A Visit to Indianapolis

March 14, 2012
Willie and I were excited that we could take our family with us to Indiana while Willie did an interview. The best part and really the only reason we took the family was so that we could see FAMILY! The boys were happy to travel 9 1/2 hours to see their cousin Tori and her dog Prince. Sorry Garrett we hadn't met you yet so you weren't top priority in their minds. Although I would have to say Garrett was one of the main reasons we traveled so far. We were happy to see Jared and Rachel as well, but most of us should admit that once kids join the picture the adults become less exciting. *

We started the day off by going to the doctor and getting the ultrasound. Girl! When we got home we packed a few of our remaining things in the car. Our neighbor who was watching the boys had said that Henry jumped in the love-sac from the bed and that he immediately started crying. This was about 10 minutes before we came home and since that time he didn't want to walk. She was really worried and I was kind of brushing it off. I did get a little more worried when I did realize that he wouldn't even walk to me, he would just crawl. I made the decision that we would just continue on with the trip and not make a doctor visit. Henry slept through the journey and we made it to Jared and Rach's around 9:30pm. Henry did walk again during the day so we knew he was okay. Linc wanted to see Tori so Rach let Tori come out of bed time and come see us. It was great!
We woke up and the garbage trucks were making their rounds.  The kids loved it.

Our first adventure in Indy Jared and Rachel treated us to the Children's Museum. Thanks you guys!  What a sight to behold. As we walked in there were these huge dinosaurs crawling into the museum, WOW. When we walked inside we saw Bumblebee from Transformers. Now my kids aren't into Transformers and Willie and I have seen the movie a couple of times, but I did think of my nephews and made sure to take a picture of it. So this was just the foyer we hadn't really officially made it in the museum yet. We did make a short visit to the gift shop that had way too many cool things. Luckily we were in and out or I would have been seriously tempted to by a few things. The first part of our visit was the cafeteria. A nice homemade lunch. Yum. Sadly Henry had an accident where he slipped on his chair, because he prefers to stand on a chair like his brothers but he's not nearly as coordinated. Anyway he slipped and hit his chin on the table which resulted in a bloody mouth because his three little teeth when right into his lip. Ouch. He cried for a little while, but was soon over it once we headed into the cool attractions at the museum.

 We visited the train area first.  Parker's excitement was great.  He was running and jumping around as he looked at all the trains.  They loved it.  I have more videos of this portion and not so many pictures.  Oops.

 We headed over to the Mr. Potato Head exhibit.  Awesome.  You really could spend the whole day just in this one spot.  This place is seriously huge, especially compared to the Atlanta Children's Museum.  
  

 I love Linc's expression.

 Cousin group shot.

Next we headed on over to the Lego land.  
 

 A couple of the kids thought it would be fun to use the ramp as a slide.  The ramp was used to race their custom built (by themselves) lego cars down.

 
Henry really loved this Lego car.  He kind of hogged it for awhile and he was super sad when he had to leave it.  One day buddy, you will have a car of your own.

 The last area we headed into was the playscape.  This area was comparable to what Atlanta has, in size and a couple of features.  The sand table was awesome.  Kids really do love to play in the sand.

 Even better, the water table.  I loved the little aprons for the kids.

 This is the site as you are walking into the Children's museum from the garage.  Awesome dinosaurs climbing into the building.  What a treat.  Thank you so much Jared and Rach for treating us to such a fun place.  Parker was so sad to leave that he said we had to move there and get a pass to go all the time.  He seriously commented on it many many times as the days went on.

*I remember once having my sister walk in a room after her kids and instead of saying 'hey Jordy(my niece)" I said "hey Jess!" She said that was the best part of her day because she had been recognized instead of her little girl.

The Leprechauns.

March 16, 2012 
At night Willie tells the boys a story. Usually it involves the magical train named Bilbo. Bilbo can do many things such as fly, go under water and recently he has even traveled back in time to visit Nephi. Sometime in January Willie re-introduced the boys to Ireland.  The new stories involve catching leprechauns.  The leprechauns have magic salad that they give the boys if they catch them.  Magic salad gives the boys a special power to use for the day such as swimming like dolphins, flying back home to Atlanta, etc.  Leprechauns can be tricky though and they can snap their fingers to get away before the boys catch them.


Needless to say this St. Patrick's day we had to celebrate and try to catch ourselves some leprechauns.  We had meant to go to a nice St. Patty's day parade downtown so we all got dressed in our greens.  Unfortunately we had an accident.  We were only about a half an hour away from leaving and I had just plugged in the flat iron to do my hair.  Right after plugging it in I went into the bedroom to grab some things when I heard Henry cry out.  I ran back into the bathroom to find that he had grabbed the flat iron and burned his fingers.  The poor kid cried for at least an hour.  He wanted to suck his thumb and twist his hair but his injured hand was the one that went into the hair.  Ouch.  He wouldn't let me put anything cold on it either.  He really had a rough time.  At first I didn't think it was that bad but he did end up burning four of his fingers pretty good.  We decided to stay home.  Henry went down for a nap and slept for over three hours.  We spent some time outside in the yard.  A yard with grass, how wonderful!  

 One reason I love this picture of Lincoln is because of the way he counts.  I love when he looks closely to see each finger go up as he counts his five fingers.  He is three years old in this picture so it works for the number of fingers he's holding up.

 Aunt Rachel had some fun cookie cutters to use and the kids were really excited to make some cookies.  They each had turns to cut the shamrock cookies and then we baked them, let them cool and covered them in frosting.  The kids enjoyed the frosting a lot!

  

 Uncle Jared made it home in time to make some cookies.

 Allen Family.

 Yeah Garrett!

Parker helped Uncle Jared with the pizza.  Parker knows how to put the pepperoni's on so that there is a piece without any for Linc.  Parker loves to make the pizza and he does really well when it comes to the decorating part.

 
We had some time to make the trap for the leprechauns.  There were some great tricks that Parker helped us to come up with so that we could try to disable the magical power of the leprechaun.  We used gold glitter to attract the leprechaun and it also had some power to trap him.  Parker also put a pillow (cotton ball) inside so that he couldn't get out.  The big leprechaun hat can be really enticing for a small little man in green.  Jared and Parker built a ladder out of toothpicks so the leprechaun could climb up then once he got on top he would fall into the trap.  Fool proof! Right?

 The boys in green.  By the way Willie was interviewing this day but he did get home late into the night and was able to be there on Saturday for St. Patty's day.  

 The boys woke up and were excited to find gold coins in the hallway from the bedrooms.  They waited very patiently for Tori to wake up when they were allowed to go down the stairs to see if the leprechauns had come.

 Disappointment came when Parker couldn't find a leprechaun.  He was excited though to find that the leprechaun had left some goodies for their attempt at catching him.  He left a little bit of a rainbow and gold for the kids.

 The green in this picture is from the streamers that were by the stairs.

 The kids with their rainbows from the leprechauns.

 Breakfast: green princess waffles.  Yum!

Thank you so much Jared and Rach for letting us come and celebrate St. Patrick's day with you.  We are glad that you were up for some of our craziness.  We had a great time and we were happy to spend a few days with you.  We love you guys!

March madness

Willie and I are at the end of his schooling. It is time to look for jobs. He is planning to graduate in the summer this year. Five years in Georgia (well for the most part). Willie applied to over 100 schools and labs around the country and a few outside of the country. February marked the first of his onsite interviews; Shanghai, China. Willie was very excited about this trip. He loved being immersed in a country where he knew the language. One thing that was a bit overwhelming for me was that if nothing else came about for us in the States then I would be moving all of my children to a foreign country where we didn't know the language and Parker would be starting kindergarten. I probably would have home-schooled. Willie didn't want me to have to deal with so much because he knew the culture shock would be enough. Thanks love. Here are a couple of pictures from China.

During Willie's visit to China Parker got an ear infection. It was towards the end but it was not a fun experience. Parker doesn't like to take medicine, at ALL! So in a way I wanted him to be punished for that so we went and had shots given to him for three days in a row. It was a bit of a head ache but next time punishment will be to take the medicine. I think that taking medicine will help him to realize that sometimes it's good to get healthy by taking the medicine prescribed by the doctor. Fun times.

Anyway on into our March madness. We started the month off right by attending the temple. Willie was able to attend an endowment session with a couple from our ward who were going for their first time. A couple of days later we both returned to the temple to watch their sealing and the sealing of their son to them. We heard word that first week that a school in Colorado wanted Willie to come out to interview. The only time he had left available was the coming week. So he was off for three days. While Willie was gone I fed the missionaries, luckily we have Sisters! During this time I had to take our van in to get checked. I kept hearing a noise. Hopefully it won't be too bad but the mechanic says it could be the...transmission, eek! Not what we want. Let's hope it's something else. Oh I must add that every weekend in March there is a consignment sale! Yeah. I love the sales.

Into the second full week of March Willie was off again, this time to Baltimore. He came back late Tuesday night. I was so very grateful to have him home the next morning. We were heading to Indiana as a family while he interviewed in a place called Terra Haute. In the morning however I had my ultrasound scheduled to find out the gender of our baby. Thank you Laura for watching the boys. This time we are having a...GIRL!

Yes, nothing on the ultrasound means it's a girl. My doctor did great at showing us all the fun stuff and taking pictures and giving us the dvd. We came home and told the boys but Parker seemed to already know that it would be a girl. Go figure. We were off to Indiana by noon and we arrived around 9:30 pm. Thank you to the Bahr family for watching Mr. Blue while we were gone. So the trip to Indiana will be posted later.

The third and fourth weeks in March included trips to Buffalo, NY; Carbondale, IN; Penn State Altoona, PA; Boston, MA. During these weeks we had meetings for our callings, birthdays, babysitting, joyschool, and other fun things going on. By the fourth week we had two offers on the table and a third came at the end of the week. The last Saturday happened to mark General Conference. I had been gearing up for us to enjoy more than one talk of General Conference this year. Willie and I chatted on the phone a few times and talked about our options. He had four hours with us on Wednesday the fourth week and so we put a movie on for the kids while we discussed our future. We pretty much knew where we would be going by Sunday. Conference was wonderful. We invited a new convert over to watch with us, his name is Tyrone. The boys loved having him over. One thing I had never introduced to the boys was water colors. What a perfect time to introduce it. Parker was quiet and worked really hard on painting. I tried to only have it out when Henry was napping, which worked well with the sessions.

Monday rolled around and Willie called up Colorado to accept the offer we had from them. In the end my stress was reduced a large amount. I am very grateful for the past five years we have had in Georgia, Boston and Porto. I think of when we need to move and to tell you the truth, it will be harder than when we moved out here. The family we have gained will be incredibly hard to leave because we don't know when we will see them again. I will miss everyone who is a part of my life right now. Thanks to all those who have helped me to become better while I have lived in Georgia.

I am thankful that the March madness is over. Congratulations to Kentucky.

February Fun.

When we get bored in February we put on our shorts because of the nice weather and we ran out on the porch and played hop scotch. The weather is really great. The boys are happy.
On the colder days we stayed inside. This particular day I thought it would be fun to teach the boys about sac races. They were entertained for about a half an hour. Henry wished he could have been inside of one but he had a hard enough time trying to jump without the pillowcase.
A friend lent me a book about mothering and finding joy in mothering. As I was reading a particular chapter about taking in the moments and not getting too worried about the little mess they may be making Parker grabbed a ball of yarn. I looked at him and thought, oh this could get bad I should stop him right now. If only you could have seen just how happy he was unrolling the ball of yarn. He had fun running from the kitchen to the living room. I stopped reading at one point and then thought better of the advice given in the book, I knew it was time to stop him. We had errands to run and dinner to make. Notice the clock says it's almost 5:00, that means dinner time and I believe we had one other thing that night. I tried to stay calm but I broke down. I got upset. The whole ball was unravelled. I think it took roughly an hour to get it all put back into a ball. Henry cried when he couldn't follow me because he was trapped by the yarn. Yes it was fun to see Parker's smiling face but I just wish he knew how to roll the yarn on his own. I tried to get him to do it, but he struggled keeping it as a ball.
The thicker pieces of yarn are about three or four trips around the room in the same area. This was a huge mess and I couldn't walk around without tripping. Frustrating for me indeed. Absolute fun for the boys (until I got mad).