The boys have been in soccer for a few weeks now and they are doing great! I have been really impressed with how much they have worked hard and improved!! They are really good sports, too (they don't get that from me, unfortunately...). Traeden has really enjoyed being goalie, and he's really good at it. He gets to play the other positions as well. Jax's division doesn't play positions yet, it's just a mass of kids following the ball around the field! It's fun watching them play, and even Araleigh loves cheering them on! Of course, it has rained EVERY game!!! It can be perfectly beautiful all week, but I guarantee it will rain on Saturday! Jaxon is really funny, he plays pretty well overall, but if there's mud on the ground, forget it! He does not want to get muddy! It's funny, he tries to be so careful and does this hilarious little prance around the field! We have explained to him over and over that it's okay to get muddy in soccer, it washes off! But he still doesn't want to. Who ever heard of a boy who hates to get muddy?! Crazy kid! But I have to say, My proudest moment as a mom came the other day, and not from how many goals my boys were scoring. The day started out nice and sunny, so we felt safe to leave the jackets at home...oops! Of course, 10 minutes into Traeden's game it started pouring on us! I was smart enough to keep the umbrella and a few fleece blankets in the car, so I ran over and gave Trae a blanket while he was waiting on the sidelines. My proudest moment was when Traeden looked over and saw that his friend was also freezing and soaking wet and jacket-less, so he went over and shared his blanket with him. I was glad to see that I have a little boy who notices others and is considerate and willing to share. I must not be doing too bad of a job, right? Of course, I don't take that much credit, he is just a really awesome kid by nature. But it made me smile. :) The forecast for this Saturday is NOT showing rain so far, so maybe I'll be able to get some better pictures...!

Our little house in the prairie, I mean land of Lincoln

I know that I have been terrible at blogging lately, I apologize! Life has been pretty busy these past few weeks! We somehow survived another winter quarter, and are very excited about this final spring quarter with a much lighter work load! Yay! I have a husband sometimes! :) Since our big move is only about 5 weeks away (!), we have been endlessly searching for a home, and we think we found a pretty great one! We only went through about 25 homes this time, so it feels like quite an accomplishment! (Last time we moved to Illinois, we went through 100+ houses and felt like we settled for a good house in a crappy school district.) We found an awesome little old cape cod home that is in an incredible area only about 15 miles north of the city! We are pretty darn excited about it! Here, I'll show you:

It needs some work (yay!) and it looks small, but it's actually a pretty good size and it has this awesome huge yard! It has plenty of room for any visitors, too (hint, hint)! And you know you all want to come visit Chicago! Can you tell how excited I am? I can't wait to move on and feel "settled", whatever that feels like! Do people really live in the same place longer than 2 years?? I don't know, if we do stay there too long, I may need to change the name of my blog, which I felt was pretty clever... any suggestions? The kids are really excited, they keep asking us why we have to wait until June!! I ask myself the same question... Anyway, now that we have this time-consuming adventure out of the way, I hope to do more frequent postings, so we'll see! Until then!!

Easter..finally!

I know that Easter has come and gone, and I apologize for my delay in documenting! We had a very fun Easter out here in Ohio! The kids had a fun time helping dye the eggs - I have fallen in love with the new stuff where you just drip a little color into a bag and the mush the egg around in it!! It is so much cleaner than the other stuff for dipping, and a lot fewer eggs were broken (only 2 casualties!!!). My awesome boys were happy to pose with their finished products...

The Easter bunny visited our house on Friday night so Saturday we woke up to a couple of excited kids scurrying "quietly" around outside our door, waiting until we showed signs of being awake so that they could pounce on us and convince us that it was time to begin hunting. The boys had quite a challenge finding their baskets this year, the Easter bunny is getting pretty good at hiding! Jaxon's was under the luv sac and Traeden's was in a suitcase.

Once Araleigh woke up, she was pretty confused as to what her brothers were so excited about. She actually got mad when they shoved a bucket into her hand and made her pick up plastic eggs. Until she dropped one and it broke open and --- jelly beans fell out!!! Oh joy! She was happy to collect eggs after that! She wasted no time eating the chocolate bunnies in her basket, either (that's my girl...!)

The bunny got pretty creative with the egg-hiding skills as well, to Jaxon's dismay! Luckily, Traeden's arms were long enough to reach. They still can't figure out how a bunny could jump that high...

And of course it just would not be Easter without a pretty dress!!! Isn't she so beautiful?

Real Snow!

Well we finally had a real snow storm! We got about 12 inches on Friday night/Saturday morning. Now by Utah standards, it wasn't a real big deal, but here they are calling it "blizzard '08"... yeah, I guess it's a big deal. We had major fun things planned for Saturday, but because of this "blizzard", everything shut down - literally! Everything closed! It was rather ridiculous, but, what can ya do? They even cancelled church on Sunday. So when there is absolutely no where to go, what do you do? Play in the snow, of course! It was great to finally have some real snow that we could actually play in! So here are some cute pictures of my awesome kids having a blast building mountains, digging out dad's car, and relaxing in the snow.

(by the way, we cut Jax's hair, as you can see in the pic below :(

I miss those long golden locks, but he still looks cute)

Araleigh loves to be outside, and this is her first time playing in snow!! We couldn't get her to come in, even though she was freezing! So we are having fun and trying to keep busy and not go crazy in the middle of this great storm!!

Bzzzzzzzz...

This Saturday we attended a "family day" at OSU where we were able to watch a free showing of "Bee Movie". It was a lot of fun! The kids were able to make "bee wings". Yes those are my boys running around with BEE WINGS, definitely not fairy wings or anything pansy-ish like that. And Jaxon's were a deeper purple color inside, the sun makes them look pink but THEY'RE NOT PINK :) We also got some great free food and treats and we won a $15 Target gift card (oooo-ooooooh)!It was such a nice day that we had to let the kids run around a little, so this is the courtyard at Fisher, the business school that Dave is attending. We thought you might be interested in what the school looks like, so here are some pictures of where my hubby spends about 80 hours a week:

It was nice to have a sunny day, we don't get many of those here in the winter. And it was nice to have a little time for some free fun again. I like free stuff to do!

All this snow!!!!!

For all of my Utah friends: You think you have a lot of snow??? I mean, come on what do you got out there, a measly 2 or 3 feet? Have you even had to have a snow day? How about 2 snow days? Well obviously it's not that bad. Out here we had 2 snow days this week. We're talking some MAJOR snow! It snowed on Tuesday, and school was closed. Then on Wednesday, the roads were still so bad from all the snow, that we had another snow day! It was awful! I tried to make the best of things, the kids and I made cookies (w/ friend, Daniel). Araleigh had a little fashion show in my sport's bra. When we got really bored, we gave Jax a new 'do.
So I bet by now you're all really curious as to what a MAJOR snow storm looks like. You're probably wondering just how bad the snow gets out here. You're thinking to yourself, man I thought we had it bad! Ohio obviously got so much more! I hope those poor people are coping with the millions of back injuries from digging out mountains of snow! So just how bad does the snow have to get out here to justify not one, but two snow days??? Well, I'll show you:I mean, look at this! You can barely even see the grass peeking through! There is almost a full inch there!! My driveway isn't shoveled, I don't know how I'm going to get out without 4 wheel drive! I guess it's a good thing I haven't had to make the treacherous journey to school, we may not have found our house behind all these drifts! So next time you're looking at all that snow in Utah, think about us, probably snowed-in, going crazy with all these snow days out here in Columbus, Ohio.

We're off to see the wizard!!

Last Saturday we had the opportunity to celebrate President Gee (pres. of OSU)'s birthday by attending a showing of "The Wizard of Oz"! The kids had such a great time! I had a pretty great time too, it brought back so many memories of my debut as Dorothy in the 6th grade play.... ahhhh, good times:) It was a great experience to see it on the big screen! Afterwards, we got a visit from the cast and Brutus the Buckeye, who posed for pictures. Then we all went into a large room where they had about 500 cupcakes of all different, gourmet varieties. We're talking GOOD cupcakes, like raspberry chocolate and creme brulee and toffee.... yum! The kids had a lot of fun, and it's always great to go to these free events!