Allie in the bath

I love how she looks up and smiles at nothing in particular, then bats her eyes.

P.S. If you haven't yet, make your choice on the poll, time's runnin' out. Looks like Lace is in the lead.

Jared and school

Oops, I forgot all about this thing yesterday. Put it on my tab, mom.
Ah, this journey we call life. 3 1/2 years ago we took a hard look at our lives (with a heavy focus on finances) and where we were headed, and we didn't like what we saw. We had a great little townhome, and we loved every square inch of it. The mortgage was pretty cheap, and yet we just couldn't make ends meet. It was a little depressing. If we couldn't even afford that tiny house, then what? Were we going to live in a 2 bedroom apartment for the rest of our lives? Jared looked for another job, but we soon decided that a drastic change would be more appropriate. Thus began our most recent adventure. We decided Jared would go back to school and become a nurse. We sold our house, and moved into a crappy little 2 bedroom apartment. I still hate that place, even a year after moving out. It broke my heart to leave our house, and our friends, and the ward we loved. I cried off and on for 2 weeks. Both of us had to work hard at not getting depressed. But we did have an exciting future! . . . at least we hoped we did. Things didn't go as smoothly as we had planned. The plan was to go to BYU Idaho, but that did not work out since he couldn't get accepted. Finally, much later than we ever hoped, he got accepted to UVU in Orem, and it has been really great.
Jared headed back to school today, for his final semester! "4 more months" is my new mantra. You can do anything for 4 months. It feels like he's been going to school for a decade at least! He's sick to death of studying, and we're at the end of our savings. But we're almost there!
But I admit we are worried about what comes after. Will he be able to find a job? Will we have to move to some random place? Some random place where you have to watch out for scorpions or killer bees? Who knows.
Perhaps it will be another adventure in this journey we call life.

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He'll probably hate me someday for putting this on here, but I had no one else to chuckle with, so here it goes on the blog.  Often when he puts his socks on he pulls them over his pant legs.  Not on purpose, I don't think, it just happens somehow, and he doesn't bother to fix it.  Today I didn't fix it either because I wanted to see how long he'd go, and I snapped some pictures instead.

(hee hee)!

Trying food

I think I've decided to only give her vegetables for the first year or 2, so she has no choice but to like them. I'm only kidding about that. Kind of. I'm actually a little bit serious. I'm just sick of picky eaters. So far she has tried carrots, an obvious choice. She liked them raw, wasn't so happy when she bit off a chunk of the steamed variety and gagged on it.Loves real green beans. Hates baby food green beans. Can't say I blame her. She has also tried broccoli, sweet potatoes, bananas, mangos and peas. So far it seems her favorite is red bell peppers. Weird, right? I never would have thought of giving this to a baby, but my sister suggested it, and it was a hit. Obviously I'm doing something different than the regular purees. It's called Baby-led weaning, and you just give them regular food. At first they really just chew on it, play with it, get the flavor and texture, but don't really eat much until they're older. I love the idea! My sister did it with her daughter, and she is a great eater. I wanted to do something completely different with Allie because the old fashioned way didn't turn out so great with my boys. Plus I HATE spoon feeding. Hate it. So far she has only been interested in a few things, mostly chucked food on the floor, and frustrated me. Because I want her to hurry it up. But that's not the idea, and I'm learning patience. It is encouraging to me that she really has enjoyed these few things, even though she hasn't eaten much. And she looks so stinkin' cute munching on real food.

Stuff Joey 's been doing

Joey has a been a busy boy lately.  The school put on a production of Willy Wonka and Joey was on the stage crew.  His big job was to plug in the lights around this golden ticket.  I admit I wasn't thrilled about him doing this because I knew it would be time consuming and I didn't really think he would like it.  But he loved it, and was so happy to be a part of it.
I sat beside this little guy at the play (Aaron Wendt).

He also did Hope of America, which was a patriotic program for 5th graders.  I had no idea it was such a huge deal, so was really surprised when we got there how many kids there were.  It was really impressive.

He loved doing it, and was so proud to be a part of it, too.

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