April

This sweet little guy turned TWO!!! 

 He got some balloons (his favorite at the time).  He drug them around for the next two days.

 We went to our favorite little chocolate place in downtown Geneva and had fondue.  We came home very messy and full.

Some pictures from Easter morning before church.

The rabbit that lives in our backyard that the kids named Jumper came out while we were taking pictures just for a prop on Easter.

 Then they needed to chase poor Jumper.

The last week in Chicago was great and awful at the same time.  Rick kept calling it 'the long goodbye"!  You would say goodbye to friends and it would be sad and then you would be ok.  Then an hour later you would say goodbye to other friends and it would be sad again.  It's kind of like pulling a bandaid off very slowly.  

Our friends there are so wonderful.  We love them and miss them dearly.  They even had a going away party for us.

I don't know when it started, but ever since I can remember my Nana would wave to us when we left her house.  She would stand outside and wave to us until we couldn't see her anymore.  My mom does it when we leave her house and we do it too.  If you come over for dinner, we will wave goodbye to you.

This is a picture of my Nana waving to us the last time we left Florida.

So imagine my surprise when our friend said that someone needed to wave at us as we left Chicago.   She said "you can't just leave Chicago from a hotel parking lot.  You need someone to wave at you as you leave."  Is that the sweetest thing you have ever heard!!!
So at 5:30 a.m. on that Sunday morning this is the last picture we have in Chicago.
I love love love them!!

March

In March we were able to go to a Children's play downtown.  Aunt Dinisha and Uncle Brian had got tickets for the kids for Christmas.  We saw 'Alexander and the Very Bad Day'.  The kids had a great time and we hit up a diner across the street for lunch.

For the first time I was able to vote for a Mormon in the primary election in Illinois!!  Mitt won Illinois and is now the Republican candidate for President.  It looks like I will be able to vote for him again in November.
Back when he ran four years ago, I read an interview with him. One of the questions asked was what he ate for breakfast.  He said that Ann would make granola for him and the article included the recipe.  I made it soon after and my kids LOVE it.  We always have some at our house for snacks or breakfast.
In my recipe book I have it called

'Mitt Romney Granola'
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 cups rolled oats
1/3 cup butter
3 tablespoons honey
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
pinch of salt
1/2 cup chopped almonds (I use slivered almonds)
1/3 cup dried cranberries (optional)

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.  Add oats then cook and stir until starting to brown and crisp, about 5 minutes.  Remove from heat and spread out on a cookie sheet to cool.
Melt the butter in the same pan over medium heat,  Stir in honey, cinnamon, vanilla, salt and brown sugar; cook and stir for another 5 minutes or so.  Pour out onto the cookie sheet cook in the oven at 350 for 5-7 minutes.
Once cool, transfer to an airtight container and stir in the almonds, and dried cranberries.  Any additional nuts or fruit can be added at this time too.

We also flew down to Atlanta for our spring break/house hunting trip.  A highlight for the kids was riding in the limo to the airport.

Although mostly Rick and I just looked at houses, we did hang out with cousins and family.

 We went to the Yellow River Game Ranch one morning.

 And we always have to visit 'Grandma's waterfall'.

After driving around and looking at houses for days on end, I realized I needed glasses for at least movies and driving long distances.  After we got home, an eye exam proved me right.  In the last few years, I have noticed more than one or two gray hairs too.  For the first time I am feeling a little old!

Also this month, I made these little sweet treats (courtesy of Our Best Bites) for the kids teachers for St. Patrick's Day.  Everybody loved them!!  I think teachers don't expect to get anything for St. Patricks' Day so they were extra surprised.

February

February was BUSY!! We celebrated Rick's birthday, Valentines Day and put our house on the market all in the space of 4 days.  This sign went in the yard on Thursday, surprisingly without any snow.

Some sweet and very generous friends of ours offered to watch the kids overnight for us on Friday so that we could have a night on the town in Chicago.  Let me tell you, it was wonderful!!  I planned it so we would put our house on the market and then all five of us would immediately leave so that the house would stay clean, at least for the first weekend for showings.  

We stayed downtown and walked to our dinner reservation at RL Grill.  It was one of the most beautifully decorated restaurants I have ever been to.  Gorgeous!!  The food and company was great too.

 I had to sneak a picture of the dining room while we were eating.  Just too beautiful!

While we were walking back we passed this sign.  Hello...SCARY!  I have never seen or noticed these signs before downtown.  I have never even thought about giant ice sickles falling from 100 stories up.  Yikes.
We had such a nice time together and it was nice to get away.  Other than being at the hospital while having Will, it was the only time we had spent a night away from the kids in almost four years.  Rick had been traveling so much that he needed a little break too.  It was perfect and completely distracted us from people looking around our house.

The next day we took the kids to the art Museum in Chicago, which is always a treat.  What treasures they have there.  We all had a good time and again distracted us from people looking at our house.
Monday was Presidents Day, so naturally we slept in a little later than normal.  I was getting the kids breakfast and Rick was in pj's working in the office.  At about 8:30a.m. there is a knock at the door and a realtor and a family of four is unlocking my front door and about to walk in.  They see me through the window in pj's.  After running through some scenarios in my head about how I can get out of opening the front door and asking them to give us about 10 minutes to get dressed, I realize it's the only thing I can do.  They were nice about it (we hadn't gotten any call about the showing) we got dressed as quick as we could and left.
They came back the next morning and we had an offer an hour later.  It was an unexpected blessing.

Ben had his first Pinewood Derby in February too.  He had fun making his car with Rick but he didn't appreciate not winning.

January

Well, it seems like a lifetime ago since January and considering that it's August in Georgia and this is what it looked like around our house in January, just a few short months ago.  It WAS a lifetime ago.

Really, the entire month was filled with normal everyday life stuff along with getting the house ready to be put on the market.  I spent a lot of time watching the entire first two seasons of Downton Abbey while cleaning out drawers and closets.  The organizing/purging made me feel a tiny bit better about watching that much tv.  When it's really cold outside and gets dark at 4:30.  What else are you supposed to do...right?!

I found this picture on my phone and it made me laugh.  Olivia said that they were pretending to be poor.  I'm not exactly sure why some sort of material on your head makes you poor but it was hilarious at the time.  She still does it every now and again.

I was helping in Ben's class one week in January and as I was walking down the hall, these art projects caught my eye.  Look what ben's said his New Year's resolution was.

 Olivia enjoyed her 100 day celebration and Will enjoyed her hat from school that day.

One night Rick and I went to check on the kids before we went to bed and this is what we found in Olivia's room.  Apparently, her room is not quite dark enough, so she found a sleeping mask.

We are alive...

We are alive but our old laptop is not, which is the reason I haven't been posting anything since the first of the year.  Although that laptop lasted a long time, it has been officially retired.  We now are the proud owners of a fancy smancy computer that I'm still learning how to use but it's great (and by great I mean, it doesn't take 20 minutes to check kids quarterly grades.)  I have low standards in the technical department.
A lot has happened since the first of the year, that I'm going to go back and post, but for now the big news is that we are leaving Chicago in a few days and we are sad about it.  If you asked me three years ago if I would be sad to leave Chicago, I would have laughed, but now I am.  We have such great friends and memories here, and its just plain weird to think that we won't be here next week.  In fact, this is the last night we are staying at the house.  Tomorrow morning the packers will arrive bright and early and tomorrow night we will be staying at a hotel.
I don't know what it is about houses for me.  I love them!!  Love them like a member of the family.  It's probably weird and sentimental, but it's true.  I still think about our first apartment in Salt Lake City and wish that I could go back and take a peek inside.  Our house in Chicago is a great house.  Its beautiful and has been perfect for us and I'm sad to leave it.  I guess I get sad about leaving houses because it's a backdrop of all those good memories that you have had in the house.  When you see the stairs, you don't just see stairs.  You see the kids coming down on Christmas morning on those stairs.  Those memories are great ones and I don't want to forget them.   The memories of pushing the kids in the swings in the backyard, the exact spot in the kitchen where we were standing when we found out we were having another baby and reading kids books at night to them in their rooms, all good ones.
The kids and I decided to sign the inside wall of Will's closest with our name and years we lived here just for fun.  I don't know think we will ever get to see the inside of this house again after this week but I'm taking lots of wonderful memories with me.
I think Olivia might have the same love for houses as I do.  Tonight when I was tucking her in she started crying.  She said she was really sad to leave our house.  I asked her what her favorite place in the house was.  She said the she didn't have a favorite because she just loves it all and wants to pick it up and take it to Georgia with us.  We then started talking about how that just couldn't happen because (in her words) it "would just be too hard to dig it out of the ground."

End of 2011!!

We ended 2011 with A LOT of change. First, Rick was released from the bishopric. We were both sad and relieved. I don't think either one of us expected to feel sad. He had been balancing bishopric stuff with traveling every week for three months, so it was time. The other change was a big one. A few days after Christmas, Rick was offered a promotion(yes, two promotions in three months!) and we will be moving to Georgia! I'm so proud of him and are excited for this next chapter in our lives. Now we are deciding where exactly in Georgia to move to. Hum...??? As part of the new job, we could live anywhere on the east coast (from New york to Florida). Although our first thought was Georgia, we really wanted to take a little time and see how we felt about where we should move. After a week, Rick and I both felt like Georgia was the place for our family. We took the kids to dinner to celebrate and tell them that we will be moving back to Georgia. Of course, that also meant that we wouldn't be moving to Disney...I mean Orlando. I was nervous about how the kids were going to react. Rick told them that his job had changed again and that we would be moving to Georgia and they both stood up at the table and started cheering. I felt a major sense of relief...they were happy. Although I'm pretty sure we now owe them a trip to DisneyWorld too. So, we feel happy, blessed, excited, to be moving somewhere we love so much. As a side note, I'm so grateful for personal revelation. Rick and I both felt very stongly that we should stay in Chicago until the kids got out of school and not hurry to move to Orlando. Thank heavens!! We would have moved there only to immediately have to move again. So grateful!! Ben played basketball all fall and winter and these are the only two pictures I took. He had fun but I did not! Keeping Olivia occupied and Will from running at mock speeds onto the court in the middle of the game became a major problem this season. It was a very long hour and 10 minutes each week.

Olivia did a cheer camp with the High school varsity cheerleaders. She LOVED it and wants to do it again but have convinced her that after we move she can.