Basketball Jonah!

Jonah is sure a good lookin kid!  He has started doing his hair different because he wants to do it like Gordon Hayward.  If he is going to pick an NBA role model, I'm glad it is Gordon Hayward!

Jonah is loving every minute of basketball this season.  He has two practices and one game each week.  As soon as he finished his game today he ran up to me and asked, "can I go to the gym and play basketball?"

He has been asking if we can get a hoop outside since we moved in. We were planning on it, but our driveway is on a slope so we aren't sure where to put one.  Luckily we have a few hoops in the house so he can play inside.

Jonah has really improved his defense this season.  I was a little worried when I sat in on his first practice.  His coach has his own names for the positions and that really confused Jonah.  His coach has proved he knows what he is doing though because Jonah's team is doing great.

Jonah is thrilled that his team hasn't lost a game.  My favorite thing this season has been watching Jonah become a team player.  He is making some great passes and he is always the first one to congratulate and high five his teammates when they make a good play.  Jonah has also been looking out for the kids who don't get the ball a lot.  He came home from practice so upset because he thought the team was being mean to one of the players.  Jonah said he was guarding him and he pretended to fall so the kid could get the ball.  I love to see Jonah thinking about other people!

I think Jonah has learned more this season than all of his other seasons combined.  I'm so grateful for his great coach.  He works them hard, keeps the boys in control and makes them do push ups if they goof off, but he is very positive with the boys.  I'm so glad Jonah has basketball during the long, cold winter!

You can't make, you're not a maker!

Hallee told Keith that he couldn't make dinner because he wasn't a maker like mom.  I'm glad she thinks I'm a "maker" because cooking is not my strong point!

This week started a little rough for us.  On Tuesday Wyatt woke up with pink eye.  His eye was so red and swollen, it looked awful.  I have had horrible ear aches and I was pretty sure I had a sinus infection so I spent Tuesday morning looking for a doctor for Wyatt and I to go to.  It took over three hours from when we left the house, but we found a doctor and we really liked him.  We buy our own insurance because the insurance from Keith's work is awful.  We pay for every thing unless it is over $500 so doctor visits are not cheap.  It was a long, stressful morning, but I'm glad we went because the doctor said I had a pretty nasty ear infection and a sinus infection and Wyatt did have pink eye.  I was so relieved when we got home and we all went down for a nap.  I had been up with three of the four kids the night before so I was exhausted.  Poor Jonah has a dream that Keith and I die at least once a month.  I can always get him calmed down, but that is obviously a big fear of his. 

Caitlyn ended up getting pink eye too, at least I think she did.  The doctor gave me an extra prescription in case anyone else got it, so when she woke up with a red eye I just started her on it.  Her eye never got really bad, but I kept her home for two days just to be safe.  She was not happy about missing school, I'm so glad she loves school so much.  

I went to SEP conferences for Caitlyn and Jonah this week.  It was so good to go in and talk to their teachers, it is hard not knowing any of the teachers or kids at their school.  I love both of their teachers.  Both of them seemed to know the kids really well and they both had great things to say about them. 

On Wednesday Jonah and I decided to go to a Jazz game.  We picked up his friend Gaven on the way.  Jonah and Gaven have missed each other.  I loved listening to them talk to each other in French and laugh, they sure get a kick out of each other. 

These two are goof balls.  It was a great game, the Jazz won by almost thirty points.  I was thrilled for a night out after a hard week of sickness, eye drops and constantly telling Wyatt not to touch his eye. 

The night was great except for when I got us lost.  I am horrible with directions and I took a different street than I normally do so I got myself all turned around.  I decided to pay to park because we were running late and I didn't want to be walking all over downtown with the boys.  My plan backfired and we ended up walking around the block instead of right down the street to the arena because I was so turned around.  After the game I couldn't figure out where we had parked because of the confusion before the game.  We walked around for a while and then I started to panic.  We were back by the arena and this wonderful, nice man offered to give us a free ride in his bike carriage to find our car.  The boys were thrilled because they were tired of walking and they thought it was pretty cool to ride in the bike trailer.  We rode around until Jonah and I started recognizing things and found our car.  I was so grateful for that guys help.  I gave him the $5 I had and thanked him over and over. I was so nervous walking around downtown with the boys.  I was so relieved when we were safely in our car.  I feel pretty dumb that I got us so lost.  

Wyatt was so excited when he found a dollar under his pillow from the tooth fairy.

Wyatt lost his first tooth yesterday.  He was so excited when he realized it was loose.  Yesterday I noticed it was gone and he had no idea that the tooth had fallen out.  He wrote a note to the tooth fairy since he didn't have his tooth.  The first words out of his mouth when he found his dollar was, "can you take me to All A Dollar?"

This week has been a rough week.  The kids take turns being sad and missing their friends and both Caitlyn and Jonah miss their old school a lot.  I've had a rough week and felt negative, so that didn't help.  Negative thinking is a dangerous whirlpool that pulls me in quickly if  I'm not careful.  I still believe you have to feel your emotions and sometimes they are negative, but I have been dwelling in the negative too much.  I wasn't expecting this move to be so hard on me.  I knew I would miss people, but I'm surprised by how much I miss everyone and how much I miss the familiar.  It also hasn't helped that this winter has been freezing and depressing and we keep getting sick.  All of those things have added up to me feeling sorry for myself.  I have been thinking about a conference talk where he (I don't remember who) talked about asking the Lord what we can do to improve and bring the Spirit into our lives, "What Lack I Yet?"  I feel like I need to be more positive.  Being positive has never come natural to me, so I need to renew my efforts to be positive and not dwell on negative thoughts.  I'm sure all of my friends and family would love it if I stopped complaining so much!  I've heard that you have a much better chance of keeping  your goals if you write them down, so I wrote it down here and now I need to start working on it. 

Friends

The kids were so excited to have Max and Grace over on Friday. Allison was sick with kidney stones so she wasn't able to come over.  I went and picked up Max and Grace and brought them over for the day.  They had fun hiding and surprising Caitlyn and Jonah when they got home from school. 

Keith and I dropped Grace and Max off at home later that night on our way to an open house for one of Keith's young men from our old ward.  I know Keith had a great impact on Nate.  Julie, Nate's mom, told Keith that he was one of the reasons that Nate was going on his mission.  I know Keith had a great influence on all of his young men.  It was great to see all the familiar faces from our old ward.  

I love that the kids pick up right where they left off no matter how long it has been.  Caitlyn and Grace had a great time together, I'm so glad they are such good friends.

Hallee was sad that Jack didn't come, but hopefully him and Allison will be able to come tomorrow.

The kids had fun playing outside for a while.  I looked out the window and Wyatt had his coat and shirt off and was running around chasing Max and Jonah. 

Wyatt is a crack up.  He is either super sensitive and crying over every thing or hilarious and trying to make people laugh.  He loves to rip off his shirt and do the belly roll any chance he gets.  He thinks he has to take off his shirt to fight, play tag or be tough.

On Saturday the Beck's came over for dinner.  It was fun to show them the house and catch up.

All of the kids had a great time.  The older kids were downstairs most of the time. 

I had to wake Hallee up so she was pretty grouchy at first, but once she warmed up her and Kenzie had a great time playing.  The girls always love dress up.

Activities

Caitlyn has horse back riding lessons every Monday.  Her and Ataiya are in a group lesson together.  It is so nice that Mel and I can sit and visit while they ride.  They have been in lessons for a few months now. Caitlyn was doing great and progressing quickly and then she was bucked off the horse.  Luckily she wasn't hurt, but it sure shook her confidence.

She has been on a lead rope since that happened because she was so nervous.  She has finally started riding on her own again and getting her confidence back.  I'm so happy to see that!  She loves horse back riding!

Jonah has been playing basketball for a few weeks now.  He loves it.  His coach is great and he is learning a lot.  We love watching his games every week.

Wyatt's old pre-school teacher, Mrs. Alisha, sent me pictures that she had of Wyatt.  It was fun to see them.  Wyatt was excited to see them.

He still misses his friend, Austin.  He has been doing great in his new pre-school, he is excited to go now!  He made a new friend at school, Kellen, who is also in our ward.  He has been excited to go ever since they started playing together.  I'm so glad because I hate sending my boy off upset.

Around the house

We had a fun on Martin Luther King day.  Katie and the kids came over and Katie and I went shopping while the kids stayed home and played and then we took the kids to Nickel City.  It was packed, but the kids didn't seem to mind.  The kids had fun playing games and they were all happy with the prizes that they got with their tickets.

Hallee is such a cutie!  She had fun riding the little rides that they had. 

Caitlyn loved holding Kenzie.  We all love holding Kenzie!

We have been getting snow off and on.  Jonah is always great about shoveling it.  Wyatt and Hallee were excited to shovel it with him. 

We all worked hard cleaning the house last Saturday so we could spend the rest of the day having fun. 

Hallee and Caitlyn have fun playing house and different games in Hallee's room.  One day they were pretending that Hallee's doll house was their car.   I told them not to do that and then took a picture, that doesn't send mixed messages, right?

The kids have been so excited that it has warmed up enough to play outside a little.  Hallee and Wyatt love the playhouse in the back.

The kids are so excited about our back yard and our swing set. 

I love this house better than our old house

Wyatt told me this morning that he loves our new house more than our old house.  We all still miss the familiar and our friends, but I think we all agree that we love our new house.  

Our new home is similar to our old one, but there a lot of things that make it better than our old one.   The first thing I love is that the garage is bigger.  We could barely get out of our cars in our old home with both cars in the garage.  Our new garage has plenty of room for two cars and storage.  

We loved the deck at our old house so we were excited that this one had a deck as well.  Our new deck is amazing.  It is covered on half of it with lighting and the floor is trex so we won't have to stain it all the time.  I also like that the deck is ground level.  

We loved our sheds in our old house.  The shed in our new home is amazing.  It is huge with a cement floor, electricity and lighting.  It isn't wood, so we won't have to stain that either.  It has one door on one side and double doors on the other.  The kids have been riding bikes and roller blades in there. We also have four grow boxes in the back.

Next to the grow boxes we have an awesome swing set.  The kids love it.  There is a little play house on top and a play house underneath.  I also love that our back yard is long and flat.  It is perfect for soccer and football games.  

I love the paint through out the house, it looks great and I love the colors.  I also love the vaulted ceilings.  I love the overall open feel of the house.  Our couches and piano went well in the front room.  I also love that there are so many ceiling fans in the house.

The kitchen is off the front room.  I love the kitchen.  It is so much bigger than our last one.  There are a lot of cupboards and I love the pantry.  The owners left their fridge.  It is a really nice one with a water and ice dispenser, we are all loving that!

I love the big open space for the table.  There is so much more room than our old kitchen.  That door leads into the garage and the sliding door goes out to the back yard.

There is a long hallway off of the front room and that leads to the three bedrooms upstairs.  Wyatt's is the first room.  I love the two tone paint!  I also love that the rooms are a really good size. 

Next to Wyatt's room and across from our room is Hallee's room.  

Our bedroom is very similar to our last home except for it is bigger, which we love!

I love our master bathroom.  It is so nice to have our own bathroom.  I love our jetted tub, I have used it once or twice a week since we have moved in.   Wyatt and Hallee have a bathroom next to Hallee's room and there is a bathroom downstairs for Caitlyn and Jonah.  I love that they are all full bathrooms.

The family room is right off of the stairs.  I'm so glad the big basketball hoop we got for Christmas fits down there.  We love our new sectional and TV down here.

If you turn left off the stairs you will pass these built in bookshelves and the storage room that is across from them.  The open door leads to the 6th bedroom that we are using for a toy room for now.  I love that we have an extra room!

There is a door leading from the toy room to this bathroom/laundry room.  It is a little strange to have the laundry room in the bathroom, but it works.  The bathroom has two doors so the downstairs is a circle, you can go all the way around, I love that.  It took me a couple of weeks to remember which way to turn when I went downstairs, but now I have it down.

On the other side of the bathroom is Caitlyn's room.  She scored the big room!  She loves that it has a fan and two closets.  She has plenty of room for all of her nick knacks and beanie boos.

Down the hall from Caitlyn's room and right off of the family room is Jonah's room.  He immediately wanted this room when he saw the blue paint.  Jonah is becoming quite the BYU fan so he was thrilled to have a blue room.  I love the shelves that were in the room, so does Jonah, they are perfect for his medals and trophies.

I feel like this move happened so fast, but took so long at the same time.  Keith and I felt very confident about his job and moving so we just put our house up for sale and hoped we would find the right home quickly.  We were open to the idea of renting for a while because the inventory was so low and we wanted to make sure we didn't settle.  

 We found a home in Orem, not far from our current home and put an offer on that.  We felt good about it and we really liked the area.  Thank goodness we had a good inspector who found that the house had a lot of problems.  We debated on backing out, and we felt instant relief when we did.  While we were under contract for that home our current home came on the market.  Once we ruled out Saratoga Springs as an option, Keith and I both knew that this was our house.  We put an offer on the house and we moved in just under a month from the day of our offer.  The sellers were great to work with and they told us that they felt strongly that they needed to move because someone else needed this house.  Sometimes I feel like I'm not receiving answers to prayers, but when I look back I can see that they were being answered.  I know this is where we are supposed to be and through this whole process we prayed that we would be led to the place that would be best for our kids.  I hope the kids will make good friends here.  When we backed out of our other house we decided that we needed to raise our budget to get into a home that we could be in long term.  I think we had to go through each step to help us know what we wanted and find this house.  I'm very grateful that everything worked out so well.  We have a lot to be grateful for.

Well, that was unexpected!

Hallee is a crack up.  Today I was getting after Jonah for getting out of his seat over and over while we were eating and Hallee turns to Caitlyn and said, "well, that was unexpected."  Hallee loves to make people laugh, she will do or say anything for a laugh, but it is the random things she says that are the funniest.

 Hallee has had a cold this week.  She has the cold in her eye, so her eye is watery and gross.  I keep telling her not to touch her eye and that I will wipe out her eye if she needs it.  I went in her room the other morning and she picked something up off the floor and said, "oh there is my eye googie, sorry mom you can't put it back in my eye."

The kids had fun making a little game room in our closet under the stairs.

Wyatt started pre-school last week.  We went and met his teacher the day before his first class and he was excited about it by the time we left.  I really like his teacher and she is just up the street from us.   Wyatt was excited all day and then when it was time to go he started to panic.  He started crying and saying that he couldn't do it and he just wanted to stay home with me.  I felt so bad for him.  I know he isn't trying to be difficult and he really wants to go, but the separation anxiety kicks in and he is terrified. I literally watch the panic wash over him.  I dropped him off crying the first day, like grabbing my coat screaming and crying.  He seemed happy when I picked him up so I was surprised to hear that he cried for over an hour.  He finally calmed down and enjoyed the last half of pre-school.  The next school day it was the same thing, he was excited all morning and then panicked right before.  This time Hallee and I went in and stayed for 45 minutes.  When I told him we were leaving he was so brave and gave me a hug while fighting back tears.  It broke my heart to leave him silently crying while he was working on his worksheet.  He was excited to tell me that he didn't cry at all after I left.  This week he was nervous again, but he told me that he didn't want me to walk him to the door because that made it harder for him to say goodbye.  I'm so proud of him for sticking with it when it is so hard for him.  He didn't cry either day this week.  He looked like he was fighting back tears while he walked to the door by himself, but he did it.  He was excited to come home today and tell me that he made a new friend.  

Wyatt asked for a picture of me to take to school with him.  He said, "I just want you in the picture because you are the only one I miss."  I found a cute picture of Wyatt and I together and printed it up for him.  He looked at it and said, "I'm in the picture too, that is good because sometimes I miss myself even when I'm right there."  He is so funny.  

Poor Wyatt has been really emotional lately, one day he told me that he felt sad, but he didn't know why.  Keith asked him why he didn't want to go to pre-school and he said he is scared to leave me because he is afraid something will happen to me.  I hate to see my kids worry because I know how miserable it is to worry all of the time!

We have all had a hard time with this move.  There are so many great things about the move and we love our house and I love being close to Tiff, but it doesn't take away how hard it is to leave the familiar and start over.  Caitlyn and Jonah like their new school and they are making friends, but they miss their old friends and their old school.  Caitlyn said she likes our house, but it doesn't feel like home.  She said hanging our pictures up would help her so we did that this weekend.  We also decided we needed a fun night out together.  This winter has been a cold one and we have some winter blues mixed in with those moving blues.  We went to the Provo Rec Center on Saturday night and went swimming.  This was by far the best pool we have ever been to.  They had an amazing play ground for the kids, a wave pool, water slides, a rock wall in the pool and basketball hoops.  We all had a lot of fun and it was so good for all of us.

Wyatt wanted to show me that he could wear his hat  like the kid in Pokemon.  He is such a cutie.  

 I have been having a hard time finding my way around here in Provo and Orem.  I get lost a lot and I usually  end up by BYU, I'm not sure how that happens.  I was in Salt Lake this week and it was so nice to know exactly where I was going.  I am starting to find my way around.  My biggest problem is I never know if I am in Orem or Provo and that little detail is very important for addresses around here.  I think we are all getting a little more comfortable every day.  Caitlyn joined the choir at school and Jonah started basketball and next week they start scouts and activity days.  I think all of these things will help us feel more at home.

I'm trying to do better at doing activities and spending quality time with the kids again.  I set that goal last year and I started the year out strong, but it faded out as a lot of things do in life.  I just feel so overwhelmed with four children and with life sometimes that I feel like I'm checking out more, which I really don't want to do.  Anyway, a friend recommended someone on instragram that puts up fun toddler activities so I started following her.  Wyatt and Hallee had a great time scooping beads out of water.  It was so simple, but so fun.  We spent the morning having fun together and it did make my day much better.  Mothering, it is a tough job!