March Update

This month has been more nuts than usual but here’s the recap! Better late than never haha

Adam: spent most of March doing all the physical work of packing and unpacking. We closed on our new house the 14th and officially moved in the 24th. He was a total super husband especially because he did move in day with Eli and without me (not that I would’ve been able to help much). His wonderful parents were great enough to come and help for move in day then stayed for about a week after. I seriously don’t know how we would’ve done it without them.

Ashley: I tried to help in other ways since I couldn’t do a lot of the physical parts of moving. So I was in charge of keeping track of all paperwork and utilities transfers. Unexpectedly early in the month, my dear great aunt Susie passed away from a sudden heart attack. My sisters and I were especially close to her and although she wasn’t exactly young, she didn’t have prior medical issues to make her death less of a shock. The funeral happened to be set on the same day as our move day so we made plans for me to go without Adam and Eli to Washington for the weekend. I drove with my aunt who lives near us and then stayed with my sister Jessica and her new husband. I missed Adam and Eli and definitely felt weird about not being apart of the big move but it was so nice to be with family. The memorial itself was not as sad as I thought as everyone shared their favorite memories of Susie. She was definitely an amazing lady. We didn’t stay long so I was back in Idaho by Monday. The rest of the week was spent unpacking and setting up cleaning of our old place. We were so blessed with the service of ladies in our old ward (church congregation) who basically did all the cleaning with minimal help from me. So by the close of March, we were no longer renters!

Eli: He actually did pretty good with all of the transition of this month. He got a little confused as pictures disappeared off of our walls and things started looking sparser. He loved the new house and enjoyed trying to test boundaries of what he could get into as we tried to settle in. He only had one instance the first night where he woke up in the middle of the night asking for his old room. He has loved having more room to roam and spreading his toys across every square foot we have haha. As for development, he is still super chatty and loves to learn new things. He now knows how to count to ten and can identify some of the numbers on sight. He finally understands bargaining which has been super nice for us as parents haha. He also is obsessed with friends. He constantly asks to have friends over or to go out and see friends. He’s definitely a little social butterfly 😊

at the aquarium with cousins; for some reason, he kept wanting me to do this to his face haha; leading me around the house with his little cart; playing with toys I brought home from WA

April update

Cheering on Dada

Holy crap!!! This month has been NUTS so I'll try to keep this brief. So here it goes!

Adam: graduated!!!! Last week he finally finished school with a Master''s of Science degree in Instructional Psychology and Technology. It was a hard last leg to the finish line but he did it! He even got a better grade than he thought in his last class especially taking into account him finishing his project and job searching. I'm so proud of him :)

at the Great Cloth Diaper Change world record event :)

Ashley: I spent the month preparing for the move mostly so lots of setting up and canceling utilities, reserving a uhaul, changing banks, and packing. Oh and trying to take care of Eli :)

Eli: is 20 months old! He is learning lots of new words and some of them are distinguishable haha. He enjoys "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" and gets so proud of himself when he gets it right. He has taken up high pitch screaming which has not been enjoyable but we're working on it. He has also started a slight fear of nursery which has been strange because he has always loved it but hopefully that is just a phase. He does enjoy praying and will fold his arms and bow his head (sometimes randomly). If we do family prayer, I'll peek and often he'll put a finger to his mouth and go "shh" hahaha. He still loves people and when anyone leaves, he gets very sad. He has 16 teeth broken through as well. He can be a little rascal sometimes but we love him :)

cousin Easter egg hunt; getting into trouble at church while Daddy does some clerking; playing with toys brought by grandparents; giving Brad some Uncle training haha

Graduation and Moving

These people... <3

So the week started off with my parents coming to visit starting on Sunday :) We were able to do lots of fun stuff with them as well as Stephanie and Eli loved the extra time with Anders. On Thursday, Adam's parents came and right off the bat helped us finish our packing. Often I would take Eli away and spend time with my family while they and Adam would pack. They were complete life-savers. Then Friday was graduation and we got to see my sister Jessica and her fiance, Brad! Afterwards, we went out shopping to look for bridesmaids dresses and then everyone went to dinner at Wallaby's (our favorite local place). We were a big group haha :) I'm so glad all of them were able to come celebrate Adam graduating! Next, Saturday came. My parents said a brief goodbye before heading off and we finished packing and loading the truck. After that, we said a very tear-filled goodbye to our best friends, Kayla and Steven, and then headed out of Provo. We made, in my opinion, one of the smartest decisions in hiring cleaners to come after we left. It was SOO nice not to stress about that! If we can afford it, I think we'll do that every time haha. On the way north, we stopped at Ikea to eat lunch and pick up our new sectional. Adam's brother Jared who had helped us all day Friday and Saturday morning met us up there to help us load that into the truck. The trip up to Idaho Falls went well, and thankfully Eli did great on the drive! Then when we got to the house, we were met by my aunts Amber and Linsy as well as their kids (and my cousin Calvin's kids), and some neighbors and church members. So much help from so many amazing people! Adam's parents stayed with us until this morning. I seriously CAN'T imagine what we would've done without them. They were AMAZING help :) We also got to go to the Idaho Falls temple open house (although it was built in the 40s, it just underwent extensive renovations so it will be rededicated).

On our own now!

All in all, we are so excited for this new adventure and can't wait until we're all settled into our new home. I will try to do a facebook live tour of it once that's done!

<3

Moving!

Hello all!  This past week has been crazy busy for us as we have had work, Ashley's internship, my birthday/Independence Day and.. oh yeah... moving!  Yes, as of July 1st Ashley and I have moved out of our first apartment as a married couple and into another apartment.  This apartment is a bit nicer, with 2 bedrooms, central air (which has been one of Ashley's favorite things), a better kitchen, dishwasher, washer/dryer hookups and happens to be just below a couple of our best friends!

This all happened quite suddenly though.  Ashley and I have casually looked at new apartments a couple of times in the past year, but always ended up deciding to stay.  However, we often asked ourselves that if we had a place like our friends, Steven and Kayla, would we take it?  We would usually say, maybe, but most likely yes.  So, the apartment below theirs opened up and we decided to take it.  After a lot of worry about selling our contract in our old apartment (which was a most needless gesture as we had nearly 20 couples come look at our place in 5 days and at least three couples applied for the apartment) we sold the contract and started packing up.

Here is what our apartment looked like as we showed it:

Luckily for us, our friends were away in Hawaii on vacation for the 10 days before the move and allowed us to put our stuff in their apartment until we could actually move in.  That was incredibly helpful as we packed away most of our little stuff before the day of the move.

The day of the move came and boy were we busy!  We had to pick up our friends from the Salt Lake Airport and then had to start the move.  We were fortunate to have a lot of help including a person from Ashley's work who brought his truck and my home teaching companion who offered his van.  With their vehicles and the help of my brother and three of our friends and a couple of brothers of Kayla's, we managed to complete the moving in 1 hour!  Then we had to do the cleaning as we had to be out of the apartment by 5 PM.  With the help of Steven and one of Kayla's brothers, we had the apartment cleaned and locked right at 5 PM.

Here was our last look at the place we had lived (at least one of us) for 20 months:

It was sad to leave the place but we were excited for our new place.  We still miss some of the cooler things about the old place like the step-up pantry but our new place is wonderful too!

We came back to our new place around 5:30 and had a huge pile of stuff in our living room!  We spent most of that night to start organizing things.  By Tuesday evening, our place looked like this:

Even though we had work on Tuesday, we worked hard that evening and had the kitchen done, the dining table and desk set up and some things in our second bedroom assembled, but we still had a large pile in the living room.

We had set a goal to finish organizing the house by Wednesday night as my birthday was on Thursday and we were going to host a few friends (more on that in another blog).  With the help of Steven and Kayla, who kindly helped us again that night, our place was finished!  Here is the finished product with a picture of the happy workers:

We are excited to live here and have enjoyed every day!  I hope you enjoy the pictures as well!