Six Months

We've been in Hurricane, Utah for six months now.

I posted Thanksgiving pictures from 2014 in my last post.
And now I need to do Thanksgiving from this year.

Clearly blogging hasn't been a priority in my life.

But I keep thinking about how important it is to write.

"Write your story."

So here I am.

At least for today.

Our summer was busy and fun.
After moving, we went to Huntsville, Utah to spend a week with the Holmes family.
They are a fun crew.
It was a weekend full of games, playing sports, talking, and playing on the lake.
We are a big crew!








 

One of our first weekends in Hurricane was spent doing a family hike.

#1: It's awesome that we can have family outings on the weekend!

#2: We can do something fun and different outside!

We made about a one mile trip due to the littleness of our kids, but it was fun to get out and do something together.

Our second outing was an off-road path in Brendon's Jeep to Toquerville Falls.

THAT was amazing!

We drove up to the waterfall and played for over an hour with the kids in the water.
Everyone had a blast.
The older kids were in the back of the car on the ride up yelling, "Aaaaaaawwwwww" while bumping up and down in their car seats while driving on the bumpy dirt road.
Hazel quickly joined the "Aaaaaaaaawwwwww" choir and had everyone of us laughing at her cuteness.

School started for Henry.

Mr. Kindergartner.
We celebrated his first day with a Swig trip.
He opted for the root beer (silly boy) while the girls got a cookie.

Henry loves school and I'm enjoying watching him learn to read and do math.

He's doing well in school and is making a lot of friends.

I didn't put Maggie in preschool.

Best decision of my life. (Maybe that's an exaggeration.)

We are forced to be home during Henry's half day of school due to Hazel's nap schedule so Maggie and I get a lot of one-on-one time together. 

She hasn't gotten much of that since Hazel was born. Maybe even ever.

We dance, play Barbies, play Spot It!, do nails, or whatever she wants to do.

Occasionally she'll watch TV, but most of the time we hang out.
It's been a special time for me for connect with her.

With some encouragement from Dad, I signed Henry up to play flag football this fall.

Dad helped coach.

No practice, Only one game a week.

Simple. I like that.

It was chaos.
At least that's what it looked like the few times I got to peek in on the game.

Utter chaos. 

Henry loved pulling faces with his teammates and ran around wrestling and playing karate.

But he loved going each week.

In October we went to a local farm with a petting zoo, games, rides, and a (very small) pumpkin patch.

We had a blast petting the animals and the kids loved the giant slide.

For Halloween, we had some friends over for dinner
and went trick-or-treating with them at the neighborhood in Hurricane.

It's a little neighborhood that blocks off their street from cars, goes all-out with decorations,
and even has a few haunted houses.

A lot of people go there.

It was a fun experience, but once was good for me (because it is so crowded) . 

Maggie got scared and sat in our friend's stroller
 and the kids were ready to go home before we finished all the houses.

Little kids are so great!

Since moving, we've discovered the children's museum (in St. George), the splash pads, Swig, and Maverick frozen yogurt (to relive my high school days).
We enjoy our backyard, our playroom, the perfect circle to run around in our home, and our loop.
Or the "hoop," as the kids call it.
Our little neighborhood loop is really convenient--even better than a cul-de-sac with lots of fun kids to play with.

Brendon has had an exciting six months.

He participated in the Hurricane parade (we missed seeing him by three floats cars) and a dunking booth.
He passed his board exam. Can I get a Hallelujah?!
But the coolest part of "real life" is that Brendon is home. A lot.
For lunch, daily family events, bed time for the kids, and he's even around enough to help with the daily cleaning.
 It feels like a dream come true.
His dream come true is that he got a new mountain bike and has so many trails to try.
Don't get me wrong, he likes to be home, but he loves his nature time.

These six months have been challenging with a lot of new adjustments.

Challenging for me.
Everyone else in the family has been completely fine.
(Although Maggie periodically asks when we're going back to our house in Texas.)
But I'm warming up to our little town.
My favorite thing is how close we are to family and how often we have visitors.
I also like that all of our needs are within a 10-minute drive.
And there are good people here.
I still have a few things to work out (like working out...I've never lacked motivation like I have these past six months), but we'll figure out this new life in this new place.

Our Final Days of Lubbock

I have been putting off this post for awhile (obviously).

Maybe because it officially closes this chapter of our lives.

A very fun, busy, friend-filled chapter.

There's a lot of things I missed blogging about,
 especially those involving trips to family in Albuquerque.

Exciting news: we had family move within five hours of us!

We celebrated Thanksgiving with them and then when there was a baptism/baby blessing, 

I took the kids out for the events. 

Mine and Brendon's first road trip ever was to visit the Shirleys and it has been fun to have so many pit stops and sleepovers with their family over the years.

As for Lubbock, our last few months were pretty normal:

preschool for Henry and Maggie twice a week, play dates, playing at the park, visiting the library, etc.

Maggie started preschool in January.
She decided to be mute during school,
but she stayed without too much of a fight (after I handed her off to the teacher),
and she participated mentally and was very cooperative in doing the activities
(so long as it didn't involve talking).
Bless her teachers! They did so well with her.
Henry, on the other hand, loved his second year of preschool.
And when the school year was over, we were all happy not to have school in our schedule.

During our time at home, we played in our awesome backyard a lot:

Henry and Maggie played in mud,

they introduced Hazel to the slide,

and Henry climbed our perfect-for-climbing tree.

Once school was over, we packed in as much friend time as possible.

We went to the parks, to Safety City, and had lots and lots of play dates.

{Hazel in her element, accompanied by her buddy, Landon.
Carissa and I timed these babies close together, making our similar families even more similar.
There's nothing like having a close friend to share such exciting life events with.}

{Grace loves Henry and although she's younger than Maggie, Henry adores her right back.}

We also went on a small (2.5 hour) roadtrip to Abilene zoo,
and reached a milestone with Henry losing his first tooth.

Brendon had a couple weeks off before we moved.
We tried to do something fun every day.
Sometimes Brendon took the kids to do something while I cleaned the house.
Brendon and I went out together to see some friends play jazz music at a nicer restaurant in town
(seeing our friends perform was on my bucket list),
Brendon and I took Henry and Maggie to the lake and played with paddle boards,
we all went to the lake and played on the "beach" with our friends,
we celebrated the fourth of July with friends,
our little family went to the drive in,
and we went out to eat a couple of times.

Brendon graduated from residency!
Hallelujah!
For some reason they thought it would be a good idea to have all of the family come to the nice, fancy dinner followed with talking and awarding and presenting.
You can tell from these pictures how great my children did at holding still for a 30 second picture.
They did even better during the dinner.
Let's just say all the parents that brought kids were out in the hallway for a majority of the meeting.
Brendon loves these things as much as the children do.
But it was an official "W'ere Done" celebration.
And it feels good to be done with training.

{During the presentation}

{Family photo fail}

For our final hurrah, we had a large gathering of dear friends for dinner at our house
(because it down-poured right when we were all supposed to gather at the park).
We ate and mingled with our many friends who became like family.
It was the perfect ending to our time in Lubbock.

It was hard leaving so many great people behind.
We loved our babysitting co-op group (with four kids Henry's age),
my workout buddies,
the plethora of children to play with at home or the library or the park,
our go-to friends for everything from ingredients to babysitting overnight to a great chat to emergency babysitting
(I guess it sounds like we had a lot of great babysitters),
and, for Brendon, his associations at work.

 What a fun ride it was to be in Lubbock.
I loved it from the first day,
thanks to a sweet friend who showed up at my door and immediately invited me to do something.
It was the perfect place for our family during residency.
A place where lifelong friendships were made,
our family grew in number and strength,
our marriage relationship tried, tested, and triumphant,
and where we grew closer to God.

Lubbock,
I miss you. Well, maybe not you but your people.