Davis at 6 months

Davis is now 6 months old.  We went to the doctor for his checkup and immunizations.  I think his immunizations were harder on me than they were on him.  Here are his stats:

• Weight: 20.06 pounds: 86th percentile
• Height: 28.6 inches: 96th percentile
• Head: 19.1 inches: 100th percentile

We are so proud!  He is one smart dude!

Here are some things I do not want to forget about Davis at this age:

• He loves to roll.  And roll.  And roll.  He is a mover!
• He is trying to crawl and wants to SOOOO bad!
• He is not the biggest fan of sitting up.  I have decided to put him in the child part of the shopping cart.  He hangs onto the cart for dear life.  He is so worried about it, but I think it is still good for him.
• He really is so sweet.  The lady at the doctor's office today asked me if he is always so sweet, and he definitely is.  It is so fun to see his little personality come out and to enjoy our little boy.

We love our little boy!

Thoughts

I always get a little nostalgic when I move.  Amid the crazy packing, I have had a few thoughts.

Things that we are looking forward to in Idaho:

• Chris experiencing a new job that is really what he wants to do
• Living so close to family--my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles
• Having a house with so much room and so many possibilities of expansion in a great neighborhood
• Not having to rent a storage unit across town
• No more annoying dog next door
• No more neighbors downstairs to complain and ask things like, "Could you take your baby somewhere else when he cries?"  Seriously.
• No more laundry room in the garage.  Cold in the winter!
• Being able to stay in the car for the entire entrance and exit of our home.  We don't have a garage door remote opener.  Bummer.
• Having two bathrooms.  On the main level.

Things that we will miss about Utah:

• Living close to family--we will miss Taylor and Katie and Carter and Whitney
• Our ward and the friends in our ward
• The great callings that we have had and people we have been able to serve with
• Living close to the Murdock Canal Trail (mostly Chris, but it is pretty cool!)
• Living close to Kneader's (dorky, I know . . . )

This home in Orem has been the place where:

• We have had all of our belongings under one roof.  For a short amount of time.
• We have had our first guestroom, which was super fun, especially when we got our parents to come and visit!
• We have gone through the entire in vitro process.  I can't express how grateful I am that we lives relatively close to the clinic and to my school at the time.
• We were able to dress up Davis's nursery and invite him to our little family
• We had our first garden adventures (yeah, not going to happen this year . . . )
• We had many many adventures with many many beloved people

All in all, we have enjoyed this home and the many wonderful things that have come from it.  This home was definitely an inspiration from the very beginning, when I was SICK of us living on top of each other and decided that we needed to GET OUT of Provo, fire our realtor, and move on.  By answer to sincere prayer (or maybe we had even given up on praying for it at this point), the girl who came to look at our condo said that she was interested in having her parents buy it if that was okay with us.  We decided it was.  And could they move in for a month and pay us rent in the meantime?  Sure!  We also found a perfect spot, close to the school I worked at, that had a reasonable rent price, and seemed perfect to fit our needs.  And the landlord seemed like a pretty decent guy too!  Sometimes, I swear that our Heavenly Father has a real sense of humor!  :)

We will miss you, Orem, and hold a special place for you in our hearts.  However, we are excited for our new adventure!

Homeowners!

We found a home in Idaho Falls!  Because owning is actually cheaper than buying right now, and because I know Idaho Falls REALLY WELL, we started looking for homes last weekend.
We found nothing.  Actually, we found a few places that REEKED of smoke.  No thanks.
So, we came home and did A LOT of research to figure out exactly what we wanted, and exactly how much we could afford.  We went back, armed with information this weekend.  The plan was, if we did not find something on Saturday, I would stay for the week and look (by myself!) for a home.  I packed accordingly.
First, we had an appointment with a friend from my ward who was selling a place that she and her husband bought in Ammon.  It was a CUTE home, and made us super excited, because after fixing up some things the renters ruined (aargh!), it would be very livable!
I got an email earlier in the day from trulia that said that there was an open house in the area.  I usually don't pay a ton of attention to those emails, but the open house was close, so I thought, "Why not?"  After visiting my friend's, we went to the open house.
And the house is PERFECT and able to be moved into right now.
There are several remodels that will need to happen eventually.  But when we first get in, we will enjoy the retro-ness of the place, and the fact that it is over TWICE the square footage that we have now!
We showed it to our family, and to our real estate agent.
We went and visited more homes with our agent, and it was great to have the place we had just seen to compare them all too.
We made an offer, and have now come to an agreement!  So, we will be closing on June 12th, after which we will come back to our place, and load a U-Haul like crazy on the 13th.  On the 14th, we will be moving to IDAHO FALLS!!  YAY!!

This is a picture of the new house:

Isn't it cute?  We think so!!

Chris is forgiven for scaring me almost to death!

You see, I was giving Davis a bath and Chris had left for scouts.  He decided that he HAD to come home and totally surprised me in the bathroom, when he yelled, "I GOT THE JOB!!"  What job, you say?  The job in Idaho Falls!
Let me back up. . . 3 years ago, my parents went to visit the library at BYU.  At the time, we were trying to decide what Chris should get his Masters degree in.  My mom had a brilliant idea: LIBRARY SCIENCE!!  Chris found a school that did an MLS (Masters of Library Science) degree online, and was accepted to their program.
He has been graduated from Clarion University for almost a year now.  Since then, there has been A LOT going on in our lives, to say the least.  Anyway, ever since a little before he graduated, we have been looking for a job.  My friends, that is a LOT of job applications and a LOT of work.  There have been about a million cover letters, and several revisions of a resume to try and get a job.  And nothing was working.
Chris found out about a website, indeed.com, which searches for any possible job on the universe (ok, in the United States), and can even sort-of-kind-of narrow it down by location.  So we came up with a plan.  I requested that the website send me updates of "Librarian" and "Instruction Librarian" jobs every morning.  I would take the ones that seemed to be in a good part of the United States, and forward the links to Chris.  He would look at them, and decide which he was interested in.  We had a working document on Google Drive that was updated, at least a couple times a week.
So our last day in Virginia, I got an email that said there was a job for an INSTRUCTION LIBRARIAN (exactly what Chris wants to do) at a Stevens-Henager COLLEGE (exactly where Chris wants to work) in IDAHO FALLS (exactly where I want to live, close to a majority of my family).  WHOA!!  And the job required no experience, which is very odd for a librarian job.  Here is the thing: it is hard to get a job in librarian-ness if you have no experience, and it is hard to get experience when you don't have a job.  We were both super excited.
Almost as soon as we got home, he applied.  Then, the next day, he called and had a great conversation with someone on the hiring board.  They talked about his experience in an alternative high school, and the types of students that he deals with on a regular basis.  They just HAPPEN TO BE the same type of students that attend the college.  Weird.  So, he got a job interview where he was told to prepare a lesson.
My parents were in Virginia, visiting Colby and Maria.  So we stayed with my grandparents, who were more than happy to have us over, as long as we brought Davis with us.  I drove part of the way, so that Chris could work on his lesson and have me help him with it.  The next day, he had the interview and felt really good about how it went, and how the lesson went.
They said they would let us know in a week, but then informed Chris that they interviewed other candidates, so it would take longer than expected.  Wednesday night, when Chris went to scouts, he checked his email from his iPad, and found that there was a short email saying that he had been chosen!  We are so excited!
We will miss our friends and family in Utah a lot, but it does make it not such sorrowful parting that we will be with other family and friends in a part of the United States that we both know well!  We are excited and grateful that this long journey of job seeking has come to a close, and that a new adventure awaits!
Chris will be able to finish out the school year with Provo School District, and will be able to start his new adventure on June 17th.  In the meantime, we will be looking for a place to buy in Idaho Falls, and madly packing all of our things!  Thank heavens for family that will help a lot!

Losing Weight

I am proud to announce that the goal that I kind of made in January (like I said, I was basically making goals for survival) has been obtained!  I sort-of-kind-of made a goal to lose weight, and I am there!  As of this morning, I have lost almost 30 pounds!

I feel great to have been able to achieve this success!  It is due to a wonderful program.  If you are interested, you can follow this link to get ahold of my coach.  She has been great during this whole process!  It has taken about 2 1/2 months, and I am loving how I look.  I have a lot more self-confidence in the things that I am doing!  Yay for weight loss!

Sister Beesley

We had a great opportunity to meet Casey's mission president's wife!  Funny story: I am involved in an exercise class in the mornings (in a church close to where we live).  The daughter of Casey's mission president is in the class as well.  Her mom was coming for the weekend for her daughter's wedding, and she invited me to come meet her.  Fun!  And small world. . . especially living in Utah!
She said that Casey is doing great as a missionary--even though he has endured some BED BUGS!  GROSS!  He has such a positive attitude, and it really reflects with the people that he teaches!  Yay Casey!  Yay being done with bedbugs!