Sand Hollow

Last minute some friends invited us to go boating down at Sand Hollow today.  I was curious how Elea would be with the sand and water, etc.  Luckily, she loved it & didn't complain about her hands being "gross" even once!  I didn't get to see it, but she even rode on the tube with Jeff and loved it. She kept saying "wee" & waving to the kids on the boat.

The weather was perfect & I'm so glad we went!

Elea-isms

Elea walks up to you and says "pingers" (Fingers) and grabs your hand, pulling you to wherever or whatever she wants help with.  Since she figured that little trick out, her tantrums have nearly disappeared (thank goodness!) it was a rough couple of months with the tantruming.

She still does sign language while using words with a lot of things (milk, dog, more, eat, etc.).  It's kind of fun to watch her randomly bust out a sign that I didn't even realize that she had learned- i.e. "juice" yesterday, for the first time.

"Stuck" is one of her favorite words.  She gets stuck trying to climb the baby gate we put in her door during nap-time.  Or stuck in her booster seat.  Or stuck in her stroller.  Or stuck trying to put pants on.  Or stuck trying to take shirt off.  Or stuck trying to pull a barrette out of her hair. Or stuck trying to pull things out of the bathroom drawers.

Another favorite phrase is "_____, watch this," and then she proceeds to do something she thinks is cool- normally describing the action while doing it.  For example, "Mom, watch this, jump!" while jumping up and down.  A couple weeks ago we were at a friends house and she was jumping on the trampoline, so she kept telling the dog across the yard, "DOG! WATCH THIS!"  Or yesterday, we were on Skype with my parents and she said, 'Papa, watch this!" but I don't remember what she did.  It's usually pretty cute & endearing . . . until she says it before dumping all the leftover food (which is usually a lot) left on her plate onto the floor.

Her favorite show is "agins" (Backyardigans).  Which is fine with me because they aren't annoying.  We tried the Little Einsteins thing for a couple of weeks, but then I had an intense desire to break my eardrums after hearing "I CAN NOT BELIEVE IT!" for the hundredth time.  Backyardigans is pretty fabulous.

Any sort of jewelry or hair accessory is "pretties" or "cute."

We're still in the process of taking away the binkie(s).  We cut the tips off of all of her binkies, and she still uses the 0 month size so they aren't that big to begin with.  When she first saw them, she called them "yucky binkiy" and made a major stink face when she tried to use them.  It's cured her of whining for her binky ALL DAY LONG, but she still wants it at bed-time, even though it falls out the second she falls asleep.  But, she doesn't wake up crying for it in the night.  So baby steps I guess.  Maybe we'll take them away completely when she turns 2 next month-- kind of a cruel birthday present though, huh?

I had a delusional moment or two a few weeks ago and thought it would be a good idea to start the potty training.  But then one morning I had her sitting on the toilet, she climbed down, peed on the floor, and then climbed back onto the toilet.  So, we're post-poning that for a few months, at least until we are settled in the new place.

She's been waking up between 5:45- 7 am every morning.  So she just comes and climbs in bed with me and says "Mom! Shows!" so I turn on sesame street and lay there with my eyes closed, hoping to fall back asleep.  Until she pats my head or face and says "Mom! Drink!" which usually takes a couple times before I stagger out of bed and make her chocolate instant breakfast which is her main source of vitamins since she still has a major aversion to the texture fruits & vegetables & every brand of multi-vitamin I have tried so far!  Mother of the Year Award right here, thank you very much.

Elea is a pretty polite little kid so far.  Sometimes she needs to be reminded to say please & thank-you but a lot of the time she remembers all on her own.  If we remind her she usually says "thank you, ________, thank you!" 

Elea is learning (as much as a 23 month old can) the difference between right/wrong, nice/mean, etc.  While watching disney/animated movies, she has started pointing at the "misbehaving" characters and telling them off.  Yesterday it was Toy Story-- I don't remember what part, but she was pointing at the TV yelling "Stop it Buzz!  Stop it!"

She thinks it's hilarious if we copy what she says.  She's at the age where she says our names over and over and over and over and over and over without any reason.  So one day in the car out of sheer desparation whenever she would say "Mom," Jeff would immediately copy her, before she could even get the second "m sound" out.  Once she realized what he was doing she thought it was hilarious and started changing the speed, pitch, volume, etc.  It's turned into a game that gets us all laughing, especially when she does her various fake laughs and we copy those.  I realized last night that one of these days she is going to start mimickinig US, when we are trying to be stern or serious and we will have a major parenting back-fire on our hands.

There was a while there that she was throwing tantrums/whining often.  When she would starts whining I remind her to "Use your words," and she usually responds with "words."  . . .Obviously that was not quite what I had in mind, but it works to distract her from the whining!  Law of unintended consequences or whatever.

We haven't had any chairs around our kitchen table except for her's and the 2 pinned against the wall because Elea loves to climb.  Everything.  And she figured out how to drag the chairs around the kitchen, so we had more than the top of the kitchen table to worry about.  The baby lock I had installed on the oven melted, imagine that, so about once or twice a day I find her standing on the open oven door, dismantling the stove top burners.  The other day I looked into the living room and she had opened the dresser we use as an entertainment center and had opened 2 rows of drawers and used them as a ladder in an effort to get into the drawer on the top row.  Luckily, it's a sturdy dresser and she still weighs less than 25 lbs.  Scared me to death.  We have child safety locks installed on every permanent drawer, cabinet, and the dishwasher- she loves to empty the contents of whatever she is able to get into, onto the floor, so that will be the first thing we install when we move in a couple of weeks.  No messing around.

She likes to randomly count to 10 and sing her abc's (or atleast 3/4s of them).  I don't honestly know how she picked them up- it wasn't Jeff or me trying to teach her them, that is for sure.

R.S.Quarterly Activity

I'm remembering why I slowed down and then stopped blogging in the first place . . . I have a difficult time finding things "important" enough to blog about!

I'm the "Relief Society Meetings Coordinator" (aka Enrichment Leader) in our ward.  (Atleast until my replacement is called).  This week we had our quarterly activity.  I had promised Jeff that I wouldn't let me life be over-run by the activity like it did in March so I took a lot simpler, less intense approach.  (Sorry Kristin if you ended up with the stress instead!)  It turned out well, we did a dinner & service auction.  Ladies in the ward donated service "items" such as babysitting for 2 hours, food items, teaching art lesson, etc. I put a questionnaire together that awarded various points for different things (attending the temple, paying tithing, taking dinners, calling just to check on someone, making bed, taking vitamin, etc.) and the points were used as money for the bidding. 

We didn't go as intense with the advertising this time and with it being summer a lot of girls are out of town so our turnout was somewhere around 30-35.  I think.  We had enough food for 60 so there was a TON of leftovers.  (And I had forgotten a lady in the ward was bringing some of the rice with her, so I made too much rice at the church!  Whoops!)

Anyway, I think it turned out well and the ladies were talking with eachother which is my main goal of every activity.  :)  So ya, my run in R.S. is pretty much over, at least in this ward.  I definitely feel more effective working in R.S. than in Primary. . . but who knows where they'll put us in our next ward. 

Packing & Cleaning, Cleaning & Packing.

Elea doing the moving box slide/dance.

I didn't get a picture of her jumping, but she was having a great time jumping on the big pile of boxes.

Yes, I understand that we aren't moving for about a month.  BUT, I realized very quickly that I was unable to relax in our house knowing that there were things up and out that would eventually need to be taken down and put in a box and then moved.  So, our walls are bare now, and the cupboards are left with the just the bare necessities.  (Don't think this is all sorts of amazing though, pretty much every decoration in our house fit in 2 boxes.)  Luckily, the people next door to us just moved in last week, so we have been able to use their boxes.  You'd think by now Jeff & I would be smart enough to keep our boxes from one move to the next, but we aren't, this time however, it all worked out.  :)

Our tortured artist

"cuhdors" are the source of much joy & many tantrums around our house.  If Elea sees one of us writing on anything with anything she thinks that she will die immediately if said writing instrument is not handed over immediately.

However, the moments when she is patient enough to sit at the table and "cuhdor" she is as happy and content.  Especially when she gets to use a pen.

You gotta be good at something. . .

. . . so why not snot bubbles?

Just a sad day.

Jeff's working this morning so I was flying solo with Elea getting to church this morning.  Somehow we were ready by 8:30 so when she started banging on the garage door, wanting to leave, I figured we might as well walk to church and kill some time. 

Anyway, she didn't last too long and we roamed the halls quite a bit but she did well in nursery.  In R.S. I was just thinking about how much we've been blessed with in the past year.  And then I got really sad.  I'm sad to be leaving my friends, friends that I didn't have a year ago but who have been there for me through the past while.  It's silly, but until this house (& Jeff & I have moved 9 times in 5 years), I was never able to call a neighbor friend and ask to borrow an egg or a cup of sugar.  Seriously, the first time I was able to do that, it felt like christmas. 

I've been staying busy this past week, thinking only about the new, exciting parts about Jeff starting his career and us moving.  I guess being forced to sit still for an hour was good for me- better to deal with this stuff now then wait until we are in the new house and I can't send Elea across the street while I run an errand.

. . . And Elea is currently throwing tantrum #5 of the day, so off I go.

Where to begin. . .

So after taking a 7 month hiatus- I'm optimistically recommiting to blogging. At least more often. Some updates:


Jeff got hired to teach P.E. at SCMS in St. George! YAY! It seriously is an answer to a year or more worth of prayers. It was pretty awesome how it all happened. Let me rewind a little bit:

In January, Jeff was told that a teacher at Cedar Middle School was retiring, so a P.E. position was going to be opening up, finally. So we waited. And waited. And then waited some more. And then found out that they filled the position within the district and did some juggling so there wasn't going to be an opening after all.

Then, a couple of months ago, Angie & Derek applied for Derek to be a City Magistrate in Page, AZ. While they were looking into Page, Derek noticed a teaching position open at the High School. It was a "Reconnecting Youth" position- which required a teaching license, but it didn't have to be a specific one. So Jeff applied and got an interview. Then a few days after that interview, he got called back for a 2nd interview, scheduled for the next week. The interviews were serious intense, hours long. By the end of the 2nd interview, he was told that he had the job. We were super excited. Then the next week he went back to shadow the current R.Y. teachers for a couple of days. On the 2nd day, he found out that the teaching position was only for 1 year. WHAT?! We knew that it wasn't a normal teachinig job, and that it was grant funded, but Jeff had gotten the impression that it was good to go for awhile. So finding out that it was only for a year and that the health benefits were going to cost $500 a month, it started seeming less and less appealing.

At first I was feeling like it didn't matter that it was only for a year, that at least 1 year was better than 0 years of teaching experience. (And let's be honest, I was really really excited to be potentially living 3 blocks from my sister!) Jeff wasn't feeling good about the job because the administration hadn't been totally honest with him, and he had heard bad things about them from the coaching staff of the football & baseall teams. By the time Jeff got home that night, we had both come to the same conclusion: the job in Page was worth the move when we thought that it was A) a start to a teaching career & B) had good health benefits. But now that we knew it WASN'T a start to a career in a district & the health benefits weren't all that great- we were better off staying in Cedar so that Jeff could go back to school to get his Special Ed endorsement while working @YHA w/a promotion that had a health benefits option. Once we'd decided that, I felt at peace. I had been feeling restless, for lack of a better word, since the whole Page interview process had began.

So he got the promotion, and that was the plan. Then, on the 22nd, a couple in our ward, the Kroffs, randomly invited us over for dinner after church. We had never hung out with them one on one before. So that night while we were talking, they asked about Jeff's job situation and Steve mentioned that he had seen a P.E. teaching job on the Washington County School District website. A few days went by and Wednesday afternoon I asked Jeff if he had checked the website, he hadn't, but got up right then and checked it out. We found the job description and the bottom of the website and then saw that the deadline was 4 pm the next day! Luckily, Jeff had everything ready to go, it was just a matter of filling out the application and printing it out. I turned the application in the next day in St. George a few hours before the deadline. The next morning Jeff got the call for an interview, scheduled for June 1 at 9 a.m.

Jeff went to his interview, it was only 20 minutes, and walked away feeling good about it. He got a call from the principal a few hours later saying that he had a really good interview, etc. but that she wasn't allowed to tell him if he got the job or not. She said something about him waiting for a call from Human Resources, so we were thinking that meant he got the job, but didn't want to just assume it without hearing FOR SURE. So after the longest couple hours of Jeff's life, he got the call from Human Resources telling him that he got the job. We then proceeded to make the requisite family phone calls,sharing the good news, while roaming aimlessly through Costco doing the happy dance.

But the goodness doesn't end there.

The next day I woke up at 5:45 a.m. and couldn't fall back asleep. I just kept thinking about needing to get back down to St. George to find a house to rent. Jeff had been scheduled to work that afternoon but someone had asked him to switch shifts, so he had the day off. He agreed to go down that day to look for a place, probably realizing I would be worthless around the house that day if we didn't because I'd be so distracted! Shanna watched Elea for us while we looked and looked. All the houses we liked when we looked online the night before were already taken, one that was really nice only wanted to rent the top floor, and the ones that were left were crappy. Then we just started driving around areas we liked, but neither of those felt right either- one didn't have a backyard and the other's yard was way too small. So we were heading back to return a key to the property management company and I decided to check craigslist one last time. I saw a listing that had just popped up in the last couple hours, called, and then we headed straight there.

I loved the location right away, then we walked through the house, and it was PERFECT for us. PERFECT. The family that owns it is in the process of moving to Texas, had just found out that week, and needed to be there in a month. They were only planning on leaving the ad up that afternoon and were planning on deciding that night. So as we were checking out the house, there were boxes everywhere, toys, etc. and it didn't even matter. Jeff and I didn't even talk about it by ourselves before we asked them for a rental application, we both just knew. It was pretty funny actually because they didn't even have an application, I just wrote out our info on a half sheet of printer paper. We sat and chatted with them about the house, our history, etc. for almost a half hour. When we left, I immediately called my friend Amanda whose husband works with the owner of the house and BEGGED her to call them and tell them we are good people. (And they did). I was more nervous about whether we were going to get the house than I was about Jeff getting the job. I felt confident about Jeff getting the job because I trusted in his qualifications, etc. But I had no idea what the owner's of the house were going to use to make their decision. But luckily, they called that evening and told us they'd rent it to us!

We went to sign the lease yesterday and are so excited to move down to St. George and into the house. They are leaving the playhouse in the back for Elea. We're allowed to paint it if we want to, they don't really care WHAT we do to the house cosmetically because they never plan on living in it again. We won't have bi-yearly inspections or anything like that. And, if anything goes wrong, we'll just call someone to come fix it, and send them the bill. Fabulous!

So anyway, this week has been pretty much perfect. (knock on wood and all that). So many prayers have been answered in such a short time for us, it's pretty amazing. Now we're about to go through our storage unit-- like I said, knock on wood.

"Stickers Pretty."