June

We move the end of May, but Michael didn't start work until July (just this week), so we have a lot of  family time which has been nice.  These are some of the things we have been able to do.

Desert Museum- We did this not long after we got here, it was good to go because it taught me a lot about the desert.  It is definitely different here but we are adapting and learning lots.

Dollar Movie- There is a movie theater by here that has movies in the morning that are free for kids and a dollar for adults.  It is a normal dollar theater so you can go later in the day to any movie for a dollar!  We will probably visit this place again sometime.  They were playing the movie Rio which we had seen and knew was good so we all went and had a day at the movies.  The boys had a great time and now love listening to the music from the movie.

This was later that day playing play-dough.  The boys love this little table and chairs that Michael's parents gave us, we put it in our kitchen so the boys can play play-dough, do crafts, or eat snacks on it.

Sprinkler Park and Cousins-  This park is a little of a drive from our home but made for a great activity to do with our cousins that came in to town the end of June.  We were all super excited when they said they were coming, it was a short visit but Alden and Calvin both got some good cousin play time in. Each day after playing with the cousins both Alden and Calvin took long naps.  They really loved having them over and wished they lived close by.  Their grandparents live by us here in Tucson so they spent the nights with them, one day we went over to pick them up and Alden got super excited he said, "This is by our house, mom, Haven and Hyrum live by us!"

Trains- We live fairly close to a train, when we go to the freeway we pass over the tracks, the boys love it when we get stopped by the train.  They both love trains, sometimes we can here it at our house and they will always stop and say, "train".  One night I was rocking Calvin to sleep, I thought he was asleep, but as soon as the train whistle went off Calvin excitedly said, "train".

The boys love to play with this wooden train set, we had some pieces before in Mississippi, but were then given a large one while we were in Utah.  They can now make a huge track if they want to.  They play with this track almost every day, they love it when Mommy or Daddy will help them make what they call a monster train track.

Bowling- A bowling place by us had a family deal for Monday nights, we did this on Michael's last Monday night at home. It was a package deal for a family of 4 that came with pizza, game tokens, and bowling.  The boys loved it! Just today Alden was asking me if we could sleep at the bowling alley. (we had to hurry and go last time because it was getting late and both boys were exhausted by the time we left) I told him that I didn't know if the people would like it if we slept there, he said how we could keep it a secret and then they wouldn't mind.  He asks frequently when we will be able to go again.

Randoms- This month we have visited many of the close parks by our home, we go to the swimming pool almost daily (it has been in the 100's every day we have been here), we are frequent visitors of the libraries in the area and love going to story time, and have played a lot of baseball.

That kindof sums up June for us, we have loved having Daddy home with us all day to play but are also excited for him to start doing what he has been studying.

Below is a picture of the boys eating oatmeal, they have become my biggest oatmeal fans.  When we moved here I wanted to find somewhere to get oatmeal for a good price, the best price I could find was online for a 50 lbs bag. Not really knowing there were different types of oats other than rolled and quick I just bought the bag of oats.  It turns out that Steel cut oats are in fact different, but everyone loves them! Alden and Calvin will sometimes eat 3 bowls or more of oatmeal in the morning and get super excited to eat it every day, so it has ended up working out.

Tucson

This is a picture of Calvin in the car before our trip out here.  He got sick at the end of Bear Lake and just before we left to come out here.  When he was sick he always wanted to be in his car seat, which was perfect for the trip.  This is him at the end of Bear Lake, he sat in his car seat for almost an hour while we finished loading everything up, we tried to get him to come out but he didn't want to, he just wanted to sit there.

Here are some pictures of us at our new house.  We all received our first package in the mail this day of matching shirts! We were all so excited and have loved wearing them, we decided it would be a good day to take some pictures from around the house.  These first few are pictures of the boys in our backyard.  You can see behind them a tree, it is a lemon tree and we are hoping that we will get some fresh lemons off it one day!

We had thought that the backyard was just dirt but it turns out it is all rock.  I wasn't too excited about all of the rock, makes it hard to run and play on but the boys have enjoyed scooping up the rocks in their buckets and moving them around.

This picture is taken in a room just off of our living room, it has our computer desk on the other side of it, it is actually meant to be a dinning room, but we wanted to put the dinning room by the kitchen so it has our piano and computer in it.

These next couple of pictures are our living room, the boys love running around and playing in here.  It is quite hot each day right now, but it has worked out that the boys have loved being inside playing with long lost toys and discovering our new home.

This is our dinning room, it is next to the kitchen and garage entry.  As you can see it is carpeted so we got a large rug to go under the table..it isn't here yet..but we are hoping to spare the carpet that way.

This is all of us in our matching shirts!

End of Utah

This is the day before the last day of school.  After school met up with some of the other teachers at our school at the home of the lady that watched Alden and Calvin while I taught. They had lunch ready, decorations up to throw me a baby shower.  It was really nice and thoughtful and completely unexpected.  Most of them were leaving town right after school the next day but still managed to put everything together! I loved teaching at Capital Hill Academy, I learned so much and met a lot of amazing people.
It was nice to get with everyone one last time before we all went our separate ways and I am glad I have a picture of all of these amazing women!

Friday May 24th was the last day of school.  It was a nice laid back day, after we were done I went and got Alden and Calvin from the babysitters. (They and I will miss her and her family, the boys loved going to her home, and she did so much for them.)
We went home and then got ready to go to Bear Lake! We spent the weekend up there with cousins, aunts, and uncles, it was great.  It was one last trip before we all moved away.
I have a brother that left to Thailand the same day we went to Tucson, and a brother that just moved south to St. George.  So this was our last big get together before we all went our separate ways.

My sister-in-law designed and got the t-shirts printed.  It is a family tree with all of us as the roots and all of our ancestors in the leaves.  While there we all shared a story of one of our ancestors, it was fun to see everyone trying to find the people we learned about on their shirts! Alden and all of the cousins loved finding their own names on the shirts as well.  They thought it was pretty neat.

These last few pictures are from some of our last days there in Utah.  Alden loves riding his bike and was always asking to go ride it.  I think this one was in the morning when he was still in his PJ's he just really wanted to ride his bike.

Baseball game with Cath and Todd. The boys loved being able to go see a baseball game, Alden still talks about it! Thanks Cath and Todd for a great afternoon.

This was a day not long before we left, we took a couple of pictures of the boys around the house and then went with Aunt Cath and Maddy to temple square.  We had wanted to go before we left to see all of the spring flowers.

Graduation!!

The Day Before Graduation

 The night before graduation we went to the graduation banquet.  It was neat hearing more about Michael's class and most of all having a nice date with my wonderful husband.

 Thursday morning Alden and Calvin were treated with a yummy breakfast of smiley face pancakes.  They loved them!

Morning of Graduation

 We decided to move all of our stuff out of our storage unit on Friday morning before graduation.  It ended up working out really well.  With all of the great helpers we were able to get the truck all loaded in less than 2 hours!!

 Alden and Calvin were big helpers with the move.  Alden especially was a big help always finding things he could carry even if they were as big as him.  As people brought stuff out to the truck he kept telling them, "good job, guys", "thank you".  It was cute to see how much he got into the whole move.  Calvin liked running on the ramp, and getting rides on the cart, but he took at least one or two things into the truck.

 Above is a picture of Alden and Calvin standing in our empty storage unit, and below all of us trying to figure out how best to put it all in the truck.

Graduation

Beginning of May

 This was a day at Liberty Park, we all love going to Liberty Park, to run, play, visit the aviary, or go for a walk.  We love that it is starting to warm up and that we can spend many days at the park!

Calvin is 20 months old.  He still is our little snuggler, and is still our little sweet one.  He is saying more and more words, which we love.  Now that he can tell us what he wants and knows that we know what he wants, he throws more fits when he doesn't get what he wants. He is our big helper and loves cleaning up.  He is at a fun stage right now.

Alden is 3 and a 1/2, there is a new babysitter at the school with a daughter Alden's age, he has loved having her to play with on kindergarten days and is still doing well in pre-school.  I often forget how young he still is, I expect so much out of him.  When Michael and I were in Arizona looking at areas, and doing job interviews, I would talk to the boys on the phone, it made me realize how young they are with there sweet little voices.

This month has been and will continue to be an exciting month for us.  At the beginning of May we decided on which job to take.  We decided to take the one in Tucson, AZ so we will be headed there the end of this month/ or the beginning of June.
Michael will finish up his internship this week.   This next week in May we will be flying out to Memphis for graduation, and loading up all of our things that we have in storage there.  Michael with his parents will drive our things to Arizona.  The boys and I will come back to do the last week of school.  Michael will come back here, we will do a few things with family and then move to our home in Arizona.  We will miss being here with family but we are excited to start this next phase of our life.

Alden and his Duck

 A few weeks ago we were on a walk and heard some squawking  we wondered what it was and then this duck ran across the street to us.  He followed Alden home and then followed him everywhere! They played football together, played in the sand box together, went on walks, etc.  Every time Alden would come inside the duck would squawk for a long while then go to his little spot under the deck, or one under a bush.  Every morning as soon as he saw the light in the kitchen he would come right up by the kitchen door squawking for Alden to come out and play.
The boys loved having the duck, after a little over a week we lost him though.  We are pretty sure a cat got him, we found duck feathers in the back yard. We wish we could have protected him better but we didn't want to en-cage him.  So that is the story of the duck.  When we would ask Alden the ducks name he would say, "Just Duck".  We sure liked having Just Duck around.