Still Here!

Just wanted to poke my head in and say hello.  Since Devin finished his last out of town rotation and joined back up with our little family at the beginning of April, life has been crazy busy, packed with work and as of late...FUN, FUN and FUN!  

For journaling and record keeping's sake:

2 week before moving out of our 6 month/temporary home at Devin's parent's house in Salt Lake, we bought a minivan baby!  An 8 seater Toyota Sienna with tons of space!  I am in love with it...truly a proud minivan mom!  

A week later we sold our trusty Scion xB.  Devin and I both were surprisingly not sad to see that pull out of the driveway for the last time.  Usually we get attached to our cars, but the Scion was strictly a good-gas mileage-get us from point A to point B-kind of car. The switch to our minivan was warmly welcomed.

So, all I remember of the month of April was researching minivans, and then making sure ours was completely ready for the month long road trip across the country: alignment, oil, new tires, brake check, etc.

We spent time at Grandpa Finch's farm, the Tranter cabin and many good nights with the family at the house.  

April brought with it the end of a small era that we had anticipated for almost 2 years.  Living in Utah again was so sweet and so good for us.  It was definitely a re-charge to our batteries to soak in the mountains on a daily basis and be with so much family before heading back to Chicago for round 2 of our 7 year Podiatric journey.  The same nostalgic/sad feeling I had when we left Illinois at the end of October came flooding back as we said our Utah goodbyes for what could be a LONG time!  Life just keeps on marching on.

Our van did a fabulous job driving us from Salt Lake City to Atlanta.  We dropped the girls off at my dad and Mary's house and then Devin and I flew to Cancun for a week of vacation...all alone.  It was awesome!  I had no worries about the girls (first time I have ever left them...even for a night) because I knew they were in the best of hands with Mary and Dad.  (Post on Cancun will be forthcoming once we are settled in Chicago in June.)

Dad literally picked us up from the airport, with the girls in tow, and we drove directly to the Gulf side of Florida for Matt and Summer's wedding weekend.  It was so good to see our little munchkins, and then spend 4 days with the Houck side of the family celebrating my big brother's love and commitment to Summer and her kids.

Josh took a ton of amazing pictures over the course of the whole weekend, and while I would love to post all 220 of them, I instead decided to just share my absolute favorites.  He is such a talented photographer, and what makes his photos even better is that he is completely self taught and does it totally for fun.

After the wedding weekend, we packed up in our van again and drove from the Gulf to the Atlantic side of Florida, have been staying at Mary's beachfront condo for the past week and will continue to be here for another week.  We have gone from one vacation, to the next and to the next, and it has been incredible!  We are out of reality and will continue to be minivan gypsies until we drive back up to Chicago at the end of May/beginning of June before Devin's graduation.  

Claire is now 11 months.  She is a super fast crawler, and is pulling herself up to the standing position whenever she can.  She is a noise maker, and loves to hear herself.  She growls, sniffs heavily, clicks her tongue and screams at a very high pitched tone.  Her 8th tooth just broke through 2 days ago...4 on top and 4 on the bottom.  Her reaction to the beach and sand and water/waves has been so fun to see.  She loves crawling on the shore and laughs so loud when a small wave comes and pushes the water over her hands and knees.  As the water recedes, she crawls after it, and the laughter repeats itself as the new wave comes and washes over her again.  Love our little Bear!

Emily is doing great.  She is a spit fire with a huge personality.  Her moods are hot and cold and we never know what we might get.  For the most part, her tantrums can be talked down and rationalized, but at least once a day she has a melt down (sometimes about absolutely nothing) that takes her to left field and there is no getting her out of it.  We simply have to let the fit run its course, and then she is fine, her energy has been expended and she often snuggles with us calmly for a while.  Being a rookie mom with Emily, I have no idea if this behavior is normal, but I'm chalking it up to the good old terrible two's!  She LOVES the beach too.  She likes running and splashing in the shallow waves, making drip castles with daddy, chasing birds and screaming with excitement whenever a helicopter/plane flies overhead.  Emily is such a sweetheart and there is a never a dull moment with her around.  Love that little buttercup!

And that's it.  More to come.