Jake's Release, Family Activities and Kids!

Well, it's happened.  Jake was released this last Sunday from his calling in the single's ward.  We were actually called in kinda by surprise last Tuesday and told that he was getting released... I guess we didn't expect it till the very end of the semester.

We were called into the ward in January 2009 and Jake has held his calling for 14 months.  Funny how fast time flies... We were called in when Hannah was a mere 6 months old, and that was the same month we found out we were expecting AGAIN!!  AND that I was already 2 MONTHS ALONG!!  Whats really ironic is that the couple Jake replaced was released because they were having a second kid and the first was already a handful.  That made me a little nervous to do the same thing in 7 months, because Hannah turned out to be a handful too.  But what would you expect from a rambunctious kid without a nursery and other young kids to play with?  Let me tell you though--we were never short on babysitters at church!  Everyone loved the babies! :)

Its weird not having HUGE FHE groups over to our house on Mondays.  Let me tell you, dessert for 15 isn't always an easy task for me...let alone looking decent enough to have anyone come over in the first place!  They were always pretty fun though!  We loved all the activites in the ward, and Jake always made them exciting!  He was the one who came up with activities like having a pinata in one of the classrooms.  It was Brother Boren's idea to hit it with a big long fishing pole though--you can imagine the chaos in a tight classroom of desks, lots of crazy kids with a VERY long fishing pole trying to blindly do damage to paper-mache Spongebob...  Human foosball was always a treat, as well as all the linger longers me and the activities kids put together.  Thankfully there was always enough food due to faith and making the boys eat last! :)  After 1 1/2 we finally learned all the tricks to feeding, hosting, entertaining and guiding single college students--and now its over!  Maybe this is preparation for the 10 kids Jake wants to have.

We were so blessed from our time in the 3rd and will miss all our friends dearly.  We are so grateful for this opportunity and all that we learned from it.  Its such a blessing to serve!  Thanks for all your hard work Jake.  You bless our family so much by being the worthy priesthood holder that you are!

WE LOVE YOU!!

We are sure going to miss all the leaders that Jake served with!  This is President Cannon with the family.  He is such a GREAT guy and we loved getting to know him better!  He was always there to offer us support, compliments, advice and the spiritual guideance we all needed!

So grateful for his Christlike example!

These are just some of the many tricks that Hannah learned going to church in a classroom.  Our ward met in the Hinckley buildling on campus.  We started off in a chapel, then moved to the gym where we held Sacrament Meeting, then broke off into classrooms from there.  It was so funny going back to a singles ward set up after having only been married 1 1/2 years. 

Hannah started off (at 6 months) just being a good girl rolling around on the floor.  Then she started crawling and it was goodbye mom--hello TrOuBlE!!  Boy she was a handful!!  Made me really want a nursery!

She was better tempered than the boy before, but she still did all the same things a toddler does when couped up at church for 3 hours.  Good thing the rest of the bishopric's wifes and some of the girls in the ward were always there to help me every week.

As seen in the pictures, Hannah got to be great at playing the piano, running through the desk isles, pressing all the computer buttons, opening/closing disk drives, crawling on desks, drinking from the water fountain, etc..  Now that we're released, Charlie just hit the 7m mark--he has been the perfect age for the babysitters to just hold, feed and rock while I ran around and chased Hannah.  She was "normally" pretty good during Sacrament, but we always had to cut her some slack the rest of the meetings, no matter how much Jake hated it.

Even though Jake was gone a lot to meetings and had to sit in the front during Sacrament, Jake was able to sit with me during the rest of the meetings,  unless he had to conduct in Priesthood.  I even got him during Relief Society!!  How fun!  (He always did complain about how much we sang in there though...:)  I am looking forward to the extra help during sacrament in the near future though, because after that, HANNAH GETS TO GO TO NURSERY!  I guess we'll find out soon if she likes it or not! :)

This is Hannah with her new friend Smaran from Nepal!  He was such a fun kid and he got baptized during this last Winter 2010 semester before we left and he and Jake graduate!  We are so excited for him and proud of his decision!  I always loved how he LOVED Hannah so much!  I knew I needed a picture of this before we left, so I had to sneak my camera to church for a picture in the hall! :)

Here are some pictures of Brother and Sister Boren.  Lee was the 1st Counselor with Jake and was his lifesaver when it came to keeping the ward fun, exciting, friendly and balanced.  They were "perfect for each other" in their respective callings!

We served with two different bishops during our time there.  Bishop Doman and his wife were super fun and we loved them a lot.  Bishop Dixon came in next and we enjoyed getting to know him and his wife better.  Bishop Dixon enjoyed all the same self-improvement/self-relaince things Jake did and we might be seeing him sometime this summer so Jake can teach him how to make cheese! :)  They always loved talking about Gardens, making yogurt--all that stuff I don't understand but that Jake thrives on!  I'm glad he got to work with such great people in his calling!

Now onto random pictures of our family activities lately...  Hannah's big thing lately has been to EAT SUCKERS ALL THE TIME!!  Totally by accident I taught her "please" using our candy bowl which ended up being a HUGE mistake!  Now she says it so well and so cute that I really have to practice some self-restraint not to just give her one every time she asks!  She sure loves them and its so cute to watch her pick them out of the candy bowl.  Thankfully we've been able to tone it down a lot!

Other things she enjoys:  helping mom take care of Charlie, putting olives on her fingers and eating them off, takking couch cushions of and jumping on them or running like mad across the multi-level couch, and stacking pretty much everything she can stack!  I was pretty impressed with that spice stack up there and got lucky to get a picture before it broke down...

Hannah is starting to get pretty good a imitating words and I'm so happy to see some progress!  Some of her new words are "Blue, red, yellow, horse sound, sheep shound, and whatever else we prompt her to say 20 times...:)  What a cutie!

Yep--its official!  We're moving out of Rexburg, slowly, but surely!  We have to make a few trips to get all our stuff to the different storage locations (thanks parents!:)  Our first load went to BL for long-term storage, e.i. baby clothes because we intend on waiting a few years to have a kid...:)  and other baby stuff that will be handy to have at home when we and other kids visit. 

This upcoming weekend we will be heading to Twin to visit Karen and Andrew and switch Jake's parents for their big truck and trailor!  Jake and his dad, brother and Andrew will go shooting for a day and Karen and I will hang out once she's home from work.  I'm hoping to through in a visit to our friend Melissa and see her new baby too!

Then on Conference weekend we will make the trek back to Boise in the truck with all the stuff we're going to take with us to Yakima, Washington for Med school.  That way we don't have to keep all our stuff with us all summer and we can just pick it up on the way up. 

Jake will graduate on the 10th and then we're off to Bear Lake with the stuff we need for the summer and leave Rexburg for good!  I can't believe its all coming to an end, but we're excited for the new life ahead!

Its so nice have these weekends free so we can go visit family and friends without having to worry about coming back for church each week!  (Is that a bad attitude?)  Our life just seems to be so on the move at this point in life that its hard holding callings like this--but I guess its all for a good reason.  We're happy to be a little more stable in a few months...:)

Pictures from MOVIE NIGHT 3

This "Potter-thon" has been such a FUN thing for us!!  Joel Neilson there in the top right corner with Hannah is the new 3rd ward clerk in the singles ward.  We've only had a few months to get to know him and his wife Kendra and their 3 yr old daughter Lily.  They've been SUPER FUN and we're soo sad to leave them behind!

We all realized that we were far behind everyone else when it came to the Harry Potter movies we'd seen, so we decided to get it take care of together.  Every week we are getting together to see all the movies.  We're on the 4th this week and should be on schedule to get the 6th watched the week we graduate.  We always get together around 5:30 and eat dinner, talk, then watch the movie until around 10 at night.  Its a pretty big production and we're going to miss the rountine every week.  Here are the ones we've had so far:

Movie Night 1-White House/Stuffed Mushrooms and Mom's Lasagna!

Movie Night 2-Neilson House/Hamburgers w/avacados, mushrooms, and all the other toppings

with an AMAZING SMOOTHIE to top it all off!

Movie Night 3-White House/DeLite Pizzas from Papa Murpheys and Oreo Truffles!

Guess we're just going to have to start a similar tradition at med school! :)

Yeah, Hannah did it this time...No wonder I didn't hear anything going on in the other room.  Normally I know when somethings wrong because Charlie cries out, but I guess he liked getting powdered!  Boy, she went all out on this one!  I love those close-ups of his poor little head and eyelashes.  I'm just glad he's still breathing and seeing well! :)

Its to be expected I guess--don't all kids get in trouble with baby powder sometime in their childhood?

Well, here they are--my CUTEST KIDS IN THE WORLD!!  I love these two little sweethearts!  Its fun having them so close in size and age, even though its crazy at the same time!  I love these pictures--first they are both smiling, and the second they're both looking kinda nervous...:)  Guess they're getting to be better friends every day!  They can both wear the same clothes, diapers, jewelry, etc...:)  I'm so lucky to be their mom!

Hope you enjoyed the update and hope you're all doing well! :)