Pictures posted by Aunt Ellen

My sister-in-law has some great pictures and videos of Sarah posted on her blog, check it out!

Here we are in Washington

I will post pictures later, I promise! So a ton has happened since the last post. We are here in Washington, and I have to tell you that today was beautiful and Sarah and I sat outside for an hour just soaking in the sun! Today was Creed's official first day of work and the few times that I talked to him he sounded way excited about reading all the procedures on what his job would be all about. So here is how our move progressed.

I sat on the couch while the amazing Relief Society of the Kolob 12th ward packed my kitchen up on Friday, Creed had packed up most of the rest of the house during the rest of the week, so it worked out great. Then Saturday Creed had the truck and the Elders all showed up and so did my visiting teachers and the Larsen men, Shirl, Eric and Ben, and we packed up the rest of the house and loaded the truck 1/3 way full before realizing that we needed a bigger truck. So Creed picked up the bigger truck and reloaded everything into the truck. Yes I bawled like a baby once everyone left and we had to leave our house behind. And just writing about it is making me cry, so onto the next day!

While we packed our house up Sarah spent the day with the Larsen's at the huge Larsen Easter Egg Hunt. I was told that Sarah loved it and she loved spending time with Parker and Kinzley. Anyway, on Sunday we attended church, and I just love Easter, then we headed off to Boise. In Boise we spent the night and hung out with my parents for a bit. Monday we drove to our new house and picked up the keys, then headed to a hotel in Vancouver. Just so everyone knows, we only had to listen to "Buzz and Woody" a few times because I had packed a fun bag for Sarah that held all of the Safety Kids stories on CD! So instead of Woody's roundup we listened to how to be good workers, and to have courage and to tell the truth etc. Good series by Brite Music. Anyway, Tuesday morning arrived and Creed and Shirl (who drove the "BIG truck" the whole way, went to the house and were met by some moving men who unloaded our belongings into the house. Sarah and I stayed at the hotel and tried to figure out what to do about internet and cable, we decided that cable was going to be a need until I had the baby, and could get up and move around for more than an hour without contractions. (So now I am hooked on any CSI show that comes on and let me tell you there is always a CSI on with Comcast!) Then we all headed to the house and Sarah got to ride in the "BIG truck" while we returned it. (there was a huge fit when we left SLC and she didn't get to ride in the "BIG truck") Anywho, Shirl helped us decide how to set up our living room and move some of the big stuff. Sarah then took a nap and so did I while Creed took Shirl to the airport. And once again I cried like a baby. I seem to have done that every time I had to say good-bye to something, or someone I love and know I won't get to see till baby is here. Anyway, Creed spent all of last week unpacking, I only unpacked clothing and helped a little with the kitchen. (Soon I will be using all the time and I wanted to have a say in where things went.) In so doing we found that this house has just as much storage as our last house and it is 1,000 sq feet smaller (don't tell anyone who is looking at buying our house!) So everything is put in it's place except the guest room/scrapbooking room. We have way too many books, and yes we knew this before moving, for the two bookcases we have, and we don't feel like getting a bigger bookcase for a little while, we decided that an infant car seat might be a little more important!

Sorry for the long post, just wanted to document how the move went for future posterity and to let you all know that I am doing a bit better, like I said, I can now be up for an hour before the contractions start, instead of 10 minutes. Wahoo! And as we were leaving Ellen said I had to blog more. So here I am blogging! Soon I will be adding pictures, because let's be honest, everyone lives for the pictures!

Moms for Modesty blog

I can't figure out how to get the button and link it over to their new blog, but I wanted to let all the mom's out there have a chance to sign the petition and see if they can make it work! Anyway, here is the blog address: www.momsformodesty.blogspot.com

Hold the phone and funny Sarah stories

So i titled this post Hold the Phone because I know that last week I posted that we would be moving to Washington in June/July, well we are moving this weekend, so HOLD THE PHONE! Yep next week, if I have internet I will be blogging from rainy Washington. YIKES is all I have to say, life has been coming at me so fast, I just don't know what to do. But I thought that I would share some really fun stories of Sarah from this past week. Last Monday night we left and started the drive to Washington so we could find a place to live, all I have to say is we need to get out more of our children CD's for the drive this coming weekend because I can no longer handle Toy Story Two music, that is all Sarah would allow us to listen to on the 13 hour drive to and from and while driving around looking for a place to rent. Anyway, we stopped at one house on Tuesday that was older and when we got back into the car afterwards we asked Sarah what she thought of the house and she said, "That house is old." We then asked, did it smell good or bad, to which she replied, "It smelled bad, we need to find new house that smells pretty not stinky!" Needless to say we passed on the house.

Then Saturday I dropped Creed off at the priesthood session and then we drove to his Aunt and Uncle's house to have a girl party. Sarah was so mad that we were leaving and that she didn't get to listen to the Prophet and that Creed did. So I tried to explain why just Daddy got to go and I said, "Daddy gets to go because he holds the priesthood, and Grandpa gets to go and uncles and brothers and other daddys all get to go and hear the prophet talk just to them." She then said, "Daddy wasn't holding the priesthood." And I said, "Yes he was, you can't see the priesthood, the priesthood is the power of God on the Earth and Daddy holds it, that is why he can give us special prayers that we call blessings." She said, "Oh, but I want to hear the prophet!" I told her she could tomorrow.

Then today Creed came home for breakfast like usual and when he had to go to work Sarah started getting upset and Creed said, "I have to go to work and make the monies so we have monies to buy things with, like food." Sarah then said, "You can stay home and I will find monies!" Creed then said, "Where will you find monies?" She said, "At Grandma's house!" (when at Grandma's house she gets to play with a treasure box that holds the left over change from the week, apparently that will be enough monies for us!).

If I don't get to post before we move I am wishing everyone a Happy Easter and I just wanted to mention that Conference was amazing!

Life

In the last couple of weeks I have been trying to figure out if I want life to go by a little faster, or slower, today I want it to go by faster. I have once again been having contractions, not so close together, but my doctor still says that I shouldn't do anything that causes contractions, I told him I would still be taking a shower because I couldn't live for three more months without one. In other words anything I do causes contractions and I am only 28 weeks. I feel a little like going crazy! Good thing we have a great library with wonderful books and movies to rent, otherwise I would just sit and cry everyday. I have also started having migrains, and yes sometimes I wish in this pregnancy I only had to deal with one thing at a time, but I think I am to be learning a ton, and I have. One of the biggest helps has been some advice from my mom. She told me to write down 2-5 blessings that I see everyday and keep track of them. When I do this I am then more focused on the fact that life really is good, God really loves me, and I have something to look forward to. Another help has been the little emails and the amazing gift from Caroline. It helps me know that there are people out there who love and care for me, so Caroline THANK-YOU! I have to tell you when I opened the door and saw the box and opened it and saw what was in it I just bawled. It came on a particularly hard day and it made the whole day better! So a thank-you card will be on its way soon, I just wanted you to know that I received it and loved it.

Another help has been my amazing husband. He has been doing so much to keep Sarah and I going it isn't even funny. And in the midst of everything he has had to do for the house and us and work he found time to fly to Woodland, Washington and get a new job. So we are moving to Washington probably in June or July depending on when baby decideds to come, which who knows could be tomorrow, though we are hoping for May (Sarah was three weeks early so we figure this one might be early as well and with the way the contractions have been I can almost gaurentee it!) Anyway, we are really excited and are looking forward to this huge adventure. It will be weird not to be near family, but I love Seattle (which will only be 2 hours away) and Portland (30 min away!) Plus then everyone will want to come and visit us because we will have tons of fun things to do!

I ended up having a pretty good birthday, though I had to send Sarah with Elizabeth because I wasn't able to be up and handling her like I would like to, but it was really good to finally sleep. I have a hard time sleeping at night and sometimes don't fall asleep till 4 in the morning and then I just cry when Sarah gets up at 7:30, which is what happened on my birthday, but don't worry Sarah and I love to take baths and so we just bathed until Creed came home for breakfast.

In other exciting news Elizabeth gave me the best birthday present ever, she potty trained Sarah. WAHOOOO! It has been so nice to have Sarah just tell me and to not have to change diapers. I love it! She still has the occasional accident, but she is doing really really well.

All in all, life is good and enjoyable, I just have to remember to count my blessings!

March already?!?

So here is an update, yes our car cost too much money to fix, but we decided that since we liked not having a car payment we would go ahead and fix it. So the car is fixed, wahooo! Once the car was picked up, Sarah became sick, then I woke up sick on Monday and Creed woke up sick on Tuesday. Go figure! Our house was listed on Thursday and we even had a showing on Saturday. Last week we got some good news, Lifeport in Washington is very interested in Creed, in fact the guy told Creed that he would be out of town from Monday through Wednesday, but would get back to us Thursday or Friday to let us know what the details would be if they were going to hire Creed. Then on Monday Creed heard from the President of the company who said that he had passed Creed's resume to a sister company. Then Creed interviewed with them on Tuesday. I imagine that since we haven't heard from either company that they are fighting about who gets to hire my husband, I have to be optimistic you know, plus it helps me feel better! So it really looks like in the next couple of months we will be headed to Washington, Woodland to be exact, which is a small town 30 minutes North of Portland, Oregon. Everyone cross your fingers and say your prayers for the Lord's plan to be fulfilled!

Five Years, Valentine's and Life

WOW! This weekend has been so many things, amazing, spiritually uplifting and discouraging. Last week was spent dejunking and cleaning and getting ready to ask our real estate agent about listing our house. Turns out our house really isn't worth what we put into it, but I don't know that there is a house out that right now that is. So we have decided, with a little nudging from the Lord and some extra spiritual experiences that it is time to sell our house. We are very bummed because we love our house and really don't know what we are going to do if it sells right away or if it sits on the market. We are just going to walk by faith. So by Friday we were looking forward to celebrating our five year anniversary. It was so nice to go back to the place where we spent our wedding weekend, the Armstrong Mansion in SLC. We LOVE it there. The staff is wonderful, the room (we have only stayed in the one) is very nice and quiet and the food is great. We celebrated on Friday so that we could head back home on Saturday and get the rest of the baseboards painted. Then we decided that we really needed to get the rest of our 3 month food supply, aka dried milk, eggs, sour cream, butter, bread mix so that I can make bread etc. The best store that we have found to do that at is in SLC. So we ended up staying around a little longer, but thought that it would be okay because Creed had Monday off. So we went home later Saturday, didn't get any more of the house stuff done, but enjoyed sharing Valentine's day with Sarah. Sunday was great, we went to church, had a few moments where baby decided to let Daddy and Sarah feel it move and kick, had a stake fireside on preparedness and then went back to SLC (we needed to order some more bread mix and pick it up in SLC). Monday arrived we went and ordered our bread and picked it up and then our car started to make some funny noises when we turned. I am here blogging and the car has been in the shop the whole day, and no one knows what is really wrong or when it will be fixed and we are stuck in SLC. Thankfully Shirl and Elizabeth happen to have an extra car that we can drive home tonight and hopefully come back tomorrow and pick up our car.

With all that has happened I started to think back on the last week and today. Someone in Sunday School once said, when you start to do what the Lord wants you to do Satan will play his cards. Today I felt that. We have been trying to follow the Lord and to do His will, and we really feel like we are doing that the best that we can, and then Satan played his card. The car place thinks that our axle is broken somewhere, which says to me, MONEY! Which really just made me feel bummed almost all day, because there was so much to get done at home and we weren't able to do any of it, and it means that we might not get to take Sarah to the Draper Open House on Friday like we planned. Anyway, we will still go, I just have to be optimistic and look at all the things I have been blessed with in the last week and in the last year. So I guess I just wish everyone the best and hope that even when Satan plays his cards we can recognize that as saying we are on the right path.