Life In Maryland

The moving van arrived the day after we did and we started to unload it that Saturday. We've been working pretty hard ever since. It was kind of a double move for us because the house we're renting here still had the owners stuff in it. Its kind of an interesting arrangement we have with a friend of my dad's. He's living in Key West and wanted to rent out the house but wasn't coming up until July. We offered to pack up his stuff and store it in the basement in exchange for moving in sooner. The house hasn't been lived in for awhile and the yard needed some attention. So we've spent a lot of time over the last few weeks, packing, cleaning, unpacking, and doing yard work. Here's a few shots of life here in Maryland and our new house.

 Andy on the riding mower mowing our huge lawn. The back yard is really big and surrounded by trees so its very private.

 The first Saturday after we moved in Andy, Lynn Rector, a friend of my parents, and I spent 10 hours trimming back this massive tree in the front yard. Andy had a lot of fun with the power saw. Yes those are all massive branches on the ground around Lynn and Andy in the tree with the power saw.

 The front of our house after the tree trimming. Taking down the branches really opened up the front yard and let more light into the rooms in the front of the house.

 Bryce on a walk in the woods on Mount Etzler with my dad last Thursday.

 My favorite spot in the house. Our screened in porch. We eat all of our meals here. We have a great view of the whole yard.

 Bryce playing in the water table in the backyard. Its been really hot here lately. Bryce loves the water table. He could play here all day.

 View of the back of the house. The kids play outside a lot.

 We filled up our little wading pool last Saturday. Tyler invited over his new friend Kenny from church. Kenny only lives about two blocks away and they play together a lot. Tyler says Kenny is his best friend.

 Tyler relaxing in the shade while everyone else does all the yard work.

 Bryce really enjoyed his bowl of ice cream. He licked it clean.

 Our kitchen. The door on the right goes out to the screened in porch and the window over the sink faces the backyard.

Another view of the kitchen. I'll add more pictures of the house later. I've been meaning to do a post for so long I just wanted to get something up. Things are moving a long here. I've been working on our Business Plan in our spare time here. We've been looking into office spaces and we have a meeting with the bank on Friday. Meanwhile Andy has 9 clients already with LDS Family Services. He had his first appointments today. Things are moving along. I'll try to post more regularly now. Come visit!!

Road Trip

 

After we got back from the Netherlands mid April we had about 2 and half weeks to pack and move to Maryland. Andy's last day at Wasatch was May 4th. The following Sunday afternoon we finally closed the door on the moving van and got in our car to begin our 5 day road trip to Maryland. I have more pictures of this but they're on Andy's phone who's not home right now. (Maybe I'll add them later). The drive ended up not being as bad as we thought thanks to modern conveniences like DVD players. It was actually fairly relaxing and we got to see a lot of the country. We drove through 9 states in total. We decided to do a little best and worst of our trip.

Pictured above is the day we drove through Illinois. I got to have dinner with my friends at Colonial and the kids played at the Cherry Hill park where I grew up. We stayed the night in Naperville and the next morning we had the best meal of our trip. Breakfast at Butterfields in Naperville. I had a date, goat cheese and bacon omelet. I craved it all day after and had to make it again once we got to my mom's in Maryland. Here's the boys with their balloons outside the restaurant.

 This is the receipt for the most expensive pit stop of the trip. Getting gas in Oakbrook, IL. The total bill was $62.67. It cost 80 cents in tolls to get on and off the freeway here too. AND Andy went into the gas station to get some ice and the attendant followed him back out to the car and told him he needed to pay 30 cents for the ice!

 Going to the Lincoln Park Zoo that day with the kids was the highlight of the road trip for me. I loved being there with just our family, walking around being outside on a nice day. The boys and I watched this polar bear swim laps for about 20 min. I got the coolest pictures. Andy was bummed he missed it because he was still taking pictures of some birds at a different exhibit.

We also saw the fanciest overpass in Nebraska. The most amount of nothing in eastern Colorado and Nebraska. The dirtiest rest stop in Iowa. The nicest rest stop in Ohio. The slowest drivers are in Ohio and the fastest were maybe Utah actually. Thanks to GPS we made it safely to Frederick on Thursday, May 12th.The weather was warm and sunny the whole way across the country. We never even hit any rain. Once we arrived the work began! More on that to come...

Catch Up! - Belgium/ Netherlands Trip

 

 Wow so much has happened in the last 2 months. We've been crazy busy. I've been wanting to journal everything on here as much as I can. Although this is a mega post of 16 pictures I feel like this will do our Belgium/ Netherlands trip no justice. We had a great time. I love traveling and it was great to Paula and Loel on their mission there. The boys were a little tough on the plan but did amazingly well traveling and touring around Belgium and the Netherlands thanks to umbrella strollers. So here it goes - our trip in a nut shell:

 

The boys never slept on the plane on the way over - go figure- and fell asleep as we were going through immigration. This is how they met Paula and Loel at the airport in Amsterdam.

 

We immediately got in the car and left for Keukenhof (I probably just slaughtered the spelling). Its like the Disneyland of flower gardens in the Netherlands and it was beautiful! I can't even describe the endless beds of beautiful perfect spring flowers and the smell was divine. 

 

A family shot over one of the small rivers

 

Andy probably has about 20 shots like this of beautiful flowers

 

Of course no trip to Belgium can be complete without at least 3 trips into the local chocolate shops. I loved the chocolates I bought. I only wish I'd bought more. Yes thats Shelly next to me in this picture. We joined them for the last 2 days of their trip. It was really fun being there with them. 

 

And we also had a few Belgium waffles. So good.

 

Tyler even did a little missionary work. Never shy of strangers, Tyler approached this guy in the sandwich shop and asked about his motorcycle. The guy brought him outside to look at it and take a picture. The man asked why we were there and who the missionaries were with us. The missionaries had a chance to talk to him and got his contact information to meet with him at a later time. Even a four year old knows its good to open your mouth and talk to people around you. You never know what may come of it.

 

Of course spending some time with Grandma and Grandpa after a year apart was the best part of all. Bryce hadn't seen them since he was about 10 months. He started calling Paula "Gub Gub" for Grandma. 

 

This was probably Tyler's favorite part of Brugge. (Brugge was probably my favorite city in Belgium by the way). We let him take a ride on this little amusement ride in the center of the city. He rode on a motorcycle on a track. Tyler was very serious the whole time he was riding the motorcycle.  When got off he ran over to us and said "I turned the right way every time!"

 

Another highlight of the trip was sword fighting in front of a real castle. Andy brought along the boys nerf swords because its one of their favorite things to play with Dad. 

 

They were victorious of course. 

 

I wouldn't want to meet this guy on the battle field.

In Brugge we also stopped at this artists stand to look at his paintings. I looked over and saw Tyler painting on the canvas. thinking he was ruining the painting I immediately told him to put the brush down. I then realized the artist was right there and he said "No no its okay.' He let Tyler paint with him a little. He said "Before it was technique. Now it is art." Tyler told him about some of the finger painting he's done too.

 

This is near some old fashioned windmills in the Netherlands. We spent a few days up there too. I loved how people decorated their homes in the Netherlands. They all had beautiful flowers in their windows.

This was probably my favorite meal at a pannekoken house in the Netherlands. Pannekoken is the Dutch version of a crepe. Our dinner crepe had pesto, sundried tomatoes and pine nuts on it. Paula and Loel's was really good too with apples, bacon and cheese on it. It was a wonderful trip and a great break before all of the chaos of moving that followed (that will be in the next blog post).

Your Future is as Bright as Your Faith

I've felt impressed lately that I need to take a risk and be more personal with my blog entries. Although I haven't posted in awhile its not because of lack of significant events, probably more because of them. I thought I would share a little more about whats been going on at our house rather than just the usually funny things the kids say and tell everyone about some lessons I've learned lately too.

As many of you know the first Sunday in March my dad received a much awaited liver transplant. A tumor was found on his liver last fall and it was determined that a transplant would be the best option in preserving his health and his life. We are very fortunate that the surgery went well and he has recuperated very well since then. He's been walking everyday and got the go ahead from the doctor to return to work and running next week sometime. Although hearing the news about my dad's condition last fall was scary for all of us, I  always felt that God had more for my dad to do in this life and he would be okay.

Around the same time as my dad's surgery, Andy was having periodic episodes of pain and numbness in his right arm. We thought originally it was caused from a pinched nerve or carpel tunnel from typing too much. He went to many different doctors and nerve specialists over the past few weeks and months to figure out what was causing the pain. During one doctors visit where the pain was causing him to become dizzy and nauseous they even thought he might be having a stroke and he was immediately rushed to the ER for a thorough evaluation including a CT scan and EKG. Luckily the tests came back negative for anything life threatening But we still didn't have a good answer for what was causing this. After a second ER visit after an episode at work one afternoon, Andy and I went back to the spinal specialist who told us this was much more than a simple pinched nerve and we needed to see the primary care physician. After an hour of explaining everything to the doctor he told Andy that because the tests didn't show anything life threatening - his default explanation was that it was being caused by stress or anxiety. Instead of his body having an emotional response to stress he was having a neurological one. Since that time Andy has taken a pretty in depth look at his life and habits and really taken a proactive approach to reducing some stress in his life. He exercises more, drinks less caffeine, gets more sleep and is attempting to simplify and reduce stress at work. He's realizing that he has to take a more proactive role in his own health. We also found out from a physical therapist that the muscles in his right side have become extremely tight over the past several weeks and months which are causing the pain and numbness in his right side and he's in the process of retraining his body to not tense up so much in response to stress.This is a lengthy explanation but its been a really emotionally draining ordeal for us over the past month. Visiting your husband twice in the ER in one week was not exactly good for my stress or anxiety level either. I feel confident, however, that we're on the right track and that with establishing good habits and a bit of patience he'll be okay.

Along with my dad's transplant and Andy's health problems, we also were having some really positive and good realizations regarding Andy's career path. Its always been his dream to one day open up a private practice of his own. We always said it would happen one day, but not yet. This past month Andy also finally received his LCSW and can now independently practice as a social worker. To make a long story short - everything kind of came together for us and we decided that now is the time to start the private practice. The idea of being his own boss and having the freedom to run a therapy office the way Andy feels it should be done has been very freeing and exciting for Andy. I don't think I've ever seen him this motivated or excited about something. He's been working so hard this past month and seems to have so much extra energy for it. We have also felt strongly that we should move closer to my parents to open the practice. So...beginning about the second week of May we will be moving to Frederick, Maryland. Andy has already put in his notice at work. I feel like posting this here makes it really official.  I must admit I have some fears of the unknown and have had a lot of anxiety over it in the past few weeks. I don't doubt Andy's abilities, in fact I know he's a great therapist. We just have to get people in the door and I know they'll like him. Its just the short term - its going to be a lot of work.
 
I feel like I have come to a better place with this decision this past weekend. I really feel like we have been led to this decision over the past year(s). Things that at the time we saw as set backs were really moving us towards this move, I believe strongly that there is a plan for each of us and if we are open and in tune to it, we'll be guided on the right path. President Thomas S. Monson, president of our Church (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) once said "Your future is as bright as your faith." I feel like this is my motto right now. I've been repeating it to myself a lot. If I believe this will work out and this is the right thing for my family right now then it will all work out. I know this post will bring mixed emotions from friends and family here in Utah who we will be leaving behind and friends and family in the East who I will see more of in the future. I'll keep you posted!

Tyler turns 4!

Tyler turned 4 on Sunday. He made sure to let everyone at church know it was his birthday. He requested a Tiger cake this year. In my haste to get dinner ready and the cake. I only had time to make orange frosting and wasn't sure what I was going to do for a face. Tyler kept asking if he could decorate the cake. After a few seconds, I handed him the icing pen and said 'Have at it. Its your cake.' Like Andy said. - Tyler will probably remember this birthday cake more than the others since he got to decorate it himself.

Tyler's favorite present this year was his Huffy Rocket bike. Too bad it was raining and dark out when we opened presents. We let him take it for a few spins around the kitchen though. He's been out practicing riding on the driveway every day since.

Bryce, of course, had a hard time understanding why Tyler kept getting presents but he didnt. He was really determined to ride his bike too. In usual second child fashion - Bryce will now inherit Tyler's big wheel. Good thing he's too young to care if everything he gets is a hand me down.

Jimmer Mania Hits the Ferguson House

Andy, Tyler and I went to BYU's last home game on Saturday afternoon. With BYU doing so well this past season I thought we have to go to a game in the Marriot Center. We were so glad we did. Although the game was expected to be and was a total blow out, the crowd was so energized. Andy and I were loving the excitement and noise.

Tyler unfortunately thought it was a little loud. He got into it after awhile though and did "spirit fingers" with the rest of the crowd during free throws and cheered for BYU points. He kept asking me if Jimmer won.

Tyler also really wanted to make a sign. Not sure Jimmer could see it from our nose bleed seats, but its the thought that counts. Here's hoping for a good run in the tournament too - Go cougars!

Whats up with the Kids

I've been meaning for awhile to do a post of what the kids are doing right now as my own little log. Maybe its interesting to the grandparents too. Just know the detailed account that follows is more for my own record keeping then that I think everyone really cares to read it.

Bryce - 19 1/2 months

He is full of personality. Hamming it up for an audience one second and throwing screaming tantrums on the floor the next. He can be pretty intense. When he's hungry he'll act as if he hasn't eaten in days and we reguarly deprive him of food. (not the case). If his trains fall over in the living room he'll run over to me saying "Fa! Fa! (fall)" and in a panick pull on my arm until I can come assess the train crash situation.

Bryce also continues to have a "I'm going to do it my way" personality. I'm not going to crawl. I'm going to scoot on my bum. I won't walk until I'm good and ready and I'm not going to say words like you do I'm going to make up my own! I talked to the pediatrictian about my concerns that Bryce is developing his own language but he assured me its fairly normal for his age and as long as he seems to understand me okay - his hearing is probably fine.

Here is a list of Bryce's made up words to date:

Milk - guaog guaog (its a weird glotteral sound that we don't think even exists in the English lanuage, maybe Chinese..)
Chocolate milk - Mine key
Crayon (or any writing utensil) - Beebee
Please - Ree Ree (usually he just signs it)

All Done - Na na (also signs this)
Food - Nummy

Words that are actually close to the English language:
Dog - Doggie (probably his best pronounced word, also his favorite animal)
Potty - poppy
Poop - pooo
Clean up - Meanup
Car - Ca
Book - bu
Blankie - benkie
Tyler - either Ty Ty or Tibee
Ball - Ba
Juice - Ju
Toast - Toe
Nose - No
Teeth - Teef
Shoes - Foos
Broke - Bro
Fall - Fa
Train - go go
Cracker - crackie
Bucket - buckie
Back pack - baka
All Gone - aga
Costco- caco
He also says trash, yucky, stuck. Mama, Dad, Kitty cat, and monkey. There's probably others he's said that I don't remember too. Unfortunately I'm probably the only one that understands most of these. But I'm just glad we can start to communicate through more than just screams.

He's fairly independent and walked right into nursery at 18 months and never looked back. The nursery leaders said they've never had a kid adjust as well to being in nursery as Bryce. They only time they've ever brought him to me was when he had a poopy diaper and then they had a hard time getting him to leave. He doesn't even seem to care when Andy and I come to pick him up.

Things Bryce likes right now - Trains. Ever since playing with the electric train at my parents house Bryce loves gogos. He links up his small Thomas the Tank trains and makes tracks for them in the family room. He also likes playing in the potty (unfortunate for me). He loves to sit on Tyler's training potty and pretend to go potty. After a few seconds he'll make a distressed face and say "Pooo." Then stand up and give me a high five. He loves anything Tyler's doing too and wants to be just like him. Too bad they also fight over a lot of toys. He also loves sitting on mom's lap with a sippy cup of milk and his "benkie."

Tyler - almost 4 years

Tyler is at a very curious age. He probably asks me about 30 questions a day.

Typical questions Tyler asks me:
Do spiders have noses?
Do sharks have blow holes like whales do?
If I feed a bear will he hurt me?
How long will it take my poop to reach to ocean?

Possibly what Tigger looks like in Tyler's mind

I also really need to post about Tigger. Tigger has been Tyler's imaginary friend for probably over a year now. I think he was "inspired" by a character on the movie Kung Fu Panda (which has since been banned at our house because Tyler started doing Kung fu moves on everyone after he'd watched it). According to Tyler Tigger is a very large black Tiger with rings on his tail that isn't afraid of anything, talks in a very deep voice and is Tyler's best friend. We kind of think of Tigger as Tyler's alter ego. He's everything Tyler wishes he could be. Fast, strong, and most importantly fearless. When I can tell Tyler's afraid of something he often tells me he's not scared anymore because he knows Tigger can fight whatever it is he's afraid of. His child therapist father says its a good and healthy way for Tyler to work out his fears.  We know Tigger is "around" because Tyler will start talking in a really deep voice. Interesting that Tigger always "goes home" when actual kids are around for Tyler to play with though.We don't know how long Tigger will stick around, but we kind of feel like he's a part of the family and I'm glad he helps Tyler feel safe.