We are now U-tards!

As we affectionaltely used to call the people of Utah when I was growing up, I am now one of them. After we got settled in the house we found out that something happened to our computer during the move, cause it was working before we left and now it doesn't (and YES, everything is plugged in properly, geeze, give me some credit people!!)

As we work to remedy this situation, please have patience. I have to use friends computers to update, so the posts won't come very frequently since I am alone with the kids all week and my freetime is LIMITED.

Surprisingly, being without Tyler for the week is easier that I thought it would be. There are times when I have....moments. But I am preparing myself, and that really seems to help.

This is a beautiful place to live. The people here are super nice, (don't know if that is a good or bad thing yet.....stay tuned:-) I have never been to keen on those "life is bowl of cherries" kinda people, cause it ain't. The weather is perfect, nothing over 87 so far, course it is the Fall season up there, well I think it is the fall, cause that 87% weather IS Fall in Las Vegas. Maybe Fall in Cedar is what Fall should be, 70% in my opinion. We are only a mile or two from Cedar mountain so we can hear the thunder from the storms over the mountain eventhough we don't get all that percipitation, it is cool to hear it.

Madison has a really nice teacher for first grade and this will be another thing to get used to. She barely has 20 kids in her class and the whole school is smaller than what I am used to. But I REALLY like that, I like the community cause I don't have to worry AS MUCH about Madison being out of my sight at school all day. I am still a very overprotective parent and always will be, it is just hard for me to trust people knowing where I just moved from. I know that bad things will happen anywhere in the world, including small towns, but I am not dropping my guard. It is just nice to know that I have a FEW more people in the neighborhood, who would help out in emergencies and not have to worry about who my kids are with.

Oh, one thing that bugs a bit is they ALL say, "Oh my heck!" I don't know why this surprises me but maybe just hearing it all the way through my first Home Enrichment Meeting has made it now a not-so-favorite saying here in Utah. I felt like saying, "What the crap!" while I told my stories at the table. That is my favorite saying, but I think I will let them ponder about their newest neighbor for a bit before I give them a good dose of what I am all about:-)

I hope this satisfies your curiosities about where we are and why I haven't blogged in a while.

Oh, and by the way, yesterday I turned 30.........fantastic! My mom had all 6 of us kids birthed before she turned 30. Sorry mom, you are better than I. We still want more kids, and it will now happen in my 30's....that's wierd to say:-)

Until next time.......

I found this on Facebook

For those of you who are HUGE fans of the Twilight series....I thought you might like this ( kinda hard to read, but....here it is.)
Love You Forever Anamarie (not the first option but the second)
\m/(>.<)\m/ rock on!!!!

Day 3 of 14 - Circle Line Boat Tour

Here are some miscellaneous pictures of the boat ride. Tyler and I are behind his sisters: Trudi & Trenna and his dad is standing.

The water towers are there incase of a fire because the water pressure isn't very good at the top of the buildings so they have those on the top to help out the upper floors in an emergency.
Part of the Manhattan coastline over my shoulder.
More Manhattan

The colgate sign is actually on the Jersey coast line.

If you ever go to NY and want to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island but don't want to pay to go directly to the islands; the Staten Island Ferry is FREE 24-7. Plus, is takes you right past the famouse landmarks.

Don't these police boats look fierce:-)

Jdub's huge place.

Pretty sure that's either the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Building with the spire behind NYU's medical center. Can't remember now.
One of the many entrances to Long Island.

ERROR...

I have been trying to post more pictures of our trip to NY but something is wrong with blogger. I will keep trying:-(

MAJOR UPDATES

Since the last time I posted, there has been some major decisions made in our house-hold. That has been the reason for the delay in new posts regarding our vacation to New York, trust me there is TONS more to share with you.

I have felt for a long time (about a year) a slight urgency, or a gentle push that I need to look at different places to live. Not knowing why I felt compelled to do so, I researched. I followed the promptings I was given (although at the time I did not realize that was what they were:-) and looked at different places to live.


So for about a year now, I have, well, not really bugging my husband, actually yes, I was bugging him, but asking him to consider moving. There has never been a faint maybe, it has always been NO. He said that he didn't feel like we need to go anywhere, so why change what we have here.


Since I do the majority of our finances, I knew that we would not be able to sustain our way of life if something didn't change. We talked about getting second jobs or babysitting peoples kids, but no doors opened up from our ideas.

About 6 weeks ago I started looking at apartments. I know, such a drastic change. I was ready though, I was ready to make the biggest sacrifice in my life right now and that was giving up my house to live in a smaller place in order to follow the counsel of the prophet and attempt to get out of debt. I was willing to make that sacrifice, I was ready! I understand now that, that is what I was being urged to do. My only trial ahead was getting my husband to understand my plea, and urgent promptings of the spirit so that we could be in a better place financially in a few years. Cause if we stayed here, nothing would change but the amount of the debt. I know that because I was willing to make such huge sacrifices, doors opend up for us to help us in our decisions.

I was trying to figure out when I could bring up my newly understood answers to my prayers with my husband without being totally shot down and then loosing my mind because I really didn't know what to do if he said no. So, with a huge prayer in my heart, we had a really good conversation about how I had felt, what I had felt and the sacrifices I was willing to make in order to better our family right now. I was totally crying and a wreak but there was no way for me to contain my composure because I felt so strongly about this and needed him to truly understand the seriousness of our situation.

Well, he understood. (Thanks Heavens) And that night, we made the decision we were going to move somewhere to get out of debt and live a better life. We though we needed to stay here in Vegas because it felt right.

I sent out a mass email to our family members (thanks for understanding) telling them of our news and to please keep us in their prayers because we hadn't found a place but were looking very hard at rental homes and apartments. I will tell you, a couple of them felt really right when we walked in. We wanted to make sure we were moving in the right direction and with the Lords blessing.

After some temple attendance and lots of prayers we decided to take up my mom and dad on their offer of letting us use their new house in Cedar City, Ut. They will be in Wyoming for a few years helping my brothers with their busniess and so their house in Enoch, (actually a subarb of Cedar), will be empty. Once we made that commitment and let the man upstairs know what we were going to do, we felt an almost immeduate sence of relief. I know without a shadow of a doubt that we need to be up there, and here:-) Tyler will be commuting to Vegas for work, cause the money he makes here, is not even comparable to what they make in Utah. I know that I really depend on him to help me with the kids and he lets me have my "ME" time. So it will be a great sacrifice on my part to be without him for the week days, but I know that we will be blessed because of our effort to follow HIS counsel and get out of debt.

I can also testify that this is the right move for us because, the adversary has REALLY been working hard on us this past week and a half. So we feel like we are going in the right direction, cause why else would Satan try so hard, and so often, when we haven't felt his presence much at all in the past.

So, for the past two weeks I have been packing and PURGING our stuff like crazy. We are having a HUGE, and I mean HUGE yard sale THIS SATURDAY the 9th starting at 6am. Please come and see if there is anything you like.

Thank you to all for your support over the past few weeks. It has been very appreciated.

I will be sending out a mass email with our new address and phone number within the next few weeks, if you would like one and aren't sure if I have your email or not, leave a comment and I will comment back to you with my email.

Pardon the interuption from the vacation.....

We know you are having a blast reading about our vacation but I just had to post these pictures of Miles. This child, has had more blood come out of his body than both girls put together in their whole lives. He is a true juggernaught. He bounces off the walls like a PONG game while chasing his sisters. He bangs his head on various things when he gets frustrated and there are many more things he does that makes him such a BOY!!

This particular time (I think) he was climbing on something in the bedroom, slipped and fell onto the lid of a plastic bucket that was turned with the sharper edges facing up.

If you blow up the top picture, you can see a dark red thin line in the middle of the cut, that is a VERY deep part but it started to seal back together within a half hour. So glad he didn't need stitches.
He was quite a trooper and only cried for about 5 minutes. Once I got the blood to stop gushing he was fine and off he want to play.

NOW BACK TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED BLOGGING!

Day 3 of 14 - Circle Line Boat Tour

Still on the boat tour. There are about 20 bridges around Manhattan Island. Here are some of the pictures of them.

Brooklyn Bridge

Manhattan Bridge

Williamsburg Bridge

59th Street Bridge (above and below). I like the tops of this one, very neat.

There is a railcar just to the left of this bridge.

This one is called a "foot" bridge because you walk across it. The center part between the two tall poll looking things, moves up and down for the larger boats and vessels that have to pass under.There were some guys working on the under side of another bridge, I think it's the Triborough Bridge.





I think the further two in the above picture are the Alexander Hamilton Bridge and the Washington Bridge (not to be confused with the George Washington Bridge).

Henry Hudson Parkway

George Washington Bridge - this is the only BRIDGE that connects Manhattan Island to New Jersey, there are plenty of tunnels, railroads and subway lines but this is the only bridge.

This is the Lincoln Tunnel (connects NY-NJ). I am not sure if there are 3 separate tunnels or if it's just one big one. This map is inconclusive.
This is the other tunnel that connects NY & NJ. Again, I am not sure if there are more than one Holland Tunnels or if it's a big one.

Day 3 of 14 - Circle Line Boat Tour

Still on the tour. As we made our way on the boat, we passed Ellis Island and then the Statue of Liberty. They were fascinating places to see. We were not able to get off on the islands but other tours could take you there. We didn't have much time so we just went by them. I would have like to tour Ellis Island seeing as now it is a museum. I love these historic places especially since we have family that had to come through there at the time of our countrys beginning.

This little island on the bottom of the picture-map is named Governors Island and was home to Fort Jay. The island is unoccupied now. The grounds are maintained but they are trying to decide how to open it up to the public for residence. They did say that you can take a ferry over there and ride bikes or take walks, it's just that no one is allowed to LIVE there right now.

Ellis Island
I love the architecture.

Statue of Liberty - isn't she beautiful!