The move

This post will probably be more interesting to me than to you- it's more for journaling/recording purposes.

Almost a year ago, I started thinking about our upcoming move (I knew it would happen sometime during summer 2010) and started to collect boxes and deep clean our apartment a little. I really dug in with the cleaning in April when I knew we were getting closer (no definite plans yet). I wanted to spread out the packing process, so from the time we knew we were moving (May 19) to the day we moved (June 12), I packed a few boxes every day. It was really nice to take it slowly- the only days I felt a little overwhelmed were the day before the move and the day of the move. (That's to be expected, right?) But we had planned ahead far enough and had so many things done early that we were able to go to the ward camp-out for dinner the night before we moved. It was awesome to relax a little and see our friends from the ward before we left.
June 12, our moving day, was super rainy. The trees outside our apartment had dropped crumbly little seedling (?) things and because of the rain they were sticking to everyone's shoes and tracking all over the apartment and the truck. I swept the sidewalk from our stairwell to the truck and I think it helped a little. We had SO many people from our ward help us with the move and cleaning! I don't know how we would have done it without help. Someone even babysat Cassie all morning. I am so glad that we moved on a Saturday when people were available to help, and I'm so glad our ward got so involved in helping people move.
After the truck was loaded, Trevor drove it to our new apartment, where he had arranged with the Elder's Quorum president there to have some people help with unloading. 12 guys showed up! They finished so fast, my brother and dad (who were on the way to help) got there after everything was already in the apartment. They stayed around, set up our bed, and unpacked a whole bunch of boxes for us while Trevor came back to Provo to return the truck and help me with last minute cleaning things. I had been cleaning with sisters from our ward who came to help. They were amazing. Really, it makes me wonder how anyone can move without having help. So many people helped us with our move, and I hope they all know how much we appreciate the things they did.
Anyway, thanks to all the amazing help we had, we were out of our apartment by 5 pm. And thanks to my dad and brother, we had a bed to sleep in when we got to our new place! We've been here for a little over a month now, and it feels and looks like home. Still on our to-do list: hang pictures in the master bedroom, buy a real kitchen table and chairs (still rockin' the card table), and buy matching nightstands and a dresser.
Things we love about our new place: More space! (twice the square footage, an actual dining area, two bathrooms, bigger bedrooms), dishwasher, washer and dryer, sliding glass door to balcony- lets in lots of light, we're right next to a playground, feels rural but we're close to shopping areas.
Here's a little photo-tour of the apartment:

Catch up: Memorial Day Weekend

We spent Memorial Day Weekend in Oakley with Trevor's family (minus Blaine, Becky, and Eliza, who live far, far away) and had a great time. I am forever grateful for a mother-in-law who takes lots of pictures and makes me CDs because I always seem to forget my camera. Please ignore all the zits. My face has decided, without my consent, that I am 15 years old and therefore must go through the pimply stage that I fortunately missed out on when I was actually a teenager. So annoying.

We spent Saturday morning at the elementary school playing on the playground and hitting softballs. It was fun and a tad chilly.
We flew kites in the afternoon.
Cassie fed the goats with her Aunt Kim and cousin Savanah.
The ever-popular Aunt Taja entertained the kids on the tramp.
And when the boys left to play basketball...












We got busy. Let me 'splain. Trevor finished the classes for his Masters degree in April, and was spending the summer finishing a project required for his degree while working for an engineering company and looking for a full-time job. He found a great job and started working on May 24th. I had been looking forward to him participating in the whole graduation ceremony at BYU in August (he didn't walk when he got his bachelors), but I realized with his new job that he wouldn't yet be eligible to take time off for graduation...and also, Trev really didn't want to walk. I had also been looking into a big graduation gift for him, since we didn't do anything when he finished his undergrad. A few days before we went to Oakley for the weekend, I called Trevor's mom and asked what she thought about having a surprise graduation party for Trevor that weekend. (Then I wouldn't make him walk in August, and I could really surprise him with an awesome graduation gift.) On Friday, a few hours before we left for the weekend, I bought Trevor a Droid (he has always wanted a fancy-schmancy phone and often mentioned that someday, when we had lots of money, he really really wanted one). By the way, the store where I bought the phone almost ruined the surprise- they canceled service to Trevor's old phone even though I had specifically asked several times to make sure they didn't. When I figured out what they had done, I had to solve the problem and make up a cover story so Trevor wouldn't suspect anything. It was stressful. Anyway, I got the phone to Oakley successfully without Trevor noticing, and we prepared an awesome little surprise while the boys were out basketballing. We turned all the lights off and yelled "surprise" and everything!

Sweaty man. "Wait, who is this surprise for?"
And yes, I wrapped Trevor's Droid in multiple boxes to disorient him.

Okay, this was my first ever attempt at cake decorating. Good enough.
Drooling over the new toy.
On Monday morning, Trevor's dad saw a little yellow finch fly right into a window, so he picked up the bird and let the grandkids pet it for a while. It must have been too dazed to fly away, because it sat in his hand for a long time while we all admired it before it finally took off. He walked right through the house with it, we were all calling the kids to come see Grandpa's bird, and we took some pictures. Afterwords, I went inside and mentioned something about it to Trevor, who was playing with his new phone. I'm sure you already know the outcome of this story. "What bird?" Trev completely missed the entire thing, even with his dad walking right past him and all of us making a fuss. Yup. That's how much he loves his Droid. He's had it for over a month now and I've definitely considered hiding it from him on more than one occasion. However, it has been a lifesaver. The last post would be picture-less if it weren't for Trev's fancy phone (again, my camera forgetfulness), and many of our summer activities would be undocumented without it as well. It also saved us when we were internet-less for a few days after moving in, and when we had some problems with viruses.

Sunday before church

Cassie and cousin Aubrey. "Cheese!"
Just chillin'. Sunday evening.
The infamous finch
S'mores 'round the "campfire."
Grandma curled Cassie's hair on Monday. Bee-ootiful!
Just a cute picture of Cassie and Aunt Taja
Jumping
And I'm done. Whew. We've still got a lot of catching up to do, so stay tuned.

Catch up: Birthdays

I've been a little too busy to blog with our move and summer festivities (more about these soon!) and virus problems (grrrrrrr) but I'm ready to catch up now. Let's start from the very beginning, a very good place to start.

Cassie and I celebrated our birthdays at the beginning of June. We had a picnic with my family on Cassie's birthday, complete with an Elmo cake. You know me, I'm a big Elmo fan. Actually, if anyone leaves a comment about why an Elmo cake really would be appropriate for me, I'll give you bonus points! (I think only those who knew me in Jr. High will know that.) But honestly, the Elmo cake was for the real Elmo fan in our house- Cassie. She still talks about it, even though it was a pretty badly done first-attempt on my part.


Cassie was pretty anxious to put her new presents to use right away. Observe:



The weather was perfect and it was nice to just be with family and enjoy good food. And I got some pretty awesome gifts, too. :) Honestly, I was pretty preoccupied with Cassie's birthday and didn't really think about mine as much. I can probably count on that happening for the rest of my life.

For those of you wondering, Cassie did not receive a dinosaur or a frog for her birthday...but she did get some water. We had some friends from the ward over for a little pool party a few days after her birthday, and the kids had a lot of fun. There are a lot of 2-year-old girls around Cassie's age in that ward- I sure miss that.

We moms had fun, too. :) I sure miss the quad 1 camp-chair mom posse.
Also, I just wanted to record some feelings that I had on my birthday. I taught some piano lessons, packed boxes, did the usual daily chores, and no one really knew it was my birthday. At first I thought it would make me sad to go without attention or a celebration, but it made me think about what really makes me happy. In the past I've wanted to be selfish and lazy and eat lots of junk food on my birthday (aka attention on me, let me relax, cake and ice cream), but of course those things don't make me happy. While I was driving home from teaching piano lessons with Cassie in the back seat, I had a really peaceful moment where I realized that the things I was doing bring me real happiness and satisfaction. That was a good birthday gift.

Ch-ch-changes

Exciting things are happening in our neck of the woods! Trevor just got a full-time job with an engineering company in Sandy and we found a new place to live. Trev started yesterday, and he'll be commuting for a few weeks before we move. I'm trying to pack and clean a few things every day so I'm not overwhelmed in the days before we move. So far so good.
Is it okay to brag about one's husband? I'm just so proud of him. Let's just say that the company he works for didn't have any job openings until they saw his resume. They basically created a job so they could have him. Mmmmmm-hmm.
Also, I am giddy with the thought of having a new space to decorate and maybe even *gasp* money to spend on decorating. Any favorite design blogs/stores/ideas? Do share.

P.S.

Last month I had the brilliant idea of teaching Cassie when her birthday is: "Dune Fif." It may have been a little early, though. I think I've created a monster. She likes to talk about her birthday, what kind of "pehsents" she wants, and she has worked very hard at holding two fingers up and saying "two!" Last week, Cassie announced to the cashier at the grocery store, "my birsday is coming up!" I can hardly get her to say "hello" when we see someone we know, but she happily announced her birthday to a stranger and immediately set to work holding her pinky and ring finger down (it takes her a minute) to show her age. A few days later, we had this conversation:
"I wanna dinosoh fo my birsday!"
"A dinosaur?"
nodding "An' a fog."
"A dinosaur and a frog?"
Where does she come up with these things? She also requested water for her birthday, and I told her I thought we could make that happen. :)

Oh, Cassie

As I may have mentioned before on this blog, Cassie is hilarious. Not intentionally, although I think she's starting to realize since we laugh at the things she does all the time.

Like any toddler, Cassie likes to go pants-free sometimes (not diaper-free, mind you. too risky). When she wants to take her pants off, she tells me "I wanna weaw my wegs" or "I wanna weaw my knees." And when she takes her socks of, she's says "I'm weawing my feet!" It's cute.

Cassie currently says yes to any question you ask her. She doesn't think about it, she just immediately responds with a "yeah." As a test, Grandma Hawkes asked her a few weeks ago if she would scrub all the toilets, and Cassie said, "yeah!" As of last night, there is now one question that she will answer "no" to: "Do we color on the walls?" I bet you can guess what prompted us to teach her that the answer to that question is no. Luckily for us, her artwork was on a non-porous wall surface (those silly pillars that stick out of the bedroom walls, for those of you familiar with the apartments where we live) and scrubbed off fairly easily.

I had another big mess to clean up this morning (too soon after the crayon-on-wall incident last night). I opened the fridge for Cassie to get her sippy cup of milk, and she said she wanted juice instead. I explained that her juice sippy was empty, so she decided to take matters into her own hands and lift the entire pitcher of juice out of the fridge (right when I turned around, of course). And of course, because it was completely full, she dropped it immediately. Juice everywhere. Argh.

Mostly though, she makes us laugh.

Fun Times

Stuff that happened this week:

Trevor's parents and sister Taja came to town on Saturday for a surprise party for his mom's sister, Ruth.

We all went to our place after the party and watched a few hours of 24 (yup, still hooked) before going to bed.

Trev's parents left in the morning and Taja stayed because she just can't get enough of us. We all went on a walk on Sunday afternoon and Cassie made a new best friend.

Trevor had his last college class on Monday! (Can I get a *woot woot?*)

Cassie discovered a new favorite activity:


For Family Home Evening on Monday, we played the "couch-camera game." (Shout out to my freshman roomies!) This game is ridiculously fun and you must play it sometime. Let me 'splain. We each had an object to hide in a certain room of the apartment. For instance, I had an apple to hide in the kitchen and Trevor had a magnet to hide in the bathroom. Once we had hidden our objects, we met in the family room where we had the camera set up facing the couch. We set the camera to timer mode then hurried to find the object that someone else had hidden (I was looking for the magnet Trevor hid in the bathroom). Our goal was to find the object and get back onto the couch before the camera went off. Here's a sampling of pictures:

P.S. We keep Cassie's toys under the couch. On purpose. We are not slobs.

After eating giant hamburgers for lunch and pizza for dinner on Monday, Emily woke up feeling pretty yucky on Tuesday. Thank heavens Taja was here! She took care of Cassie all day.

Trevor's parents drove back into town on Tuesday evening for the championship game of Trevor's intramural basketball tournament, which, by the way, they won. That's right. Out of 164 teams. As Cassie would say, "Oh yeah, baby."

Finished season 2 of 24.

Emily got in touch with her crafty/artistic side and made invitations to a baby shower for her sister-in-law.

Emily's brother came home from an internship in Peru. A nicely timed internship, I might add: he is nicely browned from the southern-hemisphere summer, and is looking forward to the upcoming northern-hemisphere summer.

Trevor and Emily went on a date! They ate at Carrabba's, which they highly recommend. Especially the Rigatoni Martino. Mmmm.