BethAnne's first day of Kindergarten

Hello Family!

BethAnne is now officially a kindergartner!! It was difficult for me to make this step. Luckily Mark helped by getting her registered on Friday. I took her to school today about noon (before class started) and met with the nurse and her teacher to explain some of BethAnne's health concerns. They were all very cool about everything, though I was quite frazzled. I was partly frazzled at the idea of letting BethAnne go to school and mostly frazzled at my sweet two year old who screamed half of the time we were at the school. Grace is very two right now, we are hoping it passes quickly. Anyway, the school seems very nice and we're really blessed because there are only 11 other kids in BethAnne's kindergarten class. It really eases my mind to know that her teacher will be able to keep an eye on her.

We are really enjoying Redmond so far. It is a beautiful area, so much green everywhere. They sunny days are amazing and the rainy days are not too bad. Mark's first day of work is today (it's a big day for our family). He says things are going well so far. He has a day and a half of orientation and then he'll get to work. We feel so blessed that Mark has this career opportunity. It's fun because 75% of the men in the ward work for Microsoft, so there's an instant connection. We love our ward. We've already started making friends. Everyone is really friendly and the classes are excellent (lots of intelligent discussion). Grace is doing great in Nursery and BethAnne enjoys Primary. I love to be able to sit in Sunday School with Mark (which we haven't been able to do since Grace was born). We've been able to unpack a lot and our house is coming together, I'm so grateful that Mark was off work last week to help us get settled. We still have lots of boxes to unpack, but it's manageable.

I hope you are all doing well. We miss you all.
Love, Aubrey

Hi

Happy Sunday everyone. Brian turned 7 this past week. I love to be able to say my kids are 7, 5, 3, and 1 - it makes tham sound further apart. We celebrated Brian's birthday on two days. On Thursday, I set up a table with balloons in our yard and served cake to all the kids as they came off the school bus. 37 kids and moms in all. We had fun, and Brian loved the attention. We opened presents on Friday, because big Brian has school on Thursdays. Brian got his first bike that wasn't a hand-me-down (though he's already taken a few good falls and scuffed it up a bit.) After presents we went fishing with our wonderful neighbors, the Olsen's, and had a really nice time playing in the sand, chatting, and catching a few fish (luckily it was only the Olsen kids who caught the fish, so I didn't have to cook any!) .

I included this pic of Cameron because it reminded me how much I love to lay in those patches of sunshine on a yucky day...

Procrastination Rationalization

I first need to apologize for how long it has been since I last posted to the Blog. I think that my biggest rationalization for my procrastination is that Steph has been doing our family blog, and I have tried to pass that off as a family effort… Wrongo Bongo. Anyways we have been doing well. The summer heat is finally starting to break, although this week we are supposed to have another round of 100 degree weather. Lucky for me though, I am going to Utah to meet with some guys for work.
Work has been good. I would be lying if I said that I was terribly busy. I really do like the flexibility that it does offer me though. Dillan is going to be coming back to AZ with me to sell, which will be fun. We are planning on doing a summer office together next year too, probably in the NYC area. Ben is getting to be such a big boy. Some days he even gets to wear big boy underwear… even though he really isn’t super interested in learning how to go on the big boy potty. BO-BO is getting big too. He is still really smiley and giggly. Lately he has been pulling himself up off the ground to stand up. We think that he will be an early walker… UH-OH.
Anyways, we hope that everything is going well for you guys.

I'm Employed!

Good news! I just accepted a job offer! After months of searching online and two long weeks here in Provo, my patience and perseverance have finally paid off! The job is with a department at UVU (formerly UVSC) called GEAR UP, or Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs. I know that's kinda wordy, but in a nutshell, the program is an outreach effort to young people throughout Utah to encourage them to go to college through scholarships and counseling. I'll be their new administrative assistant, replacing theirs who was promoted to a higher level of administrative roles within the program. Everyone who works there is super nice, and I'm excited to have a job that will keep me in touch with the educational world. The salary is decent, but the benefits are amazing, and I'm so happy to start contributing and working in the "real" world. Ok, so Provo is hardly the real world, but I'm still happy to have a job. Heavenly Father has certainly blessed us, and we're so grateful.

Jon is very busy with school, work, clubs, and extra projects - busy, but happy, and I'm so proud him and all of his talents. He's taking a full load of classes, working as a TA for a drafting class, still working about 8 hours a week for his dad, designing a home for his friend, designing a remodel for a family in Orem, and he's president of the NAHB club. Isn't he amazing? And he still manages to be the sweetest husband in the world! So that's about it with us! We love you!

More Good News

Hi Everybody,

I emailed my friends last week to tell them that Mark got a job with Microsoft and we are moving to Redmond. The next morning when I woke up, I saw that I had missed several phone calls from my dear friend Melynie (she was my favorite college roommate, and a dear friend that I still keep in contact with). It 'just so happens' that Melynie's husband, Josh, was also just offered a job at Microsoft in Redmond (they are currently living in St. Louis). I found out yesterday that they decided to take the job and they plan on living about 10-15 minutes away from us near Redmond. I'm such a lucky girl! And, as an added bonus, Melynie and Josh have a 5-year-old daughter, soon to be BethAnne's new best friend. They also have a 2-year-old boy and a baby boy. I feel very blessed to already have a good friend in my new city. We have been so blessed these last few months. As the Primary song goes- "I know Heavenly Father loves me".
Love,
Aubrey

September

I can hardly believe it's September already. We had such a wonderful time visiting you all this summer. Our time at mom and dad's was so relaxing. They pampered us (I gained 5 pounds, thank you very much! :) ), and the kids loved getting to know grandpa and grandma and their sweet cousins and aunts and uncles better. I think Eva's favorite part of everything was getting to make chocolate chip cookies with grandma every few days. Last week I told Eva she could have another cookie after she'd already had one and she said, "Two cookies like at grandma's house! Grandma had a good idea about two cookies!")

We're pretty much all settled in back at home now. We're happy to be with daddy again. He's been super busy with work, but it's still wonderful to have him home at night and spend time all together as a family. In a couple weeks, Jeff gets to got to France to meet with clients for a week. He won't get to do much sight-seeing since they basically have all of his time booked up, but I think he's excited for the adventure of going to a different country.

The garden is back under control after its month of neglect. Some of our plants died, but most are doing well, especially the tomatoes plants which are gigantic. We're getting so many tomatoes (we have seven plants) that I decided to can salsa. I called up Sister Garner (remember Garner salsa?) and got her recipe, and then gave it a try last week. It wasn't too bad for a first attempt, but it wasn't chunky enough and I used sweet onions which made the whole salsa entirely too sweet. I'm stockpiling more tomatoes and should have enough to try another batch next week. Wish me luck! As for the first batch, we're not quite sure what to do with it, so I think we're going to put it in our food storage with the idea that we'd definitely eat it if we were hungry enough.

Eva starts preschool next week and she's excited about that. She's going to a different preschool this year - one that's much closer to our house, so I was a little worried about how well she would like the new one, but we went to an open house for the new preschool yesterday and she didn't want to leave, so that's a good sign.

Aiden is happy and sweet as ever. He loves to swing on the swingset outside, and when he's inside his favorite thing to do is pull chairs all around the house to get at sink faucets and light switches (hopefully not at the same time! :) ). He sings "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and "Baby Beluga" pretty much in tune and it's so fun to listen to him. I need to find some sort of audio recording device that will let me record my children's voices onto cd - do any of you have any suggestions?

Well, we love you all tons and can't wait till the next time we get to see you.

A few more pictures

Here's a few more pictures of the elementary school, playground, and a really cool tree with bright red berries on it. These trees were all over the subdivision and I thought they were beautiful. :)

Our New House

Dear Family,
We feel so very blessed to have been chosen among many applicants to rent this beautiful home in Redmond for a very reasonable price (much less than they could probably get for it). We will send pictures of the inside in a few weeks (when we get there). It has a detached garage. A cute fence-gate is between the house and the garage to the house, completing a fully fenced backyard. (I can't believe we get a backyard for this price in Redmond. We were looking at smaller apartments that would cost more per month than this house). The house is only five years old. It is just 8 miles to Microsoft (a 20-30 minute commute, 15 minutes without traffic). There is a new elementary school (1 year old) just a few blocks from our house. There are at least a couple of neighborhood parks. It is just a beautiful neighborhood with a great ward (we went to the ward on Sunday). The 3rd picture is the elementary school and the 4th picture is a community park, both just a few blocks from our new home. We have really felt the hand of the Lord in this amazing blessing. We are so grateful! It is so much more than I could have hoped. We hope you are all well. We love you.
Love,
Aubrey