School is done~ now what?

School is out now. Friday June 4th was their last day. They have been out now for one week, and they are BORED! The weather has been really weird here. The first part of the week we ALL got sunburned, but today it probably won't make it out of the 60's and it is supposed to rain all weekend.

We have been to the library twice already and now they don't know what to do. Well actually, that isn't true. Isaac "went exploring" for several hours. I didn't know where he was. I even rode all the way around the lake hoping to find him. When I got home he was there. He was exploring a new park he hadn't seen before. I enjoy being here in Daybreak, but it will take a while for the kids to get used to the rules.

No news yet on houses. We are going to put offers on a few more houses on Monday.

Love you.
Connie

School is ALMOST done!!!!

You know when you are so close to something you can almost feel it? Well, that is where the whole family is at as far as school is. The last day of school for Sean and the kids is this Friday. It is getting harder and harder to get up in the morning to drive them to school. Sean is done with early morning, but he still is driving the kids in to school (At least a half hour each way). Everybody is getting anxious to be done.

We have been having fun in our new community. The kids have made a lot of new friends and I am having fun exploring the trails and riding my bike around. I can hardly wait to get Caleb back so I can start taking him on walks in the morning.

Last Saturday, Daybreak had a street fair with a rock climbing wall, free sodas, chalk drawing on the street and flying kites in the park. It was a lot of fun. Erin and Isaac did the rock climbing. Erin made it to the top, but Isaac got about 3/4 the way up and made the mistake of looking down and realizing how far down it was. He got scared and decided he didn't want to go up any farther. I got some good pictures of it and went to download the pictures from my phone, but I couldn't get it to sinc up. I don't know what is going on. I will keep working on it and see if I can get some photos to post.

We are doing good. There is no news on the house buying front yet. We have some offers in on short sales, and hope to put one in on another one either today or tomorrow. It is at 11323 Kestrel Rise Rd, South Jordan, Ut 84095. It is immediately behind where we are living right now. It has 4 completed bedrooms and a GREAT view off the front porch. It would be great to be able to get this house because it would still be in the same ward. The kids are starting to make friends in the ward and it is a good ward. We are happy here.

There is also a forclosure on Iron Mountain way (I don't remember the address right now) that I want to look at and maybe put an offer on.

Now, having said all of this. I know we will get the house where the Lord needs us to be. That has been the feeling since we started this whole moving process thing. Everything will be all right. It is just the patience of waiting that is hard.

Connie

Livin' Large

Laura is feeling quite pregnant. I wanted to share this picture so you can see how much she's progressed.

Before and After (mostly after)

I apparently forgot to post this a long time ago.  It was saved in my drafts.  Thanks again mom and dad.

Mom wanted to see some of the "after" photos to make comparisons to the "before" pictures we'd already posted. Here are some that we took while they were here. I need to get a few more of the chair Mom reupholstered now that we have the cushion installed.

Thanks for all the hard work. It really feels like we live in a nice home rather that a dingy, plain apartment.

New Do or "No... Don't"?

Who does this hairdo look better on? Wait... don't answer that.

I know I could never pull off a look like Stephen's silky smooth strands.

Here are the results from the name survey.  It seems that no one likes Beatriz and everyone likes Claire.  The only thing I don't like about Claire is that it was the 53rd most popular name in America last year and its getting more popular every year.

I'm leaning toward Mara, which was the second most popular.  I like the survey because it kind of helps me find out if I'm crazy.  We don't let the survey decide the name but is nice to know what others think about what you think.

Laura remembered a name almost right after I sent the survey.  What do you all think about Melaina or Melena (Mel for short)?  I won't do another survey but I'll look for comments if you have them.

Good/Bad News

I feel bad complaining when something good happens.  As many of you know my temporary job was ending on the 5th.  This was bad because it meant we would have to live on savings, but it was good because it meant that I could take an extra class and finish my program faster.

Well, long story short, I have a job and an extra class that I can't get rid of without major consequences to my GPA/transcript.  As a result, I'm super busy and more than a little stressed.  I really wish I could have just kept my job and dropped the extra class in time to keep it off my transcript. C'est la vie.

I got an email from my GAO "buddy" today.  He's like a mentor kind of person meant to help me transition into the internship without any problems.  I was glad to hear from someone because I haven't really heard much since they offered me the position.  However, I was assured that everything is going alright.

I just wanted to let everyone know so they wouldn't think I was neglecting them.  I love you all.

P.S.

I hope everyone enjoyed the survey.  I'll be posting a summary of the results later so you can all get an idea about the patterns and trends.

P.P.S.

Zac texted me the other day that he is engaged to be married to a woman named Nico.  He doesn't know when but it will probably be with his family in Puerto Rico.

We are here! (and I finally have the internet again)

Well, we moved on Saturday and unpacked a few things. Sunday we went to church in our new ward and met a few people, (happy mother's day by the way) and took a 10 minute bike ride over to the temple. Monday and Tuesday I didn't have the internet set up yet so we unpacked more boxes and settled a little bit more. Today I missed work at the school so that the cable guy could come and set up the TV and the internet so I could start typing again (if I get work). I am glad this move is over. We aren't unpacking too many boxes, just what we need until we get into our own home. If I start rambling it is because I'm tired. We only have about 3 weeks left in school and then we can stop getting up sooooooo early.

Love you all.

Connie

Looks like this Fri/Sat

We are finishing up the packing and cleaning this week. It looks like everything is going forward with the sale of this home and so we have rented the U-haul truck for this Saturday. I will be able to start moving things over on Friday in our own minivan and get the ball rolling that way. I never knew how much stuff we really had until I started cleaning things out. We have already taken two pickup truck loads to the dump and several loads to the DI (deseret industries). We probably have several more loads to take to the DI once we finish sorting. It is good to dejunk. We still haven't heard yet about any of the shortsales, but we continue to pray that we will be where the Lord needs us to be. If it is okay with the Lord, I would LOVE to be at 11066 Indigo Sky Way.

Love you all.
Connie

Spring pictures

Just wanted to share some new spring garden pictures. Grandma Herring is back home from the hospital but still not doing as well as she should be doing seems she has a cough and the regular aches and pains but I guess for almost 80 that's not that bad... We are doing o k still trying to make preparations for the summer guests we are so looking forward to your visit and have more family time with more of our kids here in Texas. Hope all goes well with the move in Utah with Sean and Connie you guys are in our prayers and hope you get the house you should. I would like to encourage more entries on this blog as I will try also to do the same. I really enjoy seeing and reading the new happening in your lives.

Home updates.

As you have all heard, our home sold. It looks like we might even have a home to rent in Daybreak Community (where we are trying to buy a home) until we can get into our own home. The lady who owns the home is more than willing to rent to us, she just has to get approval from the bank.

Here are some pictures of the hard work that Grandma and Grandpa did. They did a great job and we thank them so much.

Going camping

We're going camping!  The place we're going is called Valley of Fire in Nevada.  I'm looking forward to having a break.  I talked to Mom a few days ago and she was telling me about her and Dad getting the house ready for us to come and it made me really excited.  I know at the end of it I'll be wishing for my own place again and they be wishing they never offered their house, but I'm excited all the same.

Jarom is doing better.

It was a good parent teacher conference this time. I don't know if you know, but we took Jarom to the doctor to see if there was a medical reason that he was doing so poorly in school. After doing some tests at school and other things, he was diagnosed with ADD. We put him on Concerta about two months ago. In that two months, he has taken his grades from mostly D's and F's to mostly A's, B's and C's. He still struggles with math, but so do I. He is doing so much better in school and I am so proud of him. I was very hesitant to put him on medication, but he is doing so much better and feeling better about himself that I think it was a good thing to do.

Now if we can just get Nathan to stop talking in class when he shouldn't. He finishes his work so fast that he gets bored and starts to talk to the kids around him, then he gets in trouble.

Erin is trying to slide by and not do her homework, but she is going to change that.

Jacob is still doing well in school but is discovering that math is getting harder the older he gets.

Hope you all are doing well.

Connie

Hi!

Big news from over the weekend: Lilia has her first word - HI!! She's said things like "mama" and "dada" for a long time now, but they seem to still be somewhat indiscriminately used. She'll say mama to me, but then she also says it to the toilet - so who knows what she thinks it means. But, she now says "hi" like a real word. She'll crawl over to where I am or where Adam is after playing by herself for awhile and say "I!" (she doesn't really do the 'h' so well). Or, sometimes if I've left my phone vulnerable, she'll start to play with it and say "I!" to the phone. She has a toy phone and she likes to say hi to that, as well as speak loudly toward it in her own language, including words like guk, gok, gak, aga, duck and dog (not associated with the animals), baba, ada, etc. It's pretty funny, but so far hi is the only thing in English she consistently uses correctly.

Walking: not yet. She wishes she could walk, and likes to spend a lot of time practicing, but really isn't a walker. Basically, she's a big wuss. She'll walk from a piece of furniture to Adam or I and back as long as it isn't more than 4 or 5 steps for her. If she's walking between Adam and I, she'll go as far as 8-10 steps, but that's all we can get her to do for now. I haven't seen her choose walking over crawling when a parent is not involved - ie, couch to chair, chair to toy, etc. But, she's improved a lot in the last little bit, and I expect we'll see her really walking in the next month or so.

Other random updates: Her hair is now long enough to pull up in pigtails or a ponytail, very cute. She also can give kisses. We'll say "Give me a kiss!" and make a kiss toward her, and she'll come at us with a huge, open-mouth, very slobbery kiss, usually right on the lips if she can manage. Very disgusting, but highly amusing and so adorable. Dance moves must run in the family because Lilia has become quite the head-bobber, bootie-shaker, and foot-stomper.

Well, that's what's going on in the Lilia department. We've taken some great fotos and videos recently, but that's Adam's department so I'll let him post them when he gets a chance. :)

Like mother, like son.

Ok, so that's not how the saying really goes, but Dante is now an official walker and he is the same age I was when I started walking: 10 months. He's still pretty slow and kind of shakie, but it is really amazing how much he improves with each day he's on his feet. I'm posting some videos. They include Dante walking and a short Dante dancing section. Hope everyone gets to see them!







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