And the race is on ...

Kelli has been the diligent one in making sure that there has been some level of continuity since moving into our home here in Ogden. Between spending heaps of time trying to get the yard looking semi-descent, unpacking boxes and rearranging furniture, rooms, kids, … and finishing the triathlon training, it’s been more than a hectic last couple of weeks and months. Now that the yard is somewhat in order and the triathlon has finished, attention has turned to finishing our basement. We bought this home with a reasonably sized basement that is mostly unfinished. It’s good in the sense that we get to put it together how we’d like, bad in the sense that we have to put it together J So we’ve spent a lot of time just trying to figure out how much of it we can do on our own and how much we need to bid out. All in all we’re hoping to have it done before the baby gets here … but we’ll see what happens!

Anyway, there have been a couple of recent happening with the kids which just can’t be left undocumented. Hunter has been the most hilarious of late. We had some neighbors give us their little battery-operated jeep which Hunter just can’t get enough of. He is just tall enough to be able to push the ‘gas’ pedal. He cranks the steering wheel to one side and will literally just go around in circles for a half hour … or until the battery dies. The other day Kelli went outside and was trying to tell him to come inside and get some lunch or something. He stopped his jeep just long enough to look at her blankly for a second … and then respond, “Hey Mom! Close the door! You’re letting flies in the house!” His level of manipulation at this age is approaching his older sister! Then tonight we were out running some errands and Hunter was in the back in his car seat. He was trying to get her attention and got a little flustered when he couldn’t. Then he finally broke out with, “Mom, hey Mom, ding ding, hey Mom!” Ok, so those are cute and funny, but he’s also been increasing his vocabulary in areas which aren’t so good. He’s exploring his d’s and a’s and m’s and n’s … generally putting them together in that order. Kelli has tried to get the kids not to make a big deal of it and hopefully he’ll just pass through this phase without letting it stick. In the store tonight he did start shouting out, ‘darnet, darnet’ so at least he’s becoming slightly more ‘clean’ with his language.

In other news, Collin had his first soccer practice last Saturday. Kelli and I are the default coaches since they had enough kids sign up late they just set up a whole new team. It’s going to be 3 v 3, which should be quite entertaining. I thought we would do hour practices, but after 15 minutes the kids were just plain tuckered out so maybe we’ll go back to 30-minuters. We also did our first BYU football game over the weekend. Uncle Chris (affectionately known among his niece and nephews as ‘King Chris’ – yes, they have been brainwashed!) set up a monster tailgate party complete with generator and 2 TVs so we could all watch the Utah/Michigan game. It was quite hot, but the kids were so excited to finally be able to go to the game after waiting so long for it to come. Collin is an avid fan (so avid in fact that when his Aunt Jenny gave him a U of Utah doll, he promptly told her he didn’t want it and to go throw it outside!) I could only laugh when after BYU’s first score, they started to play the BYU fight song and there were Kelli and Grandpa Whetstone just staring at Collin as they were singing the song and making sure he got all of the actions in. If there was any hope ever left that he might have a tint of red left in him … I knew at that moment he was gone forever. Alas, at least we can look forward to an entertaining college football season!

Well, that’s about it for now. We are thoroughly enjoying being back home and closer to family. There are moments of panic and anxiety on whether we made the right decision, but there is also a quiet sense of peace that things are in order and will work out. We wish everyone the best out there and looking forward to hearing from you if you have a free moment. Cheers!