The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

It has been a roller coaster couple of weeks. Here's what I've concluded: Moving is hard. Pretty profound, huh? Haha. But seriously, it's been really hard trying to get ready! We've lived in this house for 3.5 years, had 2 children and we have a lot. Speaking of those 2 children, they make it really hard to get anything done. Eli hates seeing all of our stuff disappear (poor kid) and he does his best to be counterproductive. :) I've been doing my best, but I'm exhausted. Connor still sleeps really horribly at night, Eli's been waking up at 6 am, Jeremy's had a million school things to do before school even starts, and we are completely pooped. Sigh.

BUT...I think we'll somehow be ready to move on Wednesday (!!!). I mean, we have to be right? Somehow or another. Here's the plan. Jeremy's last day of work is Wednesday (that was probably a bad idea) and that evening we're loading up the trailer and cleaning the whole house (again, probably not the greatest idea). We're using ABF - or Upack - so we load up a giant trailer, they drive it across to Pittsburgh and deliver it when we get there. Woohoo! So we pack and clean and then stay at my aunt's house that night, then Thursday morning we fly to CA for a few days! My family is having a reunion - which I'll get excited about on Thursday morning I'm sure, I just haven't even hardly thought about it - and then the next Monday morning, we fly back super early, go to my aunt's house to take naps - a lot of them - and then we start driving to Pittsburgh that night. Oh boy. We're trying to get a large chunk in while the kids are sleeping. I'm a little nervous because Connor seems to do a whole lot of screaming at night, but oh well! It will be an adventure....hehe. We plan to arrive that Thursday - the 28th.

So in our last couple of weeks here we've been trying to throw in a few fun things so a) we don't go insane and poke our eyeballs out, b) Eli will have something fun to do, and c) we can spend some time with our friends before we go. So here's what we've done:

• Had a playdate with cousin Melarie & Julia. They live in D.C. so we don't see them too often, but Julia is only 2 weeks older than Eli. Here's 2 years ago when they had their 1st playdate:
Then last year:

And this year! It's been cute to see them together. They had a lot of fun this year. Eli chased Julia around and she squealed and squealed in delight and they were pretty entertaining. :)

• We went to the zoo! Only our second time there, but Eli had a total blast this time. He was looking forward to it the whole week before we went and then ever since he talks about it every day. They had some robotic dinosaurs too that moved and roared and even sprayed water on him! He thought that was pretty cool. :)
• We've had Jeremy around! I forgot to mention he got released from the bishopric the day we blessed Connor (June 26), so it's been so fun sitting by him at church! He got put in 3 weeks before Eli was born, so he's never sat with us in our Sacrament Meeting. I felt like we were newly-weds again today because we were sitting holding hands and it was great. :)
• We've spent time with some great friends. The guy that replaced Jeremy in the bishopric is one of our good friends and they invited us for dinner last Monday. They have 2 little boys also, both about 10 months older than ours so we had a great time eating dinner and having family night with them. Then yesterday, we met up at a park and had a picnic with our great friends the Sanders (I should've taken a picture!) and then last night the Bishop had us over for dinner. It was a fun day and we felt blessed to have known such wonderful people here.

So we've had some fun amidst the craziness. And if you're around Wednesday evening, you know where to find us! We'd love your muscles to help lift stuff or your patience to help watch children, and we'll even give you ice cream sandwiches in return!! Wow, pretty good incentive. :) I may not blog again from this state, so if I don't, farewell from Utah and I'll catch up when we get to Pennsylvania!!!

Oh, and because he wasn't very well represented in this post, here's a picture of Connor. See, he doesn't scream all the time!