We Are MOVING!!

August 29, 2012 - Kasey got the best news in a L.O.N.G. time! Back at the beginning of July, Kasey asked his boss {yet again...} if he could put in for a transfer to a job opening in Salt Lake City, UT. Not even 3 months before that, he asked about applying for a transfer to the Denver area. He was expecting the same answer he got when he asked about Denver. A big, fat, NO. The main reasons being that: 1 - nobody in their right mind wants to stay in Rawlins/Sinclair so getting someone there and keeping them there is nearly impossible. 2 - the only other guy Kasey works with will be retiring soon, but no date set. Well, Kasey had a few important people pulling for him so his boss reluctantly agreed to let him at least apply. Getting out of Rawlins was still a bit of a long shot, but our hopes were sky high. I started researching the entire northern Salt Lake area - you know, just in case :) We agonized over whether or not we would get it for 2 MONTHS, weighing the odds and speculating on what might happen. The decision came down to 6 candidates, and Kasey was the most qualified for the position but the situation with his station {location and coworker} were a big obstacle and the outcome could have gone either way. Fastforward to the end of August, his boss and the Rock Springs technician Rob played a dirty joke on Kasey knowing his hopes were as high as can be. Rob told Kasey that their boss was going to be calling him with bad news, that the job had been absolved and that the tech they already have in Salt Lake was going to take over the position's responsibilities so to be prepared. His boss took a whopping 20 minutes to call him, all the while Kasey's mind is going crazy {"what am I going to tell Krista" being at the top of his list.} Kasey answers the phone and Dale tells him that he got the job. Then my jerk of a husband played the same joke on me except told me immediately after that he was kidding. Took me about 3 hours to come back from that. Kasey got the job with the stipulation that he would go back and forth from Salt Lake to Sinclair every other week to help cover his empty position until they have someone to fill it. That's going to be rough, I worry about all the 5 hour stretch he's going to be doing on the interstate in the winter. Those roads can get nasty. But it's all about the big picture here, and if that's what we have to do, so be it.

 

They gave us 1 month to coordinate our family's relocation. Nothing I can't handle, haha! I started packing and looking for houses right away. I was pretty worried about finding a home in a safe neighborhood with a great school in a nice town and close to Kasey's new office, etc... We decided that we really liked a town called Kaysville, UT which is only 15 minutes from his office. I called on this house that is in a great location and in the school district we wanted, we went down to take a look at it, signed a 6 month least and plan to buy by the summer if everything is as picture perfect as it seems like it will be :)

We only have 1 more week here, and we are SO excited! Kasey flies out to Pennsylvania for a class and won't be back until Friday. We will be renting a uhaul, packing it up, unpacking over the weekend, then Kasey will be at work in his new office on October 1st! We are in for quite a week/weekend, but I gotta say I am looking forward to it! Wish us luck!

2012 Summer Recap

Welp, this is the 3rd {and final, YAY!!} summer we've spent here in Rawlins. There's not much to do around here, and with neverending on-call weekends we were hardly able to leave - but as always we tried to make the best of it. We were able to sneak away to SLC in June for a few days with friends, a couple camping trips in our new {to us} camper here and there, Kasey and I had our first night in a hotel room sans the kiddos since I was prego with Mikenna {Almost 9 years ago!! Kasey had to stay the night in Casper for business, so the girls and I met him down there and they stayed with my mom while we went out for dinner and a movie. It was nice to get away for a night, just the two of us.} We celebrated our wedding anniversary and...

 

Mikenna Turned 8!:

She picked a restaurant called Su Casa {one of her two options, and I'm only semi-kidding. Ha!} for lunch.

She was a wee-bit embarrassed by the sombrero and the entire restaurant singing her happy birthday. Don't let her flush cheeks fool you, you know she loved every second ;)



Then we had her best friend Elena and her family over for cupcakes.



Parade Day:

Our 3 little princesses patiently waiting for it to start...

Miss Isla...

Adiee bringing daddy her candy she gathered :)

 

Mikenna waving at the girl riding a horse wearing a crown. Two of her favorite things right there :)

Camping Trip at Pathfinder:

First breakfast in the camper... Yummy oatmeal.

 Mikenna testing out the new kayak they got for Christmas.

 Beautiful Adiee Grace!

 Funny girl :)

 Daddy and Mikenna

Kasey pushed my kayak back out a few times before pushing too hard and dumping me in the lake! Brr! It was only June, haha. He swam out there thinking he was in BIG trouble, but was pleasantly surprised when I was laughing :) So I took advantage of being completely wet and swam with the little ones.

 Sweet babies.

 Adiee

Isla and Mom drying out :)

Isla lost her fingernail:

Kasey took the girls rock climbing so I could have the house to myself for a few hours. I guess while the older girls were climbing, Isla picked up a large rock and Kasey says, "Isla, put that rock down before you drop it and hurt yourself." about 3 times before she dropped it and hurt herself... She came home with a very bruised fingernail. About 2 weeks later, I had her in the bathtub and she started crying. Her nail was coming off! I've never had that happen before so I wasn't sure what to do. I called Kasey's mom and she told me to trim it all away... Ick! But I did and it's already grown back.

Kasey built his girls a doll house:

Yup! He is a stud.

Mikenna helping Dad.

Almost finished! We just need to paint, shingle, carpet, put windows in, and trim it out. But in the mean time, they love it! Lucky little girls!

School Shopping:

All their loot.

School Open House:

Mikenna is now a 3rd Grader & Adiee is now a 1st Grader!

And lucky little Isla is home with me for her last year before pre-K!

Our girls are growing up!

First Day of School:

 Adiee & Mrs. Bentsen

 Mikenna & Ms. Goodwine

 Three little monkeys climbing in a tree...

 School Girls

 3rd Grader!

 1st Grader!

Had to throw one of the "baby" out there :) Isn't she a cutie pie?!

Labor Day:

Labor Day weekend we spent 5 days at the Bear Lake KOA in Garden City, UT. Let me just say that it was the most beautiful lake I have ever seen. It's often referred to the "Caribbean of the Rockies", the water is a gorgeous turquoise blue and we went to the north shore beach where you could literally walk out 200 feet and the water still only be waist deep. We drove the Yukon on the sandy beach right up to the water, it was a nice warm temperature, and it was littered with seashells. It was an amazing time spent with Kasey's mom, Kirby & Deena, and Kyle, Windy, and their kids.

 Mikenna LOVES that kayak!

 Hunting for seashells.

 

 Wowsa! Great picture of baby Isla!!

 Mikenna riding the "bikini bike", that's what our girls called the banana bikes because apparently Squidward on SpongeBob has one just like it and they live in Bikini Bottom. Haha :)

That's how we "roll", haha ;)

 The Cousins {well, the ones that went}

Our sweet and sassy girlies!

Big Girl Bed

I'm one sad momma tonight. Miss Isla is now officially sleeping in a BIG girl bed. Yes, I know it's about time - she's my last one and I have put it off long enough. I took apart her crib/toddler bed today and had a hard time choking back the tears as I removed the last piece of those wonderful baby years; I can't believe it's over.

She is however, thrilled! And so am I {okay, maybe not thrilled just yet}, our family is growing up and we get to enjoy and experience new things.

Happy Father's Day, Kasey!

~ You click on the play button twice to view. The first one takes you to the smilebox website, the second one takes you to his slideshow. ~

"I didn't choosed..."

We were BBQ-ing with our friends a while back. I handed Isla her plate and she replied not with a 'thank you' but with, "Hey! I didn't choosed a hamburger. I choosed a roast beeth!" Hahaha!

Silly little girl! Let me whip that right on up for you! ;-)

8 Years

Married for 8 years, together for 9!

And it just keeps getting better.

{6/14/12}

Adiee is Reading!

It's no secret that I'm not impressed with the curriculum at RES. I do not agree with the guided reading approach - at. all. Adiee excelled in math, but has somewhat struggled with reading (not with the short stories that she would bring home from school, but with everyday books from home or the library) and it was extremely frustrating to her. Anyway, {in addition to our normal reading times} Mikenna and Adiee have been reading together for quiet time everyday since school got out and as soon as Kasey came home from work last Monday (6/11) she brought "The Berenstain's B Book" out wanting to read to him. As soon as she started, you could tell it was a book that she has heard many times and she was planning on reciting it from memory... Well until she realized that it was harder than she thought to remember 26 pages verbatim so Kasey had her sound out and actually READ the entire book. The fact that she could was very encouraging to her and she has been a lot more motivated to try other books as well. This is just the tip of the iceberg, she will be reading chapter books before we know it! ;-)

SLC 2012

Kasey will be on-call at work beginning June 14th {our anniversary} through the middle of July... Obviously, we are not too thrilled about this. This means that we won't be able to go anywhere for our anniversary, Mikenna's birthday, 4th of July {my brother will be home (2 hours away) from DC}, and to top it all off - Kasey's 10-year high school reunion in Oregon. Bummer.

On the upside, we were able to get out of town for a few days before our month-long lockdown. We ran the idea by our wonderful friends, the Santiago's {our families have become very close, we both have 3 girls close to the same ages and they live right next to us!} to see if they might want to join us for a few days of fun at Lagoon and the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City. Since they did decide to come and a full itinerary, we were unable to visit the many family members we have there... Sorry guys, next time!

We left after the husbands got off work on Thursday evening and arrived at the hotel around 11:30 pm. We got conjoining rooms so we could all hang out before and after our planned activities. Brittney and I weren't tired for some reason so we decided to go try to find a store to buy healthy lunches for Lagoon. Neither one of us wanted to feed our families greasy fair food as a meal. That was quite the adventure - Super Target was closed, we found another market that was closed, the tomtom led us to an alley and said that we had reached walmart {um, no!}, so we had to follow a map on my iPhone which was fun... We had managed to make a huge circle around it, only to find out it was just a quick trip on the interstate at the next exit! We had fun though laughing for the 2 hours it took! Then we had to quietly put everything away in the fridge without waking up our kids and husbands - not easy when you can't stop giggling at every crinkle and crunch as well as eachother. Friday morning, we went down to the continental breakfast only to find out they shut it down at 9... It was 9:15! So we had breakfast together at IHOP, then headed to Lagoon.

Just a few highlights...

This was Adiee getting prepped for the skycoaster. You know, when you pay an extra $30 for them to scare the pants off of you... I was worried about Adiee on this one. She occasionally has a fear of heights, but wanted to do this with her dad.

 She was SO excited! What a wierdo, this ride is absolutely terrifying if you ask me.

 NO fear!

Look at those baby blues! She is such a gorgeous little girl!

 No turning back!

"This must be what a bird sees." Adiee said this to Kasey as they are climbing to the top...

How sweet and innocent is that?!

They LOVED every second of it. Brave girl!

I was very nervous about what her reaction was going to be.

The girls in their coordinating ladybug/polka dot outfits.

So cute!

Isla enjoying her dip n dots :)

Mikenna and I are about to go on the Catapult, another X-treme ride. I really like this one!

She's so excited! Last year she did the swing and Adiee did this one with me.

Loved it!

Sweet Isla riding the helicopters!

Saturday we planned to go to the zoo. We had breakfast and finished getting ready. This day was a little more hectic, then we found out the zoo was about an HOUR away... We took the scenic route and drove through downtown SLC. Of all the times I've been there, I don't think I have ever been downtown. By the time we got there it was already around noon. Zoo parking was ridiculous, so Kasey and I opted to just pay for parking so we didn't have to keep trolling the lot for someone to leave. The weather wasn't as nice this day, an occasional chilly gust of wind really put a damper on the day from the get-go.

Our 3 beautiful babies!

Our 3 little "chick-a-dees" :)

Checking out the seals...

Mikenna played photographer with my phone :) Made me nervous a few times, could you imagine her dropping it in the water or in an animals cage?! That thing was expensive!

This picture was taken right after what was probably the worst moment of my life - Adiee got separated from our group. Kasey, Schnihder, and I all went running in different directons while Brittney stayed with the kids. I was running around looking for her and I physically couldn't scream her name, except once. I couldn't believe that it was happening, it didn't seem real at all. I don't think a minute had passed when I saw Adiee walking towards and talking with a zoo worker, she was calm but started crying when she saw Schnihder and I running towards her in opposite directions. I squeezed her and just started sobbing. I felt like such a horrible mom, and I held her hand while we walked back to where our group was. Kasey had to talk me through a full-blown panic attack - something I have never experienced before. I physically couldn't breathe, it felt like someone was squeezing my throat and I was breathing through an opening no bigger than a pinhead. I remember feeling like I was going to faint because I was crying so hard and fighting to breathe, being just so thankful that she was safe with us, and feeling like I was a terrible mom. Kasey made me feel better by saying that I wasn't a bad mom, this is something that happens sometimes {although, it's not supposed to happen to me...}, that Adiee knowing to calmly look for a person in uniform and to ask for help was just confirmation that she has good parents. But it's 2 days later and I'm still feeling very emotional about the whole ordeal.

It didn't take long for Adiee to recover, can you see the excitement over the giraffe? :)

I love this picture, and holy cow does Mikenna look grown up or what?!

Sweet girls!

We had lunch, shopped in the gift shop {Mikenna got an elephant mood necklace, and some slime with a tiger in it. Adiee picked a frog whose eyes pop out when you squeeze it and a glass frog sculpture. Isla picked a beautiful pink crystal sea horse necklace and a pen with charms on it.} and we called it a day by 3 pm. So we basically paid $60 for 3 hours of freezing our tushes off, and a scary experience I won't ever forget. After we left, we went shopping, to dinner, then went swimming at the hotel.

Look at that face!

 Having a great time!

Easy does it :) What a sweetie pie!

Sunday we took off around noon, Kasey had to get back to town so he could take on-call while Mike left on a business trip... Even when we aren't on-call, our weekends aren't always our own. We're still trying to get used to that. If you're visiting just this post, I posted 2 others earlier {one this morning, and one last night. Just FYI if you wanted to read those as well ;-)} Thanks for reading!