30 Days until Moving Day

After all the talk and planning, it is finally time to prepare to make the move to Utah. We are excited to move and to be closer to family; however, it is going to be harder on all of us than we thought. While there are several of things about the state of New York that we don't particularly like, we've lived here for 11 years and this is the only place the kids really know as "home". We have made some wonderful friends in the community and in the Fairport Ward that we will miss terribly.



Time is ticking. Better take advantage of the time we have left.

Our Life

Lately, our adventure that we call life has been a little crazy. Here is a brief update.

Since January 1, Don has been working and living here:

(Luckily, he has been back in NY once a month for a weekend since then.)

Meanwhile, some friends and I have been busy doing a lot of this:


Now, we are dealing with this:


Not to mention this:


We have had a lot of showings in the 2 weeks the house as been on the market. We hope it sells soon. The wild things are glad spring has arrived since just about all of their toys are either packed or gone. They spend a lot of time outside - helps keep the house clean! We're looking forward to being reunited as a family.

Need A Name!

Earlier this month, we said goodbye to a family friend ... the red suburban. Indeed this car has been through over 250,000 miles of family fun and memories. The suburban, otherwise known as Big Red or The Beast, will be missed - at least it's 4-wheel drive abilities and "more power" feeling will be missed.

Now, we need help with a name for our new vehicle. Introducing: The blue 15 passenger Ford F350 van!

When J1 first saw it, all she could say was, "WOW! It's big and it's BLUE!" J2's reactions was, "Holy smokes, it's a whale!" Any good nickname suggestions?

Sshh!! I'm on the phone!!

Real phone or not, I guess I was disturbing her while she was talking to her friend.

Counting the Days

Yeah, yeah ... I know. I said I was done after #6. And I was. I gave away all my maternity clothes and most all of the baby bottles, toys, clothes, etc. I only kept a few things that were given to us for each child. I felt complete and I was really happy with the way our family was.

Then about a year ago, I started getting this feeling that we were not done - another child was waiting to come to our family. I was hoping that it was just the feelings that come with moving into another stage of life - after all A2 was turning 4 in July and wasn't a baby anymore. I ignored it until March when I just couldn't get the thought out of my mind and I shared my feelings with Don. After much prayer and pondering, we decided to follow the prompting.

We are looking forward to welcoming our new baby in June!!

Toot Toot Chugga Chugga Big Red Car

We love our big red car. We have fondly nicknamed it "The Beast" and we have had so many fun adventures in this car. It has all sorts of interesting quirks that come with a car that is 14 years old and has over 250,000 miles on it. One of these quirks happens to be the gas gauge. When The Beast is full of gas, the needle on the gauge stays past the full mark for a very long time. Then, it suddenly begins to drop. Once it hits the half tank mark, it bounces between half and empty depending on your speed and terrain. You never know for sure how much gas there really is in the tank and there is no warning when you are close to being out of gas, it just dies ... Then you pray you can stop safely somewhere without crashing due to the lack of power steering! Needless to say, we've learned to watch it carefully and when the bouncing stays closer to the empty side of the gauge, we know it's time to fill it up.

We don't actually drive The Beast much. It mostly just sits in the driveway or garage waiting for Sunday or a family outting. With the price of gas being so high, driving it as little as possible was a necessity. $150 for a tank of gas is just too much.

Last Saturday, we had to fill The Beast. The needle had been bouncing around the gas gauge for several days and we didn't want to run out of gas going to or from church. Gas prices have gone down, but I wasn't expecting this:




$74.82 to fill The Beast!?! I know gas prices are even lower in other parts of the country, but this is the first time we have paid less than $100 to fill this car with gas in a couple of years!

We're Moving! (and some other stuff)

We pondered. We prayed. We discussed the pros and cons. We prayed some more. In the end, we decided it is time for us to move west - most likely somewhere in Colorado. We haven't really decided where yet ... Don grew up in Colorado Springs and has siblings there. I grew up in Loveland and I have a sister there and a brother in Pueblo. We lived in Ft. Collins prior to moving to New York 10 1/2 years ago and we have some good friends there that we think of often. So, we'll see where we end up. We're planning to put our house on the market in March. Hopefully, it will sell by the time school ends in June.

The kids had tons of fun on Halloween - although you really can't tell from this photo taken the day after. L and J1 went to Halloween parties that included trick or treating and a sleepover. J2 went trick or treating with around the neighborhood with one of his friends. That left Don at home passing out candy and me with A1, Z and A2. They made it up and down our street and half way around the block and then announced they were tired and done!! Strange kids - warm weather, free candy and they wanted to go home and play gamecube!

I went with L and several of the YM/YW in our ward to the Amazing Maize Maze at Long Acre Farm on Saturday. It was cold, but fun. I warned my partner when we went into the maze that we would probably be the last ones to make it out ... and we were. The bishop and all the other youth cheered when we finally made it out after about 45 minutes!