I Am a Survivor!

It has been two weeks today from when Nolan left to start his new job in Washington. And it is not as hard as I thought it would be. We had a great Easter. My dad hid eggs at their house and we had dinner there.

Nolan likes his new job. He was starting to get bored but they finally have a project for him to start on and show them what he is made of. He is also having fun hanging out with his mom and dad. His dad is taking him golfing and his mom had him join her city choir to sing show tunes!

I, on the other hand, am having the time of my life! Just kidding. :) The kids and I are surviving. We call and say goodnight to daddy on Skype almost every night. I pack a few boxes every day and try to keep the house somewhat presentable just in case anyone wants to come and look at it. It went on the market last week. We have one person that wants to come and look at it and had a call on it last weekend. Hopefully we will have more interest this weekend, but there are a flood of homes that went on the market recently to take advantage of the new home owners tax credit that ends April 30th. So there are a lot of houses for sale, but hopefully a lot of people are more motivated to get out there and look.

Nolan gets to come home next weekend and then we will see him at his sister's wedding on the 22nd in Utah. My grandparents are also getting sealed in the St George temple on the 24th and we are very excited about that!!

Big Changes!!

I know I havent blogged for a very long time, but I am going to have to get much better for my friends that will soon be far away.
Lets start at the beginning. Early in January, Nolan was laid off from HP. At first Nolan was nervous but I was excited knowing how much he hated working there. He had thought of looking for a different job for a while, but now he had to. So, he started networking, going to resume meetings, calling people, looking on Monster.com. He went to a conference called DVCon and had a great time, made more contacts. In the end he had 5 interviews and 3 job offers. We fasted and prayed, went to the temple and tried to decide what was the best option for our family. The three offers were from Western Digital, National Analytics, and Columbia Energy. National Analytics had a crazy 16 page non-compete clause that we were told by a lawyer not to sign. It would have been a really fun and interesting job in Greeley, Co. Western Digital was a good offer but would be the same work he was doing at HP and big company atmosphere and Nolan wasnt sure he wanted to go back to that. We both had a really good feeling about the job with Columbia Energy in Kennewick, Wa. This is where Nolan grew up and his parents still live there. In the end, we went with Columbia Energy. Nolan will be leaving on Friday to head up there. He will be working for a small company, but with benefits still. We werent sure if we would find a company that offered benefits. I always took that for granted before. He will be doing vitrification of nuclear waste. The girls and I will wait until the end of the school year and Lexa's dance recital to head up to Washington. Sounds like houses in our price range are selling within weeks so we arent too worried about that. Plus we will be living with Nolans parents so we wont have to worry about paying 2 mortgages.
We are sad to leave my family here. But we are also excited about a new adventure. I am excited about living in a place with less snow. I love Nolans parents and think living by them will be a lot of fun! Nolan is excited to experience a small company and getting to go to the family cabin whenever he wants to! I am not looking forward to packing up the house, but the good news is I have a few months so it takes the pressure off. I'm always excited to think of a new house.
We will miss our friends but are excited to see what is out there waiting for us!

New Years Eve

We had a great New Years Eve. We miss when we cant be in Washington and eat Marilyns (Nolan's mom) great cooking! She makes a whole table full of finger/snack food. This year we tried to throw a big party too, but sadly no one wanted to come. We finally found one family in our ward that would come over! They have 3 girls, one of which we call Clara's twin because they look so much alike. One day the older girls even tried to take Clara out of nursery at church instead of their sister, Ella! The mom had to work until about 11. Her parents were in town and came over too, along with my mom being here.
Here is what we had to eat:
Wings from Pizza Hut - mild buffalo, garlic parmesan, spicy asian and honey bbq
Avocado Eggrolls with dip (copy cat from the Cheesecake Factory)
Cream cheese crab wantons
Devils on horseback (dates stuffed with asiago cheese and wrapped in bacon)
spinach dip
bean dip
spicy jalepano ranch dip (tried to copy Chuy's)
tortilla chips
punch (sprite and raspberry juice)
pop
lil' smokies
chicken nuggies

After eating we got the games out. We played a game called Things. It was a lot like apples to apples, but everyone wrote down an answer and then went around the table and everyone got to guess who wrote down what. Then we played a round of Imaginiff. And then we got out Catch Phrase. This happens to be Nolans all time favorite game. We have the electronic version. We stopped around midnight to cheer and drink some Martinelli's, then went right back to playing. We played till well after 2 am and were quite slap happy by then. It was an awesome and fun night.

We Had a Great Christmas!

As I am wandering our house tonight and doing laundry, I feel as if we had a perfect Christmas this year. We werent overwhelmed. Things were just right. I feel very blessed to live in my house, in this country, with my family. Ahhh.

Happy Birthday Lexa!!

This day 6 years ago we brought our first baby girl into the world! After 18 hours of labor and a failed epidural, Alexandra Joy came it two pushes! From the time the nurse checked to see if I was ready to push to the time she was born was less than 20 min. She started to crown before the doctor was even there and they told me to stop! Lexa was 6 lbs 11 oz. Such a skinny thing. We have loved having her in our family and look forward to more years to come. :)

Boston Weekend

Nolan had an IEEE meeting in Boston last weekend and I got to tag along. He had a meeting in Boston in spring of 2007 that I also got to be at and I wanted to go back. Marilyn is a wonderful grandma and flew here from Washington for a week of fun with us and the girls. While we were gone she took them to a pumpkin farm (run by men from a rehad center) and to a discovery childrens museum in Fort Collins. Both looked like a lot of fun and tired everyone out by the end of the day.

While in Boston Nolan had meetings Friday night, a conference all day Saturday with a 30th celebration dinner Saturday night and meetings on Sunday morning. During this time I played and relaxed. We actually were staying in Cambridge and on Friday night I walked to a restaraunt called Legal Seafood. I got to walk through the MIT campus. The rest of the night I watched the season premeire of Ugly Betty and work on my cross-stitch I am trying to get done for Christmas. Saturday I slept in till about 10:45. Left the room around 12. Ate lunch at Faneuil Hall and did some shopping. Then I went to the Museum of Science. I saw a movie on their Omni Dome, like a combo of plantetarium and Imax. Then I wandered around the museum and saw a show in the planetarium before I left. The show was about the origins of the universe and how the universe seemed to work. It was very interesting and it seemed to me that the more questions they had and asked, the more it confirmed to me the existence of something bigger than ourselves, like a Heavenly Father who was smart enough to create it all!! It was very cool. I went with Nolan to the celebration dinner. I asked him before we left if I should bring along "walking" shoes or just wear my high heels. He said we would definitely come back to the hotel before going out with everyone after the dinner. So, no walking shoes. After the dinner our friend Vishnu, who lives in Boston and has a car, invited some of us to walk to a place that served amazing hot chocolate in Harvard Square. The bus to dinner really made me sick so I was willing to walk miles in heels just to get a ride back in a car! My feet were ready to fall off, but the chocolate was definitely worth it!! I even bought a couple of packs for me and Marilyn of white chocolate mix. Sunday Nolan was off to meetings and I just slept in and then got ready and packed to go. We all had lunch at Legal Seafoods after their meetings were done. Half went to the airport and half went back to the hotel. Nolan and I got some pictures on the river. It turns out there was a really big rowing competition that weekend. While waiting to go to the airport it started to snow. We were with a girl, Gigi, who grew up in Hong Kong and now lives in LA. She once saw snow already on the ground but had never been in falling snow. She was pretty cute and funny to watch running around outside the hotel. :)

Once we all got to the airport most of our flights had all been delayed. Nolan and I had to run throught the Chicago airport to make our connection to Denver, but we did it! We made it home around 2 am and took until around 3 to finally get to bed. Grandma stayed until Tuesday morning.

We had a great weekend and the girls loved having time with Grandma. :)Thanks Marilyn!!!!

My Wonderful Day

I have this problem of not returning library books on time, thus incuring large overdue fees. This kind of frustrates Nolan so we made a bet at the beginning of the summer. If I could go through the whole summer and not get a late fee, I could have a whole day to do whatever I wanted. If I did get a late fee I would have to wear a matching dress with my girls. Now you may think that I just didnt check out any books the whole summer! Not true. I did check out lots of books and turned them all in on time. I thought "summer" meant until school started. Nolan thought it meant until the official first day of fall in September. Either way you look at it, I won!! So today I was able to claim my reward. I slept in until about 10:30, read a book for a while, worked on my cross-stitch and watched movies, read and slept a little more, made dinner, helped put girls to bed and am now cross-stitching again while Nolan is watching football. We had our first big snow today so Nolan took both girls out a few times and it was pretty funny. Clara is so cute in her get up. Not once today did I have to take care of the girls, although during my nap Clara kept coming up the stairs and yelling "mama!" at my door. I had to get up and play with her then!! So, thanks Nolan for a great day!!! I should make bets like this more often!!