Curls anyone?

Is this not the cutest curly head you have ever seen? "Why yes, yes it is".

Christmas

We got to spend the weekend before Christmas in Utah with family. We had four family parties and one funeral. My grandfather passed away and his funeral was the Monday before Christmas. He is in a much better place now and it really was a good thing. We had lots of fun with the girls, and they got way too much stuff from grandparents, aunts and uncles (spoiled little buggers).

Here are a few of the things the girls got.

Our new home!!!

This is our new digs, I have included a few pictures of the living room, kitchen and back yard. Aside from what you see here we have 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and 2 gas fireplaces upstairs. Half of the downstairs is finished and half is not. The finished part includes a family room (with another fireplace), a bed room and a bathroom. The unfinished part has room for 3 more bedrooms. There is also a storage closet, a storage room and the laundry room. We just got snow today so you get to see that in the backyard.

pocatello, part iii: on the move

Finally.

The stars aligned. A portal opened in the economy. The hand of God has been revealed.

And we're moving to Idaho Falls.

That's right. Idaho Falls. I know it's not Pocatello, but it's across the border, we have a source of income there, and it will cut my drive time in more than half. On top of that, it means we get to have a place of our own again—with a two car garage nonetheless. A definite upgrade from the in-laws' basement.

So if you start seeing more posts from me, you'll know I've finally shed the scales of depression from my life and I'm blog-ready again.

That or I'm getting a bit more sleep because I won't be plagued by as much commuter-lag.

Either way, we're moving.

Finally.

Enough said.

family pictures

Sorry it has been so long; I will do some more posts soon with all of the fun things we have been up to. For now here are our cute new family pictures!

clarification, anyone?

In her comment on "pocatello, part ii", Shiree wonders:

So, what's happening with your Ogden house and what are your lodging plans in Pocatello? (I didn't quite catch that from the post, I am clueless about water in the living room and everything....)

In the interest of keeping our readership informed (although most of you might already know this), someone is in the process of purchasing our house in Ogden. So by the beginning of October, we should be lodging somewhere in Idaho, though where is a completely other question. At present, your guess is as good as mine. It will, however, be somewhere in the Southeastern portion of the state.

And, yes, about that water in the living room. Around last Thanksgiving, we heard some water dripping in the wall. Yes, I said in the wall. And down the ceiling. And behind the paint. So we did the only sensible thing we could do and put some tarps on the roof to hold off the rain and tore out the ceiling. Hence, water in the living room, pouring from a couple of cracks in our roof (tar and gravel, anyone?), all over the floor. What a mess is right. This is what it looked like.



The next day, I patched what I could and put up some new sheetrock to keep the cold out. And that's how we lived with it until a couple of weeks ago when the rain found its way in again.

Hence the new roof.

I'm sure that will make our buyers happy. I know it sure was fun for us (and all the family members that broke their backs helping us put down new sheeting and rolled roofing. Thanks a million, by the way. We love you all!)

Confusion abated?

another dam day

Near the beginning of August, we ventured out onto Pineview again to celebrate Grandma Ames' birthday. Here's a documentary of our rousing experience. (No pictures of Tyler this time. Tragically, he died when he and Brit's husband, also named Tyler, collided mid-air when the tube flipped and the laws of physics came into full effect. Not really about the whole dying thing though. Both of them came out of it alive, but neither got back out on the water that day. In fact, I might never again...)

brown, brown...

Since starting Kindergarten, Sid's "learned" her colors (she already knew them, but the review is good) and they've started on their letters. I think now they're up to E. My favorite thing about the colors is that her teacher gave them pictures to color that showed a little monster representing the color doing some action that rhymes with the color. (Picture that, if you can.)

Here are some examples:

Red: A fuzzy monster stands next to its smiling head, one hand resting on top of the head. (Macabre, I know. What are they teaching my kid here?!) And the poem:

"Red, Red,
Forgot its head."

Green: A masculine looking fuzzy monster with a crown on its head and ballet slippers on its feet does a ballet move--a pirouette maybe?--in the center of the page. And the poem:

"Green, Green
Is a dancing queen." (I'm not even going to comment on this one!)

Orange: A fuzzy monster eats an orange. And the poem:

"Orange, Orange
Ate an orange."

Brown: (This one is my personal favorite.) A fuzzy monster reaches down to pull up its pants. And the poem:

"Brown, Brown
His pants fell down."

Aren't colors wonderful?

As for the letters, Sid read her first words the other day: sheep, baa, our, and coats (from an animal book). I helped her with the sounds of the letters and then we put them together. She's learning so fast. Pretty soon, she'll be reading heavy stuff, like Nancy Drew or Twilight.

I can't wait...

pocatello, part ii: happy trails

Tyler's double posting again. He just can't get enough of this blogging thing.

Well, so far, not too bad.

I've made it to Pocatello fully clothed and (mostly) prepared for my classes.

We finally (Hallelujah!) have a contract and a new roof on the house. So, if things go according to plan, there will be no more water in the living room and we'll be living somewhere in Idaho's wide expanse at the beginning of next month.

Sid's enjoying kindergarten, although she's sad that we have to leave our house behind. (Believe me, babe, if we could take it with us, we would have moved already!) She actually asked me the other day why we couldn't find a school here for me to go to. I was wondering that myself. I especially wonder why the University of Utah had to reject me twice when I applied there a couple of years ago. I'm still bitter about that. (Go BYU!)

The only thing I'm not crazy about right now (although I'm living with it due to a newly formed reliance on caffeine) is the commute from Ogden to Pocatello. Granted, it is better than, say, the barren drive from Orem to St. George and takes much less time. But that one hour and forty-five minutes on the road is time I'd much rather spend doing something else...like reading or writing or being with my family.

Or sleeping. Sleeping is good. I never get enough of that.

I can't even listen to the radio much, because it turns static-y about halfway there and doesn't really come back until you're right outside of Pocatello. And it's almost not even worth trying to tune something in, especially since there's not really much decent on once the signal gets stronger.

As it now stands, I get a lot of thinking in. Sometimes this is helpful because I can revise or expand the ideas in my head (way too much going on in there!).

Last night, I actually turned my brain off for a few minutes, though, and made some tunes of my own. Nothing radio worthy. In fact, Sid's and Allie's songs are much more substantial and entertaining.

Oh well.

Maybe by the time this commuting business has run its course, I'll be someone akin to Mozart or Beethoven or Shakespeare. Don't expect it though. And when I try to share my commute-developed talents with you, just smile and nod. Eventually the travel lag will wear off and I'll come to my senses. At least I hope I will, anyway.

Until then, wish me/us happy trails.

whazzup?

Hadley and Uncle Kip's hat...oh and Uncle Kip

You wanna piece of me?

Not quite as cool on the right way, is it?

sour much?

This was Hadley's reaction to her first few spoonfuls of sour baby food--apricots with pears and apples. She's since become accustomed to the tingling jaw and will eat half a bottle without flinching.

pocatello, part i: this is exactly how I've pictured things going in my head

(Tyler's double posting today: this can also be found here.)

And so it begins. I can’t believe that the summer is over. I can’t believe that we are actually going to have to start living the mayhem that we have been preparing for………….

-An email sent this morning by my wife

I woke up this morning to a riot of butterflies in my bowels, partially, I think, because I have to commute to Pocatello from Ogden three times a week (for the time being—if only our house would sell. *Frustrated sigh.*) and partially because I had a dream last night that I was stranded alone someplace unfamiliar (it might have been during the final moments of a track meet in Idaho State’s stadium—I know, I know: too much Olympic track and a sort of flashback to high school, though I’ve never run in that venue).

At least I wasn’t stranded and naked, though. Now that would be embarrassing.

Come to think of it, it would be worse if I walked into my first class late and naked and with the heavy legs of my nightmares that make it impossible to run away. *Shudder!*

To make matters worse, I’d missed the very first class of my doctoral program, which starts today at 4:00.

In Pocatello.

And I’m driving from Ogden, just in case you missed that.

And I have a tendency to be late for things, though I don’t usually leave the house without my clothes on. So I’m hopeful…

Even my wife is nervous for me, which just makes my butterflies riot more. And that makes me feel like a little kid about to leave my parents for the first day of kindergarten.

And that brings more butterflies to the riot, this time because our oldest actually starts kindergarten later this week and I’m nervous for her.

All in all, it seems, the Chadwick's are in for a big week.

Wish us luck—or at least that we’ll all leave the house fully clothed. That would definitely be a step in the right direction.

falling in love with real food

We recently started feeding Hadley solids, if you consider carrot and sweet potato mush solid. I tried starting her on rice cereal a little while ago, but for some reason she didn't like it--maybe because it tastes horrible--yes I tried it--or rather doesn't taste at all. She likes it so much that she's decided to wear it as often and as liberally as she can.

Now if only I could get her to use the spoon herself without speckling the house in orange-colored puree...

"picture me, daddy"

Whenever Allie sees a camera in action or inaction, she walks over, looks up, and, with her gorgeous blue eyes wide and her most subtle (or not so subtle) smile says, "Picture me." And unable to resist her toddler wiles, I do picture her. Here are two recent results of her request.

five going on twenty

For Sidney's fifth birthday, we threw her a swim party. She said she had fun, but I'm not so sure...I think she was expecting more presents (as if she didn't get a hundred too many!).

pineview dam family

On July 5, Kip and Camille (the sister-in-law whose father owns Fred's Marine in Layton, Utah, took the Ames family to Pineview Reservoir for half a day of tubing and wake surfing. As you can tell from the pictures, most of us made it out alive...

story time

One of Sidney's and Allie's favorite spots: on Grandpa Chadwick's lap behind a good book (or two or three, sometimes even ten). I'm sure they'd be quite content to spend their lives listening to someone read.

watch out for the rooster

One of Sidney's more frequent faces: bottom lip out, the perfect perch, as they say, for the rooster to land on. Allie, on the other hand, is quite content just to laugh at her older sister's feigned discontent.

who's the nerd?

One of these grins is not like the other; one of these faces just doesn't belong.

(Full disclosure: I, Tyler, didn't know she was actually taking the picture. Either that or I'm just a big cheeser, goofball, nerd, minus the glasses--at least in this picture that is--and wanted to stand out. You be the judge...)

hippity hop, hippity hop: sidney's a preschool graduate

At the end of May, Sidney graduated from Hippity Hop Preschool. We're pretty sure that she was at the top of her class-with parents like us, how could she not be? As you can see by this picture, she's excited, but a bit unsure about the future: "Work or college? Ivy League or local?" We are extremely proud of her for her commitment to education--on non-school days, all she wanted to do was go to school--and know that she can and will succeed in whatever she does (even if she decides Ivy League and leaves her parents in the shadow of the west).

Hippity Hop Preschool, class of 2008 (Sid's five from the left, as always at the center of attention).

Sidney and Teacher Brooke.

halfway there

Hadley's just recently, in the past few weeks, learned to roll herself onto her belly. This is what happens when she gets there: She's all smiles for a while, making fake coughing noises to get our attention until she starts fussing because she doesn't quite know how to roll back onto her back. I'm confident, however, that she'll learn quickly...infants, toddlers, and kids don't know any different than to learn fast (especially to do the things you don't want them to), do they?

summer snow bunny

While I (Tyler) was de-junking kitchen drawers, Allie found this stocking cap. Pointing at it, she said, "Mine?" then, "Pud it on." So I slipped it over her golden locks and she smiled. Isn't she the most adorable (yeah, that's right: adorable--I'm the proud at-home father of three girls; I can use the word adorable whenever I want!) two year old with her huge blue eyes, little nose, half smile, and the remnants of baby fat still clinging to her cheeks?

three monkeys on the bed

We caught these three monkeys on our bed last night when we were winding down for the day. As you can see, that can be a difficult thing to do when your kids are so cute and full of energy.

Needless to day, most nights we let them stay up far later than they should...

our house is a very, very, very nice house..

Since it's in our family's best interest to move to Pocatello before Tyler starts school this August (especially since driving up there from Ogden three times a week would put us into bankruptcy due to the outrageous price of gas and he doesn't really want to travel Greyhound for four hours a day--as exciting as that sounds), we need to sell our house. We wanted to get the word out via blog so here's our ad, the links to our online postings--one on ksl.com, the other on utahrealestate.com--and some pics.

If you know anyone that's looking for a great home in Ogden, send them our agent's way (see the sidebar for a permalink to this post and for our agent's info).

This (approximately) 1,656 square foot, 4 bedroom, 1 ½ bath, multi-level home sits on a 0.16 acre lot within walking distance of the 9th Street climbing rocks and Bonneville Shoreline Trail North to the east and Ben Lomond High and Horace Mann Elementary to the west. The spacious, fully-fenced backyard has a newly established lawn (as of July 2007), an in-ground trampoline, a large dog run, and a 10 ft. by 10 ft. storage shed. With updated paint (inside and out), three upstairs bedrooms, a recently finished basement, an open floor-plan, and a large kitchen with a great view of the mountains, this home is a must see!

Front of house.

View to the north east.

The backyard (and Sidney teeter-tottering).

Main level: the living room and kitchen.

Upstairs: the full bathroom and three bedrooms.

Basement: the laundry area, half-bathroom, family room (Sidney coloring), and fourth bedroom (currently a toy room).