First off I just want to say thank you to all of the wonderful family/friends who have helped watched Jacob/invited us over one last time before our move later this week/and have offered their help in general.  It's truly meant a lot.  This past weekend we got tons done thanks to the help of family, and our apartment is officially a warzone.  I'd say 75% of our things are in boxes with a few odds and ends waiting til right before we go so we can at least eat on things and jake can still play with his toys etc.  It's hard though cause i'm seriously tempted to just box it all so it looks better but then I know I'll be bored out of my mind and left twiddling my thumbs for four days.

So the plan is to have everything packed/cleaned by Friday/mid day and then later that evening we have some people from our church coming over to help us load the Penske truck (seriously one of the many reasons I love being mormon-doesn't matter where you live, you have an instant system of help built in-I mean, how many people can say that no matter where they move to in the world they can find free help to move???).  Hopefully we'll be able to do it quickly and then it's off to spend our last night in Houston at my parents' so we can start bright and early the next day.

Hopefully we'll be able to roll into Springville sometime Monday.  The only thing that frustrates me about moving ourselves is how much slower it's going to take us on the road.  I mean, yes we have to pull over to change jake and get him out of the carseat every once in awhile but we've already done that and we did it in good time, but a moving truck towing a car can only go so fast.  The one thing I love about roadtrips is that you're mostly in the middle of nowhere and can go really fast (Within reason of course).  I can be an impatient person.  Often it's hard for me to stop and enjoy the journey rather than focusing on the destination and whether we're making good time or not.  Code however is great at enjoying the journey.

I've talked about it before-how we grew up viewing roadtrips very differently.  For my family they were to be endured and what mattered was getting to our destination as fast as possible and THEN our vacation would start.  For Code's family it was all about getting there-roadside tourist attractions, camping along the way-taking a WEEK to get somewhere was the norm.  To be perfectly honest I like that we are different in this area.  I like that Code can help me relax and enjoy the journey a little bit more, and I like that if we need to get somewhere and get there fast we can rely on me to make it happen.

So I guess the plan is to get some walkie talkies and caravan it.  We've also invested in a headrest/carrier for our ipad so we can use movies as distraction incase jake becomes inconsolable.  It only happened once last time we did this trip and movies seemed to do the trick at distracting him plus it was kind of entertaining for the driver to hear the movie even if they couldn't see it.

I just keep telling myself, in two weeks it'll be all over and we'll be relatively moved in/settled either way so why not enjoy the process-it's an adventure right? right.

Valentine's Day

This week we visited the Skidmores for one final play date (which let's face it, we moms just want to get together) before we move.  It's crazy how much jake and evie have grown since our last visit (not counting the groundhog day visit).

then:

now:

6 months is def a cute, cute age :)

Since we were so close to Vday we did a lil mini Vday shoot with them.  We managed to get some cute ones-no thanks to jake haha.  He was chewing on his fingers the WHOLE time (must be teething or something) and let's just say that the same things that got Evie to laugh did NOT make jake laugh.

The funniest part was when we sat them on the couch together.  Jake wasn't his usual go with the flow self, and Mary was trying to help them smile by shouting BOO! which Evie LOVED and Jake....well...he just seemed concerned (the difference between a first child and a second child I guess haha).

he wasn't sure about Mary at first...

he's starting to accept her...

we're close to a smile!

Then in the excitement Evie started slipping and apparently Jake decided to have a bubble today and did NOT want it popped...

the distress on his face cracks me up...

if I were a better mother I'd put down the camera and rescue my son who's in distress at this point, but who are we kidding? it's a kodac moment.  I love how calmly Evie has accepted it and is just sweetly leaning on his shoulder-he's still not having it.

At this point I stepped in-he finally gave me the really sad face. haha

at least we got this cute one.

After this I held jake and he was clinging to me for dear life.  It's a tough life when the worst part of your day is a cute girl resting her head on your shoulder :)  Though I guess it wouldn't be so bad if he managed to stay afraid of girls for a lil while.  We had fun though and will miss our baby play dates with the Skidmore girls! Thank goodness for blogs etc to keep up with each other.

Today I did a half-hearted shoot with our cute blocks from Tiffany Zwygart's vinyl shop.  

Happy Valentines Day!

Between my sweetheart making me dinner and giving me beautiful flowers and this cute lil guy I feel pretty loved :)

we have a home to move into!

The town home that I really liked in Springville came through!  The 25th is the magic day (for any family/friends in the area who would be interested in some good old fashioned manual labor).  Here are some pics from their website.  I can pretty much guarantee that it wont' be this cutely decorated for awhile, but I'm especially excited for the kitchen area.

Now just check back here (in 1.5 months *cough*) to see what it'll look like after we move in :)  I have to admit I'm kinda excited to be in Sprinville-I like the rural feel of it but we're still close to grocery shopping and great entertainment like the Springville MoA :)  with easy access to Provo without having to deal with its traffic on game days etc if we don't want to.  BYU sports here I come! Maybe they'll stop sucking now that I'm coming back-our senior year was a pretty good year :) well...for bball at least.  I have to admit I haven't been THAT impressed with our football since I got back from my mission.  A lot of hype but always left feeling let down.  

letting go

Tonight we met with the new couple that will be taking over teaching stake mission prep.  I didn't realize how much I loved this calling until I saw the two people who were going to take it over from us.  They're great by the way-a real sweet couple who, I'm sure, will do great.  They'll direct the class in a way that the spirit directs to them and even though they haven't had a lot of experience with the "new" way of doing missionary work ie. preach my gospel, I'm sure they will learn tons/pick it up fast and, be able to offer things to the students that code and I couldn't have.

So why is it so hard for me to let go? I know that the stake presidency was inspired in calling them, that there was a reason, and that, frankly, it doesn't matter who is called to any calling cause with revelation anyone can succeed at any calling.  I know all of this.  And yet I still find myself worrying.

Worrying that they won't be able to give adequate feedback/good advise to the attendees on how to improve their teaching etc.  because they themselves don't know the material yet.  I know.  It's awful of me, but it's been soooo long since they served and when they did serve it wasn't the way things are done now.  I KNOW what I wrote above is all true and that everything will be fine and work out, so why is it so hard to let go?  How prideful am I to think that the way we ran mission prep is the ONLY way that it will work?  Or that you have to have a couple who have BOTH served missions and are well versed in preach my gospel to be good?  Of course that's not true, I know it's not true but I catch myself feeling like it's true sometimes.....

I guess I'm more of a control freak than I thought......sure I'm nice and mellow/chill until I really care about something and then I want to give 110% to it and if I can't (in this case cause I'm moving) I struggle to let go of that control.  I want to just tell them EXACTLY how we did it-what worked what didn't work, but that's not enough- I secretly want them to smile, nod, and say, ok that's exactly what we'll do.  Which of course is NOT the point.  The spirit will tell them what to do and they'll learn A TON in the process.  A part of me wonders if this calling will help them for a future misson of their own.

Sigh....it doesn't help that I worry about how much we'll be used in our new utah ward.  I know that the Lord will use us no matter where we live.  It's just...we're kind of used to being used a lot and I don't want to feel under-utilized or become lazy.....cause the bishop can't find enough callings for all the ward members.  I want to stay sharp, and I can handle it.  Maybe I don't want 3 callings like I had there for awhile, but a few wouldn't hurt especially if ones a lighter time commitment than the other etc, or something that code and I can do together like teaching....  The more I think about it, the more I realize how spoiled we were in our ward here.  Well....I won't talk for code, but I feel like I was spoiled-got two different types of callings that involved teaching, which I love, and one of them brought code and I together and got to teach together-it was so fun!

oh well.  It'll all work out, just have to trust in the Lord.  And even if we can't teach/testify together in an official calling for awhile, we will with our kid(s) as they grow up, plus any missions we serve later in life so we'll have other opportunities :)

ok....random rant done.  Sorry everyone, this was literally a mental upchucking-verbatim writing of what was on my mind at the time.

sitting sessions

After code got jake ready for bed they practiced his sitting skills, and he did a lot more than he used to.  He can handle minor shifts in balance on his own now.  He was sitting pretty good by himself for minutes at a time until he'd tilt his head back to look up at me.  (He's playing with his valentine in these pics.) Our lil man is growing up!

so proud of himself!

what happened?? 

Thank goodness daddy was there to catch him :)

Sitting sessions from Whitney Nolden on Vimeo.

you know you're getting older (or have too many callings) when...

In order to avoid the crazy waits for restaurants and traffic of Valentines Day which is on a Thursday you go out for your "valentines date" Monday night.  (Mission Prep tomorrow night, and Mutual Wed night).  It was a lot of fun tho.  We dropped Jake off at my parents' in Sugar Land-trying to give them as much Jake time as possible before the big move- and headed out on our lil adventure.
Code took me to....

The Hobbit Cafe!  I didn't even know it existed but it's tucked away down a random street in the inner loop of Houston.  It was def a unique building-older with wooden floors that squeeked etc.  It honestly reminded me of that dessert place that has those huge cookies that are really in mini pie pans with ice cream on top in provo/orem that has random tables/booths all throughout this house type building and you just go find a corner of the place etc.  It was kinda like that. 

 They had all sorts of different Lord of the Rings art/posters/signs up:

Though, being one who loves themes, their attempts to make it the hobbit cafe seemed half-hearted.  Only one section on the menu actually had Lord of the Ring names for their sandwiches etc.  I got the Dwalin sandwich (curry chicken, grapes, almonds, mayo, lettuce) and Code got the angus burger-very un-lord of the rings- if you ask me.  It was still fun though.  I would have made rounded doorways and lil displays throughout the place (maybe in display cases to protect them) etc. to make it feel like Bag End or something but still-a fun, quirky place.  

After Hobbit Cafe we stopped by our favorite dessert place in Houston: 

the Chocolate Bar!

and this is why:

that's toffee bits not nuts.

It was a great night and staying on our Valentines' theme, when we got home we checked the mail and Jake got his first valentine ever from his Grandma Kathy-a cute card with a lil picture to color of a heart.  Since we're not quite to the coloring stage of life, I let him do what he does best-mangle it....out of love: