Life Roller Coaster

The last few months have been a life roller coaster. Everyone has them, but some people can still blog during theirs. Not me.

Here's how it went down:

Spring 2012: Nate's business takes a massive dive. It had been doing SO well. Much depression ensues.

Summer 2012: Nate reads a bunch of "How to Choose A Career"-type books and settles on becoming a professor. Good call, I think. He's always been an excellent teacher, and he loves to research. Perfect. Until he tells me it's a FIVE YEAR PROGRAM to get a PhD. Sigh. Oh well - still a good career choice, if more involved than I thought.

November 15, 2012: Nate takes the GMAT (after 3 months of straight studying). Got a 650, which felt like an epic fail at the time (average for getting into PhD school is 700).

December 18, 2012: Nate takes the GMAT again and gets a 660. Didn't feel as failure-esque this time because he did really well on the portion of the test he'd bombed the first time... and bombed the portion of the test he did really well on the first time.

January 24, 2013: Thanks in part to some string-pulling by my brother Ryan, and thanks in part to the PhD prep program Nate did while at BYU, Nate gets accepted into the Behavioral Accounting program at the University of South Carolina for the coming fall (BIG deal, as it's the #2 behavioral program, and we didn't even know if we'd get accepted anywhere at all).

January 25, 2013: We list our house (seems like a  good idea, since it's taking homes an average of 8 months to sell).

January 29, 2013: Our house sells (eek!).

February 19, 2013: We fly to SC, find a house, and put an offer down on it.

March 1, 2013: We close on our house, load up our pods (that's right - Nate and I DID just move that piano out of the house and into the pod all by ourselves!), cry (a lot, in my case), and drive to my parents' house, where we'll be staying until our house in SC closes on April 8th.

WHEW! Go Gamecocks! (for the record, the fact that our new school's mascot is a fighting chicken with a name that would be dirty in England didn't escape me. I'm still having a hard time getting past that one... no offense to any current gamecock reading this...)

These Days...

I keep taking pictures of fun things that have happened over the past few months, but then forgetting to blog about them, which I've wanted to do so as not to forget the details. So here they are:

 This was Lily's first solo attempt at yogurt. She looked so cute and messy that I had to get the camera to document it, but then when I grabbed the camera to document rather than a rag to clean her off, she got super mad. Which made it even more necessary for me to document.

 Boston loved, loved, LOVED swimming lessons and his teacher McKenna. He keeps asking when it's time for them to start again.

 One Sunday I asked Boston to go get his church clothes on by himself. He came back downstairs like this... and he was pretty pleased with himself. A natural little Chippendale :)

This is what I emerged from the shower one morning to see (no, I don't shower with a camera, this was just a nearly perfect reenactment). Lily had pulled my towel down and was sitting outside the shower, just waiting to give it to me.

Boston was in the tub one day and Lily decided that it looked like fun. So she waited until I wasn't looking and hopped right in too, shoes and all.

There's a little rose garden at our library park, so we were going around smelling the flowers one day. It looked cute, so I grabbed my camera and said to Lily (pointing to a flower), "Go smell it!" Either she  missed or she misread the point, because instead she walked up to me, sniffing at the camera.

I read that "Keep Mom in the Picture" thing floating around on facebook and thought the author made an excellent point. So during Priesthood session we took some pictures - and I stayed in them (thank you, camera with a timer AND a flashing light that kept the kids' attention riveted on the camera - yay!)

Lily Kisses

Lately Lily has been handing out the cutest kisses.

At the cabin last week, she found a baby doll, grabbed its head, and gave it some rapid-fire kisses (smooch, smooch, smooch, smooch!), which sounded a little like she was sucking on the baby's forehead. Until I realized they were precisely the style of kisses Nate gives her. Super cute.

Yesterday I sent her upstairs to get a book for us to read and she blew me kisses as she climbed up the stairs until she couldn't see me anymore.

Yes, I have the sweetest girl ever.

Political Soapbox of a Mother

Dear Boston and Lily,

I want you to grow up in a country where success is encouraged.

I want you to realize that your choices come with consequences, and that those consequences will also be yours to deal with.

I want you to feel confident and capable, so I want you to have to earn your own money.

I want you to be able to take home most of what you earn.

I want you to be able to choose your own destiny, not have it dictated to you by a large-and-in-charge style of government.

I want you to love our country, as I do.

I want you to be safe.

I want you to feel empowered, not entitled.

That's why your mom is voting (and praying) for Mitt.

Love, 

Mom

http://www.mittromney.com/

"I'm 4 now - I'm not scared of anything!"

Today is Boston's 4th birthday. I'll admit that thinking about this fact made me cry a little this morning.

Aunt Whitney called to wish him a happy birthday, and I heard her ask about Cowabunga Bay (the main activity for his birthday - he'd been asking to go for almost a year).
Boston: "I went down the BIG slide! TWICE!"
Whitney: "Oooh! Were you scared?"
Boston: (matter-of-factly) "No, I'm 4 now. I'm not scared of anything!" (he actually was too scared on the first try... Dad had to do a little encouraging for him to try again)

He is a very brave, smart, handsome, funny, creative, and generally sweet boy, and every day we have him we feel so blessed to...maybe not every moment, but definitely at least once a day :)

Love you, bud!

P.S. Yes, creating this post has made me cry again. They just grow up so blasted fast!

Camping

We went on an overnight camping trip with the Millers. It was so fun!

We had a slight mishap on the way (Lily got car sick... all over her car seat), but she was fine once we got out of the car. Once we'd set up camp and had dinner (memo to me: pre-cook the tin foil dinner veggies next time), Boston and Nate set out for the lake with the rest of the fishing expedition (Boston was SO excited):

Lily stayed behind at camp with me, where she gave me this face, so I gave her...

...the ginormous marshmallow she was pointing at. Which she loved.

She also thought it was funny to try to run away from me while I tried to get pictures of her loving the ginormous marshmallow.

Lily earned (hands down) the Best Camper Award for sleeping all night, despite Boston's whining (just 6 feet away from her) all night.

The next morning the men cooked breakfast (which was surprisingly tasty - you can't beat super crisp bacon ;) after which we packed up camp and all went to the lake. Lucky for us, the Langstons camped right next to us and let us borrow their oh-so-awesome raft, which was a big hit.

(The Boys)

(The Girls)

Boston loved playing in the shallow part of the lake, where he found the new love of his life, which he dubbed "The Flinging Stick" (in his hand here).

 He was only slightly jealous when Calvin caught a fish. I think The
Flinging Stick helped ease the blow.

 Then Lily slept on the way home...

 ...and Boston acted like a goof, all hopped up on sugar and the memory of an awesome camping trip :)

Biased

Ok, raise your hand if your kids are also this fun and cute.

Who'd have thought that parenting could be so amusing?