March Jenga

This month was so hard for me in the sense that it was sooooo busy and stressful. Just when I thought things couldn't get crazier or worse, they did. I called my mom one day and told her it felt like we were playing jenga with our life. We were balancing so many things, and then something else would happen and be added on top of us, and we would have to keep trying to balance everything. Piece after piece, I'm telling you! Luckily we had lots of blessings and help from family so that we didn't completely fall apart. 

Ava is a wild child. She takes her hair out when she gets home from school, but this day she looked kind of model-ish I thought!

Brent was brave and took Ava to her four year old check up. She was so so so sad to get shots. Check out this dramatic face- before the shots even happened:

 She was about 50% on height and weight. After, Brent took her to Chick Fil-A to cheer her up. Poor Ava was already sick with a bad cold and had two ear infections.

This week was so incredibly busy with my busy season and it was spring break for Ava, which meant no preschool! So the kids wen to the babysitters two days. Brent worked away at his thesis and we worked through all the jenga pieces curve balls Wells Fargo sent to us in trying to get the loan for our house.

On Wednesday and Thursday I got Ava's cold but I got so sick with fever, chills and body aches. I haven't been that sick in a long time. Jenga piece. It was awful, so I went to my doctor on Friday morning. She thought I had some form of a flu, and luckily by Saturday afternoon I was feeling better enough to go to the new Beauty and the Beast. It was so good!

Brent and Ava can be pretty picky but at least Coen thinks my cooking is yummy!

 Coen is so obsessed with the Mickey Mouse characters. Whenever he sees me wearing this PJ shirt, he begs to wear it. He loves to wear his own Mickey shirts that my friend Wasana gave him, and sometimes won't take them off for bed and sleeps in them.

We had the sister missionaries over to dinner. We haven't done that enough this year! We also got a call from the realtor of the house that we're living in that we were going to have to start doing showings. It got so crazy and stressful, having to keep our house clean with babies! (Jenga piece). People also would put in requests for showings at 3:00 pm for... 3:00 pm. Like, now. Ugh.

I thought Ava looked cute when I picked her up at school, so I took her picture by her building.

 Coen just looking cute at the park. I love that pot belly of his so much.

 Mr. blue eyes.

 Ava's favorite park is Eureka Park, which is next-door  to her school. I took the kids there on Friday afternoon since I felt like we all needed to get out of the house! They were so cute together, running around like this.

If Ava ran off without Coen, he would shout, "Ava!" until he found her. Then he would get all excited and walk up to her and wave to her. It was the first time I really heard him pronounce Ava so well. So I took a video :) 

We finally got all dressed up to take a picture to announce we are moving to Oregon!

 Ava's faces are so funny.

Brent was gone to the library quite a bit to work on his thesis. On one afternoon, I was making dinner and Coen was getting restless in his chair. Ava brought her table over and moved her chair by Coen and got them both coloring pencils. She was such a good helper!

 I took Ava visiting teaching with me and she was excited to come. She packed a little bag with a few toys and books.

Sunday afternoon we had a storm move in and the tornado warning started going off. The sky started looking like this: 

Brent liked watching the storm for a while until I convinced him to come in the house. 

Here's a video of the storm before it got too bad:

It started getting a little crazy and the tornado siren (Ava called it the tomato siren) was still going off and she was scared. So I gave the kids popsicles to distract them. I had them sitting at the kitchen table when all of a sudden it started to hail. The hail started to sound so huge that I ran to the window to try to see how big it was. Then I proceeded to do a u-turn since it started sounding REALLY big. I yelled to Brent to help me get the kids away from the windows. We moved them just before our kitchen window shattered! (Jenga piece)

 Here's one more video during the hail storm so you can hear how loud it is.

After it was all over, Brent picked up a few of the hail in our yard and we couldn't believe how huge it was! Our entire neighborhood, part of the city really, was covered in this size of hail.

 Lots of roofs in our neighborhood needed to be replaced, and people's cars were damaged.

We should have known that this hail storm was the signal of the most crazy week! The last week of March I worked 45 hours. That may not sound like a ton, until you think about that Brent also worked that much and we only had a babysitter for Coen for 15 hours that week. Basically that meant a lot of late nights working for hours after the kids went to bed, and little sleep. (Jenga piece)

Here's Coen and his friend at the babysitters looking cute:

 Ava has gotten so into coloring lately. She is starting to get really good at staying in the lines and it's fun to see her so excited and proud.

 Since I was working so much, Ava was really craving my attention. I let her bring in her table and sit by me coloring while I worked.

 Here's another jenga piece thrown at us: Coen woke up with a crazy rash one morning:

 He had had fevers on and off for a few days, but I thought they were just from his teething. He was also on amoxicillin from ear infections, so the doctors thought he might be allergic to the medicine. My friend's boy had just had scarlet fever and it was going around, so I thought he maybe had that. Either way, it was not so fun, poor buddy. We later found out after his babysitter's daughter got the same thing (oops) that it was a virus called roseola.

Ava was excited to wear her new favorite dress for picture day at school:

 Inspecting hail damage on the siding of our house. We have about 5-7 of these holes.

 Ava was getting in the car one day and Brent was coming around to help her, when she got spooked and ran to me and said, "mom, there's something in the garage!" I told her that it was just dad. She said, "no, it had legs!" I thought Brent had just surprised her so I told her it was just dad, go get in your car seat. A little bit later Brent found this guy:

Brent and I laughed a lot that I told her "it's just dad." Ava was terrified of this lizard that made his home in our garage! Sometimes it would give me a heart attack too when it would just run out in front of me. Sadly, he only lasted a few weeks and then he got SMASHED by the garage door. It was so gross, we aren't even going to go there.

Electronic babysitters. Coen will play for quite a while in their bedroom with toys if Ava is up on the bed watching a show and not bothering him.

 We were going to the park and I put Ava's hair in a clip. She took it out and re-did it herself, miss independent girl. Look at how she did!

 This little boy loves the slide so much!

Luckily we were able to do some fun things on the weekends to keep us sane! I am happy to report that we kept all of our jenga pieces balanced. Phew!

Trip to Eugene

Ava was so excited for her birthday to finally arrive! It fell on a Wednesday which is the day I worked, so Brent picked her up from school and took her to Eureka Park, which is her favorite. 

She chose Chick Fil-A for dinner and sang to herself when the food came:

My big four-year old!

She wanted a cake with all the colors of frosting- a rainbow cake! I was tempted to say she could only choose one color, but since it was her birthday, we made all four.

She loved all the presents she got. These were Minnie Legos from Wasana

I love the way Ava says lemonade. "Ma-ma-maid"

We had a stake relief society activity with a taco dinner first and then a great speaker who paints pictures of Christ. I drove with some of the women in my ward and it was a really fun night. I was so stressed from work and the process of buying our house (a nightmare!) that it was good for me to get out and have fun. Brent watched the kids without a fuss, as he always does.

On Saturday it was my birthday, but that was the day we planned Ava's birthday party. She was confused and kept saying that it wasn't my birthday, it was hers! It was cold and rainy so we moved her party from the park to the church and it worked out perfectly.

We only invited three families in the ward, but that was just right. The kids just ran around and played and we had Papa Murphy's pizza.

Her friend Gibson gave her this Moana outfit.

Since it was my birthday and I decided to take a day off from the stress of busy season and issues with the house in Oregon. I just relaxed and let Brent pamper me! We went to Kohls and I got a wreath holder for the front door of our new house since the house needs a wreath. For dinner we went to Red Robin for my free birthday burger.

Mirror selfie. It feels weird to be 30 now!

This is what Coen does whenever we ask him where something is.

Birthday girls

The following week was more stress as I had to work a ton on Monday and Tuesday to get my work done before we went to Eugene to see our house. Then on Monday someone from Wells Fargo called me and let me know that we might not me able to buy our house after all since Brent is switching jobs in the summer. They wouldn't let us close on a house until 90 days before his new job in Oregon starts. Have I mentioned this month was hard for me?! At least we had a beautiful sunset at dinner:

Things were getting too crazy so I started sending Coen to Katie's (who used to watch Ava) once or twice a week. I was really sad to send him since he is my little buddy and always hooked at my hip. But he has done great and likes it. These are a couple pictures I got from Katie:

The state of our house when Brent and I are working a ton:

Our sweet friends the Merrells offered to watch Ava for us so we didn't have to buy a ticket for her to Oregon. She was excited to have sleepovers at their house and Brent, Coen and I flew to Oregon.

We stopped in SLC for a layover. Ahhh.

Our realtor picked us up at the airport and took us straight to the house. Coen went right for the stairs.

We really loved the house in person. It was built in 2013.

Brent and our realtor talking. We had had about a dozen and a half LONG conversations with her on the phone to get to this point of having an offer on a house:

This is the view across the street

The street (Adelman Loop)

We then went to get our rental car and checked into our hotel, completely exhausted since we had been up since about 3 am Oregon time.

The next morning we went to campus. I just kept saying, "the trees!!!"

The famous field that I was previously unaware of :)

We drove down to Creswell which is a little town south of Eugene that had a home we had absolutely loved before. It already had a pending offer on it so we were sad to miss it, but still drove to check it out. This is my, "oh mannnnn!" face:

We actually are really happy with the home we are getting and I don't feel bad about not living in Creswell at all (ghetto). The neighborhood where our home is the most beautiful we saw in Eugene, and it has a brand new park just one street from our house.

After Creswell, we drove down to Cottage Grove and Brent was super excited to see that the General (Buster Keaton's film) was filmed here. Brent has a connection with Buster Keaton and we nearly named Coen "Keaton."

We looked up good restaurants in this tiny town and found this amazing BBQ restaurant! 

This is what the whole area looked like. Gorgeous! But the buildings and houses are mostly ugly. Why!?

Then we went back to our almost-house to go over the home inspection, which went really well.

The owner's cat is hilarious and has showed up in all the pictures that people take of the house, including the ones the realtor took for us. The cat is so social and follows everyone around, but was so scared of Coen!

Checking each other out:

The end of our street- just protected grasslands as we are on the very west side of Eugene.

That evening we went to dinner with our realtor *really our friend by this point* and her husband. We got "hippy tacos." Everything is so environmentally friendly in the city- it seems to define their culture. As we were walking back from dinner, our realtor's husband pointed out the Cannabis shop across the street. We got in the car and then a lady passed by, walking her ferret. I was like, what is this place!? Hahaha, so funny.

The next morning we went to campus for Brent to meet with professors that he may work with.

The campus is beautiful and has some of the only brick in the whole city. I love brick, so I may spend some time on his campus basking in it.

More campus

While he was in meetings, my mom's friend's daughter who lives in Eugene came and picked me up and took me and Coen to the park. This day was really special because... the sun was shining!! It was the only time the sun came out in quite a few days. So we enjoyed it at the park and it was so nice of Casey to drive me around.

After Brent's meetings we met up and did some house stuff with the realtor, and then we went for a drive around the west side of Eugene.

There are quite a few of these shops:

That evening we went to dinner at a young couple's house that Brent had met when we went out in September. They live in a different ward, but have two small boys. They were really nice to invite us again!

On Saturday morning Brent got up early and walked around town with Coen. Then we drove to Springfield (east side of Eugene) and took a picture with this Simpsons mural. The creator of the Simpsons is from Oregon.

Our future home for the next four years.

On the way home we had a layover again in SLC. Brent and I were excited to see Cafe Rio at the airport there! So we picked up some to eat on the plane for dinner. The flight attendant was obsessed with Coen and loved that he liked to put out his finger to touch hers, something we call "ET Finger" and he'll do on command. She learned that he liked bananas and so she went and got one for him!

Coen really liked her too, and peeked down the aisle, smiling.

Ava did so great at her friend's house, and she slept all night, all three nights! I was so glad because I was worried about her keeping them up in the night. I was proud of her for being so brave and having a fun time. They said she only cried once on the last day, and said she missed us. Other than that, she just played, ate all of her food, and had fun in their backyard! We are so grateful to them! We were happy to have seen our house in Oregon in person, and we knew that we wanted it, and would keep fighting to get it!