Monday, June 29, 2009

Baker City here we come!

So a little information for those of you who aren't up to speed with our move. Chris has taken a transfer position with Williams to Baker City. We are so excited about Baker--it is a beautiful small town in the mountains. I'm excited for the climate change (I don't do well in the heat here). Chris starts working in Baker on July 6th! Its coming up fast, and I'm not really ready yet.
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We are being relocated by the company, so we are receiving lots of great moving benefits--like movers to pack our things so I don't have to! We've moved like a dozen times in the last 8 years, and I'm ready to not be the one who has to pack everything up again. Our house is for sale, but if we can't sell it, the company will buy it from us so we won't have to stay until it sells. They also help us with our closing costs and moving expenses.
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We haven't found a place to buy in Baker yet, hopefully we'll find a place soon so I won't be stuck in Hermiston with all 3 boys by myself all week for too long.
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I'll try to keep everyone updated, I know I've been slacking with my posts this month. Hopefully I'll make the time a little more often over the summer :)

A visit with Grandma Ruth

Chris' Grandma Ruth just had a birthday this month. We had been wanting to visit for with Conner for the last couple of weeks (he's a month old now! Time flies). But with weddings, moving, house hunting, and all that comes with it, we have had some really busy weekends in the month of June. Chris decided yesterday morning that we just needed to make a day of it and not put it off. I'm so glad we went. She is still the wonderfully positive and lovely lady she's always been, and I so wish we could see her more often.





Jace telling Grandma about something hanging on the wall.

Dallon loved Grandma's ride! Chris rolled around with him for a while. The boys were good while we were there. We took her some flowers we cut from our yard (hopefully not too many bugs in there). We enjoyed our nice visit with his Aunt Chris also. She has moved in with Grandma because she needs someone with her 24/7 now. Grandma is so lucky to have such a wonderful daughter who is taking such great care of her at home so she doesn't have to leave it to be in a nursing home.

My sister is married!

So my baby sister is married! I can't believe it. When I left home (almost 12 years ago) she was only 9 years old. She has grown into such a beautiful person, and I'm so lucky to have her in my life. She was married on June 20 to Nick Soderquist (also from Pocatello). We met Nick a few months ago, he is a great guy and I'm so happy for Kaylee.
We arrived Friday night for their reception in Pocatello, and we drove through a big storm on our way. They were so lucky, it got a little windy and no rain! Then on Saturday at the Salt Lake Temple where they were married, it was cloudy and threatening to rain, and it sprinkled for a while, but they got most of the family pictures done before it really started to come down.
Unfortunately, I was too busy with my 3 boys to get out my camera at a time when there weren't dozens of people gathered around her--so I stole a couple of pictures off of my brother Colton's family blog (thanks Whitney!).

My brother Colton and his little girl Andee, my brother Berik, and my Dad (Mark).


A couple of Kaylee and Nick's engagement pictures.


Boise Zoo

On our way to and from my sister's wedding we stayed in Boise over-night. After one of our stays we went to the Boise Zoo. Its a nice little zoo, and the boys had fun out of the car for a couple of hours.
Super-cool slide.
Diggin for dinosaurs.

One of the things I really like about this zoo is all of the animal statues the kids can climb on. And do my kids love climbing!

Ginormous Bengal Tiger. The boys were not at all afraid.


Penguin exhibit.

This elephant is spraying water--Dallon would not leave it alone! He kept going back to it and we practically had to drag him away. The kid loves water, and combine that with an elephant and it is apparently irresistable.

So we took Bianca with us, and we were pretty careful to keep her out of sight of lots of the animals. I had heard that a dog is very stressful for the monkeys--so we avoided taking her near them. And we tried to keep her from seeing most of the animals so she wouldn't be stressed. However, we did have a couple of incidents. There was a squirrel that was running down the path in front of us--which is like torture to a dog with hunting instincts! She barked at it, and we had to stay put for a while before she was settled enough to continue without searching out that darn squirrel. The other incident involved the lions. The lions are new, and we were unfamiliar with how the exhibit was set up. So I tried to walk Bianca around and past the exhibit (so we didn't have to walk all the way back around the other way) and we went pretty quickly. However, one of the lionesses (you can see her in the picture above--Chris took this picture before she spotted us) spotted Bianca and got up to stalk us! She was practically running to the glass as we hurried by. Thank goodness Bianca didn't see her! It was really a very creepy feeling for me to have that huge lioness hunting us...I'll take the extra exercise and go the long way out next time.


Dallon the big brother


Dallon LOVES baby Conner and asks to hold him a lot. He talks about how cute the baby is, and will tell me about all of his cute features--like his toes, his "3 eyes" and tiny hands (sometimes his counting is a little off). I haven't been taking a lot of pictures of Conner lately, things have been a little crazy with the move, the new baby, a wedding, and a little too much time in the car. I'll try to do better in July :)

Wednesday, June 3, 2009

A few pictures of Conner




He will be 2 weeks old tomorrow! I hate how the last weeks of pregnancy go so painfully slow, and the first few weeks of having your baby in your arms goes by way too fast. I took these pictures today. He was really unhappy after about 10 minutes, so I'll try to get more later. (I just updated this post with a few more pictures that I took after he fell asleep.)