Update from Henderson

Henderson is sure feeling like home these days. We love it! We are becoming more familiar with the area and we now have most of the essentials set up for our living space and feeling very comfortable in our apartment. I have started cooking again, and it feels wonderful not to have to go to work everyday and miss out on all the fun time spent with Lucy during the day. We are getting excited for James to start school however. I think he his growing increasingly tiresome of our daily routines and activities which mostly include meals, snack times, naps, and daily trips to the grocery store, libraries or pool. I can't get enough of it. I was made to be a stay at home mom.

 The Tri-pod as James likes to call it. Lucy's hair is not quite long enough to pull down into two pig tails.

 She sure looks old with it all pulled back. 

 The Vegas Children's Museum

 Enjoying some grandma time down in Silver City. 

 Lucy loved helping grandpa water the garden. She came back muddy and wet everytime. 

 

It has been helpful to have James help me initially discover all the activities to do with Lucy when he is gone. He has initiated a lot of it himself. I feel much more comfortable making my way to any of these places now, on my own. Henderson has several different libraries, that you can check out and return books to any one of them with one card. I love it. Because we are sort of in the middle of all of them we can visit which ever one is in the area that we happen to be in and it don't matter. There are also lots of splash pads and parks that we are learning about. We also have our pool which we love and visit frequently. 

While we were in Tucson we went to the Childrens Museum with Elizabeth, Brady, and Harper. We enjoyed it so much we wanted to find something like it in our area. There isn't one in Henderson, but not to far in down town Vegas we found a great children's museum. It is a little outdated as children museums go, but they are in the process of building a brand new state of the art childrens museum just across the street from the current museum. It looks like it is going to be BEAUTIFUL! So we bought a year pass, and we can take up to 8 guests with us. Come on down, we will have a great time! 

Lucy Lucy Lucy

 This post is all about Lucy. And she is quite a chick. I have spent enough time with her that I think she is the funniest little girl I have ever met. She may come off as shy initially but if you stick around long enough she will start showing off and won't stop until bedtime. She LOVES to make messes. The picture above is full day of food messes, river water messes, and lots of dirt and rock messes. She has no problem digging in especially if there is water in any form. If she's around don't leave the bathroom door open, because she knows that toilets have water! GROSS!

 Some of the funny things she is doing these days: She is learning to jump. She has the take off down, and she can say "ump!" but she doesn't quite get those toes off the ground. She can walk backwards and will do so on command, if you repeat the word "back, back, back..." She also figured out yesterday that she could crawl backwards. That's right, crawl backwards. It's a skill. Try it sometime. Don't be surprised if it takes you a minute or two to figure it out.  She loves to dance and will always dance when music is playing. She has several moves in her repertoire including; up and down bounce, shoulder shrug, spinning in circles until she falls to the ground, and booty shake.

 Her receptive language is great. She understands so much. She is building on her expressive language everyday. Together with Baby Signing Time, we have been learning signs. She LOVES the videos and we have all memorized the songs, so we can sing them to her at anytime. The problem is that she wants to watch the movies the second we start singing them, so we stick with trying to demonstrate the signs. She knows the signs for; more, food, eat, all-done, milk or drink (they are the same), outside, go, baby, bath, dog, bird, flower, cheese, she is working on help, hat, shoes, and ice-cream. There might be more, but that's all I can think of right now. She also has a few words, that include, mom, dada, uh-oh, cheese (posing for pictures not the food), shoes, duck, and a sound that she makes consistently when she jumps that sounds a little like, "ump!" So any of my developmental specialist friends let me know how she adds up on one of your developmental assessments. I think she's doing pretty good.

As far as eating, she loves fruit, in any form. And the truth is the children's food market really does a great job of putting fruit in everything, but as for vegetables, they pretty much stink. So I blame those people for being the reason my child will not eat vegetables. I have tried everything. I cook them up with lots of butter, and sugar and I put them in everything and she does such a good job of eating around them every time. She loves tomatoes, but some consider that a fruit anyway. Other foods that this girl loves, noodles (in any shape form and with any sauce), go-gurts and anything that she can hold and squeezes in her mouth, olives, cheese, potatoes, hotdogs, and anything covered in ketchup, chicken nuggets, eggs, ham sandwiches, and ice-cream in any form of course. There's probably more, but for those are the go-to's when we need her to eat.
I love this girl so much. It has been so much fun to stay home with her all the time and watch her grow. She loves to play and explore and is always ready for a new adventure. So here we go Lucy, we anxiously await a new BIG adventure with a new little sister coming soon to our family. Lucy loves babies so I know we will get a long just fine. Not with out hiccups here and there, but it will be fun to start that with her by my side.

Pictures from the last post... as promised.

 Lucy was a big help to her dad while packing everyday. 

 She loved playing in all the boxes. 

 A few last pictures of the fun backyard we have been enjoying for the last 10 months. We sure loved it. 

Our moving crew. They unloaded us completely in 17 minutes. I am sure that Buffalo Wild Wings on their mind had nothing to do with that. We sure appreciated all of the help. 

A new state, a new chapter

First of all, I will get pictures loaded when we have our internet set up but for now, I need to get this story down on paper, because it is a wild one.
I'm not exactly sure where to begin but I think it gets pretty crazy about the week before we left to Utah and made our way to St. George. We spent the week before trying to get as much packed and ready before we headed to St. George for my mom's wedding and family reunion with my siblings. We headed down Thursday after work, got there in time to go to dinner with my siblings. Friday we spent out by the pool with family celebrating May Birthdays, and preparing for my mom's wedding the next day. My siblings and I took over all the food prep and prepared to feed the guests before the wedding. The menu included pulled pork and coleslaw sandwiches, grape salad, noodle salad, sheet cake and ice-cream and home made rootbeer. We all had our assignments and "The Wells Family Catering Co." put on our first and last catered meal which turned out lovely and we easily fed the guests that showed up. It was pretty exclusive, only family, close relatives and friends. The ceremony took place at the Pine Valley Chapel. It was very short but very nice and I was glad to be a part of it. We took pictures and sent my mom and Randy on their way. James and I spent the remaining of the weekend lounging at the Mason Wells Palace and Monday (Memorial day) visiting grave sites and breakfast at Golden Corral. We headed up the road shortly after breakfast to prepare for my last few days of work and the big move.
Oh and don't let me forget that Monday night James and I went to outdoor concert at the Scera Shell featuring Sing-Off's Pentatonix, Delilah and Vocal Point. OH MY GOSH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can not describe the Awesomeness of this concert. All of these groups are phenominal but Pentatonix is FREAKING SICK!! SO GOOD!! I am so glad that we got to see them live. Any fans reading this blog, go like them on facebook and twitter, find out when they are coming to an event near you and buy tickets IMMEDIATELY! They sang a bunch of songs from the Sing-Off but they also sang some of their Youtube songs that were even better than anything on the Sing-Off. If I haven't convinced you yet, call me. I will go on.
Tuesday through Thursday were spent finishing up work and lots of packing and cleaning and preparing for the new tenants of my Uncle's house. I think we packed up our food on Wednesday so it was frozen prepared food or eating out from then on (which will be an important fact in the next paragraph). I said all my good byes at work on Thursday and was out. It is weird to be done at Kids on the Move. They have been so good to our family for the last two years and I am so grateful for all that I learned during my time there.
Technically we were ready to head down the road Thursday early evening, but decided instead to take it easy and sleep in our bed one more night and head down early Friday morning. Well, I started to have some stomach pains Thursday afternoon, and by 8:00 pm, I started throwing up all the junk I had eaten in the last 24 hours. I spent the entire night throwing up (outta both ends) and in pain. I could not even keep down a teaspoon of water. By 3pm I knew I needed to see a Dr. for some fluid treatment, but we didn't have a car except the truck loaded with all of our stuff so I thought I could wait until morning. I made it 7 am, and could wait no longer. I was in so much pain. I called my cousin he picked me up and dropped me off at the ER, and James spent the morning finishing up all the packing and last minute preparations. I spent 4 hours in the ER getting hooked up to an IV and being pumped with anti-nausea and 2 ltrs of fluids. I was released at 11:00 am James came and picked me up in the truck and we headed down the road to Henderson. We picked up our moving crew in St. George and continued on down to Henderson. We signed every page of a 32 page contract that was explained to us in detail, ran to 7eleven to get a money order for our first months rent and got our keys by about 6:30 pm Vegas time. The boys unloaded all our stuff and set up or bed in less than 20 minutes and they were off to grub at the BW's that is just a couple miles from our new place. They took James, but I stayed back having not eaten anything the entire day, I didn't think wings were the best thing to add to an empty sensitive stomach. I put Lucy to bed, and laid down myself, while the boys chowed down on 100 wings, chips and salsa, and an order of buffalo chips.
Lucy was disoriented the next morning as were all of us, so we put on our swim suits and took a dip in the pool. We had a good time until we remembered that our gas was not going to be connected until MOnday so there was no hot water to take a shower in.... We put Lucy in a cold bath, which she was not happy about. We also didn't have shower curtains yet so we couldn't exactly take a cold shower either, so it was back to my mexico days, with a cup and bucket of water. NOT COOL!
Regardless we spent the day organizing and unpacking. Lots of shopping and getting a few things in order. Sunday we enjoyed cold showers and meeting with our new ward. The ward is great. It is filled with young families, lots of pregnant women. We also have missionaries! I was so excited to sign up to feed them. I LOVED eating in the members homes when I was a missionary and I am happy to have the opportunity to have them in our home now as well. I am already starting to look out for potential investigators for them, because I know they will be asking when they come at the end of this month. We will see what I can come up with.
Still with out a stove, I made a crockpot meal for dinner and we went to bed early.
Today, we are waiting anxiously for the Gas man to show up. We don't know when he will be here, but I have my phone close by and we have only gone as far as the pool for a morning swim. We also took an outdoor shower after our swim at the pool because there is warm water there. Pretty pathetic, but we were desperate. Our house is more and more in order each hour, but there is still so much to do.
The apartment is spacious and we love it, but definately don't have the furniture to fill it properly. That will have to come with time, as we are feeling very poor right now, with no regular income. Loans will not kick in until the middle of next month, so we are living off our savings right now, and watching in deminish. So glad we have it though.
Well, I am done for now. We are excited to be here. We love the heat and we love our location. More updates to come especially when we get our personal internet set up on Thursday and don't have to use our complex's computer to update the blogs.

Lunch with Friends

We had such a fun filled weekend. Friday, we didn't do much but Saturday we headed north to Sweet Tomatoes for lunch with some of my favorite mission friends. Becca (Hermana Plumb as I knew her before) and Elizabeth (Formally Hermana Florence) happened to be visiting Northern Utah the exact same weekend for two very different purposes. They both called and wanted to get together, and I decided we should all get together. When we were missionaries in Tucson, Becca and I were companions and Elizabeth always had a companion that we seemed to leave out of every picture we took on P-days. So we like to leave our eternal companions out of a few pictures everytime we get together, just for tradition sake. Mike (Formally Elder Guymon) joined us as well. We would have welcomed Brady (Elizabeth's husband formally Elder Ashdown) and Kubo (Formally and always Kubo), but other than spouses and kids that's the gain and others are not invited. We had a good time. We are all moving a little farther apart in the next little while so it was so good to get together one last time. I know lots of people don't keep up with mission friends, but something about this group, I just don't know how to let go of.
Sunday we headed up to Traci's for a BBQ. I don't have pictures but if I did it would all be about the food. The company was great, but the food was EXCELLENT! Russ's grill makes everything taste so good and we plan to wear out our welcome in the next month because the food is so great. Thanks Russ and Traci, Mieka and Scott and family for a lovely Sunday afternoon.

I have lots of different thoughts running through my head right now, that I am anxious to get down on some sort of medium. I choose this blog today, only because it has been so long since I have even had the time to write or keep in touch with family members and friends. I do appreciate James doing his part to update you all on the exciting and upcoming addition to our family. I am very excited, but often forget (now that I am not sick all the time to remind me) that I am pregnant. We will find out the gender next month on our anniversary (May 15th). In the beginning I was adimant that it must be a girl, but I am convinced now that either would be splendid, and so fun for Lucy to have a sibling to mess with and torment relentlessly. So far the pregnancy has been a little tougher than the last one, but the last one was so easy and smooth I wondered daily why pregnant women complained so much. I get it now. Don't worry. Although I try not to complain too much. Usually just at night when I get home from work. (Bless you James!)
I have one month left of work before I am done forever and can stay home and play with my babies. I am looking forward to those days. This semester has been especially difficult with James doing his student teaching. He was gone every morning by 7:30 am. THat left myself and Lucy to get ready and out the door by 8:30 am every morning. She went to child care for a few hours, while I worked then it was back home to clean and cook dinner (some days) while we waited for James to get home in the late afternoon. It was sometimes very exhausting, and I often crashed the second he walked through the door. Now he is DONE! Even graduated! I couldn't be more pleased to have a semester over. James graduated Cum laude from BYU. I am so proud of all his hard work. There were several classes that he would tell me it didn't matter if he got an A, but he does not know how to do a half job on anything. Most semesters he would finish with a 4.0. Okay, I'm done bragging. WAY TO GO JAMES!
Work is a lot less stressful now that James is home with Lucy everyday. I wonder how they fill their days sometimes, but so far he seems to have been very productive. I can go to work with out worring about anything else. It feels nice. I do not want to do this forever but if I had to, I don't think I could with out that support at home.
Lucy is getting so big and doing so many fun things. It is amazing how much she soaks in as well. We have started watching signing time. She will never practice the signs along with the movie but randomly you will say a word or sing a song and she will do the sign that goes along with it. I love it. She has added "duck" to her vocabulary recently. And she says it just as clear as you or I. "DUCK!" so cute. She loves the IPad (that we will have to say goodbye to in a month as it belongs to my work) but does not last very long playing with it anymore, because she likes to push the button at the bottom of the screen that takes you out of whatever game,  or movie you are playing. Its darn close to annoying, because we have purchased some really fun apps that she enjoyed in the past, and now we don't last a minute playing them with out her exiting out. There is a plus to this situation. She spends a lot more time playing with her toys and reading books now that IPad time is so limited. She still loves books and we love reading them to her. Her favorites right now are "The way I feel" and "Where's my teddy." The are others that she brings to us frequently but those two she will always listen through to the end, for me at least. James may have a whole different list.

There you have it. We spend lots of our free time, walking to and playing at parks, and watching Lucy grow. Life is swell, and we look forward to the upcoming move and change. On with May, babysitting, baby gender, family reunion, moving, training someone new at work, and my mom's wedding. It will fly by with all we got going. Enjoy the pictures.

Easter Sunday

Lucy has gotten so big since we last blogged. She can walk and stand up on her own when she wants to, which happens to be more often lately. She's become about half walker and half crawler. She's also learned to say and appropriately use the words "uh-oh," "mama," and "dada." We're really proud of her and all that she can do. What we're most excited about is that James is done with classes! Whooohooo! Because he's been student teaching, he's all done because they have spring break this week. Graduation is the 19th and 20th of April. Even more importantly, it means that he gets to stay home with Lucy. Lucy had her last day of child care last Thursday. No more child care! James will stay home and get to be Mr. Mom for the next few months before graduate school starts. We're hoping to move sometime around

the beginning of June.

For those who don't know, we have other exciting news. LAURI IS PREGNANT AGAIN!!! We're really excited about all the changes that are happening in our lives over the next few months and this one is definitely the most exciting one of them all. Lauri is due about the first week in October.

We took these pictures today when we did our Easter Egg baskets. We put fruit snacks in the plastic eggs and then put them in a line going

toward her Easter Egg basket. She did really well. She went after the eggs and then would pick them up. James had to help her let go of the eggs so that she would put them in the basket. She did open one of them and ate all the fruit snacks inside before moving on to the next eggs. Other than that she wasn't too sidetracked. For her Easter Egg basket we got her some new pajamas since she has tons of dresses but no pajamas. She also got

a coloring book and crayons. We tried coloring today and she did scribble a little bit, but ended up putting the crayons in her mouth. That's when we stopped.Lastly, I just wanted to

share my testimony this Easter Sunday on the glorious truth of the Resurrection. I know that my Savior died for us and then rose again on the third day. As He rose from the dead, He conquered those awful monsters death and hell. He made the way possible that all might be saved if we will but believe on His name and live His gospel. I love my Savior and ever thank Him for His glorious Atonement.