Goodbyes

It's moving day . . .



Goodbye little blue house with your many levels and tiny bedrooms. We grew fond of you, even though we quickly grew out of you. Many happy memories were made within your walls.

Goodbye backyard. We love the space we have in you to play and jump on the trampoline. We are proud of the white fence we enclosed you with. We love the cement we poured on the side of the house and the hours we have spent riding bikes and scooters. We love to sit all cozy on our patio furniture talking, reading books and just enjoying you. Your peaches, nectarines, and apples were splendid. Sorry are garden plans fell through because we had to move. You are the epitome of an awesome backyard.

Goodbye chickens. You were our first pets. It has been so thrilling to watch you grow from soft, baby chicks to egg-laying chickens.

Goodbye visiting teachers. I never knew how fabulous the visiting teaching program is until I had two of the best, real visiting teachers. You actually came each month and talked with me and taught me exactly what I needed to hear. Thank you, thank you!

Goodbye next door neighbors whom we love. We love spending time with you, BBQing, going on walks, and playing.

Goodbye little parks. There are 5 of you within walking distance and we love playing on you. I don't think we will have that luxery in AZ . . .

Goodbye walking up hills.

Goodbye Mountains. I loved looking out my window and seeing such a beautiful sight. I loved seeing you snow-covered or green. I loved seeing the sun rise over you.

Goodbye Thanksgiving Point. You are the coolest place ever. Your gardens are by far my favorite. I think I would come back to Utah just to stroll along your paths hand-in-hand with Eric or see the boys roll down your green hills again. You have the most magical places to sit and think or to read at.

Goodbye bakery. We loved your name, Flour Girls, Dough Boys, your quaintness, your yummy food and treats.

Goodbye JCW's. You have the best bacon cheeseburgers ever.

Goodbye 6 temples. All within a 1/2 hour of me. I loved the fact that when I went to one temple and found out it was closed for cleaning that it didn't ruin my temple trip. I just drove 10 more minutes.

Goodbye YW in my ward. You have taught me so much and I'm so glad I got to work with you for awhile. You are a fun, amazing group of girls.

Goodbye driving to costco and the grocery stores without passing through any stoplights.

Goodbye Book Club. The friendships I made, the things I learned from our discussions, and the laughs we had were priceless.

Goodbye Utahn friends! We will miss you and hope to keep in touch. I'm sure we will be up to Utah sometime in the near future. Kacin says we have to come back and go sledding again.

I'm So Glad When Daddy Comes Home

Tonight we are FINISHED with this whole traveling-back-and-forth-Eric's-not-home thing!

I'm so done with it. I'm ready to have my husband back.

I miss him. I miss talking with him at night before drifting off to sleep. I miss leaving my house for a few minutes by myself to go on a walk. I miss the fact that he was the one to kill all the HUGE spiders we keep finding in our basement.

So what has gotten me through these last 2 months?

*The avoidance of packing (I'm definitely pretty talented in this area)

*Picnics at Thanksgiving Point reading The Wizard of Oz under a tree, discovering hidden bird houses, and sneaking up on cute bunny rabbits

*Exercising at the good ol' rec center

*Baking (cookies, cinnamon rolls, cake--no wonder I haven't lost any weight)

*Listening to the soundtrack from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (and dancing along, of course)

*BBQing and Birthday partying with my neighbors and hanging out with friends

*Playing with popsicle sticks and with the boxes I should be packing

*Collecting eggs from the chickens

*Reading from the new scriptures Eric gave me for my birthday (not Laura Allen anymore, Laura Allred) A very romantic gift I believe.

*My cell phone and my free verizon-to-verizon minutes so I can call Eric all I want

I really will be "Glad as I can be!" to have Eric home. I LOVE that man so very much. He makes me smile each day. And he's a fabulous daddy!

Fun with Boxes

Who needs the alpine slide?!

Note: I'm a terrible mommy, but I tried to provide the safest conditions for the ride they begged for.

The Superman!

OK. It wasn't really funny at the time, but since he was OK and we had it on video, we couldn't stop laughing as we watched it over and over.

Right back at it again!

First the Chicken, then . . .

. . . the egg!

3 of them actually!

The chickens are laying eggs!

We don't know which chickens it was, but the boys found 2 cute little brown eggs first thing this morning and one more a few hours later. Kacin had the first egg in his hand and was running into the house to call Eric and tell him the exciting news, when it slippped from his fingers on the back porch. Well, at least we had proof that it wasn't a baby chick in there, just an incredible, edible egg!

Guess what we're having for breakfast tomorrow?

A Quarter of a Century

25 years old today!

. . . I wondered how the day would go when within the first hour of being awake I was looked straight in the eye and lied to twice and said an "I love you" to my 5-year old and he looks straight at me and says "I don't love you" and walks away . . . sigh . . .

It probably didn't help that Eric is away all week . . .

But I had nothing to worry . . . besides missing Eric like crazy, I had a wonderful day.

I am so appreciative of all the phone calls (my dad even called!), emails, and other kindnesses.

We made my yummy birthday cake.

And then I demanded the little kids sing "Happy Birthday" to me so I could blow out the candles.

We got a very special (do you even know how fabulous you are and how much you made my day?) lunch. My mom sent me a birthday box so we got to play "Pin the Tail on the Donkey"

Thanks for coming to my party, neighbor kids! :)

I guess I should mention the doughnuts Eric surprised me with when I got home from girls camp on Saturday!

It was a memorable birthday!

Park City

We checked another one off of our list of things to do before leaving Utah . . . Pretty much on the spur of the moment, we drove up to Park City. It was really cute there! We looked around at some outlet stores, then headed to Main St. . . .

We love coupons so we used one to eat at some pizza joint.

The food was good, the service was . . . enetertaining? . . .

We were told a couple times to choose any table we wanted. We could choose any of them.

We sat down in the back with our menus . . . and the same waitress walks over and asks us to move . . . but we could choose any other table (she wanted to move our table to combine with another one or something).

We ordered and ate a pizza.

There was one slice of pizza left.

We were sitting there waiting for that waitress to come give us our bill.

We got bored.

Kacin asked to eat the olives.

Kyler wanted the onions.

I wanted the crust.

The pizza ended up like this (in the end, minus the cheese).

So the waitress finally comes and asks us if we'd like a box.

It was tempting, but we opted not to take this one home . . .

We looked around at some art galleries. Eric laughed at me and my spatial intelligence while I tried to put this polar bear puzzle together.

In the end, there was success!

We ended the day by looking around a book store . . . Kyler chose Peter Pan . . . Kacin took Wizard of Oz . . . so we now have some cool chapter books to read together.

Then we got chocolate. Sweet.

What do you think, any other musts we should do before leaving Utah?

Sunday Smiles Courtesy of Kacin

*When the hometeachers arrived (sorry, Tom) . . .

Kacin: He's bald! (a HUGE smile spreads across his face). I think Jesus made him bald.

*As we are leaving on our Sunday family walk . . .

Kacin: It's raining!

Laura: Ohhh, Kacin. Why do you think it's raining right now?
Kacin: I think Jesus is squeezing the clouds just a little.

SOLD

We felt a huge relief this week when we got an offer on our house . . . the house is now SOLD! Yippee! What a stress it has been this last month and a half not knowing what was going to happen. I guess I just needed to go to girls camp . . .

Since I really haven't seen Eric too much the last 2 weeks, I had arranged to come home Tuesday night from girls camp and then go back up on Thursday. On Tuesday, I kept debating if I should really come home . . . would it be worth the drive, the hassle, leaving the fun times at camp just for a day. But it was perfect timing.

Wednesday morning we spoke to our realtor because someone had put an offer in on our house! It was so good that I was home to sign papers and put our counter-offer in. I went back to camp on Thursday and got a text from Eric saying "SOLD!". I was ecstatic!

We feel so grateful and blessed that the house was able to sell in such a crazy time. As hard as it is on me, we know that we are supposed to be back in AZ. We are certainly being watched over by a loving Heavenly Father.

Girls Camp

LOVE the girls, LOVE our theme, LOVE the Heber Valley Camp, LOVE the mountains, LOVEd the week!

I just got home from a week at girls camp! I have such good memories of girls camp from when I was in Young Women's so it was fun to be a part of another year at girls camp as a "leader" (ha ha--the girls teach me way more than I give to them!).

Our stake theme this year was "There's No Place Like Home" and our ward were the Tinmen. Pink was our color and Got Heart was our ward theme.

What went down this week:

*Lots of games, like "Dip, Dip, Dip", "Don't Eat Pete YW Leader Style", etc.

*Planning the skit with some awesome, creative, organized YCL's. Our skit turned out to be the best by far! We had two girls "watching TV" and seeing cool shows and commercials like Wizard of OZ, Jeopardy, Dr. Phil, Twilight, Tinmen Michigan (Hannah Montana), a Beauty Pageant, and Got Heart? which all had to do with service and love. It was pretty funny!

*Facilitating the Mohawk Walk at the challenge course.

*Being scared to death, but climbing the huge, very high up rope ladder, going across the wire bridge and riding the zip line down. I don't really like heights, but I was so glad I did it.

*Singing Tree and Singing News

*Getting Pinked Out and glittered up (including some glitter to the inside of my mouth--yuck)

*Testimony meeting around the campfire

*A beautiful night sky

*A big hill to climb each morning and evening

*And more!

Too bad I didn't take pictures a whole lot, but they are making a CD ofpictures so I'll probably add some on later.

Oquirrh Mountain Temple

What a cool experience to be able to attend the Oquirrh Mountain Temple today! Kyler's favorite room was the sealing room because he said it reminded him of our sealing as a family. He said you feel smiley all the time in that room. Kacin's favorite room was the Baptismal Font room (I think he wanted to swim in it). He's also just really excited to be baptized when he is 8 (only 4 more years . . . ). Eric and I thought it was a beautiful temple--it was a neat experience to attend the open house. We love temples!

Happy 4th of July!

The 4th of July . . .a day to celebrate our country . . . a day to have fun with our families . . . a day to remember our freedoms and those who have sacrificed . . . a day of fireworks.
(contributed by the boys)

In America, we are free to buy Fireworks (well, at least in Utah).
We are free to use giftcards at Chile's and share chocolate milk.
We are free to make silly faces.

We are free to wear cowboy boots with shorts.We are free to roll down hills.

And free to bonk heads.

We are free to say "cheese" for the camera.

We are free to stroll along pretty paths.

We are free to nearly fall into streams and scare our mommies.

We are free to sleep under the trees.

We are free to use mommy's camera (with permission and care).

We are free to play in the water with good friends.

We are free to splash!

We are free to have fun!

Eric thinks he is free to start gasoline fires in hopes to kill tree roots.

He's not. It's too scary (especially when the day before a house a few blocks away burnt down!!)

We are free to admire all of our fireworks and anticipate the fun.

We are free to sit in chairs that fit us perfectly.

We are free to laugh and smile and stare in awe at the fireworks going off.

We are free to follow our daddy's example and try to start the grass on fire.

We are free to wave sparklers all around through the air.

We are free to chill with our buddies and enjoy the show.

We are free to be a family!!