Sawyer's first tooth

I've been blaming the crankiness on this tooth for a while, and here it finally is!
(yes, this shot is of him crying....but thats the best way to see the tooth! I didn't pinch him to make him cry, I promise! he just happened to be crying, I saw the tooth and snapped a picture. sheesh....people get really upset when they think "his head is about to explode!")

2 teething babies...and cake

(these pictures are all not really blog worthy, but at my poor husband's request, I'm trying to get him as many pictures of his kids as possible.)

yesterday we went to one of the cake places that dani had tried when she was here to pick out wedding cakes. this is a french bakery around the corner. aren't those little cakes just delicious looking?

Kate thought so. we went into the bakery and she was saying "I want chocolate!" "I want that one!" (pointing to cakes in the case.) we had her box them up so we could take them home and when we got in the car Kate said "I want to eat cake!" I told her we would wait until we got home and she said "I want to eat in the car!" she was dying for some cake!

we thought they were very yummy! one was chocolate creme brule, one was chocolate raspberry (my favorite) and one was lemon.

big cake tummy afterwards

my sister jen has video of her son, ethan, sitting up on her blog. I decided to see if sawyer had any sitting up skills yet. (he is far advanced in rolling over, doing it from front to back and from back to frong already!)

his sitting up outfit. very gangsta. I set pillows up all around him but he was never up long enough to get a focused picture of him!

mom thinks its because he's so wiggley and squirmy. kate thought it was just plain hilarious. eventually he gave up

but sister still loves him anyway. a lot.
he was giving her a little taste of her own medicine, though. he was grabbing her hair.
this morning I thought kate looked really cute eating her breakfast so I took a picture
and then here are some pictures of my 2 teething cuties.

kate didn't even notice hers (she's getting her 2 year molars on the top) until I got excited one night when I was brushing her teeth. now she talks about them all the time. they looked red to me but she isn't saying they bother her.

sawyer, on the other hand, is having a rough time. I just feel the bumps of his 2 first teeth coming in, but he is letting me know that they are coming. my normally calm and happy baby is turning into quite the crier and is having a really hard time going to sleep. first a hurricane to mess up his schedule and now this! sheesh!
sawyer is now sleeping, after about a half hour of crying in my arms. I had better take advantage of it and shower!

our apartment

I decided that while I was waiting, my house was being lived in and constantly getting messy. so I thought I might as well take some pictures and post them now and get it over with!


since we didn't fly down here for an apartment hunting trip, the internet pictures and floor plans were the only thing we had to go off of when picking a place to live. I think we did a pretty good job.


okay, welcome to my house. here are the steps leading up (that is often me and kate's biggest daily battle)


here are my daisies brought all the way from tucson

and what you see when you first walk into the door (thanks hilary!!)

to the left is my living room with a pretty fireplace

more living room. notice my not cute brown covered couches (I left the fabric I bought in mom's garage!) and GSN on the tv (basically a kristen necessity)....ignore the boxes in the corner.

from the living room you walk through the dining room and kitchen area

and then further down the hall to the right is my bedroom with connecting SPACIOUS bathroom and awesome closets

to the right is kate and sawyer's bathroom that connects into sawyer's room (or you can enter it through the hall). Sawyer was sleeping so you don't get any pictures of his room.

further down the hall is my laundry closet with stacked, yet full sized, washer and dryer.

and that leads into kate's room



and thats it! I apologize for the pictures. my larger zoom lens on my camera makes taking pictures of entire rooms difficult. I don't feel like I could give you an exact view of the house with my limited photography....so I guess you'll just have to come visit!!

we're here!

after 2 long days of driving we finally made it to houston!  the kids were perfect...most of the time.  I was amazed how much sawyer slept!  and now we're here surrounded by boxes.  lots of people are asking for picures of the apartment, but it really is not in a picture taking state right now so ya'll will just have to wait (see how I'm slipping into my texas accent already!) so for now all you get is a picture of the entrance.  

here is a funny moving story.  when we were packing in tucson I saw some of the ceiling fans we had bought for our old apartment and wondered if we needed them here.  I called and asked and they said they had fans already.  well yesterday ryan looked up in the living room and noticed there was no fan, just an empty space for where a fan should be, and I said "WHAT?!?  no fan!  I called and asked and they said there were fans!" and kate, who was standing right there and is completely out of sorts from all this change and not enough sleep, started crying and saying "no fan!  no fan!!"  I kind of laughed and told her it was okay and then I mentioned she had a fan in her room.  she calmed down, but then all day long she was saying "no fan! no fan!....kate's room!" and then we left the apartment and as we were coming up to the door on the way back she started saying "no fan!  no fan!"  and even today as we came home from church she was saying the same thing!  poor girl.  this move has traumatized her!

so long tucson

all our bags are packed and we're ready to go....

it feels like an dream....or nightmare, I guess...but at any rate UNREAL! we're leaving! ryan drove home a 26' penske yesterday and we thought we would NEVER fill it and we were laughing at how grossly we overestimated the size of truck we would need....and yet today we managed to fill the WHOLE THING! top to bottom! just a few more things to pack up in the morning and then we set out for our 16 hour car drive. we'll split it up into 2 days. ryan will be in the truck and mom, me, sawyer and kate are partying in our honda accord. yikes! I'm getting claustrophobic just thinking about it!

so I guess I won't be posting for a while and when I do it will be.....

(clap clap clap clap)

"deep in the heart of texas!"

I've been given 4 months to live....

in tucson, that is. thats right, ryan has made a decision with schools. and the decision is.....

DRUM ROLL!!

baylor in houston, texas!!

we had totally turned down the thought of baylor a while ago and so we thought we knew we weren't going to be leaving before jan 2009....or maybe even as late as may 2009 depending on the school that we chose....but then I came home from work last week (the day before we had to give baylor an answer) and all of a sudden ryan was saying he wanted to go there. I think some of the reasons are: he thinks its an excellent program and was really excited that he even got in, he's kind of anxious to end his bedside nursing job and begin training for the future, and he's 30...he's not getting any younger!! as you all know, I have been a big columbia fan. although ryan was a little hesitant about how much more money it would be, he was prepared to support me in my lifelong dream of living on the east coast. we did not turn down columbia because we thought it would be scary or impossible to live there, it just didn't work out with our life. I am surprisingly okay with it because I know it is the right decision for our family. (but I did tell ryan I would go to houston willingly, but I'm not sure how long I will get pangs in my heart when I watch the "today" show and see its snowing in manattan or see central park in the movies! sigh) its so interesting, today I taught my Beehives at church and the lesson was about our purpose in life and finding that purpose. how perfectly appropriate. I loved this quote (sorry its so long) from elder groberg because I feel like it describes perfectly how I made this decision:





“In the past I have tried to figure out whether I should go into business or into teaching or into the arts or whatever. As I have begun to proceed along one path, having more or less gathered what facts I could, I have found that if that decision was wrong or was taking me down the wrong path—not necessarily an evil one, but one that was not right for me—without fail, the Lord has always let me know just this emphatically: ‘That is wrong; do not go that way. That is not for you!’



“On the other hand, there may have been two or three ways that I could have gone, any one of which would have been right and would have been in the general area providing the experience and means whereby I could fulfill the mission that the Lord had in mind for me. Because he knows we need the growth, he generally does not point and say, ‘Open that door and go twelve yards in that direction; then turn right and go two miles …’. But if it is wrong, he will let us know—we will feel it for sure. I am positive of that. So rather than saying, ‘I will not move until I have this burning in my heart,’ let us turn it around and say, ‘I will move unless I feel it is wrong; and if it is wrong, then I will not do it.’ By eliminating all of these wrong courses, very quickly you will find yourself going in the direction that you ought to be going, and then you can receive the assurance: ‘Yes, I am going in the right direction. I am doing what my Father in Heaven wants me to do because I am not doing the things he does not want me to do.’ And you can know that for sure. That is part of the growth process and part of accomplishing what our Father in Heaven has in mind for us”





at the very moment I let my stubborn self tell ryan "okay, I will go to baylor" I felt it was right. I am so grateful to know that Heavenly Father is directing me and my family in our lives onto the paths that He would have us be. I can do anything and go anywhere as long as I know that.





so anyways, back to the title of my post. now that we know we're leaving sooner than I was planning to, I find myself driving down the road looking at the tucson cactus and thinking how much I'm going to miss them. or I was at the gym and I started thinking about saying goodbye to it so soon (if you don't know, I get very attached to my gyms). or, most of all, thinking how the heck am I going to leave my mom?!?! who is going to run errands with me?!?! who is going to play with kate when I'm tired?!?! or get kate cake when she sits herself at the table and starts banging on it and saying she wants cake and I'm in the middle of playing a game (yes, that did happen tonight!) I keep looking at things like I need to cherish it and take advantage of it before it all changes. and thats why I feel like I've been given 4 months to live....even though its only 4 months to live in tucson!!