This is the week we've been waiting for....

So for some reason the family that is in our future home has decided to move. They were supposed to be moving out this weekend, then the house will be cleaned Wednesday, so we can start moving in Thursday. Jordon has the day off Friday so we will try to get it all done then, at least have it all moved to the house. Then the unpacking can begin.
I have also found some kids to babysit. Next week I will have 3 extra kids, besides my own. The girl is 5, almost 6, then the boys are 3 and 18 months. The boys I will just have every other week because they are with their mom on the other weeks. I will have the daughter each week though. She has a great time playing with Ashley and I'm sure Sam will have a great time with the 3 year old so we should have a great time.
School is going good for all the kids. Sam loves his preschool and hates days that he doesn't get to go. Here are some pictures of the bird "mests" that he made at school this last week.

Because of the 20 minutes a night that the kids are supposed to read we have been reading lots of books. We even had to borrow some from Sarah because we go through them so quick. It usually only takes us less than a week to read through one.
I have also been busy this week making some hair bows for Ashley since she now wears some every day for school. It's been a fun project for me and it has made her extra excited about wearing them so it's even better.
Jordon has been busy working both his jobs. They have even made him a shift lead at Triumph (the residential home) so he is in charge of everybody there. The boys love him there and think he is totally cool. Most days aren't too bad, but the last few days have been a little rough with some of the boys causing problems. We sure do appreciate him though and all he does for us.
Parent teacher conferences are this week for the older 2 kids. Hopefully we will only have good reports from their teachers, but we will see.

Bad news for us

So after we got all excited about getting into a house for a great deal we talked to the owner. He told us his daughter has decided to stay there she says just for 6 months, but the owner thinks more like until the end of the school year. We will get first dibs once they do decide to move, but until then we are just stuck waiting. We are kind of thinking if we can get financed at the beginning on next year when Jordon has been at his job a little longer then we could maybe get them to push her out because they could sell it to us. Who knows though. In the meantime, we are trying to decide if we should find a place to rent or if we should just stick it out here until they decide to move.
On the other hand, school seems to be going well for everyone. Ashley did some assessments this week at school and the school was able to get approved for another half day Kindergarten class so she will have a new teacher on Monday with only 20 students in her class instead of the 33 like she had the first week of school. Hopefully some of her new friends will be in her new class as well. Guess we'll see.

Jr. Peach Days Parade

Ashley and Ethan got to be on their school's Jr. Peach Day Parade float (if you can call it that). Here is there pictures from it. Sam got to watch it all with his cousin Avery (Cory and Lindsey's daughter).

First Days of School Pictures

Here are some pictures from the kids' first day of school.

This was actually from Sam's second day of school because I forgot to take pictures of him on his first day.

Time is Flying!

It doesn't seem like it should be September already. This last month has definitely flown by. During August we spent a lot of time packing up and moving all of our things to storage and we are currently staying at Jordon's mom's house. We moved there so we could get the kids in school in Brigham so that they wouldn't have to transfer schools after just a few weeks.
Things have seemed to fall into place for us. We got the kids registered for school and they started on Mon. Aug. 29. They ride the bus and both Ethan and Ashley love it! Ashley even says she has made a few friends. She is actually disappointed because this coming week she doesn't have school at all. They are doing assessments so each child goes at a set time and she wants to go all week not just on her day. So instead she gets to go to Sam's "school".
I also started school again doing online classes through USU. Because of the gap between the last time I attended school and now I actually qualified for a program called Students with Children. Through this program I am eligible for the program to buy my books for my classes and I also can enroll my kids in the on-campus daycare/preschool for free. This is for me to use while I am at class, studying, or using the facilities on campus. Because I am in all online classes I just use the time to get homework done and study. Sam was really excited to have a "school" of his own. He loves it and also says he has made new friends.
We were going to look for a house to do a rent to own on, but it was looking like that would take a while before we could find anything so we were about to start looking for a house to rent, when we got a phone call from Jordon's grandma, Linda. A couple in her ward have a home that currently their daughter's family is living in, but will be moving soon. Her daughters are attending school in Roy so they are looking for a place to move to down there. This couple lives in Oregon and own a house up there too. They originally wanted to sell us the home for $150,000, but with Jordon not being on his job not very long we didn't think we would qualify for anything yet. Linda told us they would probably do a rent to own, but wanting to sell it for that much we thought the rent would probably be around $1000 a month and we just can't afford that, so we didn't even go to look at it. Linda came over the next day and said they really wanted to show it to us and that they said they would work with us. She said we could maybe just tell them how much our max rent we could afford would be and see if they could do it. So I went to look at the house with her and I loved it. It is a 5 bedroom, 2 bath home with a shop out back and lots of storage. They have updated all of it so there isn't really anything we would  need to improve on it. We finished the tour and Linda asked him what they were thinking of for rent. He said they would like $700 a month with $100 deposit and they would do a rent to own. I told him we definitely wanted it. So that night I took Jordon back so he could see it. We will get to move in as soon as their daughter moves out. We're not sure when that will be, but she said for sure before the end of October. We are hoping sooner than that, but we will see.
I think that is about all of our updates for now so I will post again when we have some more updates. I will try to post pictures of the kids' first day of school soon as well.

Update and Tremonton City Days

Here is an update already. We found out that none of Jordon's credits will transfer from Stevens Henager so okay fine, but they also maxed him out on financial aid while he was there so any schooling he does he would have to pay out of pocket. Since we don't have that kind of pocket change he has decided to just not go back to school. He talked to his boss at work and his boss said there are some classes he could take to get certified in the work that he is doing so it would give him a little more value and that the company would be willing to pay for it. So he is looking forward to doing that.
Also I still haven't found a job yet. Went to 2 interviews and those assessments and so far haven't got any job. I went to fill out another application today so I guess we will see if I actually hear anything from that. If not we will probably be moving to Brigham City towards the end of August and I will just try to find kids to babysit there or another job.
Last weekend was Tremonton City Days so Tremonton had a few fun activities that we took advantage of. Thursday night they gave out tickets to the Ogden Raptors baseball game so we went to that and Lindsey and Cory came with us. Ethan loved it and was really into it, but Ashley and Sam both just ran around most of the time. It was really hot at first and we sat on the bleachers so the sun was in our eyes until about the 4th inning. We decided to leave after the 6th inning because they were starting to drive me crazy.

Friday night they had a movie in the park which was "Yogi Bear". Grandma and Grandpa Hunter came over and went to that with us. It was really windy and the screen was a big 30 ft. blowup screen which started bending in half during the movie because of the wind, but overall we had a good time. Sorry I forgot to take pictures.

Saturday afternoon we went to Jordon's Mom's house for dinner and some water fun for the kids. She had bought a little wading pool that had a slide attached to it. The kids had a great time sliding down it.

Here are also some other pictures I forgot to post:
Our fishing trip to Mantua over the July 4th weekend:

And for the 4th of July fireworks we went to Brigham and ended up parking right next to the park that they light them off in so we just set out our chairs and watched them right overhead. We were so close we actually had ashes falling on us during the show. I had to take this picture because this was the first year we were able to all sit outside and enjoy them. Ashley was wearing some earmuffs Jordon has for shooting guns so it wasn't too loud for her. After I took this picture Sam started to get a little scared though so he ended up falling asleep on my lap with me covering his ears.

I'll try to keep updating if anything changes with jobs and such. Hope you enjoyed the long post!

Changes, changes, changes

So life has been kind of crazy lately at our house. And will continue to be so for the next while. Jordon's hours were cut back at his job so he was only working 32 hours a week. Because of this I have been looking for a job to help be able to pay our bills. I applied at a utility billing company in Logan. I was originally told "thanks but no thanks" so I was a little disappointed. The next week I saw that they still had a mail room sorter position open on their website so I sent them another email saying I had sent them my resume a few weeks before and I saw they still had the mail room position open and I was interested. I got a call from them yesterday asking me to come in and do some assessments tomorrow (Friday). If I get this job we will move back up to Logan so that only Jordon would be commuting to work instead of both of us. I will also be going back to college this Fall. I have about 4 semesters of school work to do to earn a Bachelors Degree in Family Life Studies. It is an online degree so all my classes are online which will help with working. Jordon has also decided to go back to school to earn a degree that he will enjoy working in. He has decided to do Radiography through Weber. We are hoping to get him started this Fall as well. It doesn't look like any of his credits from Stevens Henager will transfer so he will pretty much be starting from square one. He's not terribly excited about that, but he is really excited about doing the Radiography work.
The kids are all excited to move and Ethan is really excited to move to the Logan area because he has a cousin on Jordon's side that lives in Providence that he likes to play Wii with so I'm sure we will have some play days once we move. Life will be pretty crazy for us this next month because we are planning on moving before school starts so the kids start school in their new schools so they won't have to transfer after just a few weeks. Exciting and busy times for us coming up!

Our 4th of July Weekend

Starting the July 4th weekend we didn't really have anything in particular planned. By the end of it it seemed we had found something to do every day. Friday night we went to Perry to watch a movie in the park they were showing. We saw Gnomeo and Juliet. It was a pretty cute movie and the kids seemed to enjoy it.
Saturday we were going to go camping with Jordon's brother Eric up Farmington Canyon. He called us that morning and said that it was closed so we were going to find another spot to go. We decided on Mantua, but later found out it was full as well. We decided we would put off the camping trip for another weekend when hopefully it wouldn't be so busy. Jordon and I decided we would take the kids fishing at Mantua anyway and then we could head over to Perry to watch the fireworks when we were done. We spent a few hours fishing and each of the kids got to reel in a fish. When it started to get late we decided to head over to Perry. Jordon's mom has a lot they are planning on building on up on the hill so we decided we would go there to watch the fireworks so we would have a great view and not have to deal with a crowd. It was a great view, but the mosquitoes were terrible. When we got home Sam was having bad reactions to the mosquitoes, swelling and welts, so we gave him some allergy medicine and we all headed to bed keeping him close. He was still a little swollen the next day, but looking much better.
We went to Jordon's grandparent's house for dinner that day; his grandma does a dinner for the family every Sunday.
On Monday we got up and went in to Perry again for their parade. The kids loved it and got plenty of candy. That night we went to Brigham's fireworks. While trying to find parking we found a great spot right next to the park so we decided we would just sit outside the car and watch them overhead. We had pulled some earmuffs Jordon has for shooting guns out of storage for Ashley to wear so she wouldn't have to be scared. For the first time in 5 years we finally got to watch fireworks without her crying or screaming. It was so nice. Sam was a little scared though so he sat on my lap and I covered his ears the entire time. It was a great seat although we did get some ashes rained on us.
Jordon also got Tuesday off so we spent the day relaxing at home. It was a very fun weekend.

Tuacahn

The last weekend in June we were lucky enough to take a trip to St. George. Jordon's grandma bought the family tickets to The Little Mermaid at the Tuacahn and a hotel room for the night. We headed down Friday morning and got checked into the hotel that afternoon. We spent some time swimming and even got to spend a little bit of time at my brother's house there in town. After dinner we headed up to the show. The kids were all excited and I just hoped they would like it enough to sit still during the entire thing. We actually had great seats only about 9 rows back from the stage. The kids loved it and I did too. Jordon tolerated it. At intermission Sam was ready to go, but I had to keep explaining that we would soon and tried to get him to just watch the rest or fall asleep. It was a little long, over 3 hours, for a kids show especially, but still pretty cute. The next day we got up, had breakfast, and went over to my brother's house to hang out with them a little more. They fed us lunch and then we headed home. On the way home we were able to stop and meet up with my parents for dinner. It was a busy weekend, but fun to spend time with so much of our family. Here are some pictures from the trip.