New life in Tucson!

Life has been pretty good here in Tucson. Even though it’s not where I wanted to live, we have been happy. Our apartment is nice and large, and we have made lots of friends in our ward. It is much easier to make friends when you have kids! I was worried about that part, since our last move to Oregon was such a hard transition, even though I was excited about living there. It is wonderful being so close to Adam’s sister Amber and her family and having them in our ward. Lily loves her cousin Amelia, and they are so cute together. Josh likes running around outside, even though there are only sidewalks to play on and no grass. They don’t seem to mind much. And they sure love the swimming pool! I guess the Lord knew this is where we need to be.

Joshua is 18 months and officially in nursery. He is very sweet, but such a daredevil! He jumps off everything, runs away from me squealing and laughing, climbs everything, and laughs even when he gets hurt! I am a bit worried about what trouble he might get into when he gets older, but he is the most adorable thing in the world right now. He has a little friend named Norah whom I watch during the last two hours of church because her parents are busy with callings. He apparently likes her because whenever we go to her house, he grins and says “Nori! Nori!” In fact, when she went out of town, he missed her because every time we drove by her neighborhood, he would get excited and say “Nori!” and would be a little sad when we didn’t visit her.

He talks about spiders and volcanoes all the time, and has a serious sweet tooth. My favorite thing is that when he is in his crib, instead of sucking his thumb for comfort, he sticks his finger in his bellybutton and hums himself to sleep loudly with his pacifier in his mouth. It is just about the cutest thing I have ever seen! The only problem is that when I forget and put him in a onsie, he can't fall asleep for his nap. I can't we won't be doing footie pajamas with this guy!

   

Lily is growing up so much. She will be four soon, and she is learning her letters and numbers. Even though she can’t identify numbers larger than 4, she understands math really well. She can add, subtract, and even multiply small numbers fairly accurately. Reading is not coming so quickly, but she has almost two years until kindergarten, so I think it’s fine.

We are doing a preschool exchange with another family in our ward. Their 3-year-old Violet (Norah’s sister, incidentally), comes over every other Tuesday for 2 hours and we learn preschool things and do fun activities. So far we have learned about Noah’s ark, rainbows, colors, the number four, squares, and are planning to do the letter “G” with some Halloween activities this week. The odd weeks, Lily goes to Violet’s house. They are so cute! I love having a reason to plan a hands-on activity to do at home with Lily, because otherwise, I rarely do that.

Lily wanted to do characters from Frozen for Halloween. So she is Elsa, and we made her a French braided yarn wig to make it more authentic. It’s darling! Joshua is Olaf, and he loves his costume. “Olas! Olas!” he exclaims whenever we put it on him. I am going to dress up as Anna and Adam is going to be a half-baked version of Kristoff. I ran out of motivation for his costume, so it is not as authentic looking. He doesn’t care at all though.

Adam’s mom convinced us to go to Disneyland in January, and Lily is SOOO excited to see all the “real princesses, who live at Disneyland!!” I don’t even think she knows what a roller coaster is, she just knows that Disneyland has castles and princesses. That’s all she cares about.

Something very cool happened here recently: they began construction on the Tucson temple last week. It is a 13 minute drive from our house!  That is a huge improvement over the 1 ½ - 2 hour drive we currently have, which equates to an all-day trip with the kids, or a most-of-the-day trip without them. This is a huge blessing, and I honestly can hardly wait for it to open!

Adam likes his job. He is extremely busy this semester, but things should get better in January. He is teaching couple relationships, advanced family theories, and dynamics of family relationships. He rides the bus every day and is gone 11 hours each day. I thought that would be hard, since it’s more than I am used to. But it’s not so bad. It just means he gets less time with the kids in the evenings.

Adam and I went on an amazing date last week: we got to see the Broadway touring production of Phantom of the Opera. I have wanted to see this show for more than 20 years, since I was a little girl. My mom loved the music and we listened to it all the time. I know most of the words to every major song. Finally, after all that time, we got to go. It was fabulous! Truly, I was giddy with excitement probably the first half of the show. The set, music, costumes, and everything else were breathtaking! It was a really fun (and much needed!) night out. 

Even though there are still a number of pictures to put on our walls, we are feeling mostly settled and at home here. It's not as close as I would have hoped to our family, and the summer heat was really difficult for me to deal with. But I feel that it's the right place. We are very blessed! We do miss everyone in Corvallis, as well as all our friends spread all over the country! Good thing for social media, email and texting! :) Please keep in touch! 

Summer of Friends and Fun Trips

What an eventful (and hectic!) summer we had! Probably because we went to California to visit Adam's family two months in a row, and then went to Utah to visit my family two months in a row, things felt extra fun, but also a little hard to keep up with! While I am sad that I probably won't be able to visit my family or friends until next summer - 9 whole months away! - it is a relief that we will be traveling less for a while.

In July, we visited Adam's family in Soledad, CA (near Salinas) for the annual summer get-together. We had a lot of fun, and Lily especially enjoyed the time with Nana, Papa, and her cousin Amelia. Then we returned in August to welcome Travis (Adam's youngest brother) home from his LDS mission to Maceio, Brazil.

One month later in September, I took Lily to Utah for our annual summer visit, and especially so I could meet my dad's (then) fiancee, Elizabeth. We had a wonderful time, and Lily was ever so excited to return for in October for my dad's wedding, which was marvelous. But I have to say, a major trip every month since July has almost made we swear off traveling! Am I the only person who goes crazy when I come home to no clean clothes and no food in the fridge and piles of bills to pay and boatloads of other random things to catch up on? I always feel like I have to do a week's worth of household tasks in one day, and it makes me nuts! But probably after a few months of being stuck here in the Oregon winter gloom, I will be desperately wishing to go visit somewhere.

Here are some pictures of our adventures this summer, playing with friends, traveling, and adventures playing with friends while traveling. Actually, they are mostly pictures of Lily doing those things, but she's the cutest one anyway.

Lily really likes helping around the house, especially "washing" dishes. Although not always effective in cleaning the dishes themselves, it is a very effective means for cleaning the chair and the floor and Lily, or at least getting them soaking wet so mom has to clean them afterwards. 

Family photos! 

This is a picture of Adam's family, for the first time in its entirety since the little girls were born. 

Welcome home uncle Travis! 

Lily was almost as excited about riding the bus at the airport as she was about visiting relatives. 

This is Lily and her current "best friend", Molly, whose family is in our ward and lives a few doors down. They play together on almost a daily basis, and Lily practically goes into withdrawals if she doesn't see Molly for more than 24 hours. Their favorite recreation is to sit in Molly's doll cribs. Too bad Lily doesn't like her own crib this much ...

They also think it's fun to "study" Adam's textbooks in bed. 

(Just wait til you get to college girls! The studying will never end.)

We seized our last opportunity to go camping this summer and took a trip to Cascadia at the beginning of September. The swimming hole would have been fabulous if it were 15 degrees warmer outside, but Lily still had lots of fun.

This is Lily anticipating a BYU football party. She is such a little Cougar fan! She can sing the end of the fight song and frequently runs around saying "Go cougars!" We also apparently have so much BYU apparel that Lily thinks any print on a piece of clothing says "b-i-u".

This is Lily watching a BYU football game. Don't ask me why, but she seems to actually enjoy it! She sometimes turns on the TV herself and gets excited if a football game is playing, and her attention span for something she cannot possibly comprehend is surprisingly long. She also talks about football. One day, the first thing she said upon waking up at 6 am was "watch fip-ball game!". And a few nights ago, as I was putting her to bed, she told me she wanted to play football with Jesus. At least we're teaching her about all the most important things in life!

This is Lily helping strain berries to make jam at my grandma's house in Mackay, Idaho. Lily really loves her Great Grandma Evelyne, or "deet ef-lint" as she calls her.

Lily was enthralled by feeding the ducks at Salem pond,

and had a marvelous impromptu princess party with my friend Amberly's girls, 

Katelyn and Lizzie, during our trip to Utah.

Amberly also introduced Lily to her favorite pastime in the entire world (yes, even above playing in doll cribs and watching football): riding horses! The ponies at Thanksgiving Point have become a requisite tradition which we repeat every time we go to Utah. Lily talks about this on almost a daily basis.

In between all our trips out of state, my dear friend and former roommate, Candice, came to visit us with her son Bennett. Lily and Bennett are only two months apart in age, but have never met until now! They had a wonderful time together. We made Halloween cookies,

went on walks in the park, 

read books together, and had an all-around great time! Lily's favorite part? Wearing Bennett's fire engine pajamas to bed. She really wants a pair.

We also visited the pumpkin patch!  

Lily picked out her very own pumpkin, which we severed from the vine and prepared to purchase.

Then Lily found a "cute little pumpkin", which she wouldn't let go of, so we finally gave in and cut it from its vine as well. 

Then, of course, she found a "tiny baby pumpkin" which she couldn't live without. Needless to say, Daddy, Mommy, and Lily all left with their very own pumpkins.

We have had a wonderful summer and fall season! We have enjoyed visiting everyone, in spite of the little bits of stress, and will miss everybody for the next 9 months! But they will be productive: I play to stay home and cook up this bun in the oven!