Thanksgiving and November Cliff Notes

I have updated our family blog ===== http://our-nuclear-family.blogspot.com/

Twilight Party, Father/Son Campout, November Birthdays, etc.

I have updated our family blog--- www.our-nuclear-family.blogspot.com

Birthday "Do Over" and October Cliff Notes

Click here.

There are a couple of short posts on our new blog. Click here to see them. See previous post if you want to view the new blog and aren't able to.

Virtual Move

We've moved.
Physically and virtually.

We're now located at Our Nuclear Family. If you want to view it, leave a comment with your email. For privacy, you can immediately delete your comment and it will still forward the info to my email.

Oh yeah, if you use Reader (or any other feeder) I'm going to try to post an alert here whenever we update the new blog.

Saturday

Nathan took Deac to the Build and Grow workshop at Lowe's last week. It was so cute. They give each child their own apron, goggles, and a kit to work on. Last week's kit was a wooden helicopter. Deacon worked so hard to hammer the little nails in.

That evening, Nate's sister Callie watched Deacon so we could go on a little date. I'm embarrassed to say how long it's been since Nathan has purchased new clothes. I feel it's my wifely duty to keep him looking decent because he is NOT the type to go out and shop for himself. I've failed in my duty. I always look for him when I'm shopping for myself, but I usually shop at Ross and they don't carry his size. Or, if they do have something in his size it is usually neon yellow with 'Fubu' splayed across the front in giant letters ☺.

We went to a couple of stores to get him some nice work clothes and some casual clothes as well. At Old Navy and I had a celebrity sighting! You know that lady that is in all of their commercials lately? I totally recognized her. She was a little rude though. Completely ignored me when I asked for an autograph. But I did get a picture with her.
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(Nathan was totally embarassed that I asked him to take this ☺)

Addy came with us and here is proof that she doesn't always wear her brother's hand-me-downs. You can tell by her expression that even she is surprised to be wearing pink and a bow, haha.

After shopping we went to eat, I think it was called Buffalo Wild Wings. Nathan ordered a side of flaming hot sauce and it's so dark in there I thought it was ketchup and dipped my fry in it. My mouth was on fire forever. I finally got it under control and then he sweetly offered to let me try a bite of his burger. I accepted....only to find that he had slathered it in burning hot sauce as well so my mouth was on fire all over again. I think he felt guilty when I told him Addy was going to be drinking hot milk ;)

Holyoak Family Reunion

Another weekend, another family function Ü. Have I mentioned we're glad to be back so we can actually attend these things? This was a Holyoak Family Reunion (my mom's side) at Mormon Lake, Arizona. I had Deacon pretty hyped up when we told him we were going swimming at the lake. We packed his swimming trunks, floaties, special diapers.....then we arrived and there was no lake to be seen, haha. He got over it pretty quick and had so much fun running around with his cousins that he soon forgot about it. He loves the outdoors and got absolutely filthy.

My dad brought a snow cone machine and was the life of the party for the first hour. The kids (alright, lets be honest, adults too) descended on him in droves. In the first couple of hours, I saw Deacon with 3 different cones! I told my dad to be a responsible bartender and "cut him off", but he said as the Grandpa it was his duty to get him hopped up on sugar....and then send him home with me☺. Other than the wind blowing up a ton of dust, we had a great time!

Four Generations

Addy Jo and me, with my mom and my grandma.

Brenna's Baby Shower

I'm so excited that we are back in Arizona and I can actually attend some family functions! Our very first one came up on July 11th. A baby shower for my sister Brenna, who is expecting a boy on 09/09/09. I loved the "Cookies and Milkies" theme. Probably because there was all-you-could-eat cookies of all different varieties. Mmmmm...milk and chocolate milk too. The golf theme was so adorable too, right down to the astro turf and golf tees on each table! (Now watch him play baseball like his mom and not golf like his dad ☺).

We have a girl too...

I heard from a husband, who heard from a Grandma, who is on a mission in Washington, that she hasn't seen many pics of her new granddaughter Ü

First Bath

7 days old

Sleeping while I was packing

Sleepyheads

I'm noticing a theme with the sleeping pictures...

First day in our new place. She always has her hand on top of her head. She grabs her hair and can't let go, so I have to come pry her hands off.

Fingers and Toes

Deacon used to always sleep like this.

Trying to keep the dust out of her face at the windy family reunion.

Snoozing with Grandpa Gavin

Finally becoming more alert.

Coming Soon....proof that she does wear pink and not always her brother's hand-me-downs! ☺

I've been delaying uploading pictures because I'm still trying to think of a domain name for her blog. I like the alliteration of the Hunt Home and Deacon's Domain, so I was thinking of something like Adelaide's Addy or Addy's Address. Any ideas??

June 17th

This be the day Ü

My mom flew in on Sunday the 14th and I was scheduled to be induced on the 16th. I was ready bright and early at 6 am. But the hospital didn't call. So at 7:30 I finally called them. Apparently several woman had gone in to labor naturally during the night and bumped me back! The nerve! ☺So we waited. And waited. And waited some more. I kept calling our sitter for Deacon and saying we'd bring him over later...and later...and later. The sitter story was a whole other drama. I found someone three months in advance, but we ended up being cancelled on four different times by different people for everything from a new pacemaker--one of my little young women:( ---to the swine flu the day before. So I asked a friend to watch him, but she said she had to check with her husband(?!) and then never called me back. So we were freaking out on Monday night when we still didn't have someone to watch Deacon. Luckily, we found a lifesaver who stepped up! I pretty much started crying when she said yes.

Anyway, I kept calling the hospital and I think I wore them down because they finally told me to just come in around 4pm. They started the drugs at 5:30 and Addy Jo was here around 1am. My mom was so good to me. Even though I had an epidural, I was feeling the contractions a lot more than I did with Deacon. She held my hand and stroked my hair and said I was so brave and that it was okay to cry/whine because childbirth was really tough. All this from a woman who did it nine times---with NO drugs! She totally made me feel okay for moaning and groaning and complaining even though I had drugs. Finally, the anesthesiologist came and gave me another hit, and then I was in ♪HeAvEn♫ the rest of the night!

Nathan's parents happened to be at the MTC that week so they were able to stop by and see Adelaide on their way up to Washington. They are living in a fifth wheel and serving a mission at a church camp near Olympia for the next 18 months. We are so proud of them! During the short time they were able to be with us, Nathan's totally talented mom whipped up an adorable blessing dress for Addy to wear. So we had a little photo shoot.

Moving on Up

Apparently we forgot to tell my side of the family that we moved from Utah to Arizona...until we showed up here a few weeks early. So here's the looooong version for them Ü

One last shot of the old homestead

Since Adelaide was so healthy and being such a good baby (and we'd already stopped working and had nothing holding us there) we decided to change our moving date from the end of July to the 3rd of July.

We sold almost all of our furniture before we left, so that helped with loading. Deacon was pretty traumatized by it though. His poor world was turning upside down with a new baby and then we started selling off everything familiar to him. When someone came to buy our couches, he cried, "My chowch, my chowch." He cried again when a lady came for our dining table and again when we sold Nathan's truck later that day. To give him a sense of normalcy, Nathan took him to the local pool on Tuesday. Just the two of them, to have some fun. That gave me some time to finish packing.

This is where it gets stressful. We were planning on packing up Thursday night and heading out first thing Friday morning. On Wednesday night, Nathan went to take his board exam for Nuc Med. He had been going to the library everyday for several hours to study and then would come home and take practice tests on the computer for a couple more hours. On his way to the exam, the car dies! Someone gave him a jump, but it started smoking. He couldn't just call and have them hold the exam for him because they only had the LAST exam time for the day available when he scheduled it. And wouldn't you know, we had just sold his truck so we only had the one car! Luckily, he was able to drive a couple of miles to his Aunt's house. She let him borrow her brand new car (thanks!) and he was able to barely make it to the testing center in time. I told him to just focus on his test and if we had to, we would tow the car behind us in the moving truck all the way to AZ. He had been getting mid 70's on all of his practice tests (you need 74 to pass the exam) and I'm so proud that he got a 93 on his actual registry exam!!

He tried to fix the car that night. He replaced the alternator but that wasn't the problem. So early the next morning he takes it to a mechanic and rents a car to get home. He tells the guy we are moving in 24 hours, so if they can diagnose it and let us know, then we would decide what to do. Then he calls the moving truck company to see how much a trailer is to hook on the back of the truck. They were trying to look up our reservation, but couldn't find it. Finally they found it, but said it was for the next weekend. Meanwhile, everything we own is packed up and we can't wait another week to leave. Luckily, they were able to find a truck we could use that weekend...for an additional hundred bucks.

The mechanic calls back and says they figured out the problem, ordered the part, and we can pick it up Friday morning. Whew! When Nathan went to pick up the car, the owner said he's been in the business for years and there was only one person he knows that could have figured out the problem. It was electrical. Not to beat his own drum, but if we would have taken the car anywhere else, nobody would have known how to fix it and my car would have ended up in a scrap yard. So I guess that made us feel a *little* better as we shelled out a thousand dollars for the bill! The problem? I had an automatic starter put on my car 2 years ago ($150 including labor). When they installed it they didn't ground a certain wire and it finally fried the whole circuit board. I tell ya, if Circuit City hadn't already declared bankruptcy, I'd be sending them the mechanic's bill! So we returned the rental and were almost ready to go.

We've moved 5 times in our marriage, but this was the first time we were moving far enough away that we weren't going to be able to come back to the house and do things like clean or make extra trips for small loads. We had to get it all in one shot. We had most things packed up Thursday night (thanks to our awesome neighbors the Malan's because nobody else showed up!) and we aimed to leave Friday morning. Well, by noon on Friday we still weren't done yet and Deacon was getting extremely cranky. So Nathan loaded him in the moving truck and they headed to AZ. That left me and Adelaide to finish cleaning and painting before we left. She was so good! I had her on a little blanket, and I just dragged her across the floor to move her out of the way as I vacuumed and cleaned around her. We headed out about two hours after the boys did. It was really weird, we've been talking about moving for so long, but now that it finally happened it was sad to leave Utah after 6.5 years!

Deacon was soooooo excited to ride with dad!

Adelaide was only 16 days old and her first car ride (besides coming home from the hospital) was going to be 12 hours long! We were so lucky to be able to break it up and stay and Matt and Ashley's house in Vegas. I love this little pic of Charlie. She was rocking Addy while we loaded up to leave Saturday morning.

So we arrived here on the 4th of July. What a rude awakening to leave the cool breeze of Utah and be welcomed by the ferocious heat of Arizona. Why did we move during the summer? Poor Deacon. He is so used to running around barefoot. He took off through an open door and stopped dead in his tracks on the cement and just started crying. His feet were burning but he couldn't move. So Nathan quickly swept him up and told him he had to wear shoes outside in AZ.

We'll be staying at Nathan's parents house for a few months while they're on their mission. Nathan has a job at St. Lukes, but it's PRN with no benefits so we're still looking for something more permanent if anyone hears of anything! Luckily, I'm still considered and employee at Wells, just "on leave" so we'll have insurance for a couple more months and COBRA after that if we need it.

Where's Waldo? Do you see Addy in this unpacking picture?

Baby Shower and a Wedding

I'm a little behind in posting, but I had some pictures from my baby shower that I wanted to put up. Three out of five of my sisters flew up to Utah the first weekend in June to give me a baby shower. They are so creative and amazing! Carla is the ultimate party planner and can make something out of nothing. Brenna used her artistic talents to create a cute diaper cake. Chanda came up with some fun game ideas that I had never played before. We had delicious gigantic cinnamon rolls in two varieties that my mom and Carla made. Next the them was this sign:

So many cute clothes and things for Baby Addy!

On the way out the door a sign read Aubrey's bun in the oven thanks you for comin'!

Here are the three pregnant princesses who were exhausted after the party:Chanda (due 10/24/09), Me (due mid June), Brenna (due 09/09/09).

(Notice the lei I had to wear as the guest of honor that says "I got lei'd")

We teased Nathan that this is what it would be like if we were polygamists...four "sister" wives, three of who were pregnant Ü.

The day before the shower (Friday), the four of us crammed in my little Corolla (remember three of us our pregnant) and drove 3+ hours to Vernal, Utah, for the wedding of our cousin Shawn and his cute wife Jentry: For some reason, whenever our family gets together, we seem to dress alike without planning it! In keeping with that tradition:

Chanda and I have the exact same maternity shirt (different colors). Brenna and Carla wore dresses with very similar patterns. I guess great minds think alike!

The weekend before the baby shower, we had our 2nd Annual Community Yard Sale.(picture from last year's sale)
Seven out of the 8 families in our cul de sac participated. It was about 90* and really hot (as I write this now I realize I didn't know what hot was yet). Proof positive that one man's trash is another man's treasure: I had this box of junk I was planning on either throwing away or donating to DI. We spread the contents out on three tables labeled .25 and .10 cents and sold almost all of it. I think that's where we made most of our money Ü. We didn't have any big ticket items like last year though, so we only made about a hundred bucks, but it all went to our moving fund and we were thankful!

Last Days at Work and Father's Day

Nathan was really sad to leave Salt Lake Regional. That's where he did his clinical hours for X-Ray and then he continued working there two nights a week while schooling for Nuc Med. So he's been there 3 years! They will miss him too.

They threw a little going away potluck party for him during the first week of June (his last week). It was fun! A lot of them had seen Deacon right after he was born and couldn't believe it had already been two years. The number one comment we heard: "Nate! He looks just like you!"

Some pictures from my last day at work. They won't mean anything to anyone but me Ü. I didn't even realize it was my last day. I fully intended to bring Addy back to show off and say goodbye to people, but we left a lot sooner than planned and I didn't even get to tell anyone we were moving (except my boss Ü).

Father's Day

I figured I'd still be in the hospital recovering on actual Father's Day, so I gave him his present the Sunday before. It sounds like a "cheesy" gift, but if you know Nate then you know he loved it. A couple of months ago he mentioned that he'd really like to taste some fancy cheese (don't know what we were talking about at the time). Then, a few weeks ago we saw a commercial on TV for Laughing Cow Cheese and he said he had it once and it really liked it. So I created platter of fancy cheese and crackers for him ÜYou'd think he was checking out a fine lookin' lady by his expression. Nope, just admiring some fine lookin' Gouda.

I found cheeses that had really weird names like "Havarti" or said things like "soft, unripened goat cheese" and those were the ones I knew he'd like. I also picked up a box of some foreign looking crackers. He loved it! It was funny though, he was talking to his sisters on the phone and they asked what he got for Father's Day. When he told them, I was clear across the room but could still hear them *roaring* with laughter.