We'll laugh about this someday............MAYBE

You would think that moving would be simple when the bureau hires a moving company for you, buys your house if you can't sell it, flies you to your destination and transports your cars for you.

We WISH it was that easy! What is Murphy's law again? Anything that can go wrong..........

Problem #1 The truck that was transporting our cars broke down several hours away from El Paso........and we were flying out the next morning. Then when they finally get there (4 days late), the driver rolls down the back window and can't figure out how to roll it back up. So, the car crossed the country with the window down half way. Thanks to the Jensens for babysitting our cars for 3 days and getting them safely on the new transport truck!

Problem #2 That left us with a problem getting to the airport. Our cars were supposed to be gone so we were going to rent a car to take us to the airport early Friday morning so we could catch our flight. Thanks Mollie for taking us to the airport and then helping me get the kids through security. I couldn't have done it without you. Hope you remembered to get your car seat off of the Jensen's front lawn.

Problem#3 For 3 weeks I was bugging everyone from our realtor to the mortgage broker to make sure that everything was in line for closing. With that being said I can't figure out why I would need to be on the phone for 5 hours the Friday before closing trying to get the right people to wire money to the title company. Did I mention that EVERYONE was having a "holiday"party that afternoon so there was no one who knew what they were doing that could help me?

Problem #4 Getting the kids into school. If an Obama run country is going to be run anything like the Chicago area, we should just start calling each other "comrade" right now. The kids have to have a physical with the district's "special paperwork", an eye exam and a dental exam. Why does the school care if my kids have dental sealings on their teeth? Oh yeah, and the kids can't bring edible treats (if its not edible how is it a treat?) to school for their birthdays. They are trying to make the kids cut down on sugar. Also, the nurse called me and said that Garrison was behind on his immunizations, even though the doctor said that he was caught up. He even wrote this on his "special" paperwork. After I made an appointment to get the immunizations, the nurse called me back and said that she had made a mistake. Ironically, the name of the kids new school is Freedom elementary.

Problem#5 Child proofing the hotel room. Why does one hotel room need 4 phones? We thought we had all of them unplugged but we missed one. That is the one that Hailey decided to dial random numbers on. Too bad "911" was one of the random numbers that she picked.

Problem #6 Emergency preparedness. Picture this: I'm just about to step into the shower---wait----DON'T picture that. Anyway, Conal had taken the kids to their "special" school physical so I was at the hotel alone with the 3 younger kids. I was just about to step into the shower when the fire alarm starts sounding. WOW that thing was loud. So I quickly got dressed so that I could evacuate the building. You all know what a freak I am about fire. I grabbed Macy and Jackson but Alexia wouldn't budge. She was sitting on the floor in the middle of the room covering her ears and yelling that she is scared. As I am trying to coax her out the door the alarms suddenly stop sounding. I couldn't smell smoke so I went back into the room to see call the front desk. I couldn't find any of the 4 phones in the room because Conal had hidden them (see problem #5). Finally I found one and called the front desk. I asked the guy at the front desk if it was a false alarm and he says "I don't know. A bunch of people came down to the front desk and then just went back up to their rooms." Note to manager: Your front desk guy needs some emergency prepardness training. At this point I still didn't know what to do. Then I heard some noises in the stairway which was right by our room so I opened the door to have a little looksy and there are 10 or more firemen running up the stairs in full gear. I asked one of them if there was a fire and if I needed to evacuate but no one answered me. So I grabbed the kids and dragged them down the stairs to find out that there was a problem earlier but it had been taken care of by then. Does anyone else think it is strange that firemen would ignore a women with 3 small children?

Problem #7 What ward are we in? When we were here in November, we were excited to find that the church was only 10 minutes away. However, the church website said that our building was a half our away. To make a long story short, we go to the ward that is a half hour away. The north border of our ward is our backyard. Apparently the neighbors behind us are in a different city, school district and ward. The people in our new ward seem really nice though. However, should we be concerned that we could hear police sirens all during church both last week and this week?

Problem #8 We didn't have internet all week so we missed the "no school today due to bad weather" email.

Problem #9 The people who owned our house hired someone to fix a leaky showerhead in the masterbath shower. He fixed the leak.......but now we can't get hot water. Did I mention that it is -5 degrees outside right now? Not the best weather for a nice cold shower. The repair man is coming tomorrow. Do you think if he fixes the hot water problem we will get the leak back?

Problem #10 We got brand new stainless steel appliances in the kitchen. YAY! Then why doesn't the dishwasher ever finish a cycle. It goes to show you that even if you buy a new house, you will still have problems. Repair man coming Tuesday.

Problem #11 There are no real winter clothes in El Paso and it is seriously cold here. Below zero people. Below zero.

Well, now we are in the house. PHEW. The money got to the title company and we were able to close, our cars finally got here late Wednesday night, the kids are registered for school, and the movers brought our stuff Wednesday morning. Are we having fun yet?

Macy's Blessing

So its finally official. Macy has a name.

We decided to hold off blessing Macy due to the fact that we didn't know exactly when we were moving and we couldn't exactly plan it or get family in town. I'm glad that we waited until we were able to go home to Utah and have some of our family with us.

We are glad you are in our family Macy!

Goodbye to El Paso

Thank you to Mollie and Curtis for risking serious damage to your home to allow us the opportunity to say goodbye (along with the Hunts who are also moving) to our friends in El Paso! Those open houses can get really crazy with all of the kids running around.

We were so busy talking to everyone that we didn't get the opportunity to take a lot of pictures which I regret. Here are a few.

Whetten cousins:

Mollie, Me and Audray (note to self: try not to stand between two gorgeous people)

The 5 year old girls: Bailie, Hailey, and Makenzie:

Um, I think Bailie and Hailey like each other. What do you think? ha ha. These two have GOT to be roomates at BYU. Bailie and Hailey Whetten taking the BYU dorms by storm:

Thanks again Mollie!

So I was wrong..........and I admit it.

WHAT? That doesn't happen very often (the being wrong part. J/K). My Dad and Mandi told me that I would like El Paso. I didn't believe them. They told me that I would be sad when I had to move from here. Again--I didn't believe them. Here I am 10 days away from moving, and now I believe them. No "I told you so" Mandi and Dad. As Bella said to Jacob in Breaking Dawn: "I told you so has a brother................" ok I won't finish that.

Yes, I'm feeling a bit sentimental today. I can't believe that we have lived here for almost 4 years! It went by so fast.

What I WON'T miss about El Paso:

SCORPIONS, tarantulas, centipedes, millipedes, cockroaches, rattle snakes and any other disgusting things I have neglected to mention.
Being stalked in the Walmart parking lot for your parking spot----even though it is at the back of the parking lot.
The Walmart here in general
Waiting in line for EVERYTHING
That nasty stomach flu that goes around
Waiting at the doctors office forever because they over schedule.
Juarez violence. It is seriously getting bad over there.

I will miss:

The warm sun, blue sky and mild winter.
Great food.
My house.
My friends.
Family that lives here.
The kids' Spanish accent.
My neighborhood.
Halloween. It's perfect weather.
The Sun Bowl parade.
Palm trees with Christmas lights.
Rock walls.
Low maintenance yards
The factory outlet mall down the street.
Not having to drive in the snow
My flip flops---closed toes shoes seriously hurt my feet now!
Did I mention the sun????

Who knows? Maybe we'll move back!

Out with the old........in with the new.

It's amazing how much things can change in one week. We sold our house here in El Paso last week, and then a couple of days later bought a new one in Plainfield, Illinois. The new house reminds me a lot of our current house (the inside anyway) which is great because I am so sad to sell this house.

Basically we lose our awesome view, the balcony, and the winding staircase (my favorite part of my house), but gain some more space, another bedroom, another spot in the garage and a basement. I am SO excited to have a basement again!

Here it is:

From the front door:The kitchen:The master bedroom and bath:

Now if I could just find a way to bring the sun with me.............

Country First!

Vote for John McCain today!

Halloween: The good, the bad and the scary

It was a dark, cold, stormy night...wa ha ha! Ok, really it was a warm, sunny 83 degree day. We are so sad this is our last Halloween in El Paso! I LOVE Halloween in El Paso! The warm air.......no coats over your costume.......the smell of BBQ in the air..........adults trick or treating (oh wait, really I find that annoying.)

We had a really busy Halloween. Here are the kiddos in their costumes. We have two soda girls, two Batmen and a pumpkin:

Macy's little pumpkin hat didn't last very long. I bet you can guess why from this picture. I love that my eyes are closed in it as well LOL! :

After the kids got home from school we went over to the Halloween carnival at Conal's work. It was fun to see friends and the older 3 kids enjoyed the haunted house. However, something in the haunted house caused Alexia (who has never had this problem before) to have some sort of weird asthma attack. So, we had to head home for a few minutes for a breathing treatment. Then we were off to the ward party. They had all of these little booths and games for the kids. Conal did "pumpkin bowling" for the Elders Quorum. I wish my hands weren't so full with the kiddos (While Conal was running the bowling booth I took the younger three kids around. I swear Alexia is in no way sitting on Macy!)

because there were some really great costumes. My friend Carolyn was the cutest Sarah Palin! I never noticed that she look like Sarah Palin until she put on a suit and put her hair up. Then it was obvious! Also, the Bowdens were "Fannie Mae" and Freddy Mac". They were dressed up like homeless people and were going around giving people monopoly money.

After the inside party we had a trunk or treat out in the parking lot. It's amazing how much candy kids can get in a short amount of time at a trunk or treat. As Mandi says, we had to work much harder for our candy when we were kids!

After the trunk or treat we visited a one of Conal's co-workers and his cousin Lisa. These are both El Paso Halloween traditions for us.

As you can imagine, after a long day like this the kids were pooped out. Especially Jackson. It's hard work stealing candy from your sister's bucket and smearing yourself from head to toe with chocolate.

Disneyland for two political science nerds

Yes. We are insane. We took 5 kids to a political rally. It was hot. It was crowded. It was loud. It was SO worth it!

Earlier in the week I had seen on the news that there was going to be a McCain/Palin rally in Old Mesilla New Mexico which is only a half hour away from our house. Having lived in Utah most of my life I had never been to something like this before. We had planned on trying to go after Garrison's birthday party. We were thinking that it might be too late but then Conal ended up behind the McCain motorcade and we decided that we still had time to make it. So, although we were totally unprepared, we put all the kids back in the van and headed to Las Cruces.

When we got there we found out that we were even more unprepared than we originally thought. We were supposed to have tickets! Um, oops?? So we decided to stay outside of the fence for a while, listen, and see if we could catch a glimpse of anything. As we were standing there one of the security people took one look at Conal, Me and the kids and motioned us to come over. He said "Do you guys have any protest signs?" and we laughed and said "no" and he said "well if you do, this is the biggest ruse I've ever seen" as he motioned to all of the kiddos and then waved us on in. As a side note, there is no way I would drag 5 young kids to a rally just so that I could get in to protest a candidate. SO not worth it! ha ha

So we went into the plaza at Old Mesilla, a place that we have been to so many times and it was totally transformed. If it weren't for the big gazebo, it would have been totally unrecognizable to me. They had a crane with a huge flag:

and it was packed with people and political signs:

We didn't have that great of a view but hey----beggars can't be choosers right? (Check out the Secret Service guy up top)

I took a picture of this lady's shirt because I thought it was so funny that it had so many different causes on it. Plus I took it for my Dad since it has a "drill now" sticker, a "global warming is a lie" sticker and a "fair tax sticker".

Conal and I had a blast "booing" the prospect of socialism, laughing with everyone else at the "Jose the Electrician" sign (not to be confused with Joe the Plumber) and the "Maggie the nurse" sign and cheering for LOWER taxes.

Yes, I have to say, for 2 political science nerds, it was a great day out. The bonus was that the kids couldn't have been better. And if this is our last time ever to Old Mesilla, I have to say that it was well spent.

And we have a 7 year old!

How time flies----Garrison is 7! That seems so crazy to me. I could go into the whole it-seems-like-yesterday speech, but I'll spare you. ha ha!

Yesterday was the perfect day for a zoo birthday party! It was in the low 80's! Plus it was the day they have their Halloween celebration. I'd love to say that we planned it that way but we actually didn't know about it and it turned out to be a fun bonus for the kids.

Conal took this picture for me because he knows that I LOOOOOOOOOVE scorpions!

The kids also got a fun bonus on the way home. They got stopped on the freeway so the Senator John McCain motorcade could pass safely. Since they were at the front of the line they got an awesome view of the motorcade and got to follow directly behind for a couple of miles. More on that in the next post.

Happy Birthday Jackson!

Holy cow I can't believe Jackson is two! Wait a second.....yes I can. He acts like a two year old (see previous post. ha ha). What I really can't believe is that two years ago today I only had 3 kids and now I have 5.

Well, at least I have an October off from being pregnant. I was pregnant in October of 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2006 and 2007.

Ok---back from the weird side note. Jackson is two! Yay! His favorite thing to say right now is "Can I have some____?" which is great when he wants some crackers or milk but comes out funny when he says "Can I have some Barney?" or "Can I have some ball?" or Can I have some fire truck?".

Two-year-olds can sure be a handful but they are also very entertaining. He won't be two forever so I'll enjoy it while I can!

Happy Birthday Jacky!

A day (ok really 5 minutes) in the life of Jackson

Jackson is almost two----and boy does he act like a 2 year old. The little guy gets is into everything! Yesterday, we were trying to keep the house clean because we had prospective buyers coming over to look at it, and boy, was Jackson giving Conal and me a run for our money! Once the people had left, Conal said "I should just get the camera and follow him around for 5 minutes so when he gets older we can all have a good laugh about how crazy Jackson can get." I thought that was a great idea so he got the camera and here are 5 minutes in the life of crazy Jack (not to be confused with wacko jacko).

First he climbed the stools. I wish Conal was able to get the shot of him climbing up two stools and them sliding apart so he was doing the splits, but this will have to do:
Then he ran for the drawers in the kitchen:
That got old quick so he had to go grab some pot lids out of one of the cupboards so he could bang them on the tile:Next the pantry where he got out a box of raisin bran, took the bag out of the box and started chowing down:

Then he offered some to Conal. Then up the high chair on to the table:After JUMPING on the table he had to play with the bouncer (good thing Macy wasn't in there):Now to the piano (not pictured: playing a lovely song with his feet):No five minutes in Jackson's world is complete without the guest room closet where he takes one of the kids' tent poles and runs around wacking everything (luckily not everyBODY) with it:

Nor is it complete without a trip to the bathroom to open and shut the door 10 times and then to either rip toilet paper into a bunch of little pieces or to play in, or dip something in the toilet:

About half way into this, Jackson noticed Conal was taking pictures of him so he would stop every now and then and yell "CHEESE!" at the top of his lungs. What an eventful 5 minutes! Sure love ya Jack!

Go ahead kids....play with matches

The fire fighters came to Garrison's and Hailey's school this past week. The kids came home with a bunch of stuff. They had some fire safety information, a plastic fireman hat, a coloring book and crayons and a rub on tattoo that said "Never play with fire". Hailey talked Grandpa into putting on her tattoo for her. For some reason the "never" part of the tattoo was the only part that didn't rub off onto her hand.
So go ahead kids..............play with fire!

Big Brother is watching

I went to Garrison's and Hailey's parent teacher conference yesterday. I had to laugh because Hailey's teacher told me that Garrison took Hailey to class one day and asked Hailey's teacher if Hailey was behaving in class. I swear I didn't tell him to do that. ha ha. Her teacher thought that was so funny. Good thing you are being good at school Hailey! =)

The Loot

My mom was here this weekend so of course we hit the stores. My awesome dad entertained the kids for us and they did this while we shopped.

He took Alexia and Jackson and I was carrying Macy in my arms because I forgot my "Native Baby Carrier". Oh boy, big mistake. After about an hour at The Childrens Place, my arms and back got so sore. I called my dad to see if he could come get Macy since I was suddenly in a lot of pain. Either that or I suddenly noticed that I was in a lot of pain. How could something this small:

cause one to be in so much pain? Well it was probably carrying around the 44 items that I ended up purchasing there more than carrying Macy. After The Childrens Place, Carters, Gymboree, The Gap, Sam's Club and Burlington Coat Factory, I ended up with 64 items. This picture just doesn't do it justice:

Buying clothes for 5 kids is exhausting.........not to mention expensive!