Summer Fun and Emily's First Hair Cut

The boys have been enjoying their new found freedom.  I let them ride their bikes down the sidewalk to the driveway past the big evergreen tree...

Once we were settled in we decided it was time to potty train Emily...

August 17th Emily was a little tired from all the "training" and fell asleep

After some debating we decided that Emily was in need of a haircut so on August 21st I decided to just take her and get it done.  She was so excited and sat there the whole time saying, "Emily haircut"

Before...

AFTER...

Ryan thinks that Emily looks like his mom in this picture

I sometimes miss her long hair but now it is all even and looks a lot better.

First Day of School

The boys started school on Thursday, August 15th.  On the previous Tuesday we went to a back to school night and were able to see who the kids teachers are and meet them.  We decided to make these pencils (filled with Dove chocolates) for the boys to take on the first day to give to their teachers...

Nathanial started first grade and was happy to go back to "real" school...

Nathanial's first day of 1st grade with Mrs. Simoni.

After looking at various preschools in the area and not feeling like any of them were the right fit for Christopher we heard about a program through the district called Transitional Kindergarten (TK).  It is for kids who turn 5 between June and September that are not quite ready for kindergarten.  After hearing about it I knew that it was the program that we were looking for.  It is an all day, 5 day-a-week program.  He was so happy that he gets to go to school with Nathanial.

Christopher's first day of Transitional Kindergarten with Ms. Purhman

First day of school at Whiitier Elementary School, Sioux City, Iowa, August 15, 2013

The house is very quite during the day only having Emily at home.  She missed the boys for the first few days but now I think she enjoys having her mom all to herself during the day.

Also something that we have never heard of until we moved here are "heat" days.  It is similar to a snow day but caused by excessive heat.  The school doesn't have air conditioning so if it gets too hot they have to end school 2 hours early.  So far they have had 8 heat days (as of September 13th).

Woodbury County Fair

Nathanial, Emily, and Christopher at the Woodbury County Fair on Saturday, August 3rd.

The kids loved all the animals

Christopher the Combine

At one of the booths there was a snake...

Christopher thought it was the coolest thing ever.

Emily couldn't get enough of the snake.

Nathanial is like his mom and wanted NOTHING to do with the snake!!

There were pony rides that the kids wanted to go on so we headed over there...

Emily kept saying "pony, pony, pony!" the whole time and had a huge grin on her face

Nathanial chose the biggest pony there to ride and was happy

Ryan walked with Emily for safety reasons :)

Christopher was cracking jokes and making this guy laugh.  The guy liked Christopher so much that he let him go around a few extra times.

I think that we were spoiled growing up going to the Eastern Idaho State Fair.  The kids were content going to the Woodbury County fair but Ryan and I kept saying how small it was.  It was a great day to get out of the house and go and do something as a family.

Our Lives in Iowa (July)

With all the moving and unpacking I really didn't take a lot of pictures.  When we moved to Iowa we weren't sure when Ryan would start working due to the fact that he was waiting to get his Iowa Dental License.  We were told that it could take a few months.  We needed Ryan to start working so that we could close on our house.  The owner of the house was really nice and let us move in and rent the house until Ryan started working.  The house that we bought was gutted and redone so it didn't come with any appliances.  So all we had was a mini-fridge and a microwave to use.  We said lots of prayers to help everything work out.  Ryan received his dental license on July 3rd and started working on July 8th. I really wanted to go to Idaho for the 4th of July but with all the chaos we decided that it would be better if we stayed in Iowa.  We ended up going to Ryan's boss's house.  They have a pool and the kids had a blast.
When we looked at our house before we moved in the kitchen was described as an "eat-in" kitchen but it wasn't even big enough to fit a small table so we had them put more cabinets in.  It was worth it. We now have a decent amount of storage in our kitchen, but with this came another snag.  The owner didn't want to order the counter top until we arrived so that we could tell him exactly how we wanted it to be (we wanted an overhang for a bar-type area).  The bank that we were getting our loan through sent an appraiser through to get an appraisal on the home and he said he couldn't finalize the appraisal until the counter was installed.  So we continued to wait.  We really wanted to get appliances but we didn't have enough money to go and buy them and if we opened an account at an appliance store then it would mess up our mortgage application and we didn't want to do that. Finally the counter was installed and the appraiser came back and we were told that we would be closing on our house on Friday, July 26th.
As soon as we were done signing I headed to Home Depot to pick out and order our appliances.  Unfortunately, the earliest delivery date was Thursday, August 1st.  I was a little disappointed but I was also glad to have a date that I knew I would be able to have a washer and dryer, a fridge, a stove, and a dishwasher.  We cooked a lot in the microwave and Crockpot for a month. I had to go grocery shopping everyday because all we had was a minifridge.  And we had to spend a few hours and dollars every week to do our laundry at a laundry mat. I was beyond ready to have appliances.
Thursday arrived and I anxiously awaited for our appliances.  I felt like a little kid on Christmas morning.  Although as soon as the delivery guys came into the house to assess the areas my excitement quickly turned into frustration.  They were not able to hook up the water line to the fridge because it did not have the right connector; the dishwasher could not be installed because there wasn't a power source or a water source; the stove could not be installed because the gas pipe was too tall and there wasn't an emergency shut-off valve.  So after all that the only thing that was installed was the washer and dryer.  I was very thankful for at least that much.
We called the contractor who worked on the house and had him come back and fix what he could and then called a plumber to come and fix everything else.  So after another week we were able to use all of our appliances, it was a very happy day!
Also at some point in this mess of things we realized that when we drained the kitchen sink the drain would back-up and cause water to fill the utility room in the basement.  We called the contractor and he came out and fixed it by cutting a hole in the cement basement floor and tearing apart the plumbing.  He found 3 chunks of lead in the pipe that was keeping the water from draining at the speed that it should have.  So for a while we had a hole in our floor and could not use our washer and dryer.  Oh, the joys of buying/owning a home.

Emily playing with bubbles on July 3rd

Kids playing in the storage closet on July 9th

Funny Faces :)

Emily eating corn-on-the-cob on July 10th

Nathanial has an awesome sense of style...

(orange striped polo shirt, blue and red plaid shorts, black tube socks, and blue sandles)

Nathanial had an awesome Primary teacher who gave all the kids a large print triple combination.  Nathanial was so excited to receive this that he started to read it and read a few pages on Monday, July 22nd.

Nathanial reading the Book of Mormon

Our Move From Cleveland, Ohio to Sioux City, IA

Moving is always an adventure and this move was no exception. On Friday, June 28th we picked up the biggest truck that Penske had along with a trailer to haul Ryan's car on.  We started to load and clean the house as soon as we got everything ready to go.  Later in the evening we had lots of help from our ward friends who came and loaded the truck in a couple of hours: Brother Bautista and Brother Holdaway, Nate Tracey (the pack master), Brandon and Anne Evans, and the Byrne's Family.  Ryan was working all day to load and truck and he was tired by the end of the day.

Our goal was to leave as soon as we could on Saturday, June 29th, but it seems that nothing ever goes according to plan and we didn't leave until 4 PM.  Once we got on the road we made good time though. We were on the outskirts of Chicago around midnight and we decided that it would be best to drive through Chicago before we stopped for the night so we kept driving.  

Around 1 AM we started to look for a hotel and to our luck there was some event going on and there were no rooms.  So we kept driving and stopping to try and find a place to stay.  This happened to us on our drive when we moved to Cleveland four years ago.  Just after 2 we stopped one more time and we still couldn't find a place to stay so we decided to park and sleep in the car and moving truck.  Nathanial and Ryan slept pretty well in the moving truck and Christopher, Emily, and I slept in the van. 

We woke up around 6 AM and decided that we weren't tired enough to sleep anymore so we headed to a store to use the bathroom and to pick up something for breakfast and started to drive again.  

The boys took turns riding in the moving truck with Ryan.

We arrived in Sioux City just after 4 PM on Sunday, June 30th. We met with our realtor to get our keys and to start to move in. 

The office that Ryan was going to work for told us that they would have a crew come at 5 to help us unload our truck.  We weren't sure how many people would be there so we also informed our ward to help us too.  With all the help that was enlisted we had our truck unloaded and everything in our house in an hour.

Ryan put together everyone's beds so that we would have somewhere to sleep for the night and the next morning the real work began as we started to unpack all our boxes.

Our Last Days in Cleveland

We have a lot of blogging to do to catch up on everything that has been going on in our lives...

On June 20th Emily found some chocolate...

On June 21st we took our kids to our friend's, the Lovato's, while we went to the ultrasound appointment to find out what we were having and they had a blast!  They were able to add water to the dirt to make mud and cover themselves with it, they were four happy boys.

In order to clean them off a little so we could take our boys home, Lisa hosed them off, they thought that was pretty fun...

My good friend Andrea's birthday was on June 21st so we took her over some mint brownies and sang happy birthday to her...

Happy Birthday, Andrea

On Sunday, June 23rd, after church we decided to tour the historic sites at Kirtland before we moved.

Historic Kirtland

On June 25th we went with some friends from our ward to Hinckly Lake.  The kids swam for a while and then we took them up a little farther to rent a paddle boat.  The kids thought it was fun.  Just as we were getting back to shore a HUGE rainstorm started.  It was raining so hard that everyone just stayed in the boat house while I ran to get the car.  I was soaking wet by the time I reached the car.

We were sad to say goodbye to our friends in Cleveland.  One of the families that we have missed are the Tracey's.  Andrea and I can talk for hours and our kids play SO well together.  Gabby loves to take care of Emily, Luke is a great "big" brother to Nathanial, and Lily and Christopher can play for hours together.