Wisconsinites...

It's official. We are Wisconsinites (or whatever we call ourselves). We have a permanent residence with a real street address and I now own a snow-blower.

We've been working to find a suitable place to live and the only thing we could find was a split level deal that someone had built and had been trying to sell for the last three years. Well, the realtor called us the other day and told us he had a nice ranch with a fourth room in the basement just a few doors down the street. We signed the paperwork on friday (after a brief tour) and now we have the perfect house. Now, how to pay for it while we sell our house in ATL... If ANYONE wants to buy a house, please buy mine.

Since we have a yard (that actually overlooks a farm no less) we must care for the yard by mowing and clearing snow. So, I turned to my old friend Craigslist, who didn't let me down. Saturday morning we went to a farm (a real dairy farm) and bought a self-propelled mower for a mere $25. The nice people even gave our Daughter a nice little tour of the place. The mower is going to be perfect.

Our Back Yard

Daughter pets a 3 day old calf

Then She rides the tractor

And checking out the chickens

That afternoon we purchased a real life snowblower. Seriously. We found one on the craigslist. Something that I never thought that I would ever own. I am official now. Now we just have to wait a few weeks for snow so I can break the thing in.

Work has been going well. The more I learn, the more terrified I am. I just keep finding things that are either broken or that need to be totally re-done before we can take over control of things at the end of the year. I am enjoying work and i work with a lot of nice people.

SO - we got callings. Reva was called to be the primary chorister. It's a calling that she has dreaded forever. Now she has it. She went to primary today to check it out and freaked out a little.

I was also given a calling. After a one month break, I was called to be the ward mission leader - again. This is the third time I've had the calling. Hopefully the third time's the charm. I think I need to write a book. Our ward has not had a new convert since 2006. Our full-time missionaries were removed from the ward a few months ago. This will be fun.

In other seemingly random news, there is a gentleman who has been in the area forever who is from Puerto Rico and a member of our ward. He was recently married to a nice woman who moved here from NYC. It just so happened that she is from Brazil. SO, we had a good old time chatting after church (we were the only people left in the building except for the clerk and bishopric member doing tithing deposits). We were all a little more relieved that we had some kindred spirits.

That's all for now.

Road trip!

The stars aligned this weekend, and we got to visit a whole lotta people we love - Nana and Papa, the Hachtmans and the Smiths (plus Lyndel :). The drive to Iowa City to visit Jared's sister's family is only 3 hours from our new town, so we took a 3-day weekend to have a blast with them. The drive was lovely - we didn't realize how beautiful this part of the country is. Or how smelly. Jared is convinced there are entire farms out here dedicated to stink. Stink Farms, he calls them. Regardless, we persevered and got to Iowa City Friday night and passed out. The next day, we hit the town - it's a really cool place! Although perhaps our tiny town makes everything else look cosmopolitan...

Saturday night Nan gave us adults a REAL treat and offered to watch the girls while we went out and watched the new Harry Potter movie. We all gave it as many thumbs up as possible, and the girls REALLY enjoyed their girls night in :) Nana barely survived, and we're especially grateful to her for the night out!

Sunday we went to church and rested. There was a brief period where all 3 girls were asleep... it was magical...

The girls loved all the Nana attention!

That afternoon we took a quick jaunt to the Mormon Handcart Park.

As we walked up to this sign, Solei cried out - "The Book of Mormon!" We couldn't understand, until she reached up and showed the word "Mormon" to Elisabeth and explained that word meant "Book of Mormon." Dang, they didn't even teach her that word on Sesame Street... she's way to observant. We'd tried to explain about the pioneers and such before we got there, and at one point on our walk, she walked up to a man and told him "My ancestors walked across the plains!" Wow.

Also, the night before, the girls had watched some princess-y Disney movie and when they found a stone bench, they took turns laying down and having the other one kiss them to "wake" them up.

Then Monday, we had a super treat and got to go to Nauvoo and see the sealing of one of our favorite families - the Smiths!

It was an incredible experience and we are so grateful we got to witness it - AND see our fabulous friends again.
Especially exciting was that Solei got so see Sierra again - she talked about it non-stop on the way there. We were lucky enough to get this adorable picture:

I especially liked that THIS was what it took to get that adorable picture :)

One very sweet moment was when Solei and Sierra were playing on the steps of the temple, and Solei told Sierra "You were sealed to your mommy and daddy in the temple today!"

I can't believe the things she actually picks up on... Anywho, we're so grateful that it all worked out and we got to play with all the peeps we love. We need more excuses!

Longest Post Ever

Sorry this is so long in coming. As you will hear, this has been a whirlwind month or so. With all the interviews that I had, I only received one job offer. NUK USA offered me a position as their supply chain manager. In all honesty, this is a miracle for a number of reasons. First, the economy is horrible and everyone who is working should be very happy. Second, this job is perfectly aligned to my skill set and experience and if I do well, there is huge opportunity for me to advance and move on (NUK is owned by a huge European conglomerate called Total and they own a lot of different things). Third, did I mention the economy was horrible?

The bad parts of the job were this. First, it is in Reedsburg Wisconsin. For those of you who know us, we are NOT small town people and Reedsburg is a town of under ten thousand people. Moving from the 8^th largest metro area in the USA to small-town Wisconsin: not our idea of a step up. Second issue was our home in GA. Because we were planning to stay put for a while, we bought a “fixer upper” in the best school district we could find. We had done some fixing upping, but we were far, far away from sell-ready in this market. The though of selling the home in it’s current condition and in the current market was a potential hit we could do without.

Since we were without options (and career-wise this was a good move) we got to work fixing up our home to sell. A photographical presentation is available here (thanks mom): http://monkeyseatbananashome.blogspot.com/2009/06/miracle-transition.html

It was 3 straight weeks of 15 hr days with hammer in hand. Our ward came over one night and painted. We had 20+ people painting away. We had all sorts of mishaps like breaking the water main, cutting the phone line, cutting the cable line, and some paint spills, but the end result was an amazing transformation. Our realtor could not get over how different the home looked from its previous incarnation. So, away went our things into moving boxes and then into a truck, on the market went the home and off to Wisconsin we went.

We must stop here for a minute to say, that we were crushed with the idea of leaving Atlanta and our friends. We had great friends and family close. It really was the perfect situation. We shed tears as we said good-bye and miss our friends terribly. No more free baby-sitting, Our Daughter had to leave all her little friends behind, and just when our ward started getting more interesting – off we went.

We pulled into Wisconsin on July 3^rd after an unpleasant day on the road (traffic was a mess). We got our own little furnished apartment and started to get settled. We’ve tried hard to get into the community and find fun things to do the first week we were here. On the 4^th there was a parade in a local town (a town with just one street and maybe 20 homes). The picture is of a huge cow that they pushed cow patties out the back of. The patties were advertising for the cow chip tossing contest coming up...

We had a blast at the ward 4^th of July picnic. Our Daughter even won the contest for most patriotic outfit (the wife dressed her, I wore my commie t-shirt). We had a slip-and-slide, great food, and talked to lots of great people. The Church is a great vantage point for fireworks in Baraboo (where we live). So we enjoyed that too.

Sunday was nice, we had a nice time in our TINY ward. So small. So very small. The wife already has a calling as a primary chorister and the bishop already has two callings that he wants to give me, but isn’t sure exactly

where I need to end up. Wonderful people.

This week I spent at work and getting settled in. I manage people who have been working for the company since I was literally 2 years old. How do you manage someone who has been in the SAME JOB (not just the same company) for 25 years?? This could be challenging… Working at NUK is a lot better than the last two jobs I had. My boss is logical and progressive in his thinking. He is not overbearing and, more importantly, he is a thousand miles away. The staff at the plant is great, they are doing a great job and really need no “fixing”. The job that I have is actually a little more complex than simply managing older people. My job is to transition the entire supply chain from “Company X” (who owned the plant last year) to NUK (who bought the plant this January). It’s a HUGE job and will take a lot of work from me specifically. On the plus side, “Company X” is still performing the supply chain functions and I just need to replicate them at our facility. AND – this is a huge opportunity career-wise.

So, this week we immersed ourselves in Wisconsin culture. We went to the county fair – where Our Daughter rode her first carnival ride and was scared to tears for all but the first 20 seconds. She screamed that she wanted to go home the WHOLE RIDE. The video is funny but painful at the same time, so it most likely won’t be posted anytime soon. We had funnel cake and saw all the show animals. Best of all, it was a short 3 minute drive from our apartment.

We also went to the outlet malls. They are just 10 miles up the road. You know you live out in the middle of nowhere when you live by the outlet malls…

The Wife and Daughter went to see The Circus World Museum. The Ringling Brothers are from the town of Baraboo, where we live, and they still have a presence here. The Circus World is like a stand-alone circus. The girls saw an elephant stand on a ball (the only one in the world who can do the trick) and a tiger act.

The big event (besides us buyi

ng a car on Saturday) was going to the demolition derby. This really deserves a post of its own, but I’m lazy. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here's 2 thousand words worth of pictures. Two words: It Rocked. Demolition derby is a huge thing here. It went from 7:30 to after 10pm (we had to leave to take our daugher home). We sat close enough that the big trucks actually flung dirt on us.

Here's the kiddo playing on a tractor at the fair:

Hopefully the wife will start posting again too...

33 times

We celebrated Jared's 33rd birthday this week with a Nachoooooooooo Libre party and I made this video of the Top 33 Reasons Jared Is Awesome to celebrate his 33 turns around the sun.

Job Hunt Update

So, as you may or may not know, I was laid off a month ago.  We have been very prayerful and have looked very diligently for opportunities for employment.  Our hope is to be able to stay in Atlanta.  Due to some great friends helping out I've had good leads - including options in Atlanta.

Right now, here's where we stand.  I am being considered for a position just outside of Madison WI.  It's a job supporting a newly purchased plant as a supply chain manager.  Yesterday I had an interview with the CEO and if I go to the next step, I plan to be one of 3 candidates who they will interview in person.  I should know very soon.

Job two is in upstate NY, just outside of Buffalo.  It's the same type of role.  I'm not sure where I stand in terms of other candidates, but I spoke with the recruiter extensively and she is recommending me for the job.

Job three is with a global manufacturing giant.  The job is in Houston and would support their Wind Energy division.  It's getting lots of stimulus money and the business is growing.  I fly to Houston next week sometime to interview.  

I also had a phone interview with the SR VP for Supply Chain for a HUGE local home improvement store in ATL.  Hopefully he liked me enough to carve out a place for me.

My in-laws are having a special fast for jobs this month as all but one of us are either unemployeed or on shaky ground.  We are praying for a job that would not make us move, again.  We'd appreciate your prayers.

Vacay

On this, our awesome trip to Colorado, we have done many awesome things. Mostly soak up all the Gamma time we can get.

There has been hiking:



There has been gardening:

There has been an AWESOME excursion to the pool:

There has been a "very first ice cream cone" experience:

He was just as shocked as you are:

And there has been mommy time.

Life. Is. Good.

Happy Mother's Day

Man, I'm glad I got the mom I did:)

a few things....

Most of you are already informed on the comings and goings of our family, but I'm going to still give a recap of a few latest happenings for y'all:

First, a few weeks ago, Jared got laid off. It was a bit of a surprise, but not at the same time. We're excited to be job searching again and have Daddy around all the time. We are REALLY hoping to stay here in Georgia, but the unemployment rate is pretty high so we're keeping our options open.

We're tightening our belts, too. Something interesting I noticed today - the last few months we've been trying a different approach to food storage. We have our 72-hour kits and emergency preparedness stuff, but we were told that a good idea to getting that 3-month supply is to just buy twice as much of your staples and usual foods when you go grocery shopping and you'll eventually have a nice little supply of food you actually eat. We now have a decent amount of the canned veggies and pasta and such on hand, so not having to grocery shop very much has been nice and comforting when you eye every penny going out more carefully. I wondered if we were nuts the last few months when we'd buy a big pile of one item and wonder when we'd eat it all, but now I'm grateful for our small stockpile :)

Oh, and speaking of food, there's a website I like that I wanted to share - http://mealplanningmommies.blogspot.com/ . It's a simple blog some nice ladies out there have where they plan meals and put them all out there - always simple, they give you the cost per serving and even put pictures of every step up! I haven't made too many of their meals, but I love the way they blog and make it all so easy and understandable - and it gives me ideas of my own.

Now, this last weekend was one heckuva whirlwind for us - my brother Quinn got married in San Diego and Jared and I flew out Friday, got there just before the ceremony, then flew back the next (EARLY!) morning and I rushed out to play a gig that night. We knew it was going to be exhausting but we also knew it would be worth it. It was wonderful to go to the temple and be around so much family and celebrate a new member of our family.

She is really, really short compared to Quinn and the rest of the family:

Quinn was really happy:

And I couldn't get enough of how beautiful it was, and mainly how GOOD it smelled on the temple grounds!:

I didn't get any family shots because - well, trying to get my family together to do anything really is like hearding cats. It drives Jared completely bonkers. But it was so, so good to see everyone and feel that happy feeling you can only get when the whole family is together. Our newest sister-in-law - Mara - is actually from Brasil so now Jared has someone to make snarky comments about the rest of us with in Portuguese. He still has to watch himself though - I still know about 4 words in Portuguese and I'm not afraid to use 'em.

Solei is still the smartest, weirdest and funniest kid we know. Her reading vocab has grown and she'll not beg us to help her "build a word." She can spell her name and loves learning new words to recognize - like sun, fun, mommy and daddy, cat, dog, etc., but she keeps begging us to teach her "bum." Weirdo.

Oh, and in case you didn't get the memo, I'm 5 months along now and the baby in my tummy is a dude. Still processing that - but please do NOT try to cheer me up about it - I was an only girl with 3 brothers so the idea of having to deal with a little boy is NOT something I relish. And if you tell me I'll love the boy when I meet him, remember I couldn't really stand Solei until she could talk - not a big fan of the baby stage, remember? Cool thing about Solei is she advances so fast, she is always quickly becoming something I can handle and dig. We do know Heavenly Father gives us no more than we can take, so we're expecting another genius kid (I'm REALLY hoping for a clone of my younger brother Dallin).

OH - and this is good for a laugh. A few weeks ago during Family Home Evening, Solei did something completely unexpected during lesson time and PAID ATTENTION. I was just shocked and realized I had to make this story about Easter and the ressurection good - but was unprepared since Im not used to her paying attention to my stories. How do you explain coming back to life to a 2 year old without her assuming really odd things about death?? I muddled through it and even Jared thought I'd made it as easy to understand as possible, as well as engaging (hey, she was paying attention!) When I got done, I asked her if she understood me, and she nodded her head gravely and whispered to me in a serious voice -

"Daddy's going to kill us."

WHAT?!?! I couldn't stop laughing and Jared was completely befuddled. Now, she adores daddy and knows he's wrapped securely around her little finger, so where she came up with that, we'll never know. But she took comfort in the fact that later we could be ressurected. I think I need to work on my lessons...

And, okay, one more bit of toddler hilarity - today I was standing in front of the silverware drawer that we was trying to open. She told me to move - which I didn't do, and reminded her (for the 74th time today) that NOT how we talk when we ask for something, so she sighed and said "May I PLEASE have a get out of the way??" This time it was Jared's turn to laugh.

And now you're all up to speed! We know we're not the only ones in the unemployment boat, and we're praying for those of you who are with us in that. Here's to hoping for good times ahead!

Deliciously religious!

Need a laugh? Check out these Book of Mormon stories, by a bunch of marshmallow peeps.

Easter dressy

Happy Easter!

Today was just spectacular and a very happy day. Jared spoke in church - wonderfully, I might add, we had pretty Easter dresses to wear (Solei and I, not Jared) and had an Easter egg hunt! It's late or I'd write more, but for now here are some pictures Jared took of our Easter finery:

play dough fun

The weather yesterday was INCREDIBLE! Unfortunately, it was also St. Patty's Day and as a celtic musician I was running all over town and didn't get to spent it with Solei, who spent it with friends and then Nana (she got Chuck E. Cheese for lunch!!). So I felt like there was a little pressure to make TODAY awesome too... but the weather started out cloudy (I don't go outside on cloudy days) and didn't clear up until just now.

So, I improvised. I found a bunch of good homeade play dough recipes here, and settled on the super easy oatmeal recipe - so easy a 2 year old could do it. Allow her to illustrate:

Start with a half cup water, and half cup flour:

One cup Oatmeal:

Mix well

Moosh it up nice and good with your hands:

You're ready to play!!

Some things we did were make a gingerbread man and then poke holes in him:

Make a cat and poke holes in that:

SQUISH IT!!!!

Make a family - with a baby in Mommy AND Daddy's tummies:

Plus lots of alphabet fun, including Solei's favorite word, her own name:

Since she's known her alphabet for over a year now and she has started reading, she gets a bored quick with alphabet stuff so making her own letters (I did make those though:) was a new twist.

Oh, and for some dumb reason, she got really excited about giving mommy a tail:

Long Overdue

I know, I know. It's been forever since you guys did any posts and we want to know what is new with you guys and it's making us really sad that you don't ever write and we are super depressed and can't go on with life. Okay, I get it.

Things have been going fairly uneventfully for the last little while. So, I decided to give you a quick run-down of our weekend, which will give you a good feel for what life is like in general.

Friday night was big. Some friends of ours from the ward invited us to go to dinner and play games at Dave and Busters. We usually don't get invited along to things like that (I blame it on my stunning good looks). So, we PAID for a sitter (more on that later) and went out for a night on the town. We had a wonderful time and since half of the couples (there were 4 total) were still in the pre-marriage stages of thier relationships we felt like we were dating again - at least for a night.

We played lots of games and won tons of tickets (unfortunately a good portion of them were from the quiz game - I apparently am a geek). All the tickets we won got us a small basketball - which would have been just stupid, had we not had a kid at home who now LOVES her new basketball. We stayed out late and when we got home the sitter was still asleep. (By the way, the Wife STRONGLY recommends the snowmobile game).

Saturday morning I was up at 7am for a church basketball game. I haven't played any sports regularly in years and when I have played them I usually either ended up on the ground choking for air or throwing up or both. I'm woefully out of shape. Since I'm starting to get some tasty love handles, I made a goal to play on our church basketball team. Thankfully the team is bad enough that the fact that I have a pulse and know the basics of the sport qualify me for participation. We actually won a game two weeks ago, our first win of the season. Well, that didn't happen this week. In fact we lost by 40 or so points. We actually were in the lead for the first 5 minutes or so, but then we got tired and since only 5 people showed up (you need 5 people to play basketball for all you non-sporters out there) there was no rest. By the time we hit the half I thought perhaps I would die and was seriously questioning my goal to play. Thankfully a 6th man showed up at the half and I was able to sit down for a while. There was no heaving on the ground or throwing up in the bushes, so I considered the game on Saturday to be a success.

I think a mommy roach and a daddy roach loved each other very much in our bathroom a few months ago, because there is always one in there when we turned on the lights. (Either that or their is some sort of super roach that is able to reconstruct itself from the smooshed remains that are flushed down the toilet after I kill it - but occam's razor leads me to believe that there is more than just one).

Because I find finding roaches in my own personal bathroom unacceptable, I decided to do something about it. Now, when it comes to bugs or animals living in my house I am a "no holds barred" kind of guy. So, in order to rid us of this plague, I spend my Saturday cleaning out our bathroom and bug-bombing it. Somehow I managed to get a full trash bag worth of trash out of a room that is 6x8 and is mostly bathtub. I scrubbed EVERYTHING. I even scrubbed the floor with a sponge on my hands and knees. I set off the bug bomb and waited. All that work and only 1 roach came out laying on it's back. So - maybe occam's razor is wrong.

While the big bomb went off, we went grocery shopping. WooHoo! Nothing like taking a 2 year old to the grocery store. When we got home she actually took a NAP!!

Which gave me precious time with my wife, which we chose to use playing with our new toys instead of actually interacting with eachother. You see, we got iPhones.

Yes, the day came where I found such a good deal that I thougth purchasing an iPhone was worth it. Now, for you who know me - I am a gadget FREAK. I love gadgets and I love even more tweaking and breaking into them to make them even more awesome than they are supposed to be. Such is my iPhone. It is AWESOME. Go get one. The only problem is that I can't store files anywhere on the stupid thing and I can't create excel or word files either. Jerks.

Saturday evening we spent at a party for "young married couples" from our ward (or congregation for you non-mormons). We are not sure why we qualify as young married people. The wife even suggested that it might be about time for us to divorce and re-marry to be sure we qualify next time around. We had a good time and got to know some of the people we don't get to spend as much time with as we'd like to.

Papa watched our daughter why were were at that activity and they had a marvelous time. Papa and Nana introduced her to "Curly Temple" as our daughter calls her. She loves watching her. Our daughter is a lot like her as you will see in the below video:

Today was a little crazy. We had a wonderful service today at church. During Sunday the drizzle we had been "enjoying" turned to snow. All the teenagers' brains turned to mush and they went out to "frolic" as on called it. I love the south because it's not cold and it doesn't snow. Today the south failed me.

I invited an old boss and his wife and kiddos over to dinner tonight. We had a great time. I cooked a killer meal and spent WAY too much time cleaning up the house to get ready. The Daughter REFUSED to take a nap at all, even though she was going to take it in her new "rainbow" bed. She now has her own toddler bed, which we thought we would need to transition her into, but no, she slept in the new bed the first night with no problems at all.

Finally, we are also trying to potty train our little angel. We've done a good job of getting her to use the potty, but she doesn't always tell us when she needs to go. The obvious solution is to put her on the pot every few hours, which we do. Unfortunatly that only works for pee-pee. The solid stuff is a little bit less predictable. This week she got her first very own pack of "elmo" brand big girl underpants. This has actually been a big success, generally. She loves that she is wearing them and understands that she shouldn't go pee-pee in them. In fact she wore them all day today up until I caught her grunting. She apparently had to poo, but didn't feel the need to do so on the potty, so Elmo is now kind of a reddish-brown. This is the same girl who stripped herself down on Thursday morning and climed on the pot to do the number two - all by herself. We aren't there yet...

After cleaning up the kitchen, I'm exhausted. I need a nap and a day off. Unfortunately, tomorrow in Monday and I have to be up bright and early for work...

Did I mention that we all have colds and I lost my voice. That makes life AWESOME.

Have a good week.

Suburbs...

The phone rang just a few minutes ago.  It was our neighbor.

She says, "I wanted you to know that I am out in the backyard and there is someone walking through our backyards.  Can you turn on the light in the backyard?  I'm out here with my firearm.  Can you come outside?"

Normally the neighbor asking you to come out into hte backyard because there was someone out there and they were armed would not be something one would like to do.  But, our neighbor is a police officer.

I got the shotgun out of the basement and loaded two rounds.  Tomorrow I'm going to buy the strongest floodlight I can find.  

I love living in the suburbs...

Happy day!

Background: Potty training has been coming along. Usually, it's us sitting her down on the toilet and certain times in the day and she can go like a champ. She has on occasion told us when she needed to go potty, but we usually are doing the directing.

Just a few minutes ago, I was tapping along on the computer when I saw Solei walking around my bedroom stripped down to her diaper. "What are you doing? Where are your jammies?" I asked her.

Solei announced, "I am going peepee in the potty."

Huh? Okay, I ran around to the bathroom to put her little helper seat on our toilet and when I came back, she was sitting sans diaper on her little potty that she'd dragged out into the room and put right in front of Curious George on the TV. Without. Me. And then, on further inspection, I realized she'd already gone potty. All by her blasted self. She didn't even want me to make a big deal about it becayse then she couldn't hear George.

Who would have ever thought urine could make me cry happy tears???

Freebie

I may be behind the boat here, but I found a faaabulous FREE program online called Picnik - a easy fabulous alternative to the expensive and confusing Photoshop. With just a bit of tweaking, check out what I did to this picture of Solei I adore:

There's so much you can do, I want to go tweaking and playing with my wedding photos now! Enjoy!

I'll take credit for this one

Nana to Solei, whole musing over pictures on a bulletin board at church: "Who is that?"

Our genius 2 year old: "Thomas Monson!"

Heck. YEAH!!!!!!!!!