We're Moving

So it is mid-December and we have been planning to move out of my sister's basement by the end of the year, so we started a vigorous apartment-hunt a couple of weeks ago. I spent many hours on the phone, researching apartments from West Jordan to Clearfield, UT and everywhere in between. We have found a townhome we really like in Clearfield. It is a 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath with an attached garage, so we are really hoping we get it! (We should hear back from them in the next day or two if we clear their credit and background checks, etc.)
We will move as soon as possible. Of course this Friday we are leaving for a week to spend Christmas with my parents in Arizona, so that might come right in the middle of our moving plans, but for sure, we will be in our own place by the start of the new year. We are thrilled to get our kids in their own bedrooms. Cory has probably woken Hailey up from her naps at least 137 times since she was born almost 2 years ago because he goes in their room to get toys. (Usually sneaks past me without me knowing what he's up to.) Of course in early February, we will be adding a new addition to our family, but at least for the first little while, she'll be in a bassinet in our bedroom, and then we need to decide which child can share best with her. (And handle her middle of the night crying without waking up!)

On a secondary note, Trent reluctantly accepted a position with ARUP Laboratories located in SLC. He already turned them down once about a month ago, but in that month, he didn't have a single job interview doing clinical research, so when they wanted to interview him again (and offered him another job), he felt he just couldn't say no this time. It would've been much more exciting for us to accept this job (even though it has absolutely nothing to do with pharmaceuticals or drug research) if they were willing to pay him better. But they are only offering him slightly more than what he is already making as a pharmacy technician. It is also a position that only requires a Bachelors degree, instead of a Masters like he has, but the Masters degree seems to be not impressing anyone, so this job we must take. He will also have to work an extra 2 days every other week at the pharmacy in order for us to pay off our student loans. (That were pointless, by the way.) The reason why it's every other week is because his shift is pretty horrible, too. It's from 1pm-11:30pm, with 7 days on and 7 days off. That was another reason this job was very difficult for us to accept. I'm not sure how I will manage with a new baby and two other kids for 7 days straight without a husband, but we'll see. At least he's not in the military and leaves for many months at a time!! So I must count my blessings.

Hailey loves to dance

So, Hailey has really gotten into dancing lately. Ever since everyone here participated in the stake broadway review, the performer in Hailey has come out. Everytime the family would leave to rehearsal, Hailey would cry, point to herself and say "me." She really wanted to go. Anyway, I have posted a couple videos of Hailey and her cute little dancing. This first is Hailey dancing to Hairspray. The second is Hailey dancing to Lion king with her cousin Rebecca. Enjoy!

Halloween Fun

Nothing has changed with us. We are still living in my sister's basement in Layton. We've had a couple more job interviews, but still no job. Trent is still applying to several jobs each week. But I really don't want to talk about that right now, so on to the fun stuff! (On a good note, I am 6 months pregnant now and it's going really well.)

Here are the kids right before trick-or-treating. Cory was an army man and Hailey was a fairy. That's Hailey's cheesy smile--she does it every time we tell her to say cheese.


These are Cory's Shaw cousins that we are living with right now. They also have a 9 month old baby who's not in the picture. They sure had fun all together on Halloween!

Hailey had no problem putting her hands in the pumpkin goo.

Cory loved carving jack-o-lanterns. That's his older cousin, Rachel in the background.

This is how many people are living in one house right now! (Trent is taking the picture. )

Yes, that would be 11 people. At least there are 5 bedrooms!

Hailey at our ward Halloween party.

Hailey and Cory at the party.

Cory pointing to which pumpkin he wants at a local pumpkin patch.

This is Hailey at the Pumpkin patch. It was very windy and we were freezing by the end! (We had to wait in line for 40 minutes just to get on the tractor to go to the pumpkins.)

In Honor of Halloween

Well, we had quite the outing today. After a long wait, and rescheduling of appointments, we finally had our ultrasound today. It was supposed to be last Thursday, but the hospital called Karen Wednesday afternoon and said they wouldn't be able to do the ultrasound that day and had to reschedule for a week later. So off we went today and boy were we treated to a show by our new little bundle of joy. Enjoy the following images, but continue at your own risk.



BEWARE!!!!!!!

In case you can't tell, she is mooning us in the last picture. (and such a cute little tushy it is).

We are so excited to add another girl to our household and for Hailey to have a sister.

When the ultrasound tech said that it was a girl, Cory turned to me and asked, "How do you know it is a girl?" I showed him the archway on the monitor and showed him the legs and butt and said that we knew because nothing was in between. He was utterly confused. It was very cute.

Recent Pictures of the Kids

This is Cory and Hailey just being cute a week or so before we moved from our apartment.

Trent's sister, Stacey took some pictures for us of Hailey. Cory got in some of them, too.

Whoa, mama! We told Cory to give Hailey a kiss and this is what we got! Let's hope he's not quite so aggressive when he's a teenager.

Our Move

A lot has changed with us, but then again not everything has changed that we would have liked!! We had to leave our Married Student Apartments the end of August since Trent was no longer a student. We still did not have a job, though, so that made our decision on where to go and what to do a rather difficult one. See, most people when they graduate from college, they expect everything to be rosy and perfect and within a few weeks, they will have their dream job, buy a house, and their lives will be perfect. While that has happened to a few people we know (not mentioning any names!!) it certainly does not happen to everyone. We are learning some very important lessons in patience, that's for sure. We're not quite sure if we wasted the last 3 years getting a Masters Degree or not, but right now, it sure feels that way.

So my sister Stephanie, who lives in Layton, Utah and has 5 kids of her own, offered us to come live in her empty 2 bedrooms in her basement while we continued the job search. At the time (end of August), we thought we were quite close to securing a job in Cinicinnati, OH. They had already once offered Trent a job a few months ago and we knew they were still hiring, so we thought we would have the job for sure. Well, shortly after moving up here, they let us know that they decided to change their minimum qualifications for that job and wanted at least one year of experience as a clinical researcher instead of little or no experience. How lucky for us.

So now we are completely back to square one with the job search. It has helped to move into a ward with working professionals because everyone seems to be networking for us and trying to get Trent a job. Not to get our hopes up or anything (heaven forbid!) but the hiring manager for Myriad Genetics lives in this ward and promised Trent a phone interview after Trent sent him his resume. Trent has applied to jobs over the last few months at Myriad, but they never came to anything. But supposedly, as long as someone there KNOWS you, then everything suddenly changes. He also had a pretty good phone interview a couple of days ago with ARUP, a medical services laboratory company in Salt Lake City. And that job would not be doing clinical research. It would be more laboratory science work. But we are quickly realizing it is pretty much near impossible to get a job doing clinical research with no experience. So now we are going about ways to get his foot slowly in the door. It may take 2-3 years before he can do that yet.

We are hoping and praying that since we really wanted a time limit on the number of weeks we would invade someone's home, that we will at least have a job offer by the end of October. We told my sister we didn't want to invade them for more than 2 months. At least if we have a job offer by then, though, we can start house hunting and at least feeling a bit more optimistic. If we have absolutely nothing still, then we will start apartment hunting and have Trent continue to work as a pharmacy technician and just go live in an apartment for a while. I guess on the positive side, he does already have a job that at least makes enough for us to be independent on--just not enough to buy a house.

We're still trying to get Cory into preschool--he cries almost every morning when his 3 cousins, ages 9, 7, and 5 head off to school and he has to stay home with the "babies", his sister Hailey, and his other two cousins, ages 3 and 8 months. It's especially difficult for him because all last year we had him in Headstart for 4 days a week and 2 years ago, I had him involved in a preschool 2 days a week with a few moms in our court. So for him to be almost 5 years old, and doing absolutely no preschool, is so hard for him!

Hailey is adjusting very well to living here--she loves her cousin, Rebecca, who is 3 years old. She also adores baby Jacob and screams for job anytime he wakes up from his naps. I swear, my kids needed to be born into a family with 4 children already. Too bad that's not going to happen!

My pregnancy continues to go well. I'm almost 18 weeks along now. We'll find out the sex of the baby in 2 weeks. Yeah! We'll be sure to let everyone know.

We'll also be sure to let everyone know how the job search goes--trust me, if you haven't heard anything, that means absolutely nothing has happened.

Extreme Broadway

So, Karen may have mentioned that her family did an extreme broadway production for the last family reunion. Karen's brother had recorded the whole thing, but his kids recorded over parts of the production, so I told him I would burn the copy I have and send it to him. To make a long story short, all of my blank DVDs are in storage from our big move into Stephanie and Zach's house in Layton so I am going to post them on our blog and hope that he can download them onto his computer. Anyway, you are welcome to watch, but it is a little lengthy. I would particularly suggest finding Karen in her Hairspray debut. She is so "HOT." I think it is the 7th video (after the cute little dance number). FYI: This is not the whole show. My camera ran out of juice during the last 15ish minutes so this is all I have. If you watch the whole thing, you must be really bored, but I hope you enjoyed it. (Karen will be mad if I don't mention that she IS wearing a lot of extra padding. Not that it isn't totally obvious since she is normally stick skinny.)

After we saw Pride and Prejudice: The Musical

On Friday, Aug. 1 we went to see my brother, Curtis, and his wife, Jenni in their roles as Charles Bingley and Jane Bennett in the new musical of Pride and Prejudice. They performed it at the Scera Shell in Orem, UT. Afterwards we went to the Creamery at BYU for some excellent ice cream. These are some of Karen's neices and a nephew.

Karen, Kayla, Curtis, Jenni, Emily, Lindsey, Christy, and a yawning Matthew. (It was after 11pm.)

Fun in East Canyon, Aug1-4, 2008

We went up Emigration Canyon to stay at a resort called East Canyon in a condo with Trent's parents and a couple of his siblings. We spent our days playing miniature golf, tennis, shuffleboard, going swimming and of course, fishing at the lake. Our kids had a blast and came home exhausted.

Fun at the Treehouse Museum in Ogden

For part of my family's big reunion we took a day out to take the kids to the Treehouse Museum in Ogden, UT. Hailey and Cory had so much fun at all the different stations being creative and having fun with their cousins.

Cory Showing Some Muscle!

We went to a Real Soccer game a couple Saturdays ago, and the mascot gave Cory all these tatoos. Of course he wanted us to put them on him as soon as we got home. Then he took his shirt off to get his pajamas on, and we told him to flex!

24th of July Parade

We had fun with Karen's family at the Pioneer Parade in Salt Lake City last week. We met with cousins and her parents to watch the parade. It was a pretty hot day and so we were all ready for lunch afterwards with all 19 of us at Chuck-a-Rama.

Family Pictures

We recently took family pictures. I think our kids are SOOOO adorable. Both the kids did really well. Hailey was finished taking pictures by the time it was her turn, but for the family and kids pictures she was really good. Just follow this link to see the entire photo shoot. I'll post some of our favorites here. Enjoy the pictures. All of the pictures were low res to protect copyright. The actual pictures are so much better.

Cory and Hailey were so cute together. We really liked this collage that the worker convinced Karen to buy. If our kids weren't so cute, it wouldn't have been worth the $20 price tag.

Cory was really excited to get his treat. The only way we get such cute smiles from him is by bribing him with some type of treat. This photo shoot only cost us a trip to McDonald's Playland. We treated ourselves to Panda Express instead of McDonald's. The kids got some Transformer toy and some girly bobble head doll. For some reason, the kids still love the stupid little toys, and they especially love the playland.

Hailey has the cutest blue eyes in the world. She was done with pictures by the time we got to her pictures, but we still got a couple of cute ones. We want to have my sister Stacey retake her pictures so that we can get some better ones.

Here is our beautiful, wonderful, happy family

This is Hailey's true smile.