Finally...

This is probably the happiest post that I have made for a long time :) <----- See, happy! So, for those of you who don't know, Ryan finally got a job. It has been a VERY long road, but we are excited for a new little part of our lives.

About a year ago, I ran over to my parent's house one Sunday afternoon for something. Their home teachers were there, and somehow the subject of Ryan's employment came up. One of their home teachers is the director of PEHP, public employees health plan, for the State of Utah. He mentioned that they might have something coming up and he'd keep us posted. Well, who knows what has gone on there for the last year, but finally, just before Christmas, he sent Ryan an email saying that a position for an actuarial analyst had been posted. They only left it up for about 3 days, and it was right before Christmas, so we were hoping that they didn't get too much interest for it. Just after the new year, they called and schedule an interview with Ryan for January 12th. We prepared like crazy!! We did mock interview together with like every spare moment we had. On January 24th (about the time we were starting to lose hope!) they finally called and offered him a position. It was a good day!

It has been a very long road. It was 21 months, to the day, since Ryan graduated from BYU. We had such high hopes when he graduated, but I guess the Lord had some refining to do on us! I hope it worked... at least a little bit. I do have to say that we have learned a lot. Both of temporal and spiritual things. Ryan spent a lot of time with the LDS employment center in those 21 months. Their "motto" I guess you could call it - the thing they put all over their literature - is "if you are prepared, ye shall not fear". That became our own family motto. We worked hard, prepared as much as we could, and tried to stay as faithful as possible. Obviously, I would never wish for that to happen to anyone, especially not myself, but as with all trials, I'm very grateful for the things that we learned. My prayers now are that we will remember them, and remember these times when we were forced into humility!

We still have a long road ahead. The pay is well below the average for an entry-level actuary, and because of the little hole that we've dug being poor over the last 6 1/2 years, we have some catching up to do. So we're probably not going anywhere for a while. Oh, and first item on the list is a new car so we can have more babies!! :) We're very squished in our car already, and we just can't go on much longer. It doesn't help that we're all like a mile long, so our legs don't fit in anywhere! But some people are happy we're staying. My brother wouldn't even congratulate Ryan until he made sure that the job was in state and we would still be close. Which is a little selfish because he's going to be leaving us soon, but oh well :)

Although a lot of the people that I am most grateful for probably don't even read this, I'm going to say it anyway. I'm grateful for our ward who reached out so much to help us. I guess really he wouldn't even have this job if we didn't go to church because he never would have gotten that connection. There were also several others who gave us names and phone numbers of people who may be able to help. Everyone in our ward was so supportive. I'm grateful for my awesome friends who listened to me complain about dumb little things all the time. Thank you for letting me vent! I'm grateful that my marriage survived, and quite well actually! Not that it was ever in any danger, but I know things like this are tough on a marriage. I'm so grateful that both Ryan and I always managed to turn to each other, rather than pushing each other away in all the stress and frustration. I'm grateful for my babies, who made life so bearable. Ryan and I often wondered whether having Bella, and then Evan, was the wise thing to do in our situation. After having them for a while, we realized that they were the only sanity and comedic relief we had! I'm grateful for their awesome little personalities that make us laugh every day. And last but not least, I'm so grateful to both of our families. I know that a million prayers were said for us by those closest to us over the last couple of years. Our families have been so supportive, both emotionally and financially. Thank you Andy and Sarah for all the clothes you've given us. I know we avoided probably thousands of dollars in clothes for our kids over the years. I don't think our budget would've worked without them! And a special thanks to both of our parents. They've put up with a lot having us so close ALL the time!! And the support financially has been so helpful. Obviously Ryan's parents have allowed us to live in their home for a long time. That has been incredibly helpful!

We are just grateful for everyone who has helped and grateful for this new opportunity for Ryan. And, best of all, we're sooooooooo excited that he got to quit UPS. Next week is his last and it feels surreal. Ryan started that job before we even got married. The real test of our marriage is to see if I can adjust my evening schedule to have Ryan in it! I've gotten very used to my quiet evenings and having those hours while he's at work being the most productive of my day. It's going to be so weird to have him home at night, but I'm so excited! I will no longer be the only sister in the ward that needs the R.S. to provide babysitting for the night Relief Society meeting!! And now we can go to the ward Christmas party together! I know, they seem stupid, but I really have missed him at night. So, the job that was supposed to be temporary, for a year max, we will say goodbye to after 6 1/2 years. And I don't think we'll miss it!

Sorry this got so long. If any of you made it through this, congrats ;) I just feel like I have to say thank you to some people that have helped make this a rewarding and educational experience for us! Maybe my next post will have pictures...

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Before I get into Christmas, I thought I'd update those who haven't seen Bella for a while. Her hair was getting really long, and I was getting really sick of it! Because of all the curls, it would get so badly tangled. Even with conditioner, it was taking me about 10 minutes each day to brush it out. Because I'm always late, this didn't go over well for me and my time schedule! So I decided to cut it off. I was really sad, and shed a couple small tears while I did it, at having her curls gone, but I'm in love with the new hairdo! We went from this...

To this...

Now I just brush it out and throw in a headband, and we're good to go. We will miss Bella's curls, but this is definitely a better deal for both of us.

We started the holiday season out with some good fun in the snow. This was the first year we got Bella all bundled up and actually played in the snow. Ryan also took her sledding that day and said she loved it. I stayed home with Evan because we didn't have any snow clothes for him. He wasn't very happy about being left behind.

We also decided to do a gingerbread house this year. I thought it would be fun with Bella. She's finally getting old enough to do some of this fun stuff. Turns out all she really wanted to do was eat the frosting!

This is the side of the roof that Bella did...

And this is Ryan's side...

It was kind of hard for me to not be a perfectionist about it, but I withheld and let Bella just throw frosting and candy all over it and she loved it. She had fun eating all the candy off of it over the next few weeks.

We also decided to take the kids down to temple square to see the lights. Bella thought it was totally cool.

And, true to Bella's form, her favorite thing was the sheep! She's always so interested in the most random parts of things! But we stood here and looked at the sheep for like 20 minutes. Whatever makes her happy!

We got a little tree this year, to fit in our little space! We put it up on the pool table so the kids couldn't get to it. The whole time, Bella called it HER tree. That's the way of most things around here - everything belongs to Bella! We let her have this one!

Christmas finally came!! That last week was crazy busy and I felt like I was never going to get everything done. I ended up not finishing Evan's stocking, but he didn't notice so it was a good thing to drop off the list. We spent most of the evening with Ryan's family, and made a small appearance at my house later on that night. I made the kids pajamas for Christmas and we let them open them on Christmas Eve.

They were so stinking cute, and Bella loved her princesses!

They actually look happy here, but Evan is very unhappy! Bella was tackling him and trying to have a special moment, but Evan wasn't down with that!

Christmas morning!! So, Bella hasn't really figured Christmas out completely. Ryan woke up at about 9:00 and Bella and Evan were still sleeping, which is kind of unusual. Ryan LOVES Christmas, so not having his children wake up excited for it was really hard for him! I just enjoyed the sleep! He finally went in at 10 to wake them up. And then they were excited! Santa brought a lot of new toys that they really enjoyed. Like this new teepee. Santa spent A LOT of time on this teepee on Christmas Eve to get it finished for Bella! When she saw it, she gasped and put her hands up to her mouth. She stared at it for a minute, then said "can I get in it?" She and Evan have loved it since and it made all of Santa's hard work well worth it.

They also got a new car set, Evan got a basketball hoop, and a little Toy Story table with 2 chairs for them. Their stockings were filled with all kinds of fun toys. Santa also brought Toy Story 3, which has been a huge hit since.

After spending some time with Ryan's family on Christmas morning, we headed over to my parents for dinner and more presents.

Christmas joy...

My mom made the pajama pants for all the kids again. That's 14 - yes, count 'em - 14 pairs of pants. Next year it'll be 16, or more if anyone else decides to get pregnant in the next couple of months. I'm not sure how long she'll be able to keep it up at the rate we're all going, but they're cute while it lasts! This is everyone but my brother's kids, who weren't in town for Christmas.

All the girls...

And the boys... (we're a little lopsided!)

The Monday after Christmas, my mom, sisters and I got together for our annual shopping trip. It was a "true" sisters shopping trip this year. Neither of my sisters-in-law could make it this year, which was a bummer. But we had a blast. I took my camera to take pictures of the fun, and ended up with two pictures of Terra! She took one picture of me, but I haven't gotten it from her yet. So much for recording the memories! But this shirt was hilarious. It says "I'm not short, I'm fun size!", which we thought was pretty funny for Terra to put on.

Terra in her awesome heels... These made her about 6'7", 6'8".

Our 6th anniversary was on the 28th. Ryan had a friend get married on the 29th, so we made those festivities part of our celebrating. It was kind of fun to go watch a wedding for our anniversary. After the wedding, we went down to the Gateway and saw a movie and had dinner. My bestest friend (You rock, Katie!) got us a room at her hotel down at the Gateway and we enjoyed a nice night there. It was sooooooo beautiful to wake up to silence! I love my kids dearly, but man they are a rude awakening sometimes! My mom and sister were awesome and watched our kids for us the whole day and overnight.

The next day we went to my sister-in-law's apartment to watch a movie and have lunch. Since she's been on bedrest with her pregnancy, she doesn't get to get out much, so we thought we'd go entertain her. We had a fun afternoon together. There's a picture of that, but I don't have it yet (hmmm, maybe I should've waited to do this until I had all the pictures :)

New Year's was a blast too. My sister came with her kids, Terra was in town, and David invited a couple of friends over. My aunt and uncle, cousin, her husband and baby all came over to party with us. We had tons of good food as we rang in the new year.

So, that was our holidays. ryan took the week between Christmas and New Year's off of work , so we had about a week and a half of no responsibility and no stress. It was wonderful! It was hard to get back into reality. So here we are with a new year. We're praying that this year bring more success and happiness than last year did! We're hoping that this is our year! I hope everyone's holidays were wonderful and full of love and happiness. And I hope everyone has a fantastic year this year!

And all that Jazz...

Okay, so it's been a while again. I'm pretty sure there are like 3 people that actually read this blog, but those 3 people seem to really care that I'm never on top of my blogging. So to my faithful trio of readers, here you go...

This is a large smattering of random events that have gone on. I'll be brief!! But everything's out of order because I'm too lazy to change the pictures around and this is the order I uploaded them in.

Evan turned 1 on November 1st. We didn't make a huge deal out of it because hey, he's 1! One day he'll look back at the 4 pictures that I took of his "birthday party" and hate me!

This was Evan with his special little cake I made, just for him.

These are Evan's cakes. I made a big one for everyone else and a small one for Evan. There's a big ugly star on the big one because it was Evan's star birthday. Poor guy won't even remember! The colors didn't turn out right and I tried this new frosting that didn't work well for decorating, so it's pretty much an ugly cake, but it tasted divine!!
Then there was Halloween (the day before Evan's birthday!). Ryan dressed up as Mario last year, so we decided he would do that again and make it a family theme. Evan was Luigi. I could not find a green hat or a green shirt that would fit him, so his shirt is huge and he has a beanie Luigi hat. He's a gangsta Luigi! Oh well, he still got lots of candy...
Bella was Princess Peach. I decided a week before Halloween that I wanted to do this, so I went out and bought all the stuff and made her dress. I thought it turned out pretty well. It's a little big, so it'll be perfect for her to be next year too! I just hope we live in a different neighborhood by then.
The whole crew
If any of you are wondering where I am, I will just say, I don't do Halloween. Totally okay with making the kid's costumes and running all over high heaven to get everything we need, but I don't do it for myself! Besides, the only characters left were like Bowser and Toad, so....

This is a few days before Halloween. I bought a blonde wig for Bella to be Princess Peach, but she refused to wear it. Evan wasn't too thrilled about it either! I'm such a mean mommy!!
This is random, but I put it in here cause I think it's hilarious! I love these two kiddos. They seriously get me through every day! They're just so stinkin' funny!
Also a random picture, but it needed to be posted. Things like this need to be seen by the world! We went down to Hurricane like the first weekend of October for my niece's baptism. When we walked into our hotel room, this is what we found. It was A-W-E-S-O-M-E!! If you can't tell by the picture, it's huge! We ended up taking a family bath in our swimsuits and the kids loved it! Too bad it was a family vacation, instead of a just me & Ryan vacation!
So, I had a request to post these pictures. Back in September, Ryan's brother got married. They decided to do it in San Diego with just immediate family and a few close friends. We went down on Thursday, spent Friday at Disneyland, Saturday doing the wedding, and came home Sunday. It ended up being an awesome trip and we all had a really good time. The wedding was beautiful. I only wish we had left our kids at home so we could have enjoyed some of it more. They got married in the San Diego temple in the afternoon. That evening, we all got to go on a boat where with dinner and dancing. Since Kristina is the only member in her family, they did a whole ring ceremony on the deck of the boat before the little cruise started. It was all at sunset and it was really just perfect! This is from the ring ceremony...
This is the boat we were on...
This is at the temple. Kaelee (Ryan's niece) and Bella just have a blast when they get together. They are so cute together and they look like they could be sisters. They were just so cute marching down the sidewalk holding hands...
Ryan was VERY happy to be there!
The happy little family!
This was from the day before at Disneyland. Lara went to buy them the Just Married Mickey ears, but they were all out of the groom ones, so Brad got a pirate hat instead!
While we were at Disneyland, we stood in line at that new thing to meet Tinker Bell. Bella was absolutely speechless! She just sat there for like 2 or 3 minutes stroking Tinker Bell's arm while Tinker Bell asked a bunch of unanswered questions! She still talks about when she got to meet Tinker Bell.
I love this look! "Mom, are you getting this? I'm actually talking to Tinker Bell!"
So that's it. Hope it wasn't too long!

Happy Birthday Bella!

Happy Birthday to my most fabulous little Bella! For those of you who keep up on my kid's birthdays, (none of you :)) it is not actually Bella's birthday yet. But with Ryan working two jobs and only home on the weekends, we thought we'd pick one of the Saturdays around her birthday and tell her that was the day. It's not much of a fun birthday spending the day at home with mom as usual. So we did her little paper chain countdown up to Saturday and declared that the big day! She was sooooo excited for her birthday to come. We wanted to make it a really fun day for her, so we started out swimming, one of Bella's favorite things to do. My sister, Stefanie, her husband, Travis, and their kids came. My brother, David, came, along with Ryan's parents and his brother and sister, Paul and Lara. We had a blast swimming for a couple of hours.

We put a life jacket on Evan and Ryan just laid him in the water and he floated around like this almost the entire time. It was pretty hilarious! He was so chill and we just pushed him around the pool. He barely even moved!

This is Bella's cake. It's simple, because I haven't decorated a cake for quite a while! I did a small round with some cupcakes to go with it. I was trying to go for the TinkerBell theme, because most of the gifts that we got her were TinkerBell, but Bella pitched a fit in the store and wanted Ariel, and it was for her birthday, so.... I caved! Ariel it was!

After swimming, we went back to my parent's house and had pizza and cake and ice cream. My brother, Ryan and his wife Sarah came over too.

All the cake for me!

Bella blowing out her candles.

My mom got some fun stuff at the dollar store to entertain Bella with! She got some wings, a hat, and a little skirt. They had gone to have fun at the dollar store the night before with my sister. Her real gift was a princess game book with cool little princess magnets and stuff, which I neglected to take a picture of! But I think Bella may have liked the wings better than anything all day!

My mom also found a big giant gift bag at the dollar store that she gave Bella her presents in. After she had opened everything, she loaded everything into her bag and lugged it around. It was kind of funny to watch!

Grandma and Grandpa Jubber got Bella a couple of new movies, some crayons and markers, paper, and scissors so she could have some coloring fun. Ryan and I also got her a couple of movies, including the Tinker Bell movie, and a Tinker Bell sticker book. I also made her some Tinker Bell pajama pants and a Tinker Bell quilt. She's been really into Tinker Bell lately, if you couldn't tell! I think overall, she brought in a pretty good haul for her birthday. I also got her a few mylar princess balloons because that was what she requested several weeks ago for her birthday. I got Ariel, Tinker Bell, and a castle one with all the princesses in the windows.

So needless to say, we have a little girl that loves princesses!! And it's so much fun!

Now, some of you may be wondering if it was wise for me to go all out like this when we're dirt poor, so I will justify myself! Ryan and I have been a little blue lately, just dealing with the stress of our situation and feeling very pressured about what to do in the future. We've had a lot on our minds and I hate to admit it, but I don't think we've been very fun parents :( So, when Bella was so excited about her birthday, we decided that we were gonna take a reason to celebrate and run with it. So we did. And I have to say, it was kind of worth it! We had such a great day and Bella was so happy. And I still feel good. I had one of the best days today than I've had in a while. Chalk it up to an awesome princess birthday party! And I have to admit, I'm kind of excited to top it next year!