Eli's Birthday!

Wow, this past week has been so busy and so fun!  We had a visit from Jeremy's cousin Wednesday and Thursday, Friday was Eli's birthday, then that night we drove to Columbus and stayed with another of Jeremy's cousins.  Saturday morning we went to the temple, then we met up with our dear dear friends who live in Kentucky and spent the day in Columbus with them, then we drove home that night, then Sunday we had early choir practice and the choir sang, and then we all crashed and took a 3-hr nap after church.  Whew!

So there's lots to blog about but I'll start with the birthday boy.  Eli is 3 years old now!  He keeps asking, "Am I still three?"  Eli was very excited about his birthday this year.  It was really fun to have him know what it was and anticipate it.  Ever since Connor's birthday last month he's asked me (almost daily), "is it my birthday today?  how many days 'til my birthday?"  So when the long-awaited day came, he was ecstatic!  We let him open one present the night before when Jeremy's cousin was here.  He got some new legos!

Every morning Eli wakes up way too early, usually around 6:30, and he goes out in the family room and plays legos.  Every single day.  He knows Mommy and Daddy don't get up until 7, so he plays quietly by himself.  It's very cute.  So we got him some more (more hand-me-downs from Jeremy's lego days) and let him open them the night before so he could play with them the morning of his birthday.  That's also one of the only times he can play with them, since Connor likes to eat legos. :)

Eli's birthday was a busy day, but a fun one.  Once we were all up, I made french toast for breakfast - at his request.

 We ate our delicious breakfast and then it was time for presents!  He was very excited.  Can you tell?

 New water bottle

 BYU Basketball from Grandma & Grandpa.

 New hat for the summer time from Grammy and Papa.

I had to throw this in there too, it's just too cute.  We were rearranging carseats, and Connor was very excited to be inheriting Eli's carseat.

 Jeremy stayed home all day Friday, which was a real treat for Eli.  They played legos some more while Connor napped in the morning and he also helped me make his chocolate cupcakes!  I love that smile!

We had some fun with the frosting and sprinkles.

After naps that afternoon we headed over to a nearby park and met up with some of his friends.  I wasn't calling this a birthday party, more just a playdate with cupcakes, and I told everyone not to bring gifts, but no one listened.  I feel bad, I really didn't want people bringing things (especially since he got plenty from grandparents), but Eli was very excited of course, and we were very grateful for the thoughtful presents.  He seriously loved every single one of them.  So the kids played, ate cupcakes and watched as Eli opened his gifts.  It was a day of ups and downs - something about birthdays makes a kid a little emotional I suppose.  So we had a couple meltdowns along the way, but all in all, it was fun!

 Rainier and Eli (and Rulan in the orange jacket)

 Hayden and Eli.

 Oooh bubbles!  Annabelle, Rainier, Rulan, Joey, Eli, and Hayden mid-stride.

Then we headed over to Jeremy's school for dinner.  Nearly every Friday they have free dinner for the Tepper students & their families, so we usually do that.  Eli likes it because all of his friends are there.  In fact, everyone who came to the park was a Tepper kid. :)

After dinner, we headed home to grab a few things and then we drove the 3(+) hours to Columbus!  It was an eventful day.  We stayed with Jeremy's cousin there so we could go to the temple the next morning.  More to come about Columbus and the days before Eli's bday...

Easter

(Apparently I'm really into blogging spurts lately, so if you didn't catch the videos of Connor walking, scroll down after this).

I still need to catch up on some things from last month, but I also wanted to blog about Easter.  We had such a wonderful Easter this year!  We started out the day by going to church and enjoying a beautiful Easter program.  As the choir director in our ward, I'm also in charge of putting together the big Christmas and Easter programs and so it always makes me a little nervous.  I was so happy with how it turned out though!  We didn't have a ton of musical numbers, but I felt like everything we did have was really polished and well done.  I had a small group do an arrangement of "Were You There", the choir sang "None Other Lamb" by Craig Courtney and "Behold the Wounds in Jesus' Hands" by David Naylor, and we had a violin/piano duet of "O Divine Redeemer" that was beautiful.  We also had some scripture narration and a couple testimonies in between the music.  I was so touched by everything that day and had a lot of people tell me they felt the same.  That means it was a success!  We accomplished our goal, and I felt so relieved and fulfilled after it was over.

After church we put the kids to bed and started cooking!  A few days before we still didn't really have any plans (besides church of course), so we decided to invite some friends over.  It turns out, one of those friends, Becca, was planning on inviting us and the other couple over too, so we were all on the same page.  Becca was happy to let us host but she offered to bring the ham so I got off easy!  Then Joan offered to bring potatoes and I really felt like a bum. But I still did some things.  I made rolls, a broccoli/cauliflower salad, some veggies, and carrot cake for dessert.  Jeremy and I were on a roll all afternoon and it was a blast!  We had an early dinner and it was so incredibly delicious.  Everything everyone made was fantastic and it was such a fun evening.  We had thought about inviting people we didn't know very well, you know, branching out, but for the holiday we were glad to be with good friends we felt comfortable with.  Both these families are friends from church and the MBA program.  Chad and Ryan are 2nd years, so they are done next month!  We're really really going to miss them.  Eli's good friends with their kids and I love their wives!  I knew our time here was going to go by too fast and sure enough our first year is just about over and it's already time to say goodbye to good friends. :(

I meant to take a picture of everyone sitting at the table, but I got distracted by the mounds of delicious food in front of me, so here are some before pictures and then after dinner.  It was nice to all be seated at the table.  My friend Mary loaned me this cute little kids picnic table which worked out perfectly for 4 of the kids.  (Thank you Mary! We wish you could have been here too!) We had 6 adults and 7 kids, so everyone fit just right.

After church - the boys really enjoyed the table.  Too much in fact.  Connor kept climbing on top of it, so we had to stand it up until right before dinner.

 How cute is that?!?

 Chad, Jeremy, Ryan and kiddos - Emery, Rulan, and Eli.

Me, Becca, Joan, and Morgan.

 Oh, and let's not forget the rolls. No holiday is complete without them!

So that was our Easter!  It was wonderful.  Good church, good music, good food, good company.  What more could we ask for?

He walks!

Connor started taking his first steps on April 6th, the day before Easter.  He just all of a sudden took 2 steps, stopped, and took another one.  We were really surprised!  He still won't even stand up in the middle of the room by himself, so we didn't see this coming.  He's walking more now, not a ton, but he thinks it is pretty exciting.  He does much better if he is distracted since he starts giggling and gets all giddy whenever he does it.   He's pretty cute!

I told my mom I would put up some videos.  These are from last Monday, so he's doing a better now, but I don't have anymore.  I will be sure to take another one and put it up, but here is one for the time being. :)  He was going to town on some plastic eggs Jeremy's mom sent.  This kid puts anything and everything in his mouth and drools like crazy!  So that's what's going on in the video...

Blessings

First off, I've been on a roll with the blogging, so if you missed Connor's B-day and our trip to upstate NY, scroll down.

Now..............................

We found a place to live in Alabama!

This is a complete miracle.  We are overwhelmed with the giant blessing that fell from the sky and smacked us right on the head.  As Jeremy said, "Usually blessings are a little more subtle.  This one just plopped into our hands".

So here's the story.  First of all, I keep finding people with random connections to Troy (where we're going).  This couple that my parents have been friends with for years have a daughter that I played with a few times as a kid who just moved there last summer.  I've been emailing her and it has been super helpful.  And random.  Then I found out that this girl at church knows someone here who grew up there.  Weird.

THEN...yesterday morning I checked my email and saw that I had gotten a comment on my Palmyra post from another girl I knew as a kid.  She had found my blog somehow and had been reading if for a little while and saw that we were going to Alabama.  She asked where and if it was near Troy because she served her mission there and just learned on Facebook of a lady who had a house available for rent!  Wow.

So I emailed her, she called me, I called the lady, and within a few hours we got a house!  This is absolutely amazing.  Our other options before yesterday were: a tent, a single student apartment (wouldn't that have been fun!), or an apartment 40 miles away that was way more expensive.  Our prospects certainly brightened!  We got a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house with a washer and dryer, in a cute quiet neighborhood, a porch, yard, etc, etc.  We are blessed.

I truly feel like the Lord watches out for all of us and knows our needs.  We'd been searching every possibility for months now and finally I started praying more regularly a week or so ago specifically that we would find somewhere to live, if at all possible in Troy :).  I feel such a huge relief.  I'm actually excited to move now!  No noisy upstairs neighbors!  Haha.  And it's 2 blocks away from the other girl I know there...who has a boy close to Eli's age.  Amazing.  The only thing left that makes it really interesting is that we are only bringing what will fit in our car, so that will be another adventure.  No furniture, no nothin'.  But we don't have to live in a tent!  Whew.  I'm excited.  We're always up for a challenge and this sounds like a great one. LA, here we come!!

(That's "Lower Alabama", in case you were not aware.... :D)

Connor's Birthday!

I'm going out of order here, but I felt like blogging about this right now.  I can't believe how big Connor is.  It's like since he turned one a couple weeks ago, he is all of a sudden growing up in major ways.  His little personality is coming out so much more and he is exerting his will in ways he didn't before.  So fun! Right...but he is just a dollface and we love him to pieces.  

Jeremy took these pictures on his birthday morning.  

He is a little ham and I love it!  He is getting the best facial expressions and it's really adorable.  He nods and shakes his head at random times and I of course think it's the cutest think ever.  He is very vocal and in to sounds.  He loves music and loves to dance and I'm certain he'll be my singer.  Woohoo!  He just barely started saying "Uh-oh" which makes me die of cute overload everytime.  He won't say it on command, only when he drops something.  He knows what's up.

I made banana cupcakes for the little guy because he loves bananas above all other foods.  He will down an entire banana in about 90 seconds.  He looks like a monkey when he chews it and I always think he'll gag, but amazingly he manages to get it down.  (I try to break it into small pieces, but he'll just shove a ton of them in his mouth at once anyway, so either way it ends up all in there).

Here he is with his loot...none of which were from his parents.  Oops.  But grandparents are great! (and friends!) Thank you!

Unfortunately he was pretty pooped when it came time for cake.  Jeremy's bus was late so dinner was late and then presents and by the time we tried to give him his first bite of cake he was rubbing his eyes in exhaustion.  Poor little fella.

But Eli enjoyed the cupcakes!  Which is actually a first for him - he's weird about certain sweets.

So I tried again a few days later and he had a much better experience.

Oh, I should have moved these but here is a video of the boys dancing to the fun CD my mom got him.

We sure love our Connor!  This year has flown by and I have a strange inkling that the next will be even faster.  It's so fun to watch these little boys grow.  They are finally starting to play together in short bursts and it gives me hope for the future!  I know they'll be best buds.  Especially when Connor starts to understand a little more (and Eli stop being such a control freak...hehe). They really are wonderful though and I'm so grateful to have boys!

Palmyra

Next up was Palmyra!  (see 2 other posts below) It took us close to 2 hours to get to our hotel there.  It was a great hotel.  It didn't have a pool, but it was a one bedroom suite so we had our own room and it had a little kitchen.  Perfect! We were proud of ourselves on this trip for not going out to eat a single meal!  We brought lots of food and it worked out.

So we got to our hotel about 3 in the afternoon and we settled in and then went to a grocery store nearby for a couple things.  Then we came back and ate dinner in the lobby.  They told us when we checked in that they serve dinner Monday-Thursday, so that was a score!  It wasn't anything amazing, more snacky kinds of stuff but there was enough dinner-like food to give us a decent meal so we took it! :)

Here we are back at the hotel.  Eli was being a goof as usual.  He was also excited about his huge bed (sofa bed).

The next morning we got up early, got ready, ate breakfast (this hotel had breakfast, yess!), and drove out to Palmyra, NY.  It took about 20-25 minutes, so it wasn't too bad.  For anyone reading this not a member of my faith, Palmyra is a small town where Joseph Smith lived when he prayed to know which church to join.  His prayer was answered as Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him and told him to join none of them, but that he was to restore God's true church on the earth.  It's also the place where the Book of Mormon was first printed.  It is a very special place and we were so glad we got to go!  I had been here before too, but not since I was a kid, so it was really nice to go again as an adult.  They also didn't have the temple built when I went last.

This was a great time of year to go.  The weather was CRAZY and all over the place, but it was super empty and we had private tours of everything.  And with kids, that was just awesome.

Our first stop was the Book of Mormon publication site.  We had these 2 sweet sister missionaries give us a great tour.  It was really interesting about how everything worked to make the printing possible.  The Erie Canal was built shortly before, which allowed E.B. Grandin to get a new printing press shipped to him just months before Joseph asked him to print it.  The press had a new technology that enabled the Book of Mormon to be printed faster and in better quality.  Everything was working to allow this to come to pass and it was great to learn all about that.

We didn't get any pictures inside, but here's the outside.

Then we went over to the Smith farm.  It was also neat to be there in the winter because when the Smith family moved there, it was the middle of the winter and they traveled by sled.  I can't imagine arriving here with no heater, just a fire to keep you warm.  We went first to the log cabin, where they lived for a few years before building a bigger house on the property.

This is inside the log cabin.

And outside.

And through that break in the trees you can see the temple!  The church purchased all this land and it is the original 100 acres that the Smith family owned back in the early 1800s.

Here is the "frame house", they call it, where they moved after a few years.  We again had these sweet sister missionaries give us a great tour (and again we were the only ones!).  They were so nice - and beautiful!  I said to Jeremy, what is with all the bombshell missionaries?  Do they put all the super-attractive ones at the church history sites?  I don't know, but they were all gorgeous.  Moving along...

This is on the property somewhere...

And here we are in the Sacred Grove, where Joseph Smith received the First Vision.  We were the only ones there and it was so quiet and peaceful.  Another note - as you can see, there is snow everywhere.  When we went inside the log cabin, it started blizzarding (that's a word, right?) like crazy!  Snow was coming down hard - sideways- and as soon as we finished in there it stopped.

The sun even peeked out for a bit while we were in the Sacred Grove.  It made me think too, that it could have looked a lot more like this than we often think when Joseph prayed.  It was in the "early spring", we don't have an exact date, and we were there in early March, so who knows.  It could have been brown instead of green. :)

Then we hopped in the car and drove over to the Hill Cumorah Visitors Center, at which point it became a blizzard again!  Holy cow, it was crazy.  We sat inside our warm car, ate our lunch, and waited for it to stop.

Then we went in and got another one-on-one tour and then we watched the Joseph Smith movie (which was so good!) in a room all by ourselves.  It was great.  Then we drove up the Hill Cumorah, but didn't get out because it was super windy and the kids were tired and a little bit cranky...(this picture is from the car!)

Oh, and we drove by the 4 corner churches.  These are two of them.  When Joseph was growing up, there was a lot of religious talk.  Just in this little town there were 4 different churches all on the same corner.  His family was torn on which church to join.

Then we went back to the hotel!  We made dinner, did baths, packed up most of our stuff, and put the kids to bed.

Eli got this strange attachment to one of his dinosaurs on the trip and insisted that he take a bath with him, and then have a towel.  Haha.  Here his is.  What a sweet little velociraptor.

The next morning we got up too early for a vacation and went back to Palmyra.  We met up with our friends the Janzens (who live here in Pittsburgh).  They had been doing a similar vacation so we decided to meet and exchange babysitting so we could go to the temple!  It was sooo wonderful.  Jeremy and I took the 7:30am session and they went to the 9:30.  There were only 10 people in our session and it was just beautiful.  Ryan and Becca have 2 kids similar to our kids' ages, so they had a lot of fun playing together while we went.  Rulan is 3 and Annabelle is 1.5.  That was probably Eli's favorite part of the trip.  Haha.  

Again it snowed the whole time we drove to Palmyra, and then by the time we were all done at the temple it was a beautiful day!

That was our trip!  After that we headed home.  It took less than 5 hours to get home, so it really wasn't bad.  The kids were so good through all the tours and it really went smoothly.  We were so glad we were able to go!