Mother's Day

I didn't take any pictures on Mother's Day so I almost forgot about it in my journal recap but I had a wonderful Mother's Day. Most of the Mother's Days I've had, have either come right after having a new baby or when we have been traveling to see family (since May is kind of the only month off when you are in school) and so this Mother's Day it was so nice to be at home and just keep it simple. It was also fun because the Girls are old enough (or I guess I should say Mia is old enough) to start forming their own ideas about what Mother's Day is supposed to look like. So Mia had picked up on the idea of doing "Breakfast in Bed" for your Mom and was dead set on doing that. It worked out nicely that our bed happened to be in the living room at the time because we had recently cleaned our carpets in preparation for the move. So I literally had my breakfast in bed while Lance and the girls sat at the table in the room right next to me. And I think what I look forward to most on Mother's Day is seeing Mia get up with the primary kids and sing during Church.

We are here

We are here in California...It hasn't rained since got there in May...we are enjoying catching up with old friends...meeting some new friends...Lance is getting used to the new job and trying to work in some surfing time on the side...and I am working on keeping 3 kids (who can't swim yet) alive while we have fun at our neighborhood pool! :) More updates to come!

The move...and Graduation Celebration

Settling in for the Long Haul. :)

Alexis and Mia. So fun to have Cousins your age!

Our neighbors were so nice to have us over for breakfast the morning we were leaving. It was fun to visit with them for a bit before Lance picked his parents up from the airport.

All packed up and ready to go

Getting to ride in the moving truck with Grandma and Grandpa was definately the coveted spot!

First Stop: Montana to see the Browns. And as always enjoying wonderful food, baseball games, beautiful beautiful Montana, and a great time with Family.

We will miss living close to them!

Arriving in Utah...Enjoying Chuck-a-rama.

Playing at the fun Rec Center next to Grandma and Grandpa's house. Maddi convincing Grandpa to take her down the waterslide.

Ella and Christian enjoying some out-of-the-water fun.

Climbing the Rock Wall at the Rec Center.

Fun with Cousins.

It was nice that we arrived in Utah the same weekend that Lance's graduation was being held at Purdue. In honor of this Lance's Sisters put on an awesome (surprise) Graduation Celebration/Mock Ceremony for him. It started off by opening my gift to Lance: the official tassle and Doctoral Hood that we had ordered from Purdue and shipped out to Utah.

Trying to figure out how the "Hood" goes on.

The Celebration started off with a trip to an outdoor shopping where Lance was required to be blindfolded the whole way there while dressed in his Graduation attire, and then walk (still blindfolded) to the Fountain where we took off the blindfold and made him run through the foutain. It was funny because as we were walking through the plaza he kept trying to guess where we were and on that particular day they happened to be having a huge dancing/singing performance, so there was tons of music and cheering so we told him it was all in honor of him!

Lance and his sisters, Leslie and Lorie...the ultimate Party planners.

Getting drenched as a family

After and official Graduation Ceremony at Lance's sister's house...it was only fitting that the Graduate be made to jump into the pool. Lance thought it only fitting that afterwards he throw his sisters into the pool....as well as his nephew

It was fun to meet up with my Sister Lisa and her family and visit Temple Square on Sunday. Our girls had never been before. I love this cute picture of all the cousins but it was quite hillarious trying to get them all to stand there at the same time!

Sunday night we stopped in Provo to visit with Great Grandma and Grandpa Chapman and enjoy dinner with them.

Our last day of driving was from Salt Lake to California. We stopped in Nephi to visit Grandma Chris's Grave and then headed on to St. George to see my Grandma Bradbury.

The last time I saw my Grandma Mia was 6 months old! It was so fun to catch up.

Eating at In-and-Out before Grandma and Grandpa had to go back home.


Well we made it...and it was probably the easiest move we've ever had! Lance's Parents came up to Spokane to help us drive the moving truck to California and we planned to take a week to get there and visit family on the way. Everything went really smoothly, it was so fun to visit with family, and Lance's parents were SO helpful. And having good friends already here and so nice to watch our kid the first day we got there so we could unpack without kids around for a few hours was amazing. Thank you Thank you!

Any House a Home...What we will miss about Spokane

Our awesome Backyard. It may not have been nicely landscaped but it had lots of space to run and it was fenced and had a large unused Garden area great for digging and getting completely dirty..what more could a kid OR Mom ask for?

We will miss Good friends. We had some other great neighbors who Mia and Maddi loved to play with. Here is Preston showing Mia how to read Hop on Pop. They had a system worked out where she would read all the Large Printed Words and he would read all the little ones.

Mia just recently learned how to climb the tree in our front yard.

A rainbow we saw one afternoon right before we moved.

Someone in our neighborhood was getting rid of their swing set and gave it to us and I can't count how many hours of entertainment the girls got out of that thing. We were VERY sad to leave it behind. I think their faces in the pictures say it all.

We had the BEST neighbors you could ask for in Spokane. Betty was one of our most favorite neighbors/surrogate Grandma. We loved to watch her work in her beautiful Garden, and the girls loved to swing on her porch swing, go visit her cats, or play with her dog Bella.

Oh how we will miss you sky blue room with the airplane border that only went halfway around the room, and with the lovely hardwood floors that allowed us to hear absolutely EVERY footstep that our children ever took in that room throughout the entire house.

We were always finding new little cupboards everywhere like the ones ABOVE the closet. And the rounded built in shelf thing was always interesting.

Floor to Ceiling Wood Paneling...it doesn't get much better than that!

I don't know if you can tell from this picture but the stairs going down to the basement had an opening with no railing down to the floor where our little daredevils spent many a good (mommy's-not-watching) moment jumping off!

Our steep and slippery painted wood stairs to the basement, where (I especially) had many a good fall.

How how we will miss our fun basement pantry with it's perfect-for-canned food shelves. And do you see the little decal on the outside that lets you know that it's the pantry. Haha I love that! With a very small kitchen this pantry was invaluable to us.

Our secret door/underground railroad drawer under the basement stairs. We are just glad it was heavy (and probably scary enough) that no children attempted to get INSIDE it.

We did have a one car detached Garage next to our house that we used for storage, but down in our basement we had this little room that we referred to as the Garage. It was the only unfinished part of the basement, intended to be a workroom and which we used for extra storage boxes. And yes it came with all that random stuff you see on all the shelves.

Well...the girls will miss this lovely little addition to the kitchen....the mini counter right next to the Big Counter....I however...will NOT! It was actually the bane of my existence. Like an open invitation for children to walk with shoes on right up onto the counter and help themselves to whatever they can reach in the cupboards....this was a real issue when Maddi was especially into her raw egg biting, syrup drinking, egg dye tablet eating, Vanilla chugging days. haha I will admit that we had some fun cooking moments with that little counter but more often times than not you could hear us saying, okay everyone off the counter!

Our Awesome Kitchen...you know it's small when the entire thing is the width of the oven. :) And do you notice the MINI Dishwasher...we learned to get very creative with storing food, and dishes....and would you believe we cooked Thanksgiving Dinner for 16 people in this Kitchen?! :)

When you know you will be leaving a place you immediately start to realize everything you will miss about it. While we were only in Spokane for a year, we really made some wonderful memories there. One thing we just LOVED about Spokane was all the old houses in the area we lived. It was always so fun to drive around and look at them, or to visit friend's houses because every house was so different. The house we rented was built in the 1930s and they have done quite a few updates although I think that kitchen floor came original. :) It was so different from our brand new (can't tell it apart from the other houses in the neighborhood) house we sold in Indiana right before moving here (which we also loved). I remember the night we got to Spokane and after all the wonderful people in our new ward had helped us move everything in we started getting the kids ready for bed. We had had a little issue with our move in date being too early, the previous tenants not really cleaning ANYTHING (most likely for the entire time they lived there) and the management company not having a chance to come in and fix everything up before we got there. So back to the story, Aunt Jilly had the fun job of bathing the older girls in a tub, that not only looked disgusting but had flakes (of the tub) coming off in the bathtub and the girls hair... yuck yuck yuck. At this point I was about ready to just pack everything back up and go ANYWHERE else. But after a week of cleaning like I've never cleaned before (have you ever HAD to wash everything in the kitchen INCLUDING the ceiling???) I decided I could make it work (the management company came and redid the entire bathtub among many other things...and that helped quite a bit!) But anyway we grew to just love our little house in Spokane as it became our home and while I never would have thought so that first night, we will really miss it and all it's quirky little characteristics.