Photos as Promised

June:Jay's last baseball game of the season. Coach Brian in the pink dress was a great motivator for the kids.
End of season baseball party and award ceremony

July:
Alyssa got into my mascara. It was pretty funny at first then I realized that she used the wand as a Q-Tip to "clean" out here ears. Took 3 days to clean it all out.

August:
August was all about hair cuts. Alyssa got her first hair cut and I had my nieces over to our new house to cut and color their hair for back to school.

September:
Jay is discovering a new interest in photography. We let him loose with daddy's camera to see what he came up with.

October:

Jay and Gracey's first grade classes went on a field trip to the Big Red Barn in Payson. They got to tour the apple orchard and go on a hay ride. It was a lot of fun and the rain made it even better. We were soaking wet and having a ball.
Jay and Gracey turned 7 on Oct 16th and 17th. We had a small family party at Dan and Liza's club house and painted pumpkins.Unfortunately I forgot my camera on Halloween. Jay dressed up as Optimus Prime and Alyssa was a puppy. We went over to Uncle Buds and Aunt Michele's house for a fun party and trick-or-treating. Aunt Michele made us this adorable Halloween Train.

November:
Thanksgiving and Dan and Liza's new house. This was the very first time we had all of the cousins together at the same place and same time.Jeremy's parents came to visit us at the end of November. They stayed with us for a week then drove to Prescott to spend a week with Edie and her family. It was good to have them visit even though they were both sick while they were here.

December:

While Jeremy drove his parents to Arizona with Alyssa, Jay and I went on a mommy-son date. I took him to Heber to take a ride on the Polar Express. On the train we met Santa's elves, sang Christmas Carols, read the Polar Express story and met Santa. Santa even gave each of the kids a bell off of his sleigh to remind them to always believe.The kids are getting used to living in snow country. I took a picture of the mountains outside of our front door to show off our gorgeous view. Jay had a great time with his cousins making his first snowman.Christmas morning with the kids. Jay loved his new skateboard and scooter and Alyssa couldn't get enough of her princess wand and crown.

2009 Wrap-Up

For anyone that follows my blog but doesn't keep up with me personally (which I am sure there isn't anyone out there that meets that description) a LOT has changed with our family since my last post.
Most importantly, we moved from our home in Las Vegas and made the trek back to Utah. We are now renting a townhouse in Spanish Fork and getting adjusted back to Utah winters. Nowhere near as bad as New York winters, but still the kids are not used to all of this white stuff.
Jeremy finished is Associates of Applied Science in Electrical Engineering in July and is currently working at a call center doing help-desk support for Macintosh/Apple. He is taking a year off of school before going back for his Bachelors degree. We need to re-establish residency here in Utah so we can qualify for the in-state tuition at UVU.
I went back to work after moving to Utah. For a while I was working two jobs (over 70 hours every week) and wore myself out. I was working for an anesthesiologist doing all of his insurance verifications and authorizations during regular business hours then in the evenings I would go work in a deli at a grocery store. It was exhausting. I finally had to give up one of the jobs and though the logical answer would have been to quit the deli and stay with the doctors office, I decided to keep working at the deli. With night time hours it is a lot easier for me to run errands during the day, Alyssa would be at the babysitter (grandma's house) for only a few hours rather than all day long, and there is a LOT to be said for being able to come home from work and not stress about it all night. I have also been staying busy every day with taking my mom to her radiation treatments. She was diagnosed last October with squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue and though they were able to remove the visible tumors, they still wanted her to go through radiation to kill any unseen growths.
Jay is now in the first grade and making lots of new friends at his new school. He is excited for this snow to melt and baseball season to start again. He had a rocky start this school year with his reading so they put him into a reading recovery program where he gets one-on-one time with a reading teacher every day. We just had his parent-teacher conference this week and he has improved enough to "graduate" from the program in the next week or two. Math on the other hand it a totally different story. This kid is a wiz, always bringing home 100% on his math worksheets. We are very proud of the progress he has made and cheer him on as he conquers new abilities.
Alyssa can't seem to stop growing. She keeps us all amused with the new things she comes up with everyday. She loves to sing and play dress up. She actually shocked Jay's teacher when we took her to his class the other day. She was telling me what each letter was of the alphabet on the wall, all the colors and shapes on the reading rug and counted to 11. She is one smart little cookie! We are getting geared up for her 3rd birthday next Saturday. (Can't believe she is almost 3! Where did the years go???) I will be attempting to out-do last years Elmo cake with her new favorite obsession, Dinosaur Train. Wish me lots of luck!
As for pictures of the last 6 months, I will have to get those posted as soon as I find my card reader. Maybe that will inspire me to update this blog more often!