Fall Family Pictures 2012

Like I had mentioned, while we were in Gallup, Megan did our family pictures. 

Check out her website here: http://www.shaheenphotography.com/

She is the seriously the best. I always know she will pull through with some great shots, even when Collin is historically throwing huge tantrums. Luckily, this time, he was pretty good, just hard to get a natural smile from. He's king of the smirks or cheesy grins. 

OK, now help me decide!!! I have never gotten a really big family picture printed, but now is the time! Which family photo do you like best?!

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I am absolutely IN LOVE with this sweeter than sweet face! 

This half smile is so characteristic of him. I loooove it.

Whaa?! A shot with them BOTH looking AND smiling?!?! It's a Christmas miracle!! :)

Thank you Megan!! You're the best!

When the Relatives Came...

Two weeks ago, I got an unexpected call from my sister, Shelley. She said the following week was their October break and their plans had fallen through. Soooo, she wondered if they could come visit US instead! I didn't know whether to laugh or take her seriously, haha! We were second in line after Disneyland! The happiest place on earth! Does that make Farmington the second happiest? :) Of course we were thrilled to have them! I just never, in a million years, thought we'd ever get visitors, living in New Mexico. 

(Casey deserves some sort of award for driving 6 hours and not getting to any type of ocean.)

Then, two nights later, I got an even more unexpected text from my mom, wondering if the rest of the family might be able to come too. That would mean both parents, Jefferson, Craig, Marcie, and Shelley's family! At the last minute, Jefferson and my Dad couldn't make it, but we had a great time with the rest.

They all drove in late Thursday night. (It must be noted, this was the longest my mother has ever driven by herself. She is 50. Go Mom! :)

On Friday, bad weather threatened, so we went to the uber cool, children's museum. It's not so fancy, but it's free. But Mom made a donation!! :) And the boys ran that place for at least two hours. 

There is a section with all padded toys for those 5 and under. Lane made it by a month. Craig and Casey slightly broke the age limit, but shhhh, no one tell. I think we were pretty lucky to leave with no broken bones. 

Then it was time to tour the ol' dental office and meet the staff. They have a pretty cute dentist that works there. He seems to get into a lot of my pictures. :)

That night, I got a babysitter for the boys so us "adults" (+Craig) could go out to dinner in peace. 

On the way home we passed a DQ and Dolly (our car) instinctively knew Casey was on board and threw a U turn to order up some Blizzards. 

I had to take a picture of my mom and Casey all trying to throw money out the window to pay for it. Trav finally just rolled up the back window. :)

Community baths! I should have turned on the jets! 

That night we laughed pretty hard playing Loaded Questions. Casey wins another award for picking the best question... "What word makes you cringe." I'll save you a lot of cringing and leave out what we wrote. Then we had to deal with Craig continuously trying to get us to explain what "fondle" meant. :/ Sorry, one cringe for ya!

On Saturday we drove up to Durango to board the Charlie Brown and Peanuts Pumpkin Express! This is the popular train that usually goes between Durango and Silverton, but today it only went about 1/2 hr. to a family pumpkin patch.

Beautiful scenery! Colorado is gorgeous.

The kids had fun playing games, going on a hayride, picking out pumpkins and meeting Charlie Brown and "Snoofy!" (We just made sure to show them a Charlie Brown DVD before we went so they actually knew who he was. :)

Back in Durango, we walked through the shops downtown then popped a squat outside on a grassy area and let the boys run free.

Shelley pulled up Pandora on her phone, the boys enjoyed getting thrown into the giant pumpkin, and we all relaxed for a bit.

Then we walked into the Palace Grill, that had been recommended to us, and shifted uncomfortably in our seats while checking out the dinner menu with items starting around $25! And going much, much higher. (Guaranteed Craig would have ordered the $60 steak.) So, word of the wise, ask for the {Lighter Fare} menu and enjoy a much cheaper, but delicious meal!

That night I got my hair did by Marcie Moo and we snacked on brownies that I'm sure everyone was dying to eat at 10:30pm. Marcie, Craig, and my Mom headed out around noon on Sunday and Shelley's fam joined us for sacrament meeting before hitting the road. Right when we got home from church, Collin whined, "Mooooom, can we invited some friends over. I'm BORED." He was dead serious. Come back, cousins! We miss you already!

Preschool Field Trip

Last Wednesday, I helped drive kids to Collin's first preschool field trip.

It was about a 25 min. drive north to Aztec to go to a pumpkin farm!

I know that girls my age have much older kids, so I feel dumb saying this, but I just felt so OLD "chaperoning" my kid's school field trip! I don't know, just driving a suburban full of car seats makes me feel old. It's same feeling I get when I pick up the babysitter and leave on a date night with Travis. This is what ADULTS do! I'm pretty sure I'm still the babysitter's age.

ANYWAY. It was a fun day. Just maybe a little hot. And I was getting even warmer pushing Weston's umbrella stroller through the thick dirt everywhere. 

His teacher, Mrs. Teresa, is in the purple cardigan. She is awesome!

Does anyone else find this udderly weird?! Haha, I kept suppressing urges to tell him to "Stop touching that! ":)

 This sweet babe sacrificed his nap and was quite the trooper!

 What could be better than sliding into a ginormous crate of hard corn kernels?! Such a good idea!

 This reminded me of when I was a kid in sacrament meeting. My Grandmother would always have Jolly Ranchers in her purse for us and I would constantly picture the cultural hall filled like a pool with Jolly Ranchers that I could swim in! Haha! A kid can dream!

 Here's Weston getting a little handsy with the pumpkins at the end! :)

I'm glad we got to have fun at the pumpkin patch. It did make me just a little nostalgic for the pumpkin patches in New York. You can't beat their fall trees, cool weather, and gorgeous scenery. Ah well, we take what we can get!

Gallup

A few weekends ago, we made fairly last minute plans to visit the Shaheens in Gallup. 

Bron just started up a practice there with a friend and it's been doing really well. So well, that they need another dentist. 

Bron had been talking to Travis off and on about it for weeks, but now we needed to really make a decision. 

I'll be honest, I bawled the day I knew this was a real possibility. Gallup is only 2 hours away from Farmington, which makes it only 4 hours from Mesa, but it's pretty {small town}... to put it nicely. I thought I had already moved to a {small town}. 

Leah likes to joke that it's the "armpit" of America. Another friend text me, "Why the he*#, would Travis move you to Gallup!!!" :) These sentiments weren't far from my own. I know it's not a nice attitude to have, but like I said, I'm being honest. 

It weighed on my heart. I felt so internally torn between knowing that it would be a great career opportunity for Travis, just not an ideal living situation for us. Of course it would be so fun to live near the Shaheens. They are like family to us and we couldn't love them more. There was also another great family, the Kings,  that opened the practice with Bron, that would be fun to live by. But that was another part of the problem... finding a place to live!! The Shaheens and Kings really lucked out and found great houses. I was not having such great luck. Plus, we JUST MOVED. Oy. The thought of packing up house again after just 4 months gave me a mental hernia. 

Anyway, I could go on and on about all that, but I'll get back to the trip. I don't know what it was about that day, but my energy was no where to be found. We were gone all morning running errands and then I was spent. I just didn't even have the motivation to pack a single thing. In fact, around 4pm, with nothing done, and Travis coming home soon, I hid in my room and pulled the covers over my head and pretended life wasn't happening. 

That's when the boys pulled this little number....

 After about 45 minutes under my covers, I emerged and walked past the books. My jaw dropped. Then quivered. It was literally like the movies, when the jaw is moving up and down, but nothing is coming out. Then I sighed. Par for the course. 
Later, when I asked him why on earth they did this, Collin exasperatedly exclaimed with palms outstretched, "But MOM, we were BORED!!!"

Travis came home and I apologized and told him I just couldn't do it. If this trip was going to happen, he needed to make it happen. And he did. 

He packed all the boys' things, bedding, cooler, and me... and we were off. 

I have to add... we got Subway on our way out and the boy making my sandwich saw my "I  ♥ NY" shirt and almost mockingly asked, "New York, huh? When's the last time you went there?" I kind of half smiled and said, "Oh, about 4 months. We just moved here from NY state." He almost dropped the Provolone and gasped, "And you moved here?! I'm sorry." 

I had to smile. I'm not sorry one bit.

The boys fell asleep and we pulled in around 9pm. There was a little social gathering going on at the Kings that we stopped in at for a minute, then headed down the street to the Shaheens. It was so fun getting to talk all night with them! They are the neatest people. The boys talked work and Megan and I got stuff ready for Lilly's party the next day.

Lilly was turning 4 on Sunday, so the next day she threw a little {Superhero} party for her in the woods. Haha, it's funny to say that, but it was only 1/2 hour from their house and the perfect place for the kids to run free and have fun. Great weather and amazing food... of course!! Wouldn't expect anything else from Megan!

She also took our family pictures that morning, but I'll post some of those later!

She made all these capes and masks for the kids and they looked adorable. 

After the party, Trav went with the boys to the office to talk more business. Then I went with Megan and Brynn to the R.S. broadcast. We decided to stay one more night then head home first thing, Sunday morning.

I think Collin had a lot of fun playing dress up and princesses with Lilly. :)

Twice, we had to break for herds of something... this time it was sheep. Glad it was daylight to see them! Makes me a tad nervous for my night drive coming up.

Welllll, I guess I should finish by saying that we will not be going to Gallup. Not now anyway. Travis was dying to work with Bron and I honestly think it would have worked out fine if we went, but something just wasn't feeling quite right. The timing maybe. A lot of prayer and thought went into it, and we can just hope we made the right decision. I don't know. 

If there was one positive thing that came out of all of this, I think it helped me realize how much I really am loving Farmington. I wouldn't have said it before. I don't think I even knew it before! But I really do love it here. I LOVE Collin's preschool. It's right around the corner and he begs for it every day. It's right next to our ward building and we have really loved our ward too. I love that everything I need is seriously within a 3 mile radius of my home. I look forward to my Thursday night Zumba class, that is right down the road. I love taking the boys to the two museums close by, the library, and the pool. I like the doctor we just found. It's fun being so close to Durango. We are in a great house in the middle of a good neighborhood. Wal-Mart and Target are right around the corner. And get this! They are building a Panda Express down the street from Travis's office!! His favorite! If that's not a sign, I don't know what is! Haha. I never, ever would have thought I could love Farmington, but turns out, for right now, it's perfect. 

Story Time!

Update!

Remember that cool, book page on the wall of the library I posted a while ago? 

Turns out... it's not some secret door that only the employees use. It's the door to SToRy TiMe! This place just gets better and better. It was so organized and interactive and the boys really liked it. Welll, Weston may have wanted to wander and touch everything, but hopefully in time he'll sit still. Now we have something for our Friday mornings! 

Did I mention that the library is right across the street from our great new doctor's office?! It's called Mesa Family Practice. (A throwback to "home" :)

I am liking Farmington more and more each day.

Swim Lessons

My non-native Arizonian, 3 1/2 year old is finally in swim lessons! All his cousins are little fish, while he merely races the deck at Grandma's pool and screams when he has to get in. 

He was not one bit excited at the prospect of taking swim lessons (and even a Spiderman toy bribe didn't work). He was in the middle of a full blown panic attack, while we sat in the parking lot, clutching at his car seat belt with all his might, screaming, when I had an idea. I remembered a class was going on before his and since we were early, they'd still be swimming. I stopped pleading/demanding/coaxing and excitedly told him that some kids were taking their lesson right now and if we hurried, we might get to see them!!!! I don't know how that worked, but it did. He willingly went right in, and I pointed across the pool, where the class was and had him watch what they were doing. 

Then I was approached by a lifeguard with too little to do and told I needed to be {behind the yellow line}. I looked up, puzzled. Huh?! "Can't I just show him the class that is swimming right now? He's nervous and wants to know what will happen."

"Yes, you can watch.... behind the yellow line. It's state law."

Oh, my eye roll was TORTURE to hold back! We were maybe 2 feet in front of it and still farrrr from the class and my arm was around him. He wasn't going to drown. 

Show me that state law!! I want to see where it says in state law writing that all parents must stay behind the yellow caution tape while their child is in swim lessons at the Farmington community pool!

But I didn't say one thing and moved back two feet. The world was in order again. 

The other class ended and the teacher came over to round up the next class and walk them over to the water. Blessings be upon Collin, he went happily! Then I remembered my camera! I hurried over and asked the teacher if I could snap one quick picture on his first day. She said yes and as I was turning back to return to behind the yellow line, the same lifeguard approached me. "Ma'am you are not allowed over here. On the last day of class, you will be allowed over and can take a picture." I'm surprised she didn't end with, "it's state law." 

Give me a break! What is this place? This time my eye did roll, but I'm pretty sure I was turned before it did.

(You can kind of see in the background, next to the door, the bleachers lined with yellow tape.) 

This is my view from where Weston and I sit. We basically see nothing. Actually, I only took this picture because one morning, the fire department was outfitted in massive hazmat suits and doing drills in the water. You can barely see them beyond the rainbow rings.

So now, you know where to find us every Tues. and Thursday morning! I'm so glad he likes it and hopefully he's learning something too. Maybe after a few months of this, he'll actually be ready to swim this summer!