Picture Post of Molly's Birthday!

Here is a picture summary of Mollys birthday. For her Birthday this year we took advantage of her interest in animals and had a zoo theme. As part of the birthday on saturday we went to the Hogle Zoo. It was so much fun and Molly loved every minute of it.

Here is Molly with her Cousins: Weston, Braxton, Boston, and Savannah with my Dad

Here is Molly and Fred Checking out the Giraffes. I love the way Hogle Zoo is designed. Almost all of the Habitats having an indoor viewing area. The zoo really seems get Utahs crazy weather.

Here is Molly playing in a giant egg at the zoo playground with her friend Kelby. They are really cute together. Me and fred always tell his mother how lucky she is to have a redhead.

Here is Molly with her aunt Katie playing the piano just before her birthday party. She had a blast at that piano and was very upset when her mean mom turned off the piano and forced her to a have a birthday party. But she did seem to get over it after she opened the presents.

Here is Molly's birthday outfit. I completely forgot to get a picture of the cake. But it was awesome and delicious.

This is the after party when molly got a chance to go wild with all of her presents. It was a great birthday! And I will make sure to tell her how much fun she had when she is old enough to understand the concept of a birthday.

Videos of Molly

I guess it's about time to post again seeing as it's almost been a month! March was a lot of birthday power. Sara's birthday was last Saturday and Molly's was the following Monday (2 days apart). We partied hardy at Hogle Zoo and Kaysville. Molly liked the animals at the zoo and didn't get eaten by any of them. We went to Rodizio grill to celebrate Sara's birthday and then to a movie afterward. It's been a long time since we've watched a movie and it was pretty nice! (but we still dig Netflix) Sara turned a grand old 25 years old and I was able to find a 1986 quarter in her honor. This also begins the period of the year when I am younger than Sara. It's short-lived (2 months) but it's always a fun taunt til my birthday.

Molly got lots of toys for her birthday which were not quite as interesting as the paper they were wrapped in. In true fashion we reduced her to a diaper and let her dig in on her cake. Well, "dig in" is not adequate. She ate like she was at a fancy ball wearing a prom dress. It was about as girly as it gets and I think she was even lifting her pinky half the time. Not so exciting but a good laugh.

One of Molly's old toys has become her new versatile multi-purpose toy that occasionally doubles as fancy bracelets. She also likes to hold Mom's purse and strut around but we didn't have good video of that.

Molly got a block bucket for her birthday that is severely flawed in that the lid comes off way too easy. We tried to teach Molly to put the blocks in the corresponding shaped hole but she thinks that is silly and takes off the lid so she can put the blocks right in the bucket. She is definitely in control with that toy.

Molly also got a tea set from Frank and Amy. She hasn't figured out how the sounds work or what it is for, but she has figured out that the teacups and cupcakes fit very nicely into her ball popping toy. I found them in there today when the toy was all jammed up. Luckily we got them out and the ball popping toy is recovering.

Other than that we are lovin Cottonwood Heights. We are mourning the passing of the ice fishing season (Fred more than Sara) but excited for the resurrection of the golf season. Sara is loving the warm weather and thus the end of her boredom inside the apartment while it's so dang cold outside. We are also thinking about a summer (or any time of the year we want) vacation! (This sentence was followed by Fred's maniacal laughter upon realizing that the shackles of school are no longer binding)

Picture Update

Its been awhile since we have updated with any pictures of molly. So here is a post full of them so we can catch up.

This is molly getting into her favorite cabinet at our old apartment. Suprisingly she was able to replace it rather quickly when we moved.

This is to show how long her hair is getting. And dont worry I didnt allow her to go outside looking like that.

One good thing about mollys hair is now I am able to do pig tails. Its hard to do because not only do you have to comb her hair and even out the pig tails, you have to do it while wrestling with her to stay still. They are really cute though.

And here is molly rocking a sombrero.

eye-kuh

We finally have real internet! So much better than the ghettoness we had with our old internet. In celebration we're going to post a video of Molly walking! She's taking steps on her own now and is having a blast.



Sara has been loving being at home all day... not so much. It can get boring to be trapped in the little apartment. I come home for lunch most days to break the boredom and squelch the daily chaos. We were considering getting a car soon but decided to wait for a bit.

We've been watching 'hoarders' on TV. Very interesting show. You might check it out. These people have nasty houses because they have OCD for hoarding. Note to Frank L. this is not to be confused with CDO -(OCD in alphabetical order.) We've decided that we are a bit of packrats ourselves, well me especially. For instance I went through the bills before we left Logan and couldn't bring myself to get rid of my old bank statements from 2004 from a bank where I closed the account in 2007. So I watched hoarders and put myself through enough therapy to throw away those bank statements and some other stuff that was just plain junk. I have yet to throw away my old mission tracting shoes that had holes in the soles when I bought them. And for the record I don't foresee it happening in the near future. But throwing away some junk was nice. Especially when I realized that it would make room for storage of more junk!

Sara finally bought a new diaper bag from Babies R Us. We've cycled through a couple cheap ones and finally invested some dough to get a good one that we hope will last long. I would take a picture of it to show you but Sara is refusing to let me take a picture. Blame her for lack of a picture here. I guess I'll just describe it - it's black with some green on it. You'll have to fill in the blanks with your imagination.

Final note (this is getting long) we went to ikea the other day in hopes of getting a paper towel holder, curtain, and a crib teething protector. We spent 2 hours lost in the maze of ikea before we settled on a nasty sheer curtain and an okay teething protector. Paper towel holder was as hard to find as a drop of water in sawdust. I'm officially giving ikea two thumbs down until further notice. There will be no capitalization of ikea and I only pronounce it eye-kuh. Sara is undecided on eye-kuh.

We're still alive

Yes indeed. As the title reads we are still breathing and existing in our new apartment in Cottonwood Heights. We were looking to rent a house for a while but a combination of no time, less than ideal houses we had looked at, and the thought of closing on a house in the future... we decided to save some money and get a 2 bedrooom apartment. We have an amazing walk in closet that could double as a 3rd bedroom if we consolidated our clothes more. We had a lot of junk that we put in a cheap storage unit in the complex. The complex has nice amenities - pool, hot tub, tennis courts, volleyball court, etc. We're digging the hot tub especially. Our washer and dryer are finally living together in the same closet. In our Logan apartment they were separated by a long skinny hallway about 20 feet long and tucked in a corner. Now I don't have to throw the wet clothes down the hall in a lame attempt to land it in the dryer! My work is a 5 minute drive from the apartments.

We signed up for this ghetto internet on our first day here. Internet speeds are usually measured in megabytes per second. I think ours is measured in millibytes per hour. The only thing that really works is facebook which is always a sore disappointment anyway.

My work has been great. I have my own office (with my own phone and personal extension!). We will have insurance kicking in on the first of May which is convenient because that is the time I was planning on having a severe debilitating injury! At my last job we could only afford free 2d drafting software but here all the engineers have a seat of solidworks 2011 which is about as good as it gets in drafting software these days. My computer has 2 large screens so I don't have to cram it all into one little window. My boss is a pretty decent guy and so far things have gone well. All this and I was just excited to get a decent office chair (one that didn't come from DI!). Oh one more thing the company has season tickets to the Jazz games and they are distributed to employees. Somebody didn't want their tickets for this Friday so we are going to the Suns game courtesy of the company!

Thanks again everyone who helped us move. It only took us a trailer, dad's truck loaded to the gills like we were picking up pigs, and Sara's dad's truck loaded so much Steve had to drive with a vacuum cleaner in his hair! But it all made it to our apartment in good shape.

Funny Laugh

The whole moving thing definitely has its funny moments. Tonight was a funny moment for us. Our landlords have said in the contract that part of the cleaning process is to wipe down every wall with ammonia water. Well a couple nights ago we were chugging away and I started to notice that I popped a whole in one of my cleaning gloves. That was a sad but I pressed on and after a while I popped another whole in the other glove. Well I noticed that the ammonia water had no lasting effect on my hands so I decided to press on without any gloves.

Moment of Truth:

Tonight Fred and I were cleaning and I decided to read the instructions on the ammonia bottle because I was bored waiting for the bucket to fill up with water. And there on the side of the bottle it said: caution do not allow long exposure to skin or there will be burning. Yikes! I was a little freaked out so I turned to Fred for some comfort.

His exact response:

Wow! Well don't let your hands burn and dibs on the good gloves.

I probably would have been really upset if I wasn't too busy laughing.
Oh well no stinging yet so we're good.

new job

For those of you who haven't heard (through the grapevine or through the book of many faces) I was offered a job down in Cottonwood Heights. I will finally have a job as a mechanical engineer! The company (Dynatronics) makes medical devices and I will be working on the new design and maintaining documentation for past devices. Some other stuff too but that seems like the main things right now. This job came at us like a freight train. I applied for it (online) about 3 weeks ago. They called me the next day for a phone interview and I had a site interview on Friday. The next week I had a 2nd interview and offer by Friday. I start on the 31st.

We haven't found a place to live yet and that has been frustrating. We spent all day today trying to find a house to rent anywhere from Lehi to Bountiful. If anyone knows of a decent house to rent let us know. We looked at one today in a place where my uncle said a lot of people get shot. The house looked really nice inside and out but I don't want to have to get a pressure washer to clean dead bodies off my front porch.

Once upon a time we had a routine that we tried to follow. We'd get Molly to bed around 8:30-9 and then we would be in bed by 10:30. Now that we are in cleaning mode our schedule has gone through the window and we are feeling the effects of it. Oh the joys of moving in a rush!