getting my comfy on!" - I decided that could be a bumper sticker. :)  He also is very quick to let grandparents know that we're still in "Cowowado" so they don't worry where we're at. :)  Anyway - back to Ross and Ruby sharing a room - their conversations are hilarious.  Ruby usually grills Ross on where everyone is or what he's doing while he tells her over and over again where everyone really is and that he's trying to go to sleep.  Ruby - being a girl - could talk to that kid all night long - she thinks he's hilarious.  He's getting used to sleeping through her crying or random waking up in the middle of the night.  He LOVES making muffins, eating Rice Krispies for breakfast, strawberries, bananas, goldfish, spaghetti, and vegetables.  He will wrestle his dad any time of the day (especially since Mom is pregnant and can't wrestle anymore) and asking thousands of questions all day long. :)  He is quite in to music and loves rocking out to his favorites - pepped up - The Wise Man and the Foolish Man, Life is a Highway, Scripture Power, When Can I See you Again, and Let it Go.  He's so sweet with Ruby and patient.  I'm so grateful to have that boy.
 

Ross the helper of making brownies - with a bum crack ;)

Licking the bowl :)

Steve STILL gives in to letting Ross come in our bed in the morning - they are too cute :)

Ruby gets to know her own mind more and more.  She talks incessantly until she goes to sleep at night.  She loves to say, "How 'bout lunch?" to me when she wakes up from naps - from Winnie the Pooh, and adores singing and dancing.  She loves hiding in closets, trying on and walking around in everyone's shoes, playing with Ross's Woody doll and making me put his hat back on a thousand times a day, watching Mickey Mouse, and reading books in the chair by herself until she decides she wants you to read them to her.  Playing chase may be her favorite game ever (which is why she runs away most of the time), and she's experimenting with hitting and then saying "Sorry" right after.  She loves cheerios, goldfish, strawberries, apples, pears, Mac and Cheese, peas, carrots, and is definitely my spicy girl - she loves Mexican - my spicy taco soup, taquitos, and more.  She even likes salad (weird right?) and olives - if she can put them on her fingers first.  She has discovered mine and Steve's go to phrases when we're frustrated or stressed out - mine is "Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!" and Steve's is "Dang it!" - of course she thinks these are hilarious to say.  She's doing a million times better in nursery and is only sad when we leave and even then it's only a minute - woot woot!  Church is enjoyable again!  
 

Bed head!

Good morning!

My cute sassy Ruby :)

Cheese!

Steve is settling well in to his job.  Everyone there tells him how excited and glad they are that he is there.  He gets to do a little of everything which will give him some great experience.  He works four 10 hour shifts and usually has Wednesdays off which I love - it makes our week not seem so long - though the evenings before he's home from 5 until 6:30 seem to drag a lot more.  I find somehow the witching hours from 5 until 8 seem to break everyone down and we end up in survival mode until either Dad gets home or bedtime happens.  Funny how that is - I need to come up with a good plan during that time. 


All in all - we're good - getting to know people, and are starting to get to know the town a little bit.  There's much to be thankful for and we're so glad to be together!              

A Train Wreck Birthday

So I get people have bad days - you've got to have them to appreciate the good ones...this one happened to fall on my birthday.  Thank heavens my incredible husband had already thrown me a wonderful birthday party and family had already been so thoughtful to do some celebrating BEFORE we moved.  

I didn't have any expectations for my actual birthday since I knew it would be Steve's second day of work, we'd still be unpacking and getting organized, and we wouldn't have family or friends around.  In that aspect - I would say my sights were set fairly low...apparently they weren't low enough!

I woke up with the realization that that terrible plague that hit everyone and I had thought I had averted, decided to pay me a birthday visit - not an intense one thank goodness, but enough to make me feel crummy all day.  Thank-you plague.  My kids, I guess, were too excited for my birthday to begin because they decided to wake up two hours early around 6 and not go back to sleep - awesome.  Ruby thought being quite grumpy and unaccommodating was also appropriate birthday behavior.  She threw in two blow out diapers as a bonus - Happy Birthday to me! 

I tried to put on a good attitude and played the awesome mom card putting the TV on most of the day while I juggled laying down since I felt so gross, sorting out student loan consolidation for Steve, gathering moving expense receipts, and feeding children even though the very thought of food disgusted me.  Ross was very sweet and patient at least - though he sure likes asking thousands of questions all day long - which is a little wearing when you feel like garbage all day.

By that afternoon I noticed our house was getting colder and the vents were only putting out cool air with the heater on (which was concerning since the temperatures had dropped over 50 degrees in the last three days - seriously - 80 degree weather 5 days ago - down to 20!) and had no idea why.  I made a phone call and our amazing management called around like crazy to get a heating company over to our house who showed up so fast only to tell me our gas had been shut off (yay - another birthday present!).  Steve had forgotten to put the gas in our name - which, given, we haven't had to pay a gas bill since before we moved to Oregon - we only had electric there and everywhere else it was included in the rent.  I guess I was shocked we weren't given a heads up that they were shutting off our gas - even with it getting down to 8 degrees that night.  I called and set up our account within 5 minutes and found they "couldn't" come turn the gas back on until the next day between 12 and 4....fun - love those 4 hour wait periods.  I wish utility people would give you a heads up they are turning things off - so you can get it sorted out sooner rather than later or at least have a plan.

Again, our ward came to our rescue and brought five space heaters over.  Our old house, we found, can only handle two of them being plugged in however, unless you want to short out all the light.  Fun fun.  

I was hoping for a hot bath that night, but of course that has had to wait - which we're currently still waiting on since only an hour and forty five minutes have gone by of the four hour window they gave us to turn the gas back on.

Steve finally got home and let me have some alone time to recuperate which felt nice.  We ordered pizza for dinner of course, skyped with my family, and eventually got children to bed.  I went to bed early and was more than happy for the day to be over.  

Wahoo - so we're pretending my birthday hasn't really happened yet until this heat gets put back.  Then I'll get my hot bath, a delicious birthday cake, and a little party with my kids and Steve.  WHAT a day.  Poor Stephen has had three rotten ACTUAL birthdays - all taking extremely difficult exams - the last being Boards.  I guess it was my turn to take one for the team. :)  

On that note - here are a few pictures of our half sorted out house. :)  I'll post more when they're actually finished.

The backyard back when it was warm - we have a tire swing!  And the door is to our garage - never had one of those before.  The grass is something to be desired.

The sandbox is covered up due to the zillion birds that live in the tree above - Steve is planning on getting a pellet gun to take care of the problem, though I think the freeze over jumped the gun.

The kids really wanted to help use Daddy's drill so he let them drill holes in a box - extremely useful.

The office/exercise room/extra guest room.

The front - in the freezing weather!

Because apples and pears always belong on mailboxes...

Here's our carport and the garage is the back.

Getting pictures up.

The kids room with all the toys out of course - Ruby's crib is around that corner - they've actually started getting used to sleeping in the same room!  Hooray!!

Ruby's corner

Their wall :)

Well at LEAST I can find comfort in this: :)

       

The Big Move (Seriously - BIG) and a Surprise Party!

I've come to realize with how much we've moved around for school and now jobs, I've gotten more and more lazy when it comes to packing up and moving.  When we moved from Provo to Oregon I was packing maybe a month before we moved.  When we moved apartments in Oregon I had things packed about two weeks before.  Then moving from Oregon back to Cottonwood Heights I was ready about a week before.  From there to Steve's parents was a few days, and THIS move was pretty much the day before and the day of.  Have I mentioned I HATE moving?  It is way to exhausting mentally, physically - and any other "ally" word you can think of.  Don't get me wrong - we are really good at moving, but there is never any joy that accompanies it - you would think once you get good at something, it would bring you some sort of happiness...nope - never have found that.  Okay - rant over.

SO - THE MOVE. 

The plan was to pull out all our already packed boxes, check and label them, then simply pack up our bedrooms, call it a day, go out to eat and to a movie since it was going to be so simple. Haha.  Steve wanted to run a couple errands which turned in to taking care of car issues...seriously.  It took practically the entire afternoon.  I came home to start packing some more when my dad called and asked me to go pick out a present for my mom with him.  I tried to tell him we were swamped, but he wouldn't let up, so I relented and went with him.  It turned out to be a surprise to go pick out an early birthday present before we left.  Super nice - I got two great new pairs of shoes.  I thought that was a fun surprise, but when I got home I got an even bigger surprise - a birthday party! 

Steve had worked hard, planning it three weeks in advance (I know right?), and invited our families and some of our friends.  I was completely surprised and impressed with how they disguised it.  A surprise on top of a surprise - VERY fun.  :) The hilarious part was Steve had thought I was turning 30 THIS year (yeah - he's not accountable for remembering anything other than PT information for those three years he was in grad school) and had told everyone else that.  When he realized it was actually 31 through a conversation we had, they decided to turn it in to a 29th birthday - which was fabulous - I think I'll just have 29th birthday parties from now on. :)

 

Being serenaded by a rendition of "Sweet 29" - you get to go backward after you turn 30 - did you know that?

Wonderful family and friends :)

It was so fun visiting with everyone.  They sang to me, we ate yummy appetizers and drank delicious hot chocolate, and my sister-in-law, Beka, made a fabulous double chocolate cake (my favorite).  We even had our friends, the Jaggi's, come all the way down from Bountiful.  So sweet.  It was a GREAT party - I loved it.  It was a wonderful birthday present!

Since we had a fun party, we had to do our packing most of the next day which also was the day we had to pack our truck.  So I became one of THOSE people who are frantically packing WHILE people are trying to take things to the truck (given we did have a lot of it all done already, but it wasn't completely ready).  By that evening we were finally packed and exhausted. Ruby wouldn't eat anything that night and asked to go right to bed (warning sign).  By the time we were going to bed about 11:30PM we heard her....checked on her to find she had barfed everywhere.  Remember that PLAGUE that somehow keeps finding us at the wrong times?  Yeah - he came back again the night before we're driving 12 hours out to Colorado.  Steve decided to stay up with her and let me sleep and I would start the driving at 4:30 that morning.  She consistently threw up  throughout the entire night and slept maybe 45 minutes.  We did have enough time to wash and dry all the gross clothes before we left.  We left by about 6:30 with Ruby having a clean slate for the past 45 minutes.  We had the bowl ready, Clorox, and paper towels on hand to be prepared for any problems. 

Incredibly, she didn't throw up for the whole trip, or even after that.  AND she slept for a good portion of the drive anyway.  It went quite smoothly other than her MASSIVE meltdown from exhaustion once we got to our house in Colorado.  Ross was a complete champ and even drove with Grandpa and Grandma White for most of the trip.  He was a great helper loading AND unloading the truck (which he was SO impressed by - it was a 26 footer).  My dad drove our 26 ft. truck with our Elantra on the trailer in the back, and may have lost a few years off his life driving through the mountains in to Denver - it was terrible, but he got here safely thank heavens. 

Back to the plague - he decided to leave Ruby, send a postcard to Claudia who felt sick the night we got here to Colorado, but ultimately visit Don for the night.  We found out the next morning that a big handful of our family members all had gotten little visits from the plague as well - Dallas and Thomas both got it the night we left (they were going to help us move initially -but got sick and had to cancel), and then Nathan, Beka, and Alex all got it along with Young and my mom.  I guess we didn't want to make everyone feel TOO bad about us leaving - right? 

We started putting things away and getting sorted after we arrived (which incredibly, our ward brethren showed up the night we got here and unpacked our truck in about 45 minutes - it was SO nice!).  Ross went with Steve and his parents to pick some things up at the store and, out of nowhere, totally threw up over the whole floor - poor thing.  The strange thing was he had had a stomach bug the weekend before so we thought he was over it.  They came back with barf clothes and for us to find out the water had been shut off - without warning!   Yeah - not so fun - especially when you have people with stomach bugs who can't wash things off or flush toilets.  Luckily we got it sorted within a few stressed out hours, but there was definite panic going on in the middle of it.  We also got our gas shut off later...but THAT is another story. 

Amazingly, my dad, Steve, and I didn't get touched by that nasty plague (knock on wood) and everyone else managed to recover.  Now we're just doing all that fun unpacking, organizing, and putting away while we settle in to our new life here in Lamar.  My dad did wonders setting up and putting together furniture and fixing things that were wrong or would drive us crazy, and Don and Claudia did wonders helping put our house together, unpacking, and organizing a sandbox in our back yard for the kids - Ross was SUPER excited.  We were so sad to see them go, and Ross is more than ready for them to come back.  We're excited to be here though.  A whole new life to try out.  I wonder what's in store for us here.  Another crazy adventure!