Runaway!

This is The Cuteness. He has been part of our family for 3 years. He was the cutest little ball of fur when we first got him. Then he turned into an excape artist. He'd run as far and as fast as he could anytime the door was opened. Then we got an Invisible Fence. For the past 2 years, life has been great for The Cuteness and all of us. All we needed to do was change the battery in his collar and pick up the land mines he leaves for us outside.

Until yesterday! The battery in his collar is dead. He decided to explore the neighborhood after chasing after a car. (Yes he really chases cars.) Since he hasn't actually left the yard in quite a while, we looked around our yard and the neighbor's yards for about 30 minutes. When the boys were ready to go out and wait for the bus, (1 hour missing) I asked Zachary to look around a little bit more. He opened the door and there sat The Cuteness - ready for breakfast and a drink and all wet from his morning exercise.

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!