Time Marches On

The memory section of Facebook has been pretty interesting to look at this past month.  I can't believe all the things that have happened each March over the past few years.  Here's a brief run-down that kind of illustrates the crazy twist and turns of our lives. 

March 2010 - Brandon and I decided that he should stop trying to get his commercial airline license through Utah State University.  Instead he changed his major to an Interdisciplinary Degree which meant that he could graduate that May. We started making plans to move away from Logan and to Bountiful as soon as possible. 

March 2011 - The twins were 5 months old and super cute.  We were also super poor and yet hoping that Brandon's job as a gate agent for Frontier Airlines would pan out. (Spoiler alert:  it didn't)

March 2012 - Brandon did all the paperwork to join the Army and we started counting down to his actual enlistment date in September  of that year.  We were also eagerly anticipating Derrick's birth any day (though he made us wait until April.)

March 2013 - We were living in Fort Hood, Texas, I was in my first trimester with Veronica, and Brandon was just staring the process to start his Warrant Officer Packet to apply to be a helicopter pilot in the Army.

March 2014 - Brandon was in Korea.  Meanwhile I was living in Texas with the kids. Veronica was 4 months old, Derrick was almost two years old, and Charlotte and Lydia were three and a half. Brandon was still working on his packet, but was close to being able to submit it.  

March 2015 - Brandon went to Fort Rucker to attend the Warrant Officer Career College. The kids and I were still in Fort Hood preparing for our move to Fort Rucker in May.

March 2016 - Brandon finished the Primary Phase of flight school and selected Black Hawks as his aircraft.  We hoped he'd have some downtime between training, but he ended up only having about 3 weeks off.  This did not bode well for how Blackhawk training would go.    

March 2017 - Brandon is out of the Army. We are all living with Brandon's parents in Utah, I work in the accounting office at a Ski Resort, and we are preparing for a summer living in Yellowstone followed by Brandon going to school in Pocatello, Idaho for his A&P License in the Fall.

If I had made a seven year plan back in 2010 it wouldn't have looked anything like the synopsis I just gave you. 

But really I've quite enjoyed the twists and turns of our lives these past few years.  Even if some of the plot twists have scared me while I was living them. 

So let's talk about this month.  

First up.  It's SPRING.  We made it through the winter! Part of me is so happy that it's finally spring.  And part of me is kind of depressed that it's spring and yet we are still living here.  I really thought we would have moved by now.  But I didn't anticipate the Federal Hiring Freeze, and so here we still are. But at least it's stopped snowing. 

We went out looking for RV's the Saturday after I found out I had the yellowstone job.  The first one on our list was in Pleasant Grove which is in Utah County.  It was a good RV, but a little squishy feeling in the back area.  So we didn't get it.  After looking at the RV we took the kids to Cabella's near the point of the mountain.  They loved looking at the fish. 

And all the stuffed animals.

This store as some really cool displays.

They also liked looking the fish in this pond.

After we looked around the store we had  little picnic on some tables outside the store.

The kids ran around and collected rocks and sticks and had a great time.  Brandon and I were like, "yeah, our kids will do just fine living in Yellowstone all summer."  Lydia is sad in this picture because we told her she couldn't take the stuff home with her.

Here's Charlotte with her stick.

After that we drove to see our next RV which was in Eagle Mountain.  This was was okay, but a little trashy.  Then we went to the third one in Tooele.  We went around the back way and it was fun to drive on roads that neither of us had ever traveled on. The third RV was just about perfect, but slightly out of our price range.  Still I wanted to buy it.  I told the guy we would let him know the next day.

Brandons' sister Shannon lives in Tooele so we went to her house for dinner and hanging out.  Charlotte wasn't feeling well and Shannon put in Frozen to help her feel better.  Charlotte wanted me to sit with her so I sat and watched the whole movie.  It was the most fun I've ever had with that movie.  Now that all the hype has faded I could watch the movie a lot more objectively.  Anna and Olaf made me laugh so much.  And Veronica loves the songs.  She can sing every word of Let it Go.

The next day I showed her this dress and told her that Lydia used to call it her "Anna Dress."  That made Veronica want to wear it to church.  She calls it her "Anna Dress" too.

Charlotte and Lydia made this tower thing with all their animals and they wanted me to take a picture with it.

Brandon still wasn't sure we had found the RV for us and so he looked at KSL classifieds one last time and found one advertised for $1900.  Plus it was a class C which is the model that we wanted.  (The one on tooele was a class A)  He decided to take our brother in law, Justin, to go look at both RVs to help him make the decision.  So on Monday afternoon Brandon and Justin went on a RV shopping road-trip.  

Justin was a great second opinion and was totally awesome to sacrifice his time to help us out.  He and Brandon ended up deciding on the other RV.  Brandon called me and told me about it and I trusted him and Justin enough to give them a go ahead even though I hadn't seen it. 

They helped the owner clean out the RV and he knocked another $100 off the price.  So we became home owners for $1800. 

Brandon drove the RV and Justin followed him in the Jeep.  The RV made it all the way from the Southern end of the Salt Lake Valley to the Maverick 1/2 mile away from our house before it died.  Fortunately a nice man with a huge truck and a tow strap just happened to stop and help tow the RV to the house.  I'll admit I was a little worried when I saw the RV get towed to the house, but the guys assured me that it ran well - it just needed a tune up.

It was about 10:00 pm by the time the guys showed up, and so it was super dark outside.  But Brandon took me out to the RV and gave me a tour with a flashlight.  I could see that this was going to work perfectly.  

The next morning we took the kids out to see the RV before we took them to school.  They were so excited.  Derrick immediately said, "I want to go faster."  Which meant he wanted to drive in it.  Veronica kept calling it the RB.

Over the next few days Brandon was able to get it running again and we moved the RV to a spot next to the garage.  If you want to see pictures of the inside you can visit my travel blog here.

Amid all the RV stuff we realized it was almost St Patrick's Day.  I kind of regret doing big things in the past because now the kids expect something fun, even though I'm not in the mood.  Thankfully Brandon was in the mood to be the leprechaun this year.

He helped the kids set traps for the Leprechaun.  And then, after they had gone to bed, he had fun springing them.  This one was a snare trap that was supposed to catch the leprechaun's leg (this is what happens when you put a SEER graduate in charge of setting traps), but the leprechaun got out of it by taking off his boot.

And in this one the leprichuan cut his way out of the box.  The girls were so surprised to see this.  One of them asked me, "how did he know what his shape looked like?"  Lydia ended up taking the cut out shape to school for show and tell.

As always the leprechaun left green pee in the toilet.  But this year there were no green foot prints.

And he left Lucky Charms for the kids to eat for breakfast.

There was one thing I was excited about.  I wanted to try out this thing I saw on pinterest. It said we could use food spray paint on oreos to turn them gold.  In reality they were more yellowish colored, but they still tasted good. 

On Saturday we spent a lot of the day working in the RV.  The kids helped wash walls, but they also spent a lot of time watching netflix. 

Derrick found one of his train brochures.  He wanted to look at certain pictures, but they were on separate pages.  So we ended up cutting them out.  He helped cut a few of the papers.  Then we glued them to a paper.  He was so excited about this project and ended up adding about 5 more pictures to the paper after I took the picture. This was his first art project that he ever initiated.

Meanwhile, Lydia did her own impressive thing.  She learned how to ride a bike without training wheels.  She is so proud of herself.

Here's Derrick pushing Veronica around.

And all the kids playing in the driveway. 

I've been doing a few projects in the RV and apparently I keep handing my camera to Veronica because I have several pictures that look like this.

Here's Veronica and Derrick hanging out in the RV while we work on some project or other.

On Friday night we went to the Tree House Museum in Odgen because that's when they have a discounted price.  I met Brandon and the kids there after work.  We had a lot of fun.  However, I took pictures with Brandon's camera and I don't know where I put it so those pictures will have to wait. 

Ever since we moved here I've felt like we were missing some of our clothes.  And on Saturday we found the box with the wayward clothes.  Lydia's bat costume was there.  She has been so sad and now she is so happy again.  

We also found a box of clothes that had lots of dresses that I was saving for Veronica to grow into. When Charlotte and Lydia were Veronica age/size they LOVED dresses.  So we have a lot.  But Veronica doesn't really care for them as much.  She had about 3 or 4 dresses that she likes to wear to church, and usually she just wants to wear the black one which she calls her "fancy dress."  But I hung up all the dresses in the hopes that she'll show interest.

On Saturday afternoon I took the kids down to visit my sister Hillary while Brandon stayed home and had some quality time with the RV.  (He was so happy to have time to work on projects without kids underfoot - I can totally relate.)  Derrick had been asking all week to "see Hillary's Kitty Cat" so he was happy to go there.  I was hoping to take the kids to play in Liberty Park, but it ended up raining.  Still we had a great time at Hillary's.  The kids love watching America's Funniest Home Videos every time we visit her.  And she taught them how to play mario cart and the Wii bowling game.  

On Monday I was able to work on curtains for the RV all day.  I'm going to put an in-depth post about all of our projects up on the travel blog, but here is a little sneak peak of the curtains and the white boards and cork boards that Brandon put up.  (Ignore all the tools and other junk)

Charlotte started drawing a picture on Monday night and by Tuesday night it had turned into a 14 foot story board.

It's all about two cats named Pearl and Bug.  (She thinks purring is called pearling, and I really don't feel like correcting something so cute.)

All the pictures show the cats celebrating different holiday's.  Thesse two of Pearl eating the Thanksgiving Turkey down to just bones are probably my favorite.

And that pretty much sums up our March.

It's kind of interesting to think about what life will be like in March of 2018.  We'll be living in Pocatello, Brandon will be in school, I'll be working somewhere, Charlotte and Lydia will be in first grade, Derrick will be in Kindergarten, and Veronica will probably be in Head Start.  Its going to be very different from this year.

If there'e one thing I know for sure, its that life is always changing and that it can change fast.  So enjoy what you are doing now because you never know what things will change in the future.

More Details about Lots of Stuff

Hey it's time for another catch up post.  I feel like I've mentioned a few of these things either on this blog or on Facebook, but it's time to talk about all of them a little bit more. 

First up let's talk about the super big awesome news that I announced on Facebook last night.  

I got the Yellowstone job!!!!!!

At the end of my last post I talked about how I was fully qualified for the job, but that actually getting an offer depended on whether or not they had an RV spot for us.  It was looking like they didn't have a spot or that we wouldn't know for sure until April 1.  I pretty much gave up on the Yellowstone plan.  

I started applying for nice normal jobs in Pocatello with the plan that we'd move there as soon as I got a job or the kids finished school - whichever came first.  

On Sunday I fasted for help with finding a job.  I was hoping for some sort of job in Pocatello, but instead Heavenly Father has bigger plans for how my family is going to spend the summer.  On Tuesday I got a call from the accounting lady with Xanterra resorts in Yellowstone telling me that she'd been able to get an RV spot for me.  

I was so excited.  We are going to live in the Canyon Village Campground which is just across the street from the Canyon Village area where I will work in the controllers office.  Canyon Village is only a few miles away from the impressive Yellowstone Falls.  I was secretly hoping that I'd get assigned to this place.  I can't wait to go for evening walks along the canyon rim trail.  

I start right before Memorial Day which is perfect because that means the kids can finish up the school year here in Utah.  Though I will say that Charlotte was really looking forward to doing home school in Yellowstone if we'd been assigned a place that opened earlier. 

I'll work until the middle of August.  Then we'll have just enough time to get squared away in Pocatello in time for Brandon and the kids to start school.

Right now we have a lot of little things to work out.  The most important thing is finding an RV.  We have some that we'll look at on Saturday.  Once we have a home everything else should fall into place.  

I should probably address the whole, "do you really think your family can live in an RV for 2 1/2 months" question that I know you are asking.  Well I don't know if my family can do it, but I do know about 5 other families that have done it.  Back at Fort Rucker we had several friends who gave up their on-post housing to go live at the RV park on Fort Rucker.  At the time I both admired them and thought they were crazy.  I couldn't imagine living in a tiny space while dealing with the stress of flight school.  But we aren't in flight school anymore.  And now I'm thinking it would be pretty fun. And with all of Yellowstone as our back yard who can complain about living in a 25 foot home. 

Okay let's talk about other things.  

Life here in Utah is starting to feel normal. This house is actually starting to feel a little like home.  And I'm feeling a lot more like myself.  A large part of that is due to the fact that Brandon and I realized that I was probably super Vitamin D deficient and so I started taking vitamins.  That's helped a lot.  

I decided that I needed to take pictures of some of the little things going on around here. One day we will look back on this time and smile when we see these little moments. 

Here's Derrick playing with his train.  He loves to lay on the floor and watch the train drive by.

 Veronica LOVES her pumpkin shirt.  She wants to wear it just about every day.  She loves to yell, "Mom! Look! Pumpkin!"

 Here's a picture I took while we were getting a tour of the ISU campus.  The twins loved our tour guide and talked to her for most of the tour.

 When we were all done checking out the campus we checked into our hotel and changed into swimming suits.  We haven't swam since Veronica's birthday so we were all looking forward to swimming in the pool.

 I didn't take many pictures, but we had a lot of fun.  We were the only ones in there and it was really great to do whatever we wanted without worrying about over-cautious life guard blowing their whistles.

 On Tuesday we checked out of our hotel and then headed over to the Museum of Clean.  My mom and dad went here a year or two ago and they told me it was great and that we should go.  I was pretty skeptical, but I figured we might as well check it out.

Well, as much as it pains me to admit it, my parents were right.  This museum was amazing. The have a giant ark on display right in the lobby.

One of the museum workers took us on a tour.  He turned on this vacuum to suck all the dirt off the kids.

 My mom had told me about this and after I told the girls about it they started asking about going to the "Sucky museum."  Sucky is not the right way to describe this museum though.

 They had a whole little children area where the kids could play.  I was so surprised to see Veronica actually PLAYING with the toys.

 Lydia tidied up the whole doll house and was so proud of her work.

 The kids played with the toys for a long time and then we continued our tour.

 There were so many fun things to do.

 Our guide showed the girls this old fashioned scrubbing board and wringer.  They were able to wash socks and hang them on a clothes line.

 Everyone got a ride on this trashcan chair.

 We thought this re-purposed tub was cute.

 Derrick couldn't get enough of this pump that actually had water coming out of it.

 Here are the girls pretending to take baths in tubs.

 Downstairs the kids were able to try out floor buffing machines.

 They pretended to dive for sponges.

 Of course everyone wanted a turn to take their picture.

 Even Derrick wanted to do it.

 At one point the kids could dress up like chimney sweeps.

 So far we'd had a tour guide through all of this.  Then he let us go up to the third floor where the kids could play with some more hands on things.  We all loved this vacuum that sucked rags through a tube.

 Derrick and I had a lot of fun playing with it over and over again.

 Then it was back downstairs to play with the pump some more.

 Charlotte and Lydia went back to the wringer.

 Isn't this so cute.

 Derrick also loved this "game" where you sorted recycling and then pulled a lever to see it all fall out so you could sort it again.

 Charlotte built a pyramid.

 Lydia pretended to do laundry.

 We'd been in the museum for almost 3 hours which is probably a record for us.  The girls were back at the wringer again and we were all having a great time.

 When suddenly Lydia came running over to me with her finger bleeding. Charlotte had accidentally run it through the wringer.  The man at the front desk pulled out a first aid kit and we patched Lydia up as well as we could, but it was bleeding pretty bad.  It was a terrible way to ruin such a great morning. We were all kind of sad that it had to end that way.

Back in the car we drove over to a grocery store and Brandon ran inside to buy bigger band-aids, hydrogen peroxide, and neosporin.  He also bought bread and jelly and some treats for lunch.  He came back to the car and we had a quick in-the-car-lunch followed by a quick in-the-car-trauma assessment of Lydia's finger.

From what we'd seen of her finger in the museum Brandon and I were worried that we might have to include a trip to the hospital on this get-to-know-Pocatello weekend.  I was almost certain that her skin needed stitches.  Lydia did not like the idea of getting stitches so I said a quick prayer with her while Brandon went into the store.

When we took off the bandaid we were relieved to see that Lydia was "just" missing the top layer of her skin all around the fingernail area of her left index finger.  Since the skin was missing there wasn't any place to put stitches anyway.  The bones and muscles seemed fine so we just cleaned off the area with hydrogen peroxide (and lots of screaming from Lydia and Veronica who was freaked out by the whole thing) slathered the neosporin on and bandaged the whole thing up.

Over the next few days Lydia watched in amazement as her finger gradually got better.  She also was pretty happy about the fact that she got a box of baidaids that were just for her.  It's the little things that make kids happy.

Shifting gears again let's look at some pictures from my phone. These are from my commute to work. A few Fridays ago we had fresh snow fall over night and that meant there were TONS of people on the mountain.  There was a line of cars just to turn off of Trappers Loop onto Snow Basin Road.

 The cars snaked all the way up the mountain.  I think I was in line for something like 30 minutes.  Usually I can drive this part of the road in 5 minutes.

 When I finally got to the parking lot I was put in the lowest possible area.  There were cars all around me when I got to work, but they were all gone by the time I got done with work.

 One Saturday we went to the mall so the kids could ride the train there.  We were hanging out at the little kid playground when Ashley, my all time best friend since I was 9 years old, went walking by with her kids.  Remember Ashley's a fellow Army wife too.  She'd spent the last few years in North Carolina and Korea.  Both of us were so excited that we actually live in the same state again and can randomly run into each other.

 After hanging out with Ashley for a minute Brandon and I took the kids over to the train area.  Brandon had brought the kids here a few weeks earlier and had taken them on the train.  This time it was my turn to go on the train with the kids.

 Last Saturday I had to work (my counterpart needed Saturday off so he worked Tuesday for me which is how we were able to go to Pocatello for two days.)  Brandon took the kids to the Ogden Train Museum for the model train show.  They were also able to go into the train museum.  We have some many pictures of the kids in this caboose.

 The little train was running this time so they kids were super happy about that.

 The kids loved all the model trains that were on display.

 And they got to ride this little train for just $0.50 a ride.

 Isn't that the cutest thing ever?

 They were all really happy.

 After the museum Brandon took them to a car wash because the car was DIRTY. And then they rearranged the seats because some people were getting sick of sitting right by each other.

 On Sunday I wanted to take more pictures of the cute little things the kids do.  Here's Lydia with rocks that she picked up on a hike the day before. (Oh yeah, Brandon took the kids hiking too.)

 Veronica has been playing with these metal bobbins non stop for a least a week.  She loves to pretend that they are people and she'll have the baby kiss the mommy goodbye and things like that.

 Here's Derrick with all of his train stuff.  He loves trains so much.

 Charlotte is something  of a building genius.  She's always making something new.  This day she'd created a tree next to a river with clouds in the sky.

 And I felt like I might as well take a picture of myself.  I gained a little bit of weight over Christmas, but lately I've been really good about the foods I choose to eat.  And I eat vegetables every day.  It's starting to pay off.

 Every once in a while I see Charlotte and Lydia doing absolutely cute stuff like this.  Completely unprompted, and completely cute.

 And then I tried to get Veronica into the picture and she could have cared less.

 On Monday Charlotte came home with some pictures of animals from a story called "And Bear Snores On."  She colored the pictures and put them on wooden sticks.  She build a set with the piano bench and blocks.  Then she put on a play for me.  I was so impressed by her drive and her building skills.  This girl is amazing.

Well that gets us caught up for now.  I'm so excited for the future.