Salt Lake City

One day when I was in high school one of my teachers told the class that Mormons like feel like they should live in Utah and congregate there.  Knowing that was WAY off I raised my hand and said, "I'm   Mormon and have no desire to ever live in Utah."  That really hasn't changed too much in the last ten years (yes I know I went to college there) but I can find a few reasons why it wouldn't be too bad for fellowship.  We do have lots of family up there and it would be great to see them especially the great grandparents.  I would love for my kids to go pick fruit and veggies from my grandparents garden and get to know them. And it would be wonderful for grandma Graham to meet our sweet little Graham.  I also have a friend from high school that lives up there and it would be great to see her too not to mention the aunts, uncles, and cousins I haven't seen in a really long time.  Lots of family, plus I would make sure to head down to Zion's National Park and/or Arches because they really are beautiful.  But Salt Lake also has cold winters, dry weather I don't know how to deal with, and higher rent we'd have to pay, so it's not really number one on my list.  But I promise we'd survive if we did end up venturing out there.
On a different note, tonight while we were watching The Croods Graham stood up several times and said to Devin and Caroline, "Don't worry guys they don't die."  Love that he feels he needs to look out for his siblings and their tender little hearts. He makes me laugh everyday.

Denver

Shawn had interview number 4 yesterday in Denver.  I'm not going to lie the only thing that would make me happy about living there is the fact that Shawn's sister lives just a little north so we would be close to some family which would be awesome, but that's where the appeal ends for me though.  Its cold, expensive, and they seem to have a large number of senseless acts of violence.  Columbine, and the movie theatre shooting were both not far from the hospital Shawn would be working at.  Granted crimes like this seem to be increasing everywhere but still creepy.  It is close to mountains though so maybe Shady and her family would come visit so they could go camping and Brandon could look at rocks.  I wouldn't mind that either.  I would love to be close to family but its been so cold this winter right now I may take warm weather over family.  I'm desperate for some sun!

San Diego

I got a little behind posting about the places Shawn has interviewed at, mainly because its kind of a pain to type on the iPad.  Anyways, after interviewing in Los Angeles he drove down to San Diego for another one.  It was nice to get both interviews done in the same weekend.  So all those fun things I listed about LA can pretty much be lumped into San Diego as well.  Disneyland, and Legoland are close enough, I like to pretend that we'd venture to at least one of those places.  San Diego is smaller which I like and apparently lots of the fellows live on or REALLY close to the beach.  And if we're going to pay a ton of money in rent anyways, I'd rather go into more debt living on the beach than living farther away.  I'd really love to have lots of beach days!  Most of the places Shawn is interviewing at are going to be more expensive than Tennessee so if we're going to be paying more to live somewhere warm and on the beach!  Oh and I think I could get on board with eating Mexican food, probably not as good as Tex Mex but I could really go for some fajitas!  You won't see me shed a tear if we end up in San Diego!

L.A.

If anyone out there knows me at all you know that I have no desire at all to ever live in California.  However after talking to Shawn I'm pretty sure I could manage living there for a year.  I still have some issues with it, for one thing the traffic is TERRIBLE!  It seemed like every time it was on the phone with Shawn he was stuck in traffic. It's also pretty polluted there and too big in my opinion, I really like smaller cities.  It's pretty expensive to live there as well which I hate.
Now for the good stuff; food. Shawn has thoroughly enjoyed eating there and I have to say I'm pretty jealous.  The weather as well sounds amazing, maybe that's because it's 40 degrees here but I'd love some more sunshine and going to the beach would be so fun! It also seems like there are a lot of things to do there, Disneyland, Legoland, the beach, the beach again and again.  Let's just say I'm warming up to the idea of California.  Don't worry though people Texas is my true love.

Delaware

I don't feel like anyone really checks the blog anymore but I'm still going to try and remember to post. The only thing that's been going on lately is Shawn has been interviewing for fellowship programs, so lucky us get to move some place else for a year so Shawn can get even more training because come on nine years after undergrad just isn't enough.  His first interview went well. I'm not going to post how much he likes a place or how great the program is he can decide that but I'll just give my two cents about the possibility of living in the various places he interviews in, fun right?!

So first up was Delaware. Wilmington to be exact. Honestly the only upside I cans see living there is it's insanely close to Philly and that seems like a fun place, for a year anyways. And I'd love to fill up on my share do Philly cheesesteaks! Yum! But there is a fun fact about Delaware, it was the first place to ratify the constitution technically making it the first state.  It's also on the east coast which means it's more expensive to live there and much farther from family than I'd like to be. But with all that said it could be fun for a year, I can do anything for a year! I'm excited to see where we end up! What's funny is that we find out a year before we even move which is great because we'll have plenty of time to find a place to live. Stay tuned, the next interviews are in L.A. and then San Diego!

My love/hate relationship with Legos

Let me start by saying I really do love legos.  I think they are a great toy.  Devin and Shawn have built so many its been great bonding time for them.  It sounds cheesy but its so true.  At one point Devin said I wasn't allowed to play legos because I break them.  Its a father son thing I guess, and I'm totally fine with that.  Its given Devin a lot of confidence as well, he's pretty dang good at putting them together!  And it keeps him from watching too many shows.  But if I"m being honest there are a few things that drive me crazy about legos.
1.  They break SO easily!  I"m pretty sure if I looked at some of our legos wrong they'd fall apart.  Not even kidding.  So the wonderful masterpieces Devin and Shawn create go from fully put together  to half way destroyed in about a day.

Remember this awesome lego creation?  Maybe a day later it looks like this.

And here is his really cool fire station he got for his birthday, again it took about a day for it to look like this.  And then you have to go back and figure out how far back you need to build to fix it.  Its frustrating.

2. This is my biggest pet peeve.  The pieces are SO tiny it hard to tell what's a lego and what is trash.

One of the things in the above picture is a lego the other two are pieces of lint from my couch.  See what I mean.  I've gotten pretty good at spotting them on the floor but I know I've sucked a few up in the vacuum.  Opps.  And in case you can't tell the one to the far right is the lego.  

Honestly I really just need to set some ground rules for them.  They need to stay upstairs first of all and we really need to find a shelf to put them on so Devin can admire his hard work.  Maybe if I can ever get organized enough with them they won't be so hard to have around, because I really do like them! 

  

Good Bye Christmas Break!

After two and a half weeks my kids are finally going back to school tomorrow!  School was canceled on Tuesday because of the horrible cold weather we had and then they canceled it today because of maintenance issues, and I at first I wasn't too sad about it.  I thought one more day to hang around with the kids will be fun!  I should know better by now.  Usually by about 9 Caroline is asking to have friends over to play and since I really don't feel like having more people over to mess up the house I say no, so I get to hear about that injustice all day long.  Then Devin, all he wants to do is watch TV all day, I know he's totally me as a child, and every time I say no (which isn't too often to be honest) he yells at me and it makes me want to scream!  So after two and half weeks I'm VERY, VERY ready for them to go back.  Caroline is too, in fact when I told her school was canceled today she was mad.  I really think we'll all be happier once we get back into a routine and aren't spending every waking second next to each other.

New Year's Revolutions

Yes I know I put revolution instead of resolution, that's what Devin keeps calling them and I thought it was funny.  Caroline was so cute and wrote down her goals for this year, and I thought I would write them down here because they were pretty funny.
1. Don't yell at my brothers so much,
2. Be better at math.
3. Be nicer to my brothers.
4. Stop getting mad at my brothers. (good luck)
Devin's
1. Stop yelling at Graham and Caroline.
2. Stop fighting with Graham.
3. Be better at building legos.
4. Try to be good this year. (this is as general as you can get)
Graham's
1. Stop yelling at Devin and Caroline.
2. Stop making annoying sounds. (he does this A LOT and it really is annoying)
3. Stop taking things from Devin and Caroline without asking.
4. Stop hurting Devin and Caroline. (he likes to just jump and hit people randomly)
As you can see there is plenty of yelling that goes on in our house.  Really I think they were copying each other a little by the looks of these lists we are constantly at each other's throats but that's only about half true.  I thought it was so funny to hear these, I love these crazy kids.

New Years

I have never been a huge fan of New Years Eve, its really just not that exciting to me.  I've had a handful of good ones but we usually end up going to bed before midnight.  Last night was no exception.  I wasn't even sure if Shawn would be home before 9 so our grand plans for the evening were to rent Wolverine, laugh at how ridiculous it is and then go to bed.  We were both pretty excited about our plans, so I cleaned up and got the house nice and clean so we could relax when Shawn got home.  Everything was going great until Shawn got home and we put the movie in.  It didn't work, we spent about 15 minutes trying to get the dumb thing to play and nothing was happening.  I was so mad, so I went to return the movie only to find out it was sold out everywhere. And here's where the evening just gets embarrassing.  I went home and cried.  Yes I cried because my lame plans didn't even work.  I'm really good at keeping my expectations VERY low so when even those didn't work out I couldn't take it anymore.  Shawn came to the rescue and we just rented it from VUDU and we laughed and had a good time making fun of the movie.  We were in bed by 11 which is actually really late for us so the night turned out pretty well after all. Maybe in the future we will have more exciting New Years Eve plans but don't count on it.