Happy New Years

Important locations of 2010

Our kitchen – It was the largest home remodel project to date. We completely gutted our 1964 kitchen, moved some appliance locations, installed all new cabinets, built an island, and tiled the floor. With the help of some family, friends, Google and some very late nights, we are proud to say it is finished and looks great!

Decatur – Jensen started kindergarten at Decatur Presbyterian school. He has thrived in the small class environment and has enjoyed learning to read and so many other things.

Utah – Derek was offered an opportunity to transfer with PwC from the Atlanta office to the Salt Lake City office. We decided this was the best thing for our family and will be moving sometime in the spring. We are very sad to leave Atlanta, our home and our friends but are looking forward to all the good things that will come with living in Utah.

As we reflect on the last year we are truly grateful for all of our blessings, especially our three happy, healthy children. We are looking forward to the opportunities and adventures of 2011.

Walking

She can walk but still prefers to crawl most of the time since it is much faster.

Happy 7 years

1 car (OK, it is a little dirtier than it use to be but all these years and it still works great!)

2 promotions

3 kids

4 years in Public accounting

5 home remodel projects (two bathrooms, one kitchen, one family room and one living room)

6 different items from the menu to celebrate our anniversary ( pan seared duck breast, goat cheese and roasted beet napoleon, shrimp casino, pear salad, tofu mignon, and crème brulée. No to go box needed we ate it all. YUM!)

7 years and still in love!

The Candy Approach

This year we decided to take a little different approach when it came to Halloween candy. This morning I declared it “Candy Day.” (Last night was our trunk-or-treat so the kids were going through their mountains of candy.) I told them that they could eat as much candy as they wanted today and then tomorrow the rest of the candy was all going to disappear (aka eaten by me or thrown in the garbage.) They thought that was a great idea. Their breakfast consisted of eggs and about 5 pieces of candy each. They have been eating candy like crazy all day and on a sugar high pretty much all day. We also conducted “science experiments" on our candy (mostly the candy they didn't like). Out of all the different types of candy, the only three that floated in water were marshmallows, kit-kat and whoppers. Also, did you know that if you put M&Ms in the microwave for a full minute nothing happens, they don’t even get hot, add a little water, completely different story. Taffy was the favorite, it gets nice and bubbly when nuked. I just finished cleaning up and threw out the leftover candy. There wasn’t much, it had all been opened, tasted, stepped on and experimented with. I’m not quite sure how tomorrow is going to go, (I have a feeling they are going to be . . . well . . . a little grumpy) but I am glad there is no more Halloween candy around my house. We are definitely making this a tradition.

Happy Halloween!

October Happenings

We went to a pumpkin patch. They had a maze, a hay ride, blow up bouncy slides, farm animals etc all the usual stuff.
As you can tell from there faces Jensen and Siesa loved the fun house, they played in the fun house for 45 minutes. They would run out smiling and laugh and run back in. I couldn’t go in but I could hear them laughing inside having a great time.

Witches Party

Some friends threw a witches party at my house (my friend didn’t think everyone would fit in her house so I offered my house for the party) We decorated the night before by candle light because my power went out 20 minutes after starting, very random but very fitting for Halloween We had a good time.

Siesa and I made pumpkins to decorate morning, just for fun.

Derek celebrated his 31^st birthday. We didn’t do too much because he had to go out of town the next day but I did make a yummy salmon dinner and mint brownies.

Coach Derek

The long awaited day has finally come. Derek was able to coach Jensen’s soccer team. It is pretty low key, it is only one hour a week on Saturday. They have a 30 minute practice and then a 30 minute game. There are 8 kids on his team and only four play at a time. One of Jensen’s best friends is on his team and his Dad is Derek’s assistant coach. Jensen has been very excited that Dad was going to be his coach but on the way to the game he said “Dad, how are you going to be the coach because you have never been one before? Are you even going to know what to do?” We assured him that Derek knew a lot about soccer and would be a good coach. He has not been disappointed, Derek has done great. Truth be told it is more crowd control than actually coaching since most of the kids have never played soccer before. Jensen has improved since last season and actually tries to kick the ball and he made his first goal and was very excited.