100 things (or so) since my last blog posting...

Since it has been over a year since my last blog, I thought I'd do a 'quick' catch up of what's been happening. I don't know if it'll take 100 items or not, but we'll see how it goes...

1. Calista and Brandon did come for a visit; it was nice, I remember spending quite a bit of time at the pool.
2. Joseph also came to visit for a day or so.
3. Rachel started Nursery! WAHOO!!
   
4. We went to Indiana and visited our Allen family in August; did some swimming and hiking and playing.
5. On the same trip we stayed in Chicago with the Brimms (who are now Grandma and Grandpa to my girls as well...) while Joe was at a conference.
6. We went to the zoo and aquarium and ate lots of yummy Chicago food.
7. We moved from our 2 bedroom apartment to a nice and huge 3 bedroom in the next building over.
8. Joe started his final year of grad school.
9. Joe got offered a job in Lincoln, NE with a 6-figure salary; we stayed in school.
   
10. We sent out several hundred job applications (at least it felt like that many) but got no interviews until November/December.
11. For Halloween Karen was Snow White and Rachel was Cinderella; it rained on trunk-or-treat.
12. Watched an entire season of BYU football with the Beasleys and Cooks
13. Celebrated Koryn Beasley's first birthday!
14. My cousin Catherine and a friend came to visit from SVU for Thanksgiving
15. I drove them back with the girls by myself while Joe worked on his dissertation
16. Joe finished his last fall semester as a student!
17. We went to Oregon for 3 weeks for Christmas
18. Had family pictures with everyone in BYU shirts :)
19. Met Rosie, my cute new sister in law, for the first time
20. Had a great Christmas with all my family squished into my parents house
21. Spent $100 sending all our presents home
22. could barely stay awake for New Years; went to bed by 12:30
23. Resolved to quit farming on Facebook
24. Resolved to blog weekly
    
25. actually quit farming on Facebook (in June)
26. Karen started Sunbeams! She LOVES Primary!!
    
27. went to LOTS of prenatal appointments
28. played in the snow once or twice
29. Rachel turned 2! She's such a big girl!
30. Joe interviewed for jobs in Omaha, NE and Asheville, NC; he took the Omaha job.
    
31. found out baby #3 was a girl (February)
32. bought a baby name book because I wouldn't agree to Elvira...
33. Decided to name her Alice Erika
34. Courtney got accepted to BYU-I
35. I turned 26
36. We went to Atlanta for a conference with Joe on my birthday
37. I took the girls to the Aquarium; they had fun, I got really tired
38. I found out they had changed my due date from 5-28 to 6-20. I told them they were wrong; they didn't believe me.
    
39. Joseph and Rosie were married on 4-30 in Timpanogos; I was in Charlotte
40. I gained 20 lbs the first 37 weeks of pregnancy; I gained 20 lbs my last 3 weeks of pregnancy
41. had a fun and quick baby shower (thanks to Sarah Rennells and Kitara Beasley!!)
    
42. Joe finished his last semester as a grad student!!!!
43. fun pool party with friends
    
44. Joe (FINALLY!!!) got his proposal defended
45. 6 weeks later he had a draft of his dissertation finished
46. Mom and Dad Howes came to visit
47. we all went to Joseph and Rosie's wedding reception in Knoxville
48. had fun, but my feet were so swollen I couldn't walk
49. Karen turned 4! My baby is huge!!! Grandma Howes made her cake since I was too swollen to do anything.
50. 5-28 went to the hospital in labor (day 3 of contractions);
    
51. was told I wasn't far enough along to deliver and sent home after having terrible drugs to make the contractions stop
52. 5-31 back to the hospital with a headache that wouldn't go away; while there regular contractions started again
53. 6-1 Alice Erika Allen born at 10:05 am!!! The nurse asked if I was really 3 weeks early w/ a 7lb 7oz baby; I said NO!
    
54. Lots of visitors and helpers with the other girls; they loved going to play with friends all the time!
55. Mom and Dad Allen came to visit and help out. I stayed at home and Joe and the girls went out a lot.
56. Joe went to Omaha to find our new place of dwelling, leaving me with 3 little girls
57. 2- 4th of July bbq's; one with fireworks the other with swimming
58. Celebrated 7 years of marriage with a date to R&R BBQ and Toy Story 3
    
59. fun Pioneer day ward party; our last in Charlotte!
60. Alice's blessing; lots of ward family, no blood family
    
61. getting ready to move again; lots of trips to Goodwill
    
62. movers come and pack all our stuff, then tell us they'll be extra late getting it to us
63. drive to Indiana and visit Allen family
    
64. drive to Omaha, get new apartment
65. live for almost 2 weeks without our furniture
66. start making new friends and settling into life as non-students (a work in progress)
67. get our stuff and unpack.

okay, so I didn't get to number 100, but I'm sure some of those things could be split up some. If you made it to the bottom... congratulations! I'd give you a prize but I don't really have anything to give right now. Hopefully it won't be another 60+ weeks until my next post!?

To-Do list

I realize that it's been a LONG time since I've done a real post, but we're getting there now. I've been really busy, that's my only excuse, but I don't really remember exactly what I've been doing. It seems like my life is full of busyness but nothing ever gets done. (especially yesterday, nothing got done. I couldn't find my broom and so gave up on all cleaning and just read 300+ pages in Harry Potter #5.) However, this trend simply can't continue. I've decided I need more accountability, so I'm going to work on putting up my to do list and maybe then it will actually get done. The main thing is that my sister and brother-1n-law are coming to visit next week (and my brother too for a couple of days), and my apartment is a total and complete disaster! (not kidding or exaggerating too much either.) The only problem is that Joe's birthday is tomorrow (happy 28 honey!!) and Father's day is Sunday (he gets a bum deal; his two holidays are right next to each other. It's like having a birthday on Christmas, like my cousin Danielle.) So, here's the list. I'll start with the most necessary things first and go from there. It might get a little crazy, and for the 2 or 3 of you who actually read this, I'm sorry and you are not really obligated to read it all.

THE LIST
Clean Bathrooms
Buy new broom
clean floors
vacuum
all trash out
clean out closet
find a new home for maternity clothes (their old home was taken by our camping gear last week)
move crib out of girls room and into closet
move girls furniture and toys
wash dishes
date night today
finish Harry Potter 5
make birthday cake
Birthday activities for Joe
Father's day activities for Joe
laundry
dusting
clean off dresser
list of activities for vacation days
child locks on cabinets
post blog update and pics
organize music for girls

Well, that's all I have time for right now. The girls' morning shows are over, so it's time for me to be done. I don't think those things are all in the right order but that's all I can do right now. I think to start my list I'll go to the new Walmart (opened Wednesday) and see if I can find a broom and a couple other things. As you can see, a true update is in fact on the list. Let's just see how quickly the more urgent things can get done...

"Pardon our mess, but rennovations taking place"

Thanks to Calista for the new look! A real post will be coming soon, but I think that an hour or two a night is all I've got. Hope you're all doing great. BTW, my blog links got trashed in the update and I'm working on finding them, but if you want me to put yours back up and I haven't already leave the site in a comment and I'll be on it in the next day or so!

Anger Management

So, Karen's anger problems have gotten really bad, especially this morning. She's been really jealous of Rachel's glasses, no matter what I try to do to help. The last couple days she's just been really angry at everything. I know part of that's just being an almost-3-year-old, but it seems like more than that right now. Already in the last 2 hours she's hit Rachel at least 3 times, me once, and she was so angry she broke her crayons into little pieces. I don't really know what to do with her. Anyone have any suggestions for 3 year old anger management?

Easter and Glasses and Haircut

Happy Easter everyone! (Well, yesterday anyway). I hope y'all had a great day, as we did. Saturday we colored eggs, and Joe made it home to help us finish up. Karen loved it; we're going to have to up our egg count next year, 2 dozen wasn't enough for her. Rachel just wanted to eat the eggs and drink the 'juice'. It was nice to only have to be at church by 8:15, and Joe didn't even have meetings after church, so it was acutally a 'family' day.

The Easter bunny brought candy (a little less than last year, I'm trying to keep my sweet tooth under control) and some Little People in the baskets. They wore their new dresses that I made. Rachel picked the fabric and Karen picked the pattern, and they both loved the end product. Rachel would find them last week and start carrying them around with her 'showing off' walk. We had a somewhat-traditional dinner with ham, funeral potatoes, and deviled eggs. Doren and Steve also joined us and brought a yummy 'fish soup' that was really good. Rachel ate so much more candy than she was used to she got really 'hi' and then 'crashed', which was sad and funny at the same time. Karen ate more candy than Rachel, but thankfully tolerated it a bit better.

Today was supposed to be the first of several 'calmer' days this week. Ha! This morning the eye doctor called and said that Rachel's glasses were in. It was too late to go in the morning, so we had to go this afternoon. Thanks to Kitara for taking Karen this afternoon, because it was crazy. After dropping off Karen we drove and drove and drove (it is SO far down there). Rachel was getting more and more fussy, but there wasn't anything I could do at the moment so I tried to help her calm down. That effort totally failed and she instead gave back all of her lunch-in disgustingly recognizable pieces, we need to work on chewing our food better-all over her clothes and car seat!

If I was really a good mother I would have extra clothes for all my children packed away in the car for just such an eventuality, but alas I am not that mother. I used all my travel pack of wipes cleaning off her face, hands, and carseat enough that it would be 'okay' to take her home, and had to go into the doctor's office wearing only a diaper and socks. Needless to say, I received more glares in that 25 minutes of my life than practically any other time. How could I take my child out in public in only his (everyone assumed she was a boy) diaper? Well, we got the glasses and got out of there as fast as we possibly could. This was by far our shortest eye doctor trip on record. We left our apartment at 2:45, and even stopping at Kitara's to drop off and pick up Karen, we were still home by 5:30. Now all we have to do is keep Rachel from destroying her eye patches and glasses, and keep Karen from being insanely jealous and left out since she's the only one in the family without glasses. (I'm considering taking the lenses out of her sunglasses so she can wear them all the time, but haven't decided yet.)

Last item for the evening: Karen's first haircut. She had been bugging me for a couple of weeks to get her hair cut because her friend Hailey had recently gotten her's done. It was looking pretty gross at the ends, so I agreed. I bought a $10 pair of hair cutting scissors on Saturday morning, and that was it. I think it turned out okay for my first time ever, not perfect but not horrible either. It actually makes her hair look more full than it did before, and she likes it so I guess we're good on that count.

Well, that's it for us right now. If this post doesn't seem as upbeat as I'd like it to, I apologize. We really did have a great Easter this year, and we are glad that Rachel has her glasses. It's just that tonight at the end of it all I'm really tired, but I wanted to put this up now before I make more excuses not to do it and get farther behind... so here are the pics!

More Pictures!

In addition to these fun photos, I just put up a ton on Facebook. Also, a video from our ward party got put on You-Tube so, and Joe did a great job in it. Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ttj5JuQho0

Rachel's Walking!!!!! (and January)

Okay, so I was going to write about what happened in January since I haven't yet, but most important things first: Rachel is officially WALKING! Over the last week or so she's been making the transition, but today she pretty much refused to crawl anywhere and so it's official. I don't know how my baby can old enough to walk, but it's true. I have pictures, but they're still on the camera; I'll try to get them up by the end of the week (how's that for a goal?).

Another development, much more annoying but also important, is that Karen started asking "why" this week. Now everything she sees, she asks why. "Why are we stopped, mommy, I want to go" "why is it raining still" "why does daddy have to go on campouts" and on and on... Of course each question is followed up by another why question, until it feels like all I'm doing is answering questions while following Rachel around trying to keep her out of all the things she can now reach! And it seems like half of her questions always come back to "Because Heavenly Father wants us to do that" or some other version of the same. At least she accepts that without question for now, but I know it won't last too long. I think I keep falling back on that because it's easier than getting into a discussion with a 2 year old on photosynthesis, aerobic v. anaerobic, or other difficult science question. Yesterday I got away with telling her that it was raining because heavy clouds came from somewhere else with rain, and the rain was too heavy so it had to fall down (technically true, but still a bit fuzzy).

Now to January, but just the most important features of the month. Of course Rachel's birthday was on the 18th, which I already put up the picts for. The other big event was Joe's qualifying exam. For those who don't know what that is (which is totally understandable...), think Comps. or Comprehensive Exam. If that doesn't help, it's a really big test over 2 days (8 hours long) that was devised especially for Joe by the professors that know him best, testing whether he had enough knowledge on certain specific subjects to start his dissertation process. Scary? Yes! However, he took it just before the semester started in January and he passed!!!!!!! YEAH!!!! What does it mean? Just that now he can continue in the program, work on his dissertation, and that someday (maybe just over a year????) he will actually be done with school and we can have a real job that pays real money (okay, so he makes real money now teaching, just not that much of it)! I was so excited for him that I threw a huge party at our apartment clubhouse the night after the test. We didn't even know if he'd passed it yet, but it was such a relief that it was over! And our turnout was amazing, too! Almost all of our friends here in the Charlotte area came, over 50 people! We had lots of yummy food and visited while Ratatouille (sp?) was on, then (when in Rome, right) watched the Carolina Panthers get creamed in the playoffs. Thanks to all of you who came to hang with us that night, it was really great. And to all of you who didn't, that's okay. I'd put up pictures for you, but I was so worried about everything else that I forgot my camera that night. Sigh. So, if any of you who came took any pictures I'd love a copy...

Really for me in January it was all about Twilight. I borrowed the books in December and read them all in 5 days, no mean feat for a mom with 2 little girls. Joe bought the box set for me for Christmas (love Amazon.com) and in January I read them all again, and then again. (yes, I got a little obsessed, and I did in fact read the entire series 3 times in 6 weeks. I'm better now, I think). We also saw the movie for the first time the week before Valentine's day and it got Joe interested enough that he read them too! Sad, I know, but I can't wait until the movie comes out on Saturday!!!! (even though it wasn't very good; the next one will be awesome though!)

That's more than enough information in one post I think; I'll try and break it up with some picutes later this week. As a last note, it's been so long since I did a lot of typing that my skills are not as good as they used to be. This really took me too long to type.

Flashback Friday: Auto Theft

Okay, so I know it's not actually Friday anymore, but I started this on Friday and didn't have time to finish so I'm doing it now. For those of you not familiar with my friend Nancy's blog, every Friday she posts some funny story about something that happened to her. Last week it was eating pizza in Russia, other times it's about living in Jordan, living in Canada, or anything else she feels like writing about (like her grandma's food storage). As I was reading her Flashback last week I remembered something we did together once in High School, and I thought some of you might enjoy it. If it's not your cup of tea, sorry but it's still true.

I think it was my senior year of HS in Orem, but it could have been my junior year. It was in the fall during the time we had pit orchestra rehersals late into the evening several times a week and they were also having sophomores on the driving range-late October, probably. By the time we got out of practice it was dark outside. My friend Andy at the time drove a big old 10-passenger van. It was so old that the locks didn't work right, and the ignition would start even without the key. He drove to school one morning and then realized he'd forgotten his keys or something like that (a VERY Andy thing).

That's what gave me the idea in the first place. I remember that day he'd gone out right after the bell to move his van off the driving range so it wouldn't get towed or hit by the sophs. I told Nancy that I was going to 'steal' his car, and for some reason I couldn't understand she was very much against it. She knew I wasn't really going to steal it, but she was also way more anxious about the plan than I had thought she would be. (Now I realize it's because she liked him, since they're married and all, but at the time it was a mystery to me. It was around that same time that I told her I felt sorry for whoever Andy ended up marrying because he's so accident prone.)

Anyway, back to the story. After Andy had moved his van I snuck out of rehersal and met Nancy, who insisted on coming with me to make sure I didn't do anything too bad. We went out to the van which was now parked near the band room and climbed in. It started just fine without the keys, and I drove it over to the far end of the parking lot. Then we turned it off, got out, 'locked' the doors, and went back in. When we got out later (not sure what time) it was dark, and hard to see the far end of the parking lot. The van was a dark blue color with lots of rust, making it really hard to see clear down there. Of course Andy flipped out. He thought at first that he hadn't moved it and it was towed by the driver's ed people. Then Mike reminded him that he'd moved it. Then he was sure it was stolen, though none of us could think of why someone would steal such a nasty vehicle. Finally someone (I don't remember who) pointed it out, so far away in the dark. It didn't take long for everyone to figure out it was me, in fact I might have boasted about it, but I don't remember that now. Andy was mad of course, but more relieved that it wasn't stolen or anything (so were the other 5 kids who needed rides home that night). After that Andy drove the truck for a couple weeks while his parents got the locks and things fixed so it couldn't get stolen for real. Andy was never one to hold a grudge, thank goodnes, and a couple weeks later I even bummed a ride from him.

So, that's my flashback. I don't know if I'm thinking of these random things more now because my sister's a junior this year or because Joe's the YM pres and we do lots of stuff with his boys right now (BB tournament and Prom both this weekend). I know I have a lot more things I should post about, but hopefully someone will get a good laugh out of it and then forgive me. And Andrew, once again, I'm sorry I stole your van! (though it wouldn't do you a lot of good in Cairo anyway!)

RETURN!!!!

These first few are from Rachel's First Birthday! I can't believe she's already 13 months old! Where did the time go? (I know, you're thinking 'not by her blogging!') Anyway, it was a great time for our family and a few neighbors who came to help us eat cake and ice cream. Rachel got lots of Little People stuff; we walked through Toys R Us to find something she would like, and when we walked down that aisle she got SOOOO excited we knew just what to get her. She plays with these toys every day still (which is great).

Notice that the cake is the same colors and such as the toy castle? That was really on purpose, and Joe didn't even notice until after we'd eaten half the cake, when he said something like, "hey, isn't the cake almost like the castle?

This was our Thanksgiving that we did the day after Thanksgiving. On 'real' Thanksgiving, we went to the Tufts', Karen's best friend Hailey's house, and had a big ole' party then made our own the next day (mostly for the leftovers, I think). This year, I think we'll just stay home and do our own Thanksgiving instead of doing 2.
Setting up the Christmas Decorations after our Thanksgiving.

The rest of these pics are from our trip to Indiana for Christmas. It was a great week with Grandma and Grandpa Allen! The only problem we have now is that we have so much fun doing our fun stuff that we don't remember to get our camera out! It was fun to visit family and celebrate the holidays, as well as see the cousins, eat the yummy food, get presents, and everything else that goes along with that time of year.

Well, if a picture's really worth a thousand words, this entry is already WAYYYYY to long, so I'll be done for now and work on getting more caught up another time (tomorrow maybe? we'll see)

So...About that Return...

Well, it's been a trying process to get our computer back to where it needs to be to do ANYTHING! A week or two ago we had our friend reformat it and sadly, that didn't really help. But, we got our tax return last week, and the first thing we did was order a new desktop computer (okay, it was the second thing, we paid off our van first!!!) Anyway, HP should be shipping it by tomorrow and that means in the next week or so I will no longer have a valid IT problem for not blogging. It's sad, I have like a million pictures to put up of the girls from thanksgiving until now. They say a picture's worth a thousand words, so think how long it would take me to write all that if I can't upload the pictures. (I can't now; my Explorer would freeze up and I'd have to restart the computer at least once to get it going again...) Maybe my pennance for Lent this year will be to blog every day...That's actually not a bad idea, I might get caught up then... Hmmm, I'll have to think about that some more. Untl then, I'll keep my growing files of pics to myself and wait for the day I have enough juice in my computer to actually show them to someone.

I Will Return!!

Okay, so it's been so long since I posted that I really don't know where to start, but I'm really going to try. The last couple months have been really truly crazy and after next week it'll (hopefully) calm down enough that I can do a bit of catching up (0r at least start from where I'm at now and consider the last months a lost cause). Also our computer has issues with typing- there's a several second delay from when I type to when it shows up on the screen-so sorry about any really wierd spelling errors. I have no more time right now, but I promise I will return!!

Halloween and beyond!

First off I'm going to put up a bunch of pictures (I hope) from Halloween and everything. We'll see where we get from there. Karen was Cinderella for Halloween, while Rachel reprised Karen's role of 2 years ago (can it really be that long?) as a sunflower. They got lots of candy for mom and dad, and had fun showing off their cute clothes. Karen even got kissed on the cheek by AJ, a 3-year-old in the ward at the trunk-or-treat.
The pumpkin patch where we got our pumpkin (we bought the one Joe's touching). If someone else would have taken the picture so I could be in this would be the perfect family picture for us and we wouldn't have to get them taken still... oh well!

Karen was trying to 'sneak' a few cheerios, but ended up dumping most of the box. The day after this she did dump the entire box of Kix, but since it was right after I'd cleaned the floors I put them all back in the box. Was that bad of me? The one with the trash can is from the week after general conference. Karen liked watching the old guys (who she kept calling John McCain) talking so much that she had to do her own talks. She put a book on the can that she has memorized and then 'reads' it to me. She even does this cute little fake cough like she's clearing her throat.Future pianists? I definitely think so! I have to practice my choir music almost every day, and after I have my turn the girls each have to have their own turns too. It doesn't even sound that bad sometimes, but maybe I'm just going deaf or something.

Now that I'm officially the last person on the planet to put up their Halloween pics, I can maybe write about some other things that have been going on.

Starting with the church scene, it's as busy as always. We had a great ward party in October with 6 different jump/bounce house things, cotton candy, karaoke, and all kinds of fun stuff. Then we had Trunk or Treat for Halloween, which is always fun. Last week was the Scout Spaghetti Dinner fundraiser that Joe was in charge of (can he go back to teaching Primary, please?...) and so I got to help with some. I baked a pumpkin pie from some of my pumpkin that we got at the patch in October (I got enough pumpkin from it to make 9 pies...crazy) and it sold for $20 at the baked goods auction. They also had a sauce contest and had the 6 missionaries serving in our ward and the next one to us judge them. Crazy as it sounds, I actually won the prize for best sauce overall! I always knew the spaghetti sauce my mom made (and now I make) was really good, but there were some accomplished chefs, Italians, and good southern cooking experts in our ward. Everyone says I won because Joe was in charge of it, but he says it really wasn't that. It felt really good to actually win something, even if it was only a certificate that got wet in my diaper bag on the way home. This weekend Joe's on a scout campout, which is why I have enough computer time to not only look at other people's blogs but actually do my own post.

On the school front, it's more of the same. Joe was planning on taking his qualifying exam for his dissertation yesterday and today, but it's been pushed back to January 8-9. So much for a non-studying holiday! At this point we're looking forward to the test being done, just like we've been for the past 6 months. On the bright side Joe's doing a great job teaching his class on campus, and they've signed him to teach 2 sections of the class in the winter and 3 more in the spring/summer, which will be really good for our bank account.

On the home front things just keep plugging along. Rachel is now 10 months old and crawling like crazy. She's started to pull up on things (mostly the piano and the couch) and today she REALLY decided that anyone besides mommy and daddy is scary (at piano lesson time she screamed because the mom of my students tried to hold/play with her like she always does). She also insists on feeding herself. I'm not allowed to come anywhere near her with a spoon. So much for baby food! She eats lots of canned fruits and veggies, bread, cereal, and pasta, but nothing that's been creamed/ground up for her. She'll also take a bottle, but only if she's sitting on the floor while someone holds it up for her. Karen is 2 1/2 and that's about all I can say. She is very independant when she wants to be, but also can be really whiney and a pain too. She's pretty much potty trained (we'll take her night-time pull-up away next week when the package is empty) She loves princess movies and sings the songs from Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. We watched Peter Pan tonight and she thought it was fun except the 'funny scary crocodile/dragon' (her words, not mine). I'm about the same too, except that now I read books during naptime instead of blog/surf the internet. In the last month I've read 4 of the Anne of Green Gables books, Of Mice and Men, The Secret Garden, Robinson Crusoe, and started 1984 (but it's wierd, I might not finish that one).

Now that this terribly long blog is so long no one will ever read it all, I'm going to feed my baby and go to bed. Hope everyone has a really terrific Thanksgiving!

I figured it out!

The reason I've been having so much trouble doing regular posts lately is that I'm busy. At this moment you're thinking, okay so am I but I still get in at least a blog a week (or maybe not). I realized today that most of the time when I used to blog was during Karen's naptime. Not that Karen no longer takes a nap, but now I also have Rachel. She's a cute little bundle of screaming (mostly happy) and until recently was never sleeping at the same time as Karen. That makes it hard to blog since she's always crying or pulling on my leg and crying, or trying to eat the computer cords when I try to get online. This week has been better in one way, however. I finally got my girls to take naps at the same time!!! I think it's a miracle! Here's the catch: they can't be in the same room. I don't know what it is; they have no trouble sharing a room at night or any other time except for naptime. Putting them in the same room and telling them to take a nap is like dropping your pen and telling it not to fall. It just doesn't work in the known universe. So now the pack-n-play has become a permanent fixture in our bedroom (at least there's room for it in this apartment!) and they are taking good almost-2-hour naps. Now the only problem is that the computer (actually, the internet connection since the computer is a laptop) is in the bedroom with Rachel during naptime. So, I've won (at least temporarily) one battle, but the war to have a little of my own life continues. One of these days I'll even have enough time to myself with a computer to justify having an account on a social networking site... in my dreams....

Anyway, we've been doing pretty good here. The leaves are finally starting to change, we may have a frost tonight, and it's wonderful that I now have a justification for drinking hot chocolate! In other news, I stubbed my pinky toe on my left foot on Tuesday and it's pretty well jammed though it's not as painful and swollen as it was. Karen got a big blister running around the church last Thursday while I was helping set up for Enrichment (which was a great event...maybe I'll write about it sometime...). Anyway, her blister popped and scabbed over, she picked it a couple of times, and it was so gross I didn't want her to even try putting on shoes. As a result we've been kinda cooped up in our apartment and were about ready to kill each other this afternoon. This is why I have a brilliant and wonderful husband who came home and helped take care of the girls this evening, then kicked me out the door and told me to come back after bedtime! I didn't know what to do with myself!!! I went to the mall (without my money so I couldn't be really tempted) for over an hour without stopping at the kiddie slides, and walked in and looked at stuff in 4 consecutive stores. I can't ever do that with the girls; either they start screaming b/c we're not moving fast enough or they pull stuff off the shelves. It was nice (and wierd) to be able to go into any store I wanted to.

Last note befor I have to run: Rachel had her follow-up with the eye doctor on Tuesday morning. I spent an hour driving to south Charlotte for the appointment only to have him say "well, it looks like it might be a little better, but I'm not really sure what/if she needs anything yet. come back in January". It's nice to know that she's not blind and she might be a little better, but I feel like I wasted an entire morning for a doctor that doesn't really care about my baby! Grrr!

I was going to write more, but now the Office is on so I have to go. Hopefully I'll be back sooner than later, but I'm not giving up nap time for it so we'll see...

Football story

This story was the headline on rivals.com today. It's great that we're finally starting to get the recognition that we deserve! I miss Provo!

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news;_ylt=AuAPlMYlDarK.H.wlfzC3DUcvrYF?slug=jn-byu100208&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

Where have I been?

Goodness, it looks like I've been away for a while now. I just don't know where the time has gone. We haven't really been doing much of anything big or exciting or scary or bad (unless you watch the economy, but that's not my fault I don't even have a mortgage). I really have no excuse for it having been about 6 weeks since I actually posted. It seems like I've been running crazy, but I don't have much to show for it. Between church, Joe's school, two girls, and trying to keep the house running it's just gotten away. Here's a few interesting things we've been doing:

1. Rachel went to an Eye, Ears, Nose and Throat specialist office about her funny eye-crossing behaviors. She's just nearsighted the Dr said, but she may need glasses around her birthday if her eyes don't continue to improve. They seem to be getting better but it's a really slow process.

2. We got the van serviced and found several things that needed to be fixed totaling over $1000 and it's sad that our student loans had to go mostly to that and not to actually paying off the van.

3. Joe started teaching! He has one class that he's teaching now and he really seems to be enjoying it. Next semester he's teaching 2 sections of the same class. He's also taking his qualifying exam in November and will hopefully be working on his dissertation by Christmas. He also got a bit of a job offer, but we're not done with school yet so it didn't even come to anything. It's nice to know that Joe's got a profitable degree that he can use though.

4. Karen is almost completely potty trained! Last week was kinda bad, but overall she's only using pull-ups at bedtime now and most of the time she goes in the toilet!!! She can even go by herself but then some of the time 'forgets' to put her underwear back on (she'd rather be free...). It's nice to not have 2 kids in diapers anymore.

5. Rachel is almost fully mobile. She can sit herself up and pull herself over. She can roll all over the place and yesterday started to commando crawl. She's really doing better in that department than Karen did. Rachel is now 8 months old; Karen didn't crawl at all until 10 months, I think someone's trying to catch up.

6. As I write, my government is attempting to buy up $700 billion in bad debt to just hold on to it for a few years... not that I have anything to do with that really since I don't currently pay taxes myself, own a home, or have anything in the stock market right now, but it's just a crazy situation. And it means the price of food is probably going to go up again... but it's just more fuel for an already exciting political season. It's crazy, but I don't even know who I'm voting for yet. What a crazy year this is!

Well, this is a long enough post for now. We've been busy and hopefully I'll be back for good now... until something else minor comes up, right? Here are some pics from the last bit...

These two pictures are from a party we had for our friends who were moving back to teach at BYU-I. Since then (July) they have moved to ID, one of our other friends moved to NJ, and another one had her baby!

Moving On

It seems like it's just that time of year. We moved about 2 weeks ago now and seem to be almost settled in our new apartment, just a couple blocks from our old apartment. Also this week I have several friends moving. Nancy and Andrew Heiss (and Rachel) are moving to Egypt to start grad school at AUC for 2 years. Megan Pickard is moving to Penn State for her PhD in Geology, and Shaille and Casey Claypool (and Matthew and Kelsi) are moving once again for their last year of optometry school-this time to Washington state. I'm sure there are more that I don't know about, but those are the ones I've read about online in the past 30 minutes or so and are therefore fresher in my mind. We've also begun the rash of move-ins in our ward, with a couple new couples from BYU and a family from Montana. It seems like this is the time of year to move, right before school starts and you have to get back to 'life'. (although you're still living in the summer, and there are those who claim to live for summer but aren't actually dead during the rest of the year...)

Anyway, our last couple weeks have been mostly spent getting settled and used to our new and oh-so-much bigger and better apartment. Karen has almost stopped asking to go home (meaning our old apartment) and is almost back to where she was with her potty training. (she regressed a LOT last week). Rachel is doing well but now HATES to sleep in her crib, and it's our biggest challenge now. Last week Joe's professors made him take off and not do any work from Monday until Friday. So we got netflix 2 week trials and watched an entire season of the West Wing as well as the olympics. Saturday night we went to the Indianapolis Colts vs. Carolina Panthers preseason game with our friends Justin and Kitara. It was totally cool to be in the stands (almost at the very top) but would have been better if the Colts were actually trying to win (since preseason NFL games don't count on the record the Indy coach doesn't usually play his starting lineup for more than the first few minutes to reduce the risk of injury). The craziest thing at the game besides the way expensive consessions was the fact that the field goal kicker for Carolina missed 2 times and sent the game into overtime. It was pretty fun and got us really excited to watch some BYU football!!!

Well, time to be done. As a note, I think I did something bad and deleted all the blogs I had linked on my blog, so if you could, repost your website so I can check out your blogs again (since I have no memory) and I'll try to get everything worked out. It's been about a year since I worked on updating the layout anyway, so I'll try to get it better but if y'all could help me out that would be wonderful. Thanks!!!!

I'm Going Crazy...

I remember singing this song at girl's camp and in girl scouts many years (or maybe not many...) ago:

I'm going crazy
Why don't you come along
I must be crazy
To sing this song....

And it went on from there. Every time we move it feels like that song fits perfectly (though I'm not going to deliver a whole farm or even a sheep any time soon...). We move on Saturday, and while it's exciting it's also exhausting, crazy and a bit overwhelming this time, even though it's not very far. Tomorrow I have to take our internet modem back to the TimeWarner Cable place and have the internet turned off here. So this is my last opportunity to blog in this apartment. It really makes me happy to be moving but sad at the same time since this is the only home our kids have ever known. Karen cried this morning when she went into our empty master bath; she doesn't understand what moving means even though we've kinda psyched her up for it the last couple weeks/months. I hope you all have a great end of July and I hope to be officially back online in a couple weeks at the latest. (before the Heisses leave for Egypt?) So Happy Pioneer Day to you all, and TTFN!!

Milestones and Milemarkers

That's what we've been working on the last few weeks, reaching milestones and counting mile markers. I'll write about our trip to Indiana first and then go from there, I think. I'm trying to write about everything before I forget it, we turn off our internet, or get so far behind that it's not worth writing about anymore.

On the 30th of June we left for Grandma and Grandpa Allen's at 5:30 in the morning. I know you're all thinking, why in the world would they leave that early? Because we find that our children are easier to deal with in the car early in the morning (they mostly sleep) and the roads are much more empty so you can make better time that way. Our girls are pretty much amazing. We thought we'd have to stop for a play break around lunch time, but we pretty much drove straight through. I drove some, but Joe ended up doing most of it since I would have to go back and nurse Rachel every few hours. We made it in 10 hours including rest stops, which is really good, and Karen got her first taste of country life by playing with the gravel driveway and chasing the very pregnant cat (she had a litter of 6 while we were there).

It was a much more relaxing vacation than we've had so far this year, mostly because with the price of gas it's not worth it to drive all over to see things. We mostly stayed on the farm and played outside, although Joe and I went to the Lane Place, a historic home in Crawfordsville, one afternoon. Joe's brother Matt came down with his family (Shelley, Faith, and Clayton) for the 4th, and Karen's rarely had so much fun. Faith is a year and a half older and Clay a year younger than her. There's lots of room to run and play and no one else to play with besides each other, so they got along really well and had a blast. They played basketball with badminton racquets, splashed in the wading pool, took turns on the 4 wheeler, watched princess movies and veggie tales... it was fun. Faith was the de-facto leader of the group since she was the biggest, but by the end they were mostly doing what Karen wanted since if Faith wanted to do something Karen didn't want to, Karen wouldn't play. It was funny to watch as they tried to manipulate each other... like father like daughter, right? It was a great week and we were both happy and sad to come back home again.

Now to the milestones... Rachel is going to be 6 months old on Friday! I can't believe it! Where did the time go? At her last checkup she was 16 lbs 4 oz, and 26 in. long. that was 2 months ago! She's huge now! She has her first 2 bottom teeth and is working hard on the 2 top ones. She rolled all the way over on Friday, which was so great to see! Karen's passed most of her milestones already, but is now starting on her 2 year molars and seems taller every day. She already asks when she can go to school, and likes to count and sound out really simple words (like cat). Another milestone that we passed last week was our 5th anniversary. I can't believe it's been 5 years since we got married! In some ways it seems like a long time (I finished school, we've moved 7 times, we have 2 kids...) and in other ways it seems like it was just a little while ago. I decided it's a good thing we have eternity to go, because 5 years is definitely not enough even though it may be a good place to start.

The last part I have to mention in this post is the countdown to moving has begun. We move in 12 days from today! I'm so excited for the bigger apartment, awesome amenities, and the good friends we already have at our new location. I just wish we could move this week instead of almost 2 weeks from now since Joe has a conference and scout camp betweev now and then. As a result of our impending move, we'll be temporarily internet-less sometime in the next couple weeks, but don't worry, we'll be back before Nancy and Andrew leave for Egypt. Time to go; typing one-handed takes too long!

pictures, pictures, pictures

Here are the pictures of some things I've posted about the last few months. The bottom has pictures from Calista's wedding, dinner, and reception in Alpine. Then is the one of the dresser we refinished for them at their apartment. After that are a couple from Karen's 2nd birthday (the unfamiliar people are Doren and Steve Cook). Then come our Savannah, GA pictures with Marissa Shuffler's (now Porter, sorry) wedding and Karen as flower girl. The top pics are at Fort Pulaski outside Savannah. Sorry it's taken so long to get anything up. We'll do better in the future (I hope!).