McDonalds Made Me Do It

Before we moved into my parents house we had made the decision to let Trevin stay at his Elementary School for 2 more weeks before transfering him to the one by us now. We did this for a few reasons. First, Trevin loves his school. It's been the school that he has been at since 1st grade so he is very comfy there. I wanted to make the transition as easy as possible and a couple things were happening in the upcoming weeks that he had been looking forward to for quite a while. Every school has fundraisers. Every year. They may be different thinks like cookies, chocolates, wrapping paper or coupon books but they all have them. This year Trevin was one of the top sellers of the school. It doesn't hurt that he has aunts, uncles, grandparents and neighbors galore who just happen to love being sucked into these things (THANK YOU ALL). So with Trevin being the master salesman that he is (or just having such a HUGE family net) he got the grand prize of riding in a firetruck to McDonalds and eating lunch with the firemen. oh, hallah. He had a great time, as you can see below. The other reason that we waited a few weeks to move him was that his class was scheduled to go to Clear Creek and Trevin would have been devastated if he hadn't been able to go. So he went, and he had a blast and then he transfered and didn't like it, but he has lived through it and we are proud of him for it.

Memorialized

As most of you know we decided to move our little family into my parents basement and rent out our condo for the time being. Joe is employed but not permanently yet. When we decided to do this it was a bit of an undertaking. For those of you who have been privy to my parents basement, you know of what I speak. If you haven't, just trust me and don't ask too many questions. We took over my fathers "man cave" as I lovingly called it and turned it into our master bedroom/bath. We painted, carpeted and cleaned like no one's business. In that transitional phase there is something that will live in my heart and in paint under the actual paint job forever. It is this...

Painted oh, so thoughtfully by above average joe.

Kids at home...

Now that Above Average Joe is working again the kids and I have a lot of time together. Kiya has a new bumbo that she loves...
Garrin likes it too...

...for several reasons...

Kiya has an exersaucer (thanks to a generous neighbor) and she loves playing with it...

...almost as much as Garrin does!

Garrin Hearts Spaghetti

Kiya's 4 Months

Stats are as follows: She weighs 13.4 lbs and she is 25" long. She smiles, giggles, coos, blows bubbles like no ones business and has the family pretty much tied around her little finger.

This video shows what happens most nights. Trevin makes it his mission to get his sister to laugh for as along as possible, and does a great job of it!

Yummy Utah!

For those who do not have or have had 4th graders let me show you the fun we have! They are learning about Utah's geographical mapping. To really help the kids learn this they get to make a cake! Luckily, Utah is shaped easily enough that all you have to do is cut out a square of a standard cake and you have UT! Then we just had to frost the 3 different sections to represent different parts and then Trevin got to take a bunch of candy to class to "make" things like the rivers, lakes and moutains of Utah. I don't know about you guys but I'd probably remember UT a lot better if I knew it in chocolate!

This picture is the night before school with just the frosting done representing the Great Basin in green, Mountain Range in red and Plateaus and rivers in blue. I particularly love this picture because of Trevin's blue teeth.
This was the finished product when he got home from school!

The Reces & Kisses were melted from the walk home in the sun but Trevin tells me it made it look even more like the real plateaus...so he was happy about it! Yummy!

Western Walkers

We had a fun Labor Day weekend. It was quite labor intensive. We were able to visit Above Average Joe's parents in Delta to kick off our weekend because our little man kept climbing up the drawers in our kitchen and finally broke one. So daddy had to head down to the family wood shop to fix it. Any excuse is a good one though to visit. We love it down there and they love having the kids there.
We only stayed one night though. When we got back I phoned my parents and they were heading down to St. George to their newly purchased condo to move some furniture and spend some time with my sister who is getting her nursing degree. We decided to go down with them...why not? Just a few more clothes into the still packed bags was not a big deal. When we got all funned out in St. George we headed back home but not before going to Richfield to visit my grandparents (on my dad's side). Just enough time to have dinner and a minor visit, but again, worth it. We were all over Utah for the weekend. It was a lot of travel but great to see those we don't get to see regularly.
While we were in Delta I did get a few pictures of the kids that are pretty funny. Our Miss Kiya is so freakin' independent already that she won't sit in anything that reclines so the rocker was out. Well, grandma has an old walker and Kiya loved it. She spent a lot of time in there and we just wheeled her around with us. She looks too tiny for it, but I promise she was thrilled to be in it!


And Garrin discovered that Grandpa Western had this great stick that made it really easy for him to take him to wherever he wanted. Every time Garrin wanted Grandpa he would go grab his cane and take it to him and then lead him all over. Joe's dad was a great sport about it. I just kept thinking...talk about the blind leading the blind...

Thank all.

Thankfully Above Average Joe has FINALLY received a phone call that made him happy. He has been offered a job at Symantec. Officially, it is a temporary job but Above Average Joe is crafty and will do everything he can to make himself indispensable. It came at a good time because that unemployment stuff was just about to run out...

Thank you all for keeping us in your thoughts and prayers and helping Joe get his resume out to everyone. He will continue to search for jobs that may be a bit more permanent but this gives our family another few months of non-panic, which is just nice.