3 Years Old

Joshua turned three this month. The day started out with a Thomas the train sourdough waffle breakfast. He was very excited, although confused by the candles that were relighting candles. Latter in the day we took a picnic down to my parents new house and had a picnic and went swimming.

The Saturday after his birthday we had a Thomas the Train swim party for the family. He loved his cake.

He got some great gifts but...

...most of all loved hanging out with his cousins...

...and of course swimming.

We also went to the Goleta Train Museum. Joshua was so excited. On Monday I mentioned to Caleb that we should check the schedule and take him. Joshua over heard and everyday that week he woke up and asked if we were going to the choo choo train museum. So on Friday when it was finally open we went and had a great time. The museum was very little, but had a tiny train they could ride on. Joshua has always loved trains, it was a dream come true for him.

8 Months

Abigail is now 8 months old. She is sitting up and sort of crawling. She does a gimpy army/normal crawl, but she is already pulling up and standing. Maybe she will just skip the crawling. She is very funny and happy. She is now 22.5 pounds and 28 inches long. We love having her. He are some pictures.
I will also post Joshua's three year pictures soon, sorry I have been a really bad blogger lately.

California Adventures

We have been relaxing and trying to stay busy while we wait to move into our house.

Abigail turned 7 months old! She is getting so big. She is almost crawling, and is so happy and sweet.

Every year on memorial day weekend at the Santa Barbara Mission there is a side walk chalk festival. Artists from California and all around come and make amazing chalk drawings on the sidewalks. There were amazing drawings everywhere.

Saying Good Bye to Vermont

We have been so busy that we did not get a chance to post all our last Vermont pictures. Our last week we packed up our house and loaded up our trailer, but we also went around saying good bye to some of our favorite places and people in Vermont.

Packing up our "Mac" truck.

Saying Good Bye to the beach at lake Champlain.

Caleb's 29th Birthday party with all our friends.

The Graduation cruise.

California boy

He may have been born in Vermont, but Joshua is a California kid through and through.

Graduation!!

Last weekend was graduation weekend. The week before we packed up our whole house and sent it away on a trailer to California. The weekend started out with Caleb's parents coming into town. Even in an empty house we had a lot of fun with them here.

On Saturday we took a cruise on lake Champlain, something that has been on our to do list for a while.

Graduation was Sunday. After years of looking forward to this moment it was so exciting to hear them call up Doctor Bailey. I was so excited to make it through the ceremony without going out with the kids. No small feat given that it was boiling hot and I was wrestling them the whole time.

The graduate!! We are so proud of him for making it through. We know that it has been a lot of work to get through med school especially with starting our family.

The next graduates in our family?

When we started in Vermont we had only been married a year and had no kids. Now we have a family and Caleb has finished school. We are well on our way to being real people. :)

It was so wonderful to have Caleb's parents there with us. They were so excited and proud of him, it was great to have someone to share our excitement with. It really meant a lot to Caleb.

Other LDS guys. They were a pretty close group.

And the wives. I thought it appropriate to wear the hats since we all kind of "graduated" from being med student wives, and survived.

The Families. Four years ago there were only 9 kids between us all. Now there are 21 between those same 9 families. Our numbers really grew!

We had such a great group of friends. We really would not have made it through med school without them. We will really miss them.

All in all med school was an amazing experience. We have learned and grown so much, and have made so many wonderful life long friends. We will always have a soft spot in our hearts for Vermont.

How does a three-year old help you move?

All things considered, Joshua has been handling all our moving ok. He loves to try and help, so here he is doing his best:

My New Life

I thought this video clip was really inspirational, especially for mothers. Happy Mothers Day to all, I hope you all know how important a job you have. I am so grateful to be a Mom and especially to have the amazing opportunity to be a stay at home mom. To know that I can spend the whole day playing trains, reading and talking to Joshua and Abigail and know that I am doing the most important job in the world...motherhood. I feel truly privileged and blessed that Heavenly Father has entrusted me with two of his special children. Remember spending time as a mom is accomplishing more than any projects, or worldly accomplishments...it is the work of Salvation, it is not your work it is Heavenly Fathers work. When frustrations, loneliness, boredom, and hardships come, remember you are not alone he cares as much or more about them as you do, ask and he will help. You are wonderful divine mothers.

Mother thank you for all that you have done for me and taught me, all that I am I owe to you, I could not ask for a better more loving mother. I love you.

Thank you to all the wonderful mothers that have been in my life and been examples to me, and have helped me become a better mother.

Thank you to my mother-in-law who made my husband into the loving righteous man and father that he is. All the great leaders and people in the world began at their mother's knee.

Happy Mother's Day enjoy the clip.

House hunting and other April adventures

Sorry that it has been a long time since I have written anything. We have had a crazy month. We found out that we were moving to Loma Linda March 18th and decided that some how we would need to go house hunting. We played around with a bunch of ideas...one of us fly out alone, renting sight unseen, etc. We knew that we wanted to really pursue buying in this market, and neither of us wanted to pick the house out on our own, but we couldn't afford to fly all of us out. When my parents offered to give us their tickets that they couldn't use to come out to graduation we jumped at the chance, and flew out two days later. Our car was in Utah which worked out well, since we made it (just barely) in time to see my oldest nephew get married. Between that, general conference, and Easter with Caleb's parents it made for a quick fun trip.

From Utah we drove to Loma Linda to go house hunting. On first day we looked at about 20 houses, spent the next day visiting the neighborhoods and schools of our favorites, the third day revisiting the ones we liked best, and then wrote up offers for a few of them before driving up to my parent's house in Santa Barbara to wait for news. Unfortunately all the houses that we like that our in our price range are short sales, which (despite the name) are anything but short. After one more trip down to see more homes, we ended up making four short sale offers, and got into the bank with one of them (our favorite one!) and basically just are waiting to hear back...sometime... We might not know if we are getting the house for up to four months! We love the house and neighborhood and are really excited about getting it, but just praying that it all works out, and quickly (our moving trailer should be arriving in California in less than four weeks! I guess that if we are still waiting to hear about the house by the end of June, when Caleb starts residency, we will just find a short term rental.

Well that is probably way more than you wanted to hear!! Besides the house hunting we did lots of other fun things. We swam in grandma's new pool, played with cousins, and hung out with everyone. We also had a photographer in the ward take some pictures of us, which turned out pretty cute (see prior post). Unfortunately most the pictures that I took were on my parents camera and I forgot to grab copies before I left...not that I didn't attach a ton of pictures to this post anyway. By the way, no pictures of the house until we know it is ours...sorry we don't want to jump the gun. Anyone who knows me, knows I would love to, but for Caleb's sake I wont :).

We split up the photos that accompany this, so be sure and check the couple of previous posts.

California pictures

Here are the pictures from California:

Levi and Abigail. They are three months apart, so Levi is still a little nervous around his gigantic cousin.

Abigail liked to grab Levi, but he did not seem as thrilled about it...

She is close to 20 lbs, and really getting close to crawling. Her first tooth broke through on May 1st and her second today. She is getting big way too fast. We all just adore her, she is happy and so sweet.

Little Levi

Getting ready to pounce on Levi from behind.

Family Photos

The family shots by "Photography by Janese:"

Loved the daddy daughter shots.

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Our sweet babies, trying to getting away from us while taking pictures.

The beautiful chubby morsel.