Monster Baby Bash

I forget if I've mentioned it before, but my sister Carrie is expecting an extra special Christmas present this year! A large bird or a fat man in a red suit won't be delivering it, she'll have to do that herself.

 

Last weekend I threw Carrie a baby shower with my excellent co-hosts, Joy and DJ. A few months back Carrie found a photo of a cute crib mobile with little dangling monsters. It was a little on the expensive side, so she asked me if it was something I could duplicate. I went off in a slightly different direction, but monsters is what she got. It was the monster mobile that gave me the idea for the monster theme of her shower.

 

I found lots of great ideas online and before, during, and after our move I started piecing it all together. I had so much fun with all the planning and, in my opinion, the shower was lots of fun! Carrie had a great turnout and got a good jump on a lot of the things she'll need for her little guy.

 

 

 

I'm thrilled that I was able to be here and had the help and time to put a fun party together for her! She's done so much to spoil my boys that it only seemed fitting for me to kick off the spoiling of her little one. I speak for many...we're all so excited to meet him!

Utah

We've now been in Utah just shy of 3 weeks, and it's been a very busy 3 weeks! Darius started working at the SL airport on the 1st, just a couple days after we arrived. I spent the same day looking around the SL area for a new place for us to call home (which luckily I did) with Joy and Carrie in tow. A day later I flew to Louisiana and back again to pick up Ben and Zach from Nini and Papaw...thanks again for watching them for us Margaret & Alfred!

While waiting to move into our apartment, we were fortunate to be able to stay with my sister Michel's family in our parent's room (Thanks again for opening your home to us!). The boys thoroughly enjoyed their cousins and their cousin's toys! We made dinner for everyone a few nights, and the boys and I went with Michel and her family on a beautiful hike and enjoyed some beautiful colors in the foliage.

 

 

This is the first year we've really experienced a traditional Autumn with the boys. Even when we lived in Alaska, there wasn't that distinct change in season. When we visited Joy's place last week, the boys were curious about the leaves in the driveway, and I was caught a little off guard when I tried to explain Autumn to them.

After a week of staying with family, we moved into our apartment in North Salt Lake last week. We're really happy with our apartment, but the one downfall is that it's on the third floor. I had come down with a cold from the trip out to get the boys, and Darius loaded up the rental truck the morning of our move by himself. Once it came time to haul everything up three flights of stairs, we were both already dreading it. Lucky for us we had Joy to help us out and two extremely nice neighbors that pitched in to help us. All the extra hands easily cut our time in half.

The days following the move were full of unpacking and getting settled into our new place mixed with getting ready for my sister Carrie's baby shower this past weekend...another post.

This week started out with a visit to Black Island Farms. My sister-in-law Stacey invited the boys and I along on a field trip her daughter Hope's preschool class was having there. It was a massive farm with corn mazes, fields of pumpkins, farm animals, tractor rids, and lots of fun stuff for the kids to do. We had a great time, and the boys were very sad when it came time to leave.

 

 

 

 

 

In addition to all the help Joy's given us with the move-in and unpacking, she's also been over to hang out a lot. She's my workout buddy, company at night when Darius is at work, and is now my cooking/baking student. I'm no expert in the kitchen, but she wants to learn, so I'm game to teach her what I know. Yesterday was pie 101. We made 3 apple pies here, 2 for our helpful neighbors and 1 to keep. We then moved on to Clair & Stacey's where we made 4 more, 2 apple and 2 banana cream. She did most of the work, and her pies came out beautiful and super tasty! Awesome work Joy!

If you would have asked me a couple of years ago if I'd ever live in Utah again, I would have firmly said no. When I first moved away over 10 years ago, I thought that there were better options out there. It wasn't until marriage and kids entered the picture that I began to realize the importance that family plays when raising kids. Knowing this I still had my reservations about living in Utah until this past Spring/Summer. After the trips I took with family this year to some of the national/state parks, I realized that Utah has so much more to offer than I ever thought it did. It's sad I grew up here and never appreciated all the great stuff to see and do here. I'm glad that I have the opportunity now to rediscover this state with my own family.

Who Knew!?

Secretly we love to move.

Not short cross-town or cross-state moves, but 2,000+ mile moves across the country. Since we first started dating, Darius and I have now made a total of 5 long distance moves. NJ/FL to CA, CA to FL, FL to AK, AK to FL, and now FL to UT. I won't even try to tally up the rest of our moves we made on our own before we got together.

It's unsettling to make such big moves, and just about every one of our moves was short notice and kind of a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants move. Really, who in their right mind would voluntarily choose to do such crazy things unless they were super passionate about it?

Crazy people that's who....and there are two such people right now sitting in a teepee at a KOA campground in Cortez, CO (okay maybe one is sawing logs). The exact same teepee we stayed in almost exactly a year ago. If someone had told us we'd be back here again in a year, we would have shook our heads and laughed. Well we are shaking our heads and laughing a bit. It's funny how life plays out.

About a month ago Darius accepted an opportunity to transfer with Delta from Orlando to Salt Lake City. The odds are much better for him to advance to a full time position in UT over FL. The pot was sweetened by the fact that I have a plethora of family in Utah, and just like that we were staring at a move in a month's time. My head is still in a bit of a fog over everything that has happened in such a short amount of time. There's no logical reason why all the pieces came together the way they did. Certainly there is some divine intervention at play mixed in with some very generous help from family.

Okay, so maybe we don't secretly love to move. It's a stressful process and almost always bittersweet to leave places and people we love. If only we could transplant all our favorite locations and people to one place. It's a selfish idea, but what a wonderful and crazy place it would be.

 

 

LaDart teepee out....again.

Sweet Ben

You know you have a sick kid on your hands when he asks to go to bed an hour early. Zach asked me to lay down with him, so Ben hung out in the next room. About 10 minutes later I emerge, and what do I find?

My adorable and thoughtful boy is sitting quietly on the couch under a blanket, and everything in the room has been picked up. What a sweet surprise. What a sweet boy.

I love him....

.....even if he only piled everything up just inside his bedroom door.

Preschool

Ben and Zach finished their second week of preschool on Friday. Florida has a free VPK program which provides kids, who will be entering Kindergarten the next school year, an opportunity to get a jump start and prepare for grade school.

We're fortunate to have a center down the street from us that participates in the program, and the boys love it when I force them to make the walk everyday!

Darius and I were told at the start of school that the boys would be put in separate classrooms, which we were okay with. A couple days later the boys ended up in the same classroom, and then a few days after that they split them up again because their class size was already too big (and paired up they were sometimes disruptive). It was all a little chaotic, but I think the boys are finally settled in their own classes.

On Friday parents were invited to attend a special snack time with their kids and asked to send a snack to be shared with the class. This memo was posted on the classroom sign-in sheets the day before, and of course I had to send snacks for each class. Fun. At that moment I wish they would have kept the boys in the same class for another couple of days! Oh well, the sooner I adjust to double-duty-school-related expenses the better!

20 children + approx 20 sugary snacks = CRAZY! Honestly, who decided it was a good idea to have everyone bring a snack on the same day? Just try telling a 4-year-old they can't have all the same sweet treats as the kid next to them.

The double-duty stuff is definitely something that we can figure out, but when in comes to division...that's a little trickier.

I wanted to be with both Ben and Zach during their snack times, and there's just no proven way to safely split a person in half! I found myself darting back and forth between classrooms to be fair to each of them, and it was hard for me not to feel bad for whichever son I wasn't with.

It was a taste of what's to come. It felt awful.

How do parents with multiple children, with coinciding needs balance those needs and manage the guilt that will inevitably arise?

I'm a Libra. I like for things to always be balanced, and it's very frustrating for me when they're not.

There will be guilt. There will always be times when I want to be in two different places at once. I will have these feelings the rest of my life. It will be difficult. I won't like it, but I'll get used to it eventually....right?