Murdock Canal

About a month or so ago my neighbor told me about a hobby called letterboxing. It's like geocacheing but you don't need a gps and you find stamps that you stamp in a journal to record where you've been and you make a stamp that you stamp in their journal. Basically, a treasure hunt you can do anytime with the whole family. It's a great activity to do with the kids when we get bored and my personal favorite parts of the activity are exploring the area and finding great picture places I wouldn't have found otherwise. Here are some pictures of our first adventure. If you want to find out more go to www.atlasquest.com or www.letterboxing.org for more information and clues to spots around your area.

Computer woes

I am way behind posting because I had a computer problem. I wanted to get more hard drive space on my computer and wanted to delete the iphoto trash bin since all those photos are backed up at least 2 times. Jon told me I should highlight them all and hit delete. Sounds good right? Wrong! All my photos ended up reloading into the library and all the sudden hours of work weeding through photos had gone down the drain. So I had to go through all the photos again to weed them out and google how to really get rid of them. To give an idea, I had over 10,000 photos in my library and weeded it down to 3600 over the last week and a half. I didn't want to work with new photos or old ones for that matter until the task was done. I am all good now. Whew! I never want to do that again! So I'll be posting some of the highlights of the last month or so when I have in an attempt to catch up a little.

Prairie Dogs

These were the funniest creatures ever! We found them at a rest stop and I'm quite sure we weren't the first people to feed them given their behavior. I counted at least 8 of them around our car at one time. They were pretty friendly and one even tried to crawl on Jon and into the car to go home with us and be our new pet. Sam, the animal lover, was in heaven and kept trying to draw them closer to him so he could look at them.

Martin's Cove

Martin's Cove is on the way to Mount Rushmore so we made a stop there on the way. We were hoping to make it during visitor's hours but were half an hour off. It was still nice to wander around and look at the plaques with the history and look at the monuments. It's sad and inspiring at the same time. The top picture is of Devil's gate which is in the same area. It has some cool Indian legends associated with it. You can't tell in the picture, but you could walk through the gate, it goes all the way down to the ground.

More Mt Rushmore

As promised, here are some more pics from our Mount Rushmore Trip now that I am more awake. It was fun to go East on a trip for a change and be crazy.

Mt Rushmore spaze trip

This was the craziest thing we've ever done- and among the funnest! We woke up Sunday morning and decided we wanted to go see Mt Rushmore- approximately an 11 hour drive from us- and within an hour we were on the road. We just got back this afternoon. I am very tired but will write more about the trip and add some more pictures later. I'll just say this for now- the drive was gorgeous and I hope to go again sometime when I can plan it out and take the time to do more- the area is rich in things to see including caves, wildlife adventures, historical landmarks, and more. We very rarely go east and this was fun.

Backwards Day

Jacob's preschool class had a "backwards day" where he wore his shirt backwards at school. He loved backwards day so much that he talked the others into having a backwards night with him and putting on their jammies backwards. I had to put my foot down on having diapers backwards like they wanted, but all in all they had a lot of silly fun. I'm happy to report that it was only for one night.

Spider Boy and Rock Girl

Sam loves Spiderman. This is a picture of him trying to throw a web at me with his spidey powers.
I wonder what she is thinking about while holding that large rock? I hope it is not her brothers- that could be dangerous.

My kids on marriage

This is a conversation I overheard today between Sam and Katie.

Sam: I can't marry you Katie.
Katie: Yeah, because you don't have a pretty dress.

Now we know, if you want to marry- regardless of gender- you need a pretty dress.

My son the Talking Doughnut

Jacob had a school carnival this last week. When they asked him what he wanted painted on his face he said a doughnut. Better yet, make it green and add brown frosting. It's so random and makes me laugh. I can't say it would be my first choice, but it sure made him happy. The rest of the night he kept telling everyone he was a "Talking Doughnut".

Baby J

We went up to my new Niece's baby blessing in Idaho this last weekend. I wanted to practice newborn photography and made a make shift studio on the hotel bed. These are my favorites. Isn't she just a doll!

Tulip Festival

These were taken at the Thanksgiving Point Tulip Festival. Their gardens are so beautiful! We had such a fun time walking through them and seeing all the varieties.

Come here duckie!

Sam loves animals- all animals. Usually he pets and talks to cats and dogs but today it was ducks. I would never of thought of petting a duck, but I suppose it makes sense from a 4 year old perspective. So cute, but I can't blame the ducks for jumping into the pond as soon as they figured out what was going on.

Cave Art

I've been trying to get all marking utensils clear out of the kids reach to prevent incidents like this one from occurring. However, a purple crayon must have slipped my grasp and I ended up finding cave drawings all over the tv, wall, and chair. The chair was the one I could laugh at the most so I'll post it. Jacob says it is a picture of the temple. I can kind of see it too, but still... I'm not sure mr clean magic eraser will work for this one.

A Job!

We found out today that Jon got the job! We are so excited as this means we can stay in UT and we will get medical benefits for the first time. Wahoo! The best part is that when he finishes his masters degree by the end of this year then we will get even more benefits and stuff to look forward too and hopefully can get into a house. That would be a dream come true.

Happy Easter!

We went up to campus and took some family Easter photos while we were all dressed up. The kids had a great Easter. We had an egg hunt around the house and front yard and it was so fun watching them find eggs. Katie kept running up to us and telling us she had found an "eggie" between each one, Jacob was running wild trying to get them all, and Sam had to open up each egg and see what was inside before going on to the next.

For Our Angel Baby

"...Why is it that infants, innocent children, are taken away from us, especially those that seem to be the most intelligent and interesting. The strongest reasons that present themselves to my mind are these: This world is a very wicked world; and it... grows more wicked and corrupt. ...The Lord takes many away, even in infancy, that they may escape the envy of man, and the sorrows and evils of this present world; they were too pure, too lovely, to live on earth; therefore, if rightly considered, instead of mourning we have reason to rejoice as they are delivered from evil, and we shall soon have them again." -Joseph Smith

We sure miss our little angel. The few moments we had with him in this life will last forever in our hearts. We would like to give our gratitude for the outpouring of love and prayers we've received during this difficult time in our family. How interesting that this happens around Easter. As we celebrate Christ's triumph over death, we are reminded that he opened up the way that all shall rise from the grave and live again and we know that we will hold our little Benjamin again because of it.

With Love, The Abbott Family

Balloon Bounce

Sam got a balloon at church today and he started bouncing around the room with his head on it. It was so funny so I had to share. Enjoy!

Sticker Mischeif

These make me crack up. The kids had found some of my sister's stickers and put them all over themselves. Katie even tried to put one on her eye but her hair got in the way. Their smiles are always so big when they are doing mischief :)

The baby verdict

Today we had our 20 week ultrasound. Everything looks pretty good with the baby. Of course we found out the gender and...

It's a BOY!!!!

We are excited. I think Katie will do better with a brother anyway. She is such a princess and holding that status for longer might help ease the transition to not being the youngest anymore. Possible names:

Benjamin David
Jackson David
Nathan Myron

We'll just see. Of course, if it were up to Sam the baby would be named Cookie Monster, but I don't think we will go with that.

charter school

We signed up Jacob for the local charter schools lottery to see if we could get him in and found out today that he made it! I am so excited! This will be such a great chance for him. It will make shopping for school clothes easy- they have uniforms for the school. There are a whole bunch of moms from our neighborhood that signed up their kids too so I'll have to see if they made it and if he'll have neighborhood kids in with him. That would be so nice. Yeah!

20 weeks

I wasn't expecting to have pictures of me being taken and I've been sick with a bad cold this whole week (this poor baby probably thinks its mom is an elephant or a pig with all the blowing and congestion). Anyway, I am half way! The baby is starting to move around a lot, and that is always reassuring. I am doing pretty good really. Besides the cold and not being able to take nyquil (sigh...), I've had good energy and have been playing with the kids in the warmer weather this week. Life is good.

Sam's Birthday

Samuel's birthday is technically tomorrow but we celebrated it over the weekend so we could do something really special for him. We took him to the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point. Then we went down to a park in Provo Canyon and got some portraits of him that I think turned out real nice. Everything revolved around a dinosaur theme- dinosaur museum, dinosaur shirt, dinosaur presents, and dinosaur balloons. He really enjoyed it and felt special- which is how you should feel on your birthday. Success!

My first Manual D-SLR Photo

This is my first totally Manual photo I've taken with my SLR camera. I got the camera on an incredible deal on ebay (needed some minor repair work, but I still came up well on top) back in October. Afterwards, I knew I needed to learn to use it for real instead of just auto mode or program mode (sort of like auto, but you can change some of the settings if you want). I didn't want to buy a book without checking it out first so I put my name on the waiting list at the library for a book amazon recommended and finally got the book this last week after waiting 3-4 months for it. So, for those who appreciate SLR photography this picture was taken at f/5.6 with a shutter speed of 1/200 sec and I am quite proud of myself. :)

Emerging artist...

Jacob drew a picture of James to send to Uncle James. He wrote his name at the top, copied the words "To: James" under the picture, and drew waves at the bottom. James has BIG fingers and short arms, a smiley face with a nose, and two eyes.

You are a delay fish

So I found myself telling my 5 year old in exasperation because no matter how early we put him to bed or wake him (or even how late), he is NEVER ready for school until 5 minutes before the bus is supposed to come which means he usually doesn't get much of a breakfast. On that day it took 35 minutes for him to get dressed, even I'm not sure how. I realized two things as this quote popped into my head. 1- I've watched way too many pixar movies, especially Finding Nemo which is my kids favorite. 2- Kids are delay fish in general. Before I had kids I remember going to a class at education week where the lady was telling everyone to plan for it to take 10 minutes to get out the door per child and 20 per infant. I didn't believe her until Jacob was born and all the sudden you needed to bring half the baby room to go anywhere and he was inevitabley hungry or blown out by the time we were ready to go out the door. Despite all that, I'm still so thankful to be a mom and have my little delay fish. Despite the fact I would be on time without them, life wouldn't be nearly so entertaining or full of color.

The real world

So perhaps more college isn't the only route open to us right now (I can't tell you how much I like that idea). The company that funds Jon's research and he works for through the university is talking about hiring him on full time- like a real job. What a great opportunity in this economy. They came up to him and talked about interviewing him this week. Then we found out that they meant switching his hours at the university and hiring him right away. His professor told them that it wouldn't be a good idea until his classes are done this semester. So maybe, just maybe, cross our fingers, at the end of this semester- which is April- Jon will start working full time for this company while he works on finishing his masters by the end of the summer or December. This job is exactly what he wants to do with his degree, he loves the people who work there, and it means we get to stay in the area instead of planning a huge move soon. As Jon says- it sounds almost too good to be true. We could get off of assistance and start being grown-ups instead of college students which are like between grown ups and teenagers despite the fact we have three and a half kids. It would be wonderful! Sigh... Another thing to be found and figured out in the near future. We've prayed a lot about it and it feels good so we'll just have to see where we are lead.

16 weeks

Today I had my 16 week appt. Everything seems to be going well. They laid all these tests on me that I have to decide to take or not- things that don't really matter for the most part, but might. I am starting to look pregnant now and be past the fatty stage. My coat is fitting tight and I decided that winter has to be done before I out grow it completely. I scheduled my 20 week ultrasound. We should find out the gender of the baby and other exciting things on March 18! As a warning, this appt has ALWAYS been rescheduled in the past so if it doesn't happen on the 18th, don't be dissappointed folks. That's just how it works for me. It's a curse.

Jacob's first math problem

This was so cute. I overheard the following conversation just now and had to share. It went something like this:

Jacob: When I grow up I'll be a dad.
Sam: When I grow up I'll be a dad too.
Katie: When I grow up I'll be a mommy.
Jacob: So when we all grow up there will be three dads and two moms (he is counting his parents).

Then a little later:

Jacob: Wait a minute! When we are dads we can just share with our dad and we won't have to work! (um..... I think we are going to have to work on that one).

A "sunny" move on the horizon?

So to make a long story short, Jon will not be able to complete his PhD here at BYU. He will graduate with his Masters in Physics either at the end of this summer or in December. He still wants a PhD, but now in Materials Science which would give him a better education for a job in industry and product testing and development which he would like to pursue. So there is a good possibility that by the end of this year we will be moving to Tempe, AZ - Home of Arizona State University- which has a great materials science program. But, oh I'm scared. I hate moving and it is such a big move. Not to mention we will be moving with 4 kids this time and Jacob will be uprooted from kindergarten. On the other hand, given the cold front that moved in today after a week of temperatures around 50 degrees maybe it is not such a bad thing to try a new adventure. Now don't think I am so shallow that I would move over the weather, but it does perk me up to think I wouldn't have to drive in the snow anymore which I absolutley hate (given how some Utah drivers drive that shouldn't be surprising). Anyway, it will be interesting to see where life takes us from here.

Draper Temple Open House

It was very cold that day, and it didn't help the temple was in the foothills- so that is why the kids look uncomfortable. We tried to be really quick. The open house itself was warm and great though. We went with my sisters and had a good time. Afterward, I asked Samuel what his favorite part was and he immediately said "The elevator". We got a good laugh out of that.

Preztal Letters

Jacob has been writing his name for a month or two now thanks to preschool! The other day we had pretzals for snacks and he decided to get creative and spell his name with the preztals (with just a little help from mom forming some of the letters). Since he did it mostly by himself I'll go ahead and post a picture. What a smartie!