Pack It All In

My little brother was leaving on his mission to Knoxville, Tennessee so I decided to head to Utah for a visit with the kids.  And it just so happened that my brother going into the MTC coincided with many other events including my 10 year high school reunion, my birthday, and Alpine Days.  It was a packed week!

We stayed the first couple of days at my Uncle Ryan and Aunt Shanda's house.  We love them so much!  And the kids loved their cat Aurora. My sister and I got in some good girl time shopping because I needed something to wear to my reunion.  We also went to a little day event for my high school reunion at a splash park followed by some snow cones.

Evy and Nate's first snow cone 

Honestly, I wouldn't have trekked out to Utah just for my high school reunion.  But since I was in town, it was nice to go and see my girl friends from high school.  Love these ladies!

We had to squeeze in an afternoon at the cabin.  The kids loved the ranger rides and romping in the woods.

One bonus of seeing my family is getting haircuts from Grandma.  Evy had her first haircut and we had to play beauty parlor with some hair curlers.

We had Byron's setting apart as a missionary. I'm so proud of his decision to serve!

We went down to Provo for one last family lunch and to drop Byron off at the MTC.  While we were down there, we stopped by the Provo City Center Temple since I hadn't seen it yet.  Byron was so anxious at lunch to just get to the MTC he had a hard time eating.  We stopped for some pictures and hugs at the Provo Temple before dropping him off at the curb of the MTC.  We are sure going to miss Uncle Byron, but we know he's going to be the best missionary!

The next day, Missy Evy was not feeling so hot.  Luckily, my sister-in-law/out-of-town pediatrician saved the day by checking out Evy.  Seriously, Alissa is amazing!  Evy had hand, foot, and mouth disease so she had to stay home for the days festivities.  Nate and I drove to Farmington to see Grandma Packer.  We sure love her!  After that we hung out with cousins.   It was so nice to see my cute cute nieces!  We were sad Evy couldn't come with us, but she had loads of fun with Grandma all to herself.  And Grandma needed a little buddy.  Both of my sisters were working that day and we'd just dropped of Byron the day before.  Evy kept asking, "Uncle Byron, where are you?"

Sarah and Nate trying to spray each other

I got to celebrate my birthday while I was in Utah.  My mom took me shopping and we went out for dinner as a family. And following dinner, my girl friends from high school got together for some more time to chat.  As far as birthdays go, it was pretty great.

One of the best things about my birthday growing up was Alpine Days was the same week.  I have so many great memories of the parade and fair I was excited to share it with my kids. Aaron and Kendra came up so we were able to have the grandkiddies play together for a little bit. Alpine Days has grown a lot since when I was little, but it's still a lot of fun. We enjoyed walking around and seeing so many people I knew from growing up in Alpine.

Some much fun in just one week!  Seeing all these pictures makes me want to do it all over again.  I'll have to remember that when I'm starting out on my next 8 hour road trip to Utah with 2 monkeys in the back.

Fossil Creek Reservoir

Evelyn at 18 Months

- Evy loves her stuffed animals.  She takes a load of them to bed with her. And she'll ask for a different one to snuggle each night. She's also very attached to her blankie.
- If I need to keep Evy entertained for a while I'll give her a sheet of stickers.  She loves them!
- Favorite word: no.  Of course.
- Bathtime is still her favorite time of day.
- Evy is becoming such a daddies girl. She loves running to find daddy and welcome him home.  She'll ask throughout the day, "Daddy, where are you?"

- She is a trouble maker!  She us always climbing on things, making messes, and putting things in her mouth!
- Her 18 month visit was delayed due to our move, but here are her 19 month stats: 32.5 inches (58th percentile) and 23 lbs (48th percentile.)

- Evy is always eating!  She is always wanting some little snack or hanging on the refrigerator door to try and get in.
- Such a little smarty pants.

- Evy is definitly a little water baby.  Loves, loves, loves it.
- She wants to read a million books at bedtime.

- She loves her big brother.  She usually wakes up and asks for Nate Nate.
- Loves brushing her teeth.

- Evy loves to be outside.  She loves playing in the backyard, at the playground, or just going for a walk.
- She loves to see the school bus.  She waves and grins as it pulls up.  And then she shouts for her Nate Nate.

- Such a good little helper.  She's getting the hang of cleaning up. And she desperately wants to help me with the dishwasher.
- Evy's learned to throw a pretty good tantrum.

- I love it when she sings.  She knows Itsy Bitsy Spider, ABCs, Child of God, Twinkle Star, and You Are My Sunshine.
- Loves to look for bunnies in the backyard.

- She's been getting into dancing.  It's too cute!
- Before we leave her room and sometimes before she goes to sleep, Evy will ask for a hair bow to be put in her hair. What a little cutie!

- Her favorite game has got to be peekaboo.  She plays it all of the time.  Even with strangers at the grocery store.
- She started nursery and she loves it.  Her first day she ran right in and didn't even look back to wave bye to mom and dad.

- So many hugs and kisses.  I love it when she'll spontaneously come over and give me a hug.
- Evy has such a cute little personality.  So happy and smiley and sweet and full of adventure and lots of trouble!  I wouldn't trade her for anything.

We Moved

So, we moved.  Again.  Evy's only 19 months and she's lived in 3 different houses.  But, we did move for a real job so we're pretty excited about that.

Brad had a couple of different offers so I went to check out both cities.  One was up in Greeley and the other was down in Colorado Springs.  We really wanted to stay in Colorado so we were happy with both options keeping us here.

I loved the office in Greeley.  They're called "The Smile Department" and are themed around fire departments complete with real fire trucks outside.  Then I went over to Windsor and met up with Brad's would-be-boss's-wife at a playground.  Micah is super nice and was so sweet to let me know about the area.  And our families are kind of eerily similar.  Like both of our husband's are named Brad who play the trumpet and tennis. We're both LDS. And we both have a kid with autism.  It's been so nice to have Micah to get recommendations and let me know about services.  After that we ran over to see the temple in Fort Collins.  It was really surprising to me driving around to see how many little lakes there are around here.  It's really beautiful and the mountains aren't too far away from Fort Collins.

The very next day I drove to Colorado Springs. It was so beautiful!  So close to the mountains.  We drove up to the Garden of the Gods which was amazing.  I drove around to a few other places in town to see how we liked the city. The practice also looked pretty nice, but it wasn't in a great part of town.

Goodbye Aurora house!

After that we were so back and forth about our decision.  We really kept changing our minds about which we liked better.  But in the end we've very happy with our decision to move to Fort Collins.  We decided to move to Fort Collins 2 weeks before our move.  It really was crazy timing.  My mom flew out to watch my kids while I was supposed to go to Girl's Camp for the week.  But then I got sick.  So while we were still making up our minds, my mom was packing up our house while I lay on the couch.  My illness did allow Brad and I to be together and make a decision.  By the end of the week we decided to move to Fort Collins and we put in an application for renting our house.

Brad's actual practices are in Greeley and Ault.  Both are a 30 minute commute. So why did we move to Fort Collins? Well, the school district here is great for special needs and the community board (how we access county services) is better in Fort Collins. And we really like Fort Collins.  It's also kind of special since Brad served part of his mission in Fort Collins.  In fact, we're in the same ward Brad served in 11 years ago.

We love our location. We're so close to everything.  It's only 10 minutes to Costco, 5 minutes to Sprout's (my favorite grocery store, I know, a little nuts to have a favorite grocery store, but I really do love it,) 10 minutes to Cafe Rio, Nate's school is 2 minutes away, we walk to church every Sunday since we're just across the street, and we can see the temple from our house.  It's an amazing location.  The house itself, well, let's just say the landlord didn't even do a walk through of the house after the last tenant left.  And he doesn't want to fix anything.  So, we're really motivated to start saving for a house!

But just as long as we can stay in this area.  I really really like our new ward. It's a good mix of families though everyone is a dentist, doctor, or a engineer.  We're had 3 new Mormon families move in on our street since we're been here.  And all of them have kids the same age as ours.  It's great!  And this ward is very special needs friendly.  The bishop's brother has down syndrome so he's been so supportive and welcoming.  He's calling a special helper for Nate for sunbeams.  And there's also a few other kids with special needs in our ward so Nate's quirks really aren't that unusual.  We're also really liking Nate's preschool.  Bacon Elementary has been recommended to us by so many people.  It's the district's special integration school for kids with autism.  So they're especially versed in autism care, but they still let these kids be fully integrated into regular classrooms as much as they can.  In all I've read about classrooms for autistic kiddos, integrated classrooms have the best outcomes for all of the children involved.

And Brad's been liking his work.  The Ault Office was closed for some renovations before Brad started so they did a Grand Re-Opening party and also welcomed Brad to the practice.  They had a cake with Brad's name on it and even had "Welcome Dr. Packer" goodie bags to hand out.  The whole staff is wonderful.  Brad's Greeley office is also undergoing some renovations and they will be putting in some operating suites for Brad to work in so he can start doing sedation and oral surgery cases.

We're really loving this move.  We love the beautiful area.  We love being close to the temple.  We love the friends we're making here.  And it's so nice to feel like we can put down some roots.   For our entire marriage, we're known how long we're staying in one place before we're going to pick up everything and move again.  But we're staying here for the foreseeable future.  We are hoping to buy a house, but we'll stay in the same area.  We won't have to leave familiarity and friends behind.  So life is good.  Life is really good.

4th of July