update time

Hello everyone. I just thought I'd update you all. Charlie and I have decided to put off looking for a house for a while. We think Charlie will probably have a different job this fall, but we don't know where yet, so we felt like we should wait to find out where before we buy a house. So I'm going to stay in Jocelyn's house with the kids so they can finish up the school year at their school. Charlie will continue to live in his brother, Les's, basement and come home on the weekends. It sucks, but we only have a couple more months.

Les and Jocelyn are going to move in with Charlie's parents next weekend. That will leave me and the kids here on our own. I'm actually looking forward to it. I can't believe how hard it is to live with a different family, even when you get along pretty well. After they move out, Charlie and I will start to fix up their house and then try to sell it. We hope to have it sold by the end of the summer (we know it is a pretty high hope, but I don't want to be discouraged). That way we won't have to leave it vacant in order to move into our own home before the beginning of the next school year. We really hope to be able to live together as a family for the whole year next school year.

I have a new calling at church. I'm the 2nd councelor in the Relief Society presidency and am over the Enrichment meetings. I'm excited to serve with the women again. I really love them, especially in Flint. Charlie doesn't have a calling still, but the bishop assures us that he is working on it now that we know we will be around for at least the next couple of months.

Charlie still doesn't like his job too much. He really struggles with the middle school aged kids. He knows for sure he doesn't ever want to teach that age group again. I'm glad we have other opportunities so that he won't have to. He is going to a job fair at Eastern Michigan in April. There are several schools that will be there looking for math teachers. He will talk to as many as he can.

The kids are doing well in school. This week was their school spirit week. Every day they have had a different way to dress. Today they got to wear their pj's to school. Makayla, in particular, was so excited for today. The kids have enjoyed getting to wear something other than their uniforms everyday.

The weather here is finally starting to be nice more than not. We've been able to go outside more, which I am so happy about. I heard that Utah had a blizzard this past couple of days. Must have sucked to be you guys out there! I've felt really couped up in this house all winter. We played at someone's house on Monday and went on a walk on Tuesday. It's really nice again today, but I don't know if we'll be able to do anything special. So I should probably stop babbling.

We're Moving

So, we've finally had it with this place. Everybody smokes around us and it has started pouring in at all hours. I can't sleep and there is no place to hide from the smell. Plus the people down stairs and next door party. ALSO the people next door got a dog that they do not take care of and leave on their balcony in the snow and the dog lives in its own urine and feaces. We called the office and let them know, but so far, nothing has changed. So, we have decided to break our lease and move early. We will be moving out the 2nd week of May and moving in with Eric's parents until we find another apartment-hopefully it is soon. To say the least, we are very excited and should have done this sooner. But we thought you all should know and would you please pray for us that we will find another place and that we won't be duped again. Thanks for all you guys do, we love you! And we cannot wait to see you all in 28 DAYS!!!

High School Festivals

I had a weekend of high school music festivals. On Friday I chaperoned 3 of the high school choirs at the regional choir festival. Lyon Singers got straight I s as did one of the 2 girl groups. On Saturday I played for 2 band students at the state solo and ensemble festival, one of them got a I and the other one didn't do as well. Now the choirs will go on to the state competition, which one of the parents said is the same week as the play. It should be fun!

a big KICK

I had a neat experience this morning. I jumped out of bed rather quickly and must have startled our baby because...WHAM...what a kick! I've been feeling her move quite a bit lately, but her movements are usually small and easy to overlook, so it was cool feeling her so strongly--hopefully she doesn't have an attitude in the making!

Li'l Grape

According to this description, our baby is about the size of a grape. That's right folks, Heather is pregnant!

As you can see from that article, she's about 9 weeks. We've been waiting to tell everyone, and it's been tough keeping the secret. We told Heather's parents and family at her mom's birthday party on Saturday. She thought it was a great birthday present. We told Mom and Dad last night as we were coming home. They are very excited, too. And now that the secret is out, we can spread the news!

The due date is October 23 for now, although one of the ladies at the birthday party said her due date changed twice after she starting getting the ultrasounds.

Yay for babies!

Jimmy's Almost a Legal Adult!!!

I know the event was yesterday, but it still calls for some serious celebration. Our little brother, James William, is now, officially, SEVENTEEN!!!! I have a few pictures for all you that do not remember what he looks like-I wish I had baby pictures because then we could do a progression, but this will have to do.
Here are the two boys on Mom and Dad's new porch and don't they look happy.

This is Jimmy doing what he does best -wink ;)

And here is Jimmy just being plain scary...but we still love him.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LITTLE BROTHER!!!

We all can't wait to see you rock the house as the world's coolest Beast. LOVE YOU!!!

My friend Wendy visited me this last weekend. She was here for about 3 days and I thought you might like to see some pictures from our adventures.

Wendy in Salt Lake City. We took a tour of the Conference Center (which was cool) and tried to find her family in the Family History Center (but didn't have much luck).

This is me on top of a cliff up Rock Canyon. You can see Provo and Utah Lake in the background. I like this picture because you can see how pregnant I am! It was quite a hike for me, and I was VERY sore the next day.

We ate at the No Name Saloon in Park City, UT. I had to get a membership in order for us to eat there (it was free) and I'm holding the membership card in the picture. We thought it was funny because I am the most unlikely candidate to join a bar (not only do I not drink, I'm pregnant!).

Wendy and Jason with a beautiful, dolled-up moose in Park City. All Park City souveniers have moose on them, which was funny, because this was the only moose we saw!

Wendy and I at the Great Salt Lake. She wanted to stick her foot in, just to say she had done it, but when she saw how icky the lake was she quickly changed her mind! I got my foot stuck in the mud, though, and sort-of lived her dream. Overall, it was a great weekend with lots of laughs and new memories.

Break in

Somebody broke into our apartment Thursday while I was out to lunch with Kurt, however we didn't notice anything was missing until around noon on Friday. Well, break-in isn't exactly the right terms since they appear to have had a key to our door. The apartment complex has had some trouble keeping track of all of its sets of master keys. Anyway, they broke in and took our Wii, Game Cube, all of their accessories, and our digital camera. The cops have told us we won't be getting any of the stuff back even if they recover it. We are very bummed. I also think I got one of the worst nights of sleep ever last night. Our locks were re-keyed last night but they had also been re-keyed on Tuesday so it doesn't make us feel all that secure. There is an alarm system on the door and we are supposed to be getting that activated today. In the end it was all just material stuff that we can replace eventually but it is unnerving.

We Got a House!

We put an offer in on this house Monday morning and, after some negotiations, our offer was accepted last night! We'll go out with the inspector in the next couple of days and then things will be official. We originally had proposed April 6th for closing but they couldn't make that so we pushed it back to May 4th so it would be after my thesis was over. I would have liked to have gotten into the home sooner but at least this way I don't have to pack and move while writing my thesis. It will be nice to deal with that after I'm done with my school responsibilities.

easy recipe

I found this recipe in the magazine that comes with the Herald newspaper and it got rave reviews from Dad and Jim and the people at the storehouse. It's called Beef Taco Skillet and here it is;
1 lb. ground beef 1/2 cup water
1 can (10 3/4 oz.) Campbell's Tomato Soup 6 flour tortillas (6"), cut into 1" pieces
(Regular or 25% Less Sodium) 1/2 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
1/2 cup salsa

1. Cook beef in 10" skillet until well browned, stirring to break up meat. Pour off fat.
2. Stir in soup, salsa, water, tortillas. Heat to a boil. Reduce heat to low and cook for 5 min. Stir. Top with cheese. Makes 4 servings.

Creamy Mexican Fiesta: Stir in 1/2 cup sour cream with soup.

Ranchero Style: Use corn tortillas instead of flour tortillas and shredded Mexican cheese blend instead of Cheddar.

Thesis Date Set

I've set up my thesis defense date for April 25th. It will be the culmination of three years of work on this project and I'm already nervous. Thought you guys would like to know. I think it will go OK. Kurt and I are going to be in Greenville for the beginning of the week. After the defense I'm hoping to go to the beach for a day or two and then head home. We will definitely be back in time for the big Gala event.

SURPRISE!!

So, today started out like any other Saturday; we slept in, took a shower, went grocery shopping (where we, by-the-way, bought the new DVD Clue game and it is totally rad). On our way home from shopping we were listening to the radio and they were talking about how we could win Rascal Flatts (one of our favorite country bands) concert tickets at this furniture store in Sandy (about 10 min from where we were). Now, the concert is in two weeks and we were going to buy tickets until we found out they were $65 a piece...so I've been trying to win them by calling the radio station at those certain times of day-no luck. So, anyway, we were driving and I looked at Eric and I asked him if he wanted to try his luck and he said sure, so we went. There wasn't a huge amount of people there and the next drawing was in 20 min. so we entered and just hung out, looking at furniture. At 3pm they had the drawing and we actually almost left before it happened, but they CALLED ERIC'S NAME AND WE WON 2 TICKETS TO SEE RASCAL FLATTS MARCH 9TH!!!!!!! Can you believe it? Well, it's true and we are so excited about it that we just had to share in our good fortune. Just one of those random things that makes life a little sweeter.

baby pictures

This is a cute picture of her sucking her thumb.

Here is her profile and her two little feet crossed at the ankles. It's amazing what they can see!

The closeup: What a frightening first picture!

House update

So, the new blog is a bit different and took me a little bit to get used to. Anyway, I promised an update, so here we go. Charlie and I decided after many prayers to withdraw our offer for the house in Maybee. When we went with the inspector to have the home inspected, we walked in and the kitchen ceiling was on the floor. The realtor selling the home didn't winterized it and the water pipes for the upstairs bathroom burst causing a lot of water damage. So, because we were there, the inspector inspected everything else that he could and told us that he thought we were looking at about $50,000 worth of work. That sounds high, because it is, but it's high because that is what we would pay if we hired out most of the work. We were planning on doing most of the work ourselves and knew that we would be paying a pretty penny for the updates and repairs. With the water pipes broken we couldn't qualify for a loan on the house because it wasn't livable (I mean, jeez, why would you need running water to live in a house anyway?). The realtor selling the house was pretty rude to our realtor when she called to tell her about the water pipes and our not being able to get a loan for the house. Their realtor, Jean, told our realtor, Brenda, that if we didn't do something that week that she'd re-list the house. Well, we couldn't really do anything so Charlie and I prayed about it and felt like it didn't matter if we bought this house or not. So we felt that logically we shouldn't. We told Brenda that we didn't want it and she formally withdrew the offer. Since then, Jean has left the company she was working for and the house has been reassigned to a different realtor. That realtor has been calling Brenda and asking whats been going on and why we haven't closed yet on this house. So she called me yesterday and wanted to know if we were sure we didn't want this house. She said that the plumbing was to be fixed by this Friday and we could walk back through the house if we wanted. I told her I'd talk to Charlie and he and I decided that we were sure. So I called her back lastnight and told her we were sure that we didn't want this house. Maybe, if it's still on the market in a couple of months we'll re-evaluate and offer a lower bid but for now we are going to look elsewhere. We are kind of in the position of Kurt and Heather and waiting and hoping that more houses will come on the market in the spring. We are also looking at the possiblity that Charlie may change jobs so we aren't sure if we should buy right now anyway since we aren't sure where Charlie will end up. He really doesn't like his job. It's really hard for him to split time between the two schools and the subjects he's teaching are not his favorite. We know that he could get a full time high school teaching job somewhere else but we don't know if that's the best thing for him. He has started coaching in Flat Rock, something he's always wanted to do and we aren't sure he'll be able to do that somewhere else. We're trying to weight the pros and cons and praying a lot. We want to make sure we do what the Lord wants us to. So I'll try to keep you guys posted as well as I can. Take care all.

It's a GIRL!

We had our ultrasound this morning and we're having a little girl! The ultrasound was amazing, they are able to see so much (kidneys, brain, lips, diaphragm, stomach, even the four chambers of the heart!) and everything was healthy and normal. It is now starting to sink in that we're really going to be parents. Jason and I are feeling very blessed, overwhelmed, and excited!

Congrats Jana and Jason!!!!

Jana and Jason
Congratulations on your wonderful news. It is always good to have a girl first because she can baby-sit when she gets older and you really don't have to pay her. Good luck figureing out a name. I think Erica is good name for girl, but that's my opinion. We are so excited for you and hope that this news eases the stress a little bit. Kari and I are planning on a big present that will take up your entire moving van, sorry.

birthdays and valentines

I hope Dad had a great birthday yesterday (the big 53!) and that Alexis has something wonderful planned today (the big 10...double digits!).

I would like to hear what everyone did yesterday on Valentine's Day. I always have a difficult time with this particular holiday, probably because I feel I'm already out of ideas of things to do. Jason and I made pink rice krispie treats (we had intended to pass them out to our friends, but that didn't end up happening), I sent him on a little scavenger hunt for candy, and he brought me home a rose. We also had take-out for dinner. Nothing extravagent, but nice. I'm curious what you ended up doing...

We're starting to look forward to our ultrasound, it's this Tuesday. Even though I didn't want to know what we're having, now that I have to know, I'm starting to get excited about it. I'll keep you posted!

Guess What?!!!

Soooooooooo.....I was just dinking around on the internet and I thought I would check my application status before we went to bed and so......I GOT IN!!!! So, this fall I will be a full time student at the University of Utah. This is to make Dad proud :) But we still have yet to hear from Creighton so we could be moving-but we aren't holding our breaths. Anyway, just thought you all would want to know. HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY...WE LOVE YOU!

Super pretzels!

Here's an update on the house stuff.

Heather said a bit about the house before. The list price was $160,000. We put an offer on it for $125,000 last Friday. We knew it wouldn't be accepted; we were using it as a negotiating starting point. The house had an open house on Sunday, and today we found out from our agent that they got an offer in the $150s. That's higher than we were willing to go for this particular house, so we're back to the hunt. We have some more houses lined up to look at later this week, so hopefully we'll find something soon. As it gets closer to spring, more houses are coming on the market, so we're not worried. We'll keep looking until we find the right one.

Super pretzels rule.

Decisions, decisions

Thought I'd add my two cents to the updates. Our life is pretty much the same as it has been for the past few months. Eric has heard from 6 of the 7 schools he's applied to and none of it has been good news. We still have to hear from Creighton, but he's not optimistic. But he's doing okay and is already planning for the applications this year. He is going to retake the MCAT, probably at the beginning of April or after we get back from Michigan. But, with dads urging, we have researched both him becoming a Medical Doctor (MD) or an Osteopathic Doctor (DO). So, Eric is going to apply to both schools. It you want to know more about DO's-we didn't know much-here's a website: click here. So we are making plans to stay here in Utah. I have applied to the University of Utah and are still waiting to hear back but Eric's pretty certain that I'll get in. So then we are planning that in the fall I will be going to school full time and he will be hopefully working full time. We are going to move too-probably to live in downtown Salt Lake, we have found some cheaper apartments there and are hoping that will still be true in July when we will be moving. Ummm....that's seems to be the gist of the news. Oh, except that yesterday was our one year anniversary of getting engaged so Eric took me to Park City-where we got engaged-and we practically relived the night. It was a lot of fun.

These are the flowers he bought me yesterday-the first flowers he has ever bought me. Aren't they pretty?










And this is a picture of us on the bench where we got engaged. If you click on it to make it bigger you can see the snow falling.

Plus now you can remember what we look like-just in case you were having a hard time remembering. Well, that's all from us. We wish everybody who has a birthday this week and who had one last week and good and happy birthday and a warm congratulations to Merrit for getting baptized, we hope that it was a wonderful time. We love you all and are SUPER excited to see you guys in a couple of months.