Georgia is beautiful

The flowers in Georgia in March and April are amazing. We didn't get any pictures of the Wysteria vines that grow all over the trees and look like 40 ft. tall purple waterfalls--those are my favorite. It's a lovely time of year but also terrible for allergy sufferers. The streets and cars have a constant yellow dusting of pollen, and sometimes it actually looks foggy or misty outside just from the pollen.

Just some of the beautiful blossoms on UGA campus. James took these with his new camera.

This is in front of James's building.

Across from James's building--the old building on the right is one of the original University buildings that is still in use.

A street in Five Points--the residential area by the University where a huge proporation of the professors live. (And yes, that's James's pride and joy parked on the street.)

The perfect house and yard.

Wouldn't you hate to live next door to these people?

Josh Reeves Memorial 5K--Henry's first race!

Our family recently participated in the first ever Josh Reeves Memorial 5K. First, a little background info. The Reeves family are members of our ward. We've known the parents and their children ever since we moved here. Josh (and one other grown sibling) were the only ones we didn't know, although I knew Josh's wife, Leslie.

Anyway, Josh was serving in Iraq up until last September when a roadside bomb exploded under the Humvee he was in. His passing happened at a particularly difficult time--Josh's first child, Jackson, was born here in the states just 24 hours earlier. So we love the Reeves family very much and this has been and continues to be a tough thing for them. So when we heard about the memorial 5k the UGA ROTC was doing, we, along with a lot of other ward members, signed up.

Of course, the problem was that we hadn't run a race in forever and had not been running. Well, for James it had been the Fall Festival 5K and for me it had been the relay race marathon last April. And we were both pretty out-of-shape. But it was good because it made us get back in shape. Before the race they had a tribute to Josh and his family. A large group from each military division--the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines--were there and they ran in formation by division and did their...I can't think of what it's called..chanting, shouting things with their commander during the entire race. It was rainy during the race but that actually felt pretty good. It was fun to run a race with lots of our friends from church.

This 5k also, by accident, became Henry's first race. Our friends were going to watch the boys while we ran but at the last minute the night before we found out they couldn't come. So we decided James would run the race himself and I would push the boys in the double stroller. But it actually turned out to be a good thing because Henry was so excited about being in the race. And I have to say he did a pretty amazing job. He ran about half of the 3.1 miles, including several hills and at a pretty good pace. Everyone we passed when he was running got a pretty big kick out of his clenched fists and determined face. He was very excited. At one point we were running up a hill and it was just starting to drizzle and Henry was laughing while he was running and my heart took a picture of it. You could just tell that his little boy heart was pretty happy in that moment.

So James finished the race in probably pretty good time, although we don't really know because he didn't see the big race clock they had at the end and assumed they didn't have one. :) So then he came back and got the boys from me and I got to run the last 1/2 mile of the race without the stroller. When James came up with the boys, everyone kept trying to get Henry to get out and run across the finish line of the race, but by that point he had had it and kept yelling at everyone, "No. I'm too tired!" Of course he perked up a bit when he found out that people who run the race get to eat donuts at the end, although not enough to smile for any of our pictures.

All in all, it was a really fun race. We want to always do stuff like this as a family and raise our kids participating in things like that. And it got us really back into running mode, which we really like to do. That and Emily Morrise's blogs about all of her running accomplishments. She's amazing! Her example has really inspired us and hopefully we can do some running together when we're out there this summer!

Our living room makeover

We do exist. We have not fallen off the face of the earth, though I know it seems we have. We've just been really busy and our Internet always seems to be having one problem or another. But anyway, now that everyone has probably stopped checking our blog, I am back with just a small update on our lives.

We continue to love our house. It's so nice (and so much easier!) to have options and flexibility in terms of storage and decorating and use. So one of my fun projects in February was getting our living room set up a little more nicely. It was hard to make myself stick to predominantly one style and color palette because I love so many different looks, but I think I did and I'm pretty happy with the result.

First, I have to say that even though it's not a fancy living room that people would still be very surprised to know how little we spent on everything in there. About 80% of everything in there (as well as in the rest of our house) was either given to us or purchased at a garage sale. (We have a very generous and thoughtful family and circle of friends.) And among those things, there are a number of items we refurbished to make them look nicer and like they were supposed to go together. And then there's a small number of things we just bought (read: IKEA and Walmart--what would I do without those two stores?!).

My favorite item (and the most unique) is the humongous world map on the far wall. That was my big purchase item. I loved that map when I first saw it on the IKEA website a year ago, and for me it's a good sign when I still like something after a few months because I normally change my mind all over the place. It's a beautiful canvas maps with great colors--colored like a map but in nice shades of blue, brown and green so it didn't look straight out of a geography book. I love it because it's big enough to allow you to read everything on it, and it's interesting to look at so you actually learn something everytime you look at it. And it's a great conversation piece. Everyone who comes to our house (even the repairman) stops to look at it, and it spurs a lot of interesting conversations. And down the road (a ways down the road) it can go in our library that we hope to one day have. So I feel like it was worth the investment to get the one thing I really loved and that we would use for a long time, although again, IKEA, so it wasn't really expensive enough to call it an investment!

Finally, I made the blue pillow the day I wanted to have the room all done, when my friends came over for book club at my house (my first time being able to host the book club after being in it for four years!) Anyway, I was proud of my cool design and that I remembered enough about sewing to put a zipper in it.

So there you have it. Now you can all feel like you've visited us here and...been in the front room. :)

Christmas Day

Lots of fun. Toys and paper everywhere! We had a lot of fun with the dinosaur Henry got. It's amazingly lifelike when it's on Demo, and Wesley wasn't really sure what to think of it.




The highlight of my Christmas morning this year actually did not have to do with watching the kids. The best gift and the biggest, knockout surprise was for James--a MacBook Pro. It was largely for his research and some of his big upcoming trips, but also something he'll have an immense amount of fun with. It's a long story, but it had been our long-running joke that that's what he wanted for Christmas and five more years' worth of birthdays, but I had been 100% sure that we're not getting that. And then, just the Thursday before Christmas, Henry and I were going to finish up some shopping and I realized that there was a PeachMac store in town and that I could be sure of completely surprising James (which can be hard to do) and then a thought that I think was actually a prompting of the Spirit: that my hard-working husband, in the last few months, had already earned it and that it was something I should do and not withhold from him.

Again not to go into endless details but I had the biggest thrill of the Christmas spirit this year getting that computer and hiding it and getting it ready for Christmas morning. I made sure that the last present to be opened was a family gift of the game Clue, which Henry had opened on his own a few weeks ago. So James got the unexciting job of opening the rewrapped family present, but of course he didn't know there would be the note under the plastic directing him to look under the couch. It was a pretty exciting moment. We had long since lost the boys' attention to their new toys, but I had the best Christmas experience ever of seeing my husband open a gift the made him both go crazy with excitement and choke up and say over and over, "I can't believe it. I just can't believe it." I love him so much. He is deserving of everything good he gets in this life and of so much more as well. I can't believe I almost didn't get it for him. Life is short and it could all end tomorrow. This Christmas was worth every penny.

The Santa breakfast was a big hit. As you can see, the boys were very excited! Very, very fun for me.

So here is the rest of it--egg nog French toast, eggs, sausage, OJ, and hot cocoa (Henry is obsessed with "hot to-to" and especially if the water comes from a teapot). It was all super-yummy.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve was very nice this year. We were planning on spending it by ourselves and I'd made a huge dinner (a little too huge), but our good friends Dave and Shauna Vess (who had been by multiple times that day helping both James and I with secret gifts for each other) didn't have much planned for the evening because of all their relatives joining them the next day, so we had them over at the last minute and it was very fun. It was the first time I had ever picked out and cooked a real ham myself, and I have to say it was highly successful. In fact, we all agreed it was about the best ham we'd had, even better than Honeybaked Hams. I don't remember what it was except that it was some kind of shoulder/picnic type roast and it was the very cheapest kind in all the cases they had at Walmart. Talk about a lucky pick!




As you can see, our boys are quite reverent. Ely is one of Henry's best friends. And yes, that is a can of prune juice by their cups. Ely and Henry picked them out on their own from our food storage shelves. Ely did not enjoy his, but Henry, very surprisingly, did and drank the whole thing!

A little storytime following dinner. We read "Mr. Willoughby's Christmas Tree" most nights leading up to Christmas. It's a tradition from James's family, along with Richard Scarry's "The Animals' Merry Christmas" and we enjoy them throughly. Nothing warms my heart more than hearing James read, "The Little Bear and the Golden Sled" to Henry. (Wesley has no patience for that long of a story. Not yet, anyway.)

Here's our attempt at a Christmas Eve picture by the stockings. Wes would not hold still and smile, that little stinker. So we resorted to other measures.

OK, and here's my big fun thing this year. I saw an idea in a Southern Living cookbook for a Christmas morning brunch and here's my set-up of it the night before, only we called it "Santa's breakfast." In addition to having the table set up, there were lights strewn around the room and a curtain over the doorway so that the kids wouldn't notice it until after presents.

And voila! The powdered-donut Christmas tree. This was so fun to make. The balls are on toothpicks stuck into a styrofoam cone. The ornaments are cranberries. I had a lot of fun embellishing it. I've never made anything like this before. I'm not usually a "presentation" type of person, more like "feed-the-family-and-I'm-done," but this was a fun new project for me.

Getting ready for Christmas

We had such a nice time celebrating Christmas this year. It was nice to know we'd have the best of both worlds--staying at home for Christmas and traveling to see both of our families for New Year's. We got to do lots of fun things with the boys--making lots of holiday goodies and going to parties and shopping for each other. We also watched a slug of Christmas movies from the library and on YouTube, making Wesley even more of a movie junkie than he already is. (The first thing he does in the morning is point to the DVD drawer and then to the TV saying, "That, that, that." I promise we don't actually watch that much though!)

In honor of our huge, new living abode, we get a huge, new Christmas tree. We went to Jack's Creek Tree Farm and opted for a huge White Pine, which was on sale, as opposed to the Frazier Fir we usually get or the Leland Cypress that most everyone in the South seems to favor. As you can see, it barely fit in our car yet our awesome Corolla triumphs once again! (I also got a fully-assembled play kitchen in the trunk and brought it home the other day. Who needs a minivan?!)

Here's our tree all decorated. It turned out OK--it looks good in this picture--but it actually was an interesting tree. I don't think we'll get a white pine again. The branches are too flimsy to hold anything and then when you put ornaments on the branches farther in, they area totally obscured by the soft, grassy pine needles. Hmm. And, as you can see, it was a little too tall, with multiple branches touching the ceiling and the star situated just near the top as opposed to on the top. Plus, it was so fat and full that it took up like 1/4 of the room with its girth and had such a presence that sometimes it felt like an awkward 3rd person in the room that I was leaving out of the conversation. Still, the boys loved it and routinely tore down the bottom third of it. It looked beautiful on Christmas Eve and brought the Christmas spirit in our home.

And finally, what kids like Santa when they're this small? I must admit most Santas we see make me feel a big edgy too. The mall here actually has an excellent Santa with a real fluffy white beard and friendly smile and who the boys might have a better chance with, but he costs $25 for a photo, no personal cameras please. So here we are at a different community event and Henry was brave just long enough to tell Santa he'd sent him a letter and to please not forget his younger brother Wes who is too young too write.

November happenings

Well, a lot happened in November. Shortly after our move, I left with the boys to Utah to give James a chance to get some serious work done. The boys got some great bonding time with grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Aunt Amy threw a little tea party for the cousins and they had a wonderful time snacking on little pizzas and cinnamon rolls and sipping miniature glasses of hot chocolate. It was so fun. We also had a great time with Grandma Eyring at the Children's Discovery Center in Gateway Mall in Salt Lake. It was AMAZING! I've never seen such an awesome place for children. I even loved it and got excited about every new thing like the kids did. The boys also just loved playing in the yard and things like running races with Grandma Robertson, back and forth through the house for 30+ min.

Henry was a pretty lucky boy this year. Not only did he get to celebrate his birthday with family this year, but he got two parties--one with his Robertson cousins and one with the Eyring extended family. We had a blast and he got some wonderful gifts from everyone. We had a Little Einsteins theme for his cousins party. I've never spent so long working on a cake--until late into the night--but the look on his face in the morning made every minute worth it.

Finally, the big reason for our visit to Utah was for my brother Kenny's wedding. He married Megan Jaussi from Idaho Falls in the Bountiful Temple. It was a wonderful experience. We were so happy for them. Megan is beautiful and is so fun. We really liked getting to know her and her family better. They're awesome. I hope we get to see them more in the future. There was a reception in Kaysville the night of the wedding and one the next night in Idaho Falls. The following morning we drove over to Rexburg for a quick visit. We got to see the beautiful new Rexburg temple. I wish we could've gone inside but it won't be finished for another month. It was fun taking a quick walk down memory lane. How could it be already 9 years since I started college there? How could I already be back with a husband and two kids? At least I don't feel as old as I think I used to picture that stage in life to be.

Thanks everyone who made our visit so nice! We love you all a bunch. Thanks, Mom and Dad Eyring, for making it possible for us to come out. Congratulations Kenny and Megan and best of luck!