Telling Our Kids The Good News

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Wanted:

A person capable of creating a child within their own body, while at the same time managing to keep a 2 and 4 year old alive and not fighting, box up and prepare to move a family of 4, and various other tasks such as selling and fixing items to sell on craigslist.

Organizational skills a plus. Patience not necessary but certainly nice. Pay minimal. Would you accept homemade chocolate chip cookies as payment instead of money? The cookies  may have a bite or two missing since my 2 year old took it upon herself to taste test them for you.

Another skill needed is optimism for the man in the home who is applying for jobs like mad. Must cheer him on and cheer him up and have dinner ready when he gets home. Sandwiches are totally acceptable. As is cereal.

Also, beware the 2 year old and markers. There seems to be a magnetic draw between the two, as the sheet on my bed can now attest as I took 2 minutes to put tights on the 4 year old today.
Also, the 2 year old is showing tendencies towards neatness attributes.After sitting down for a meal or any sort, she quickly loses her shirt if she deems the meal too messy and tries to keep her clothing clean. How thoughtful and helpful!  Please encourage her when she tries to sweep the floor and makes a bigger mess. She holds and dumps the dust pan like a pro! She must have picked up that skill from her 4 year old sister who is also a great dust dumper.  Beware the 2 year old's too long visits to the bathroom to go potty. We have deducted after doing her business she likes to put on makeup, spread soap, unroll toilet paper and any other "fun" task that catches her eye. Including but not limited to dunking toothbrushes, toilet paper, hands and anything else "fun" into the toilet water.

The 4 year old currently has an affinity for bed jumping. But she can make her bed like a pro.
And is learning all kinds of other useful skills like using scissors on her own gogurts, drawing stick figures, folding towels and spelling her name out loud. She's a great assistant in helping the 2 year old into clothes, going potty and most other things. The 2 year old doesn't always think she's such a great help though.

If you think you could fill this position successfully: Congratulations!! You too must be amazing!

Oh The Joys of Moving

Craigslist. I love to love it, I love to hate it. I just finished dealing with a person who tried to get me to drop my price by $2. While he was here to pick up the pieces. When you're paying less than $10 for something that's worth easily more than I'm charging, that's a problem. I think when you find yourself insisting that they pay that extra $2, that's when you know you're poor. When $2 is worth the pain of insisting on someone paying it. If I was going for a garage sale atmosphere, I wouldn't be selling on craigslist. Okay, end of rant.

Also, I'm getting tired of arranging my time so people can come over and pick up the stuff of ours that they are buying. We're trying to fit back into the same size trailer we came out here with almost a year and a half ago. *Sigh*  I hate having to start completely over acquiring furniture for a household. At least this time we're moving with a chair. A folding chair. Also, don't mind my attitude. It has to do with saying goodbye to perfectly usable and nice pieces that we've been given or gotten fairly inexpensively and are now saying goodbye to instead of having them last a whole lot longer with our family. Hopefully this will be one of the few times in my life that I have to do this. Again.

I sound ungrateful. I am really just tired. Moving isn't anyone's most favorite thing to do. It's interesting trying to box things up with two curious little girls who like to pull things out of piles and play with and move them to new places. Oh the joys.

Also, something I feel I should have more time to be excited about. We find out what we're having on Tuesday. I'm excited when I think about it but I don't have time to let that be something for my mind to rest on for very long. At least this pregnancy is going by quickly and fairly painlessly. I'll take it!

Okay, there's your update for now. Still no job. We'll let you know as soon as we know. Either way, June 29th we are leaving this apartment unless something job-wise comes up in this area. We're not making any REALLY concrete plans at this point for anything.

17 Days Left

Well, we've not been up to much here. Packing, taking things to Salvation Army, selling things on Craigslist. We're taking about the same amount of things out of here as we brought in which really isn't much. Beds, clothes, kitchen stuff, toiletry items.  Kinda sad about losing some of the things we've gathered here, I had such big dreams of changing and painting. Hopefully I'll get to do that at our next place. Here are some much needed pictures from lately.

   

Aftyn's 4th birthday!!

It got really hot. We slept terribly for 4 days.Hence Bronwyn falling asleep randomly on the floor mid-morning.

The girls in their birthday dresses from Grandma Bishop! So cute and ready for church!

Also other awesome news, I hurt my right wrist again. Ugh. Just had to document it b/c it's really bad timing for that.

Graduation Day - It was Awesome

I love the excitement on his face

Mohammed and Talal - much talked about classmates

Deanna, the academic advisor

Ling Ling - classmate who we met on the way back to our car

Reed's brother, sis-in-law and kids. Not pictured, Reed's parents. Not sure how that happened.

Back in the Saddle Again

Ah, life. It sure throws some doozies at you doesn't it?

Reed and I made a monumentous decision this week. We gave our notice here at our apartment. Luckily it works out that with our security deposit as our last months rent, we are here until the end of June. 6 weeks from now.

Where are you going?               Does Reed have a job?

The answer to both of those questions: No idea where we're going, and no Reed doesn't have a job yet. For some reason it just feels right putting our total faith in Heavenly Father in this situation. We know He is aware of us, and we know He has a plan for our family. So ready or not, let's toast a nice glass of water to this adventure we call life!

***And in other news, Reed officially graduates this Sunday. Stay tuned for pictures of that!***

Birthdays and Such

Wow. I know. It's been awhile since I updated but we've had a lot going on so we have a lot to update here.  First of all, I became an older and wiser lady. :) Luckily, I still love birthdays and my age is just a number. 32 is looking pretty good on me if I do say so myself. HA!! I had a great birthday, Reed and the girls got me flowers and chocolates and made me a card and later Reed surprised me with 2 new books!! What more could a girl ask for?! My birthday only became greater because the following 2 days after my birthday I got to hear the heartbeat and see the special little person we're adding to our family in November. 

Majorly majorly adorable. Even better that we all got to go and see the ultrasound including the girls. They both thought seeing the baby was exciting although I'm sure Bronwyn didn't connect the picture on the screen as something inside of me. Aftyn has been excited for a long time already and I think it became more real for her when she saw the baby's picture. Reed couldn't wipe the smile off of his face. :) He's such a good dad.

Reed's parents came into town on the 11th of May with Reed's aunt and we've been enjoying having them here and showing them our town for the last few days. On Saturday we went to Old Sturbridge Village which is about 20-ish minutes away. Such a neat place to go and learn about what an 1800's village would have looked like, how the things in the village would have worked, how the people looked and what their work and play looked like. We spent about 4 hours there and could very easily go back for another 4. TONS of walking around which was great exercise and our girls loved the wagon ride with the horses and all of the space to run and walk and look at things. We all loved the baby sheep(!) which were only a few days old. They also had majorly stinky pigs and lots of cows and goats and horses. My in-laws watched the girls for us that night while Reed and I had our first date of the year. It was so much fun to go out without our girls. What a treat!
Mothers day was great. My ward had a 2 hour meeting where all the women got to meet together while all the men and young men filled in for all the callings, and we were so spoiled with yummy lunch and dessert. It wouldn't have been possible without lots of work from the relief society presidency and the young women's presidency. They did an awesome job!!  Reed got me more beautiful roses and surprised his mom and aunt with roses and chocolates as well. :) And my mother in law supplied us with all the fixings for a yummy roast with potatoes and carrots and all we had to do was stick it in the crockpot and oh boy was it the best mothers day meal! What a fun day, and it ended in a cemetery finding ancestors for my mother in law and her sister. Nothing like a little genealogy work.
 Only a few days later, our little Bronwyn had her 2nd birthday. She had a grin from morning until evening because someone was always saying to her "Is today your birthday?" to which she would answer with a grin "Yes!".  We sure love her. Aftyn was such a sweet sweet sister and was so excited for Bronwyn's birthday. She picked out gummy worms and dictated her own card for Bronwyn.

I love this shirt. This is the shirt Aftyn wore to the hospital 2 years ago to meet baby Bronwyn. :( My baby got so big!

Her favorite present: An art center. She spent the rest of the night coloring and erasing her chalk drawings.

Bronwyn insisted on throwing away each little torn piece of paper as she ripped it off this present

Grandma and Grandpa Bishop gave Bronwyn this cute dress.

We had a fantastic night and Bronwyn loved her birthday so so much. Aftyn is very VERY excited for her own birthday in a few days and we're actually planning on celebrating it 2 days early so we can celebrate with Grandma and Grandpa Bishop.  Thanks to them and Aunt Eileen for making Bronwynnie's special day so much fun!