A New Beginning

Life is good.  Not easy, but good and will get better and better with each day as we are trying to create memories for our families.  The past year held many changes and challenges and this new year awaits with who know what yet.  :)

 I have been trying to get out and do more things with the boys, the weather has been so nice.  One of the places we like to go is the Children's Museum.  Jaron loves the mail truck and will sit there for quite a while.  He's usually the only one I feel like I need to follow around, so that makes the trips really nice for me.  :)  I love seeing my boys grow and explore and be more independent.  And it's nice to let go a little myself and let them just be.

 Since moving to St. George, we have been getting lots of cousin time and we love it.  I'm grateful that right now we are in a place where they can be around family a lot.  My boys have even picked up a few dance moves from all their girl cousins.  :)  There are some videos too, but I'm not sure if they will make it on the post.

 Bear and Britters love watching Dora together and those two silly kids have a lot of fun playing.

 We had a pizza night not too long ago and I grabbed a quick shot of all my boys.  I can't believe how big they are getting.  They were only on that bench for about 30 seconds before they were taking turns running around the store.

 Morgan still heads up to Weber once a month to teach there.  In January he had to go up twice just because the way the semester is.  We decided to make one more trip up with him before the baby comes.  It was supposed to be decent weather...until that weekend, then it was a snow storm.  We thought we could beat it since everything looked pretty good until we hit Cedar, then we actually contemplated turning around and having Morgan catch a flight up, but we plodded along and I'm glad we did.  We had quite the adventure.

Morgan has some other pictures on his phone that I'll have to post later, but the weather got so bad that we were basically just following in the tread of a couple big trucks in front of us and not really being able to see anything.  I don't think I have ever experienced such a tangible description of what the mists of darkness must have looked like in Lehi's Dream.  As we were following that narrow path behind the truck, I couldn't help but think of the iron rod and how much we have to rely on that to make it to our destination in safety.

We felt prompted to stop at the first Filmore exit and I'm glad we did.  We were able to get a room for the night.  We also found out that I-15 through Nephi was closed until late that night and they were diverting traffic through Delta and Holden...way out in the boonies.  Either way, the boys loved it.  They were jumping on the beds and just so excited to stay at "the inn."

It was tough getting them to sleep and I don't think Morgan or I slept more than an hour that night.  It made me wonder if that's how family vacations/trips were for our parents growing up.  As kids you don't realize the stressful situations you might be in, you just see it as a fun adventure, but the parents are stressed.  It did turn into an adventure by the end of it though.

We headed out early that morning and the roads were great.  We could hear and see the plows working all night.  We got breakfast at the hotel, it was really good, or we were just really hungry.  :)  The boys ate really well and they even had a model train track running around the ceiling and the hotel manager was so nice to turn it on for them even at 5:30 in the morning.  It totally made their day.

We made it to Morgan's parent's house and he got us all settled then headed up to teach.  I was able to take a shower and a little break and get ready for the day.  I had told the boys that we would go to the Mall and ride the train, so we headed out and I'm glad we did.  We all promised each other that we would be really nice to each other since we were all tired.  It actually worked at least for those few hours, or really it was the Lord's tender mercies on a mother who was well beyond her tired limit.

I did make them go to my stores with me before the train ride and they were great.

 We got to ride the train and play in the play area for a while.

 They also love pretending to drive all the quarter machines, pretend being the key because I'm too cheap to waste my quarters in those things...they have fun anyway.  And we spent "their" money on the train ride.

We headed back to Grandma's and the boys were really good I thought.  Later that afternoon Grandma and Papa watched the kids for us while we found our piano.  Since the move our digital piano finally bit the dust, so we've been on the search, but there isn't a huge selection in St. George in our price range.  So, I met Morgan at work (he had to stop and take care of some stuff for Gamma up north...convenient, eh?) and we found our piano.

Later after the piano was delivered we were able to get our old piano reset, go figure.  I'm still happy that I was able to get a piano out of it.  I really have loved our old piano, but I really really love our new one and as a bonus my nieces will now have something to practice on after they move.  :)

That pretty much sums up January...I think, so until next time...