First Subway ride and FAO Schwartz

Pictures of the boys first subway ride. We decided to go on the subway before Jeremy started work so I could figure it out for when I was by myself. We went downtown to see Time Square and then go to the toy store FAO Schwartz.The boys absolutely LOVE New York and they absolutely LOVE the subway. The cry every time we pass a subway entrance if we don't go down it. The love being on the trains.
Of course the boys loved finding this Thomas train display. Ty flipped when I had to rip the train out of his hand so we could leave.
There were Toy Story 3 displays everywhere. Hopefully we can go while we are here....if I dare brave it by myself. :)
This is a picture of when we came the second time with Jeremy's family. We forgot to get a picture with the soldier the first time we came. Such a fun toy store. One day I want to afford all those huge stuffed animals for my kids playroom.

Our New York Apartment

Here are some pictures of our apartment. Its a 1 BR/1BA, and it was pretty nice. A lot nicer than a lot of things we had been seeing. It was at W 112th street and Broadway. It was in a great location...close to parks, 2 grocery stores, Rite Aid, a couple blocks from Columbia, and good restaurants and bakeries. Actually the diner from Seinfield is on the same corner as our apartment.
Here is our bedroom. All four of us sleep in here. We have Ty in the corner in his pack n' play, we are on the FULL bed (he said it was a queen, i don't think people here know the difference), and then Jackson was on the floor on a comforter.
Here is the living room. We have a nice TV, a couch that pulls out, a futon, and a desk. This room is where our visitors will stay. :) It's open for anyone else wanting a New York vacation! :)The door to our building...see Jackson and Ty at the door? They love saying hi to the security guard everytime we come in and out.
Our street. It is a really pretty street. There is a huge, old cathedral at the end of our street that is such a pretty building.
This is a picture out our front door. Its the Seinfeld diner... We haven't eaten there yet, but that's on our list!

Blessings o' Blessings - The Garff's

Saturday night we are at the hotel and I call my friend Elizabeth who grew up in Scarsdale, NY to ask her about church in the area. I knew her parents lived close by and they would know where to go to church. Well she tells me that her parents moved to White Plains, which was where we were staying, and they were 5 minutes away from us. She called her parents and then called us back to give me her parents number. We returned our car already and were planning on taking the hotel shuttle to the train station to go to church. So her parents, Blair and Sue Garff, offer to pick us up for church the next morning and invite us over for dinner afterward. They were so sweet to help us out and even brought car seats for us in their car. The Garff's are the kind of people that help everyone and anyone they meet. They are the most amazing people. My boys absolutely LOVED them. My boys called them Papa Blair and Grandma Sue. And then they acted like grandparents to my boys. It was nice for my boys to feel loved and more at home with people even though it was the first time they met my boys.

The Garff's then offered for us to use their car and stay with them until we found a place. Well, they actually offered for us to stay with them the whole summer, but we didn't want to overdo our welcome. They left a few days later for a month and a half so we stayed in their master bedroom. I was amazed at how giving and willing they are to help people. There was already a couple (Lindsay and Pat) and their neice (Patty) staying with them before we got there. So they had a full house of people while they weren't there.

The Garff's were such a blessing for us. We were able to use their car and stay there while we tried to find a place to live. Jeremy started work on June 7th so he just took the train into the city while we were there. It took him about an hour and a half, so it was a long commute for him each way. The car was so nice to have so we could check out places to live. We found a place that strung us along for a few weeks and we thought we were moving in the next day and then he emails and says his wife is worried they are going to get caught because they aren't suppose to sublet. We had been dealing with this guy for over 2 weeks trying to make his place work. It was a lot nicer than what we had been seeing so we were hoping it would work out. Anyways, it didn't work out, and then a few days later we found a different place but we couldn't move in until Tuesday June 15th. We wanted to move in over the weekend because Jeremy would start working with his group on monday and the long hours would begin so he wouldn't be able to help move. We also had visitors (Jeremy's mom, sister and brother-in-law) coming on Thursday the 17th so we needed a place for them to come to.

Well we didn't have many other options so we took this new 1 BR place and I had to do all the loading, moving, cleaning, and then unloading by myself. I think it was the longest day of my life, and I was so exhausted at the end of the day.....but we finally are in the city and excited to have visitors and now get to enjoy New York City. Our boys playing at a park by the Garff's house. The boys hadn't been having much fun with the stress of finding a place to stay so we tried to do a couple of play days for the boys.
They boys helped Patty (the Garff's neice) wash the Garff's car. My boys loved playing in the soapy water.
Patty was so sweet to my boys. All Jackson wanted to do was play with Patty, but she is doing her masters and so usually had to study. I think Jackson had his first crush! :)My boys saying good-bye to Patty. Jackson was so sad to say bye to her.

New York - First week!

We flew to New York on May 27th, and we thought we would play for a week and a half til Jeremy had to actually go to work. Jeremy will be doing investment banking, and the hours are pretty bad so we thought we would get our playing in before he starts work on June 7th.

So, the nightmare begins... We first of all take a red-eye there. Not a good idea with young kids that love sleeping in their cribs. Jackson did great, he played the first hour and slept the rest of the time. He is a deep sleeper and can sleep anywhere once he's out. Ty on the other hand doesn't really sleep in the car (unless he's absolutely exhausted) and especially not planes. So I had to walk around and rock him til he eventually fell asleep. He slept for an hour of the 4 1/2 hour flight, but was still so exhausted he would scream and couldn't even play because he was so tired. Once we get there, we have sooooo much stuff and finally get our rental car. We get to our 1 BR apartment we found to rent on W 86th street right off Central Park West. It was horrible.... I don't know why we have such poor luck on apartments, but the kitchen was pretty much the size of a closet. The fridge was a 70 year old mini fridge that wasn't even cleaned out for us. The microwave and oven were the size of an easy bake oven. I knew everything would be old, but i was grossed out to even put our cups or anything in the kitchen. The bathroom was old and gross and the worse part was it was part of the bedroom. We were planning on sleeping in the living room and the kids were going to be in the bedroom, but if we wanted to use the bathroom once they kids went to sleep they would wake up. This was a huge issue for us since we were having visitors come stay with us. "Sorry, after 8pm you can't use the bathroom." :) The tv didn't work, the bed was suppose to be a queen and it was a full, and the final straw was that there were big french door type windows with no screen in the living room that couldn't have child locks on them and we were on the 8th floor and it just freaked me out to worry about my kids opening the windows and falling out.

To say the least, we hated the apartment and i didn't sleep that whole night even though we were exhausted from the red-eye the night before. I ended up getting up at 5am to start packing up our stuff. Luckily we didn't sign a contract yet and so paid the guy $300 for his time and for the one night we stayed. We had rented a car so we could go get some things we needed so it was nice to have the car to keep all our stuff in. We then drove to a hotel in White Plains that night so we could drop the car off at a return place near by. Since it was memorial day weekend the hotels were pretty expensive in the city so we went 30 minutes north. And the car was killing us at over $200 a day with it being memorial day weeekend. So we returned the car and stayed at a Hyatt Summerfield Suites for 3 nights. It was so nice to finally be somewhere clean and nice and have normal beds and fridges and bathrooms. :) As to our luck we booked a 1 BR suite and it was a handicap room, so they upgraded us to a 2 bedroom suite. Jackson got to sleep in a huge keep size bed.
The kids are happy to finally have a nice room and a place to call home (for a few days, anyways). The boys enjoyed watching some tv on their huge king size bed.

New York!!!

Jeremy will be doing his internship with Bank of America in New York for the summer. We are so excited to play there for the whole summer. I can hardly wait...

Halloween

Still catching up...

Halloween 2009

We went to a Pumpkin Patch with the MBA Spouse Group. The boys loved it and especially that they each got to pick out their own little pumpkin.
Both boys got a buzz cut the weekend before so with their blonde hair it looks like they don't have any! :)



We had a Halloween Party with my family and our little fam went with a super-hero theme. We had Spiderman, Batman, and Catwoman... Dad was MIA in New York doing one of his many networking trips :)


Jackson had already taken his costume off so I don't have many picture of him in it from this night. I think a cousin made fun of him saying he didn't like Batman, so Jackson came upstairs and wanted to take it off :( Which was so interesting because at home, he wouldn't take it off! Sad to see the first time your kid gets teased...I wish I could protect him from that ever happening, but I guess that means he is just growing up and that is life, sadly enough.

Moving to Provo

Still catching up...

August 2009 - Our move to Provo
Jeremy started the BYU MBA program this fall (2009) and so we moved to good ol' P-town. Yes I became a Provo resident once again. We were really excited for this new change. Jeremy has been wanting to go back to school for a few years now, and so we finally did it. It has been a rough transition in some ways for Jeremy to humble himself to wear blue......but he finally recognized its the best school in the state and changed his ways (it's nice to have the power when blogging to write whatever I want). No really, he still doesn't wear blue much (unless it has BYU MBA on it), but the nice thing is that he has realized what a good school BYU is and that there are a lot of normal people here :)

So we moved to Provo in August before school started, even though we still hadn't sold our house in Herriman. It was hard to be paying mortgage and rent payments, but we had "faith" that we would sell our house. We were starting to worry and figured if we didn't get an offer soon, we would have to try rent it out. We decided to fast and pray and the next day we received an offer. It's amazing what a little bit of effort shows to Heavenly Father. We were lucky to close on our house by September 24th, and no longer owned a home, and were now just renters. It definitely was a sad time for me. I didn't think I would be sad, because I liked my house, but I didn't necessarily love my house. I just knew I didn't want to stay in it long term. When we were walking through for the last time I was so sad. We started our marriage in this house, had both of our boys in this house, and had so many memories here.....and now it was someone else's. It is such a weird feeling to own something and then the next day you no longer have it.I actually get sad just looking at this picture. But I'm not sad to not have to do yard work anymore! :)

Ty's 1st Birthday!

Catching up...
August 27th, 2009

Our baby boy turned 1! I can't believe how time flies and our little Tyler turned 1 already. We had a fun party for him and he of course loved the attention, presents, and cake! :)

One of his favorite toys from his birthday. Now he has a car like Jackson got for his first birthday, and there is no more fighting...For Ty's birthday it was a stressful time with moving to Provo, trying to sell our house, and so I didn't make a cake for Ty-Ty. I hope he forgives me, and I promise to make him a cute cake for number 2.
He still loved the cake the same....homemade or not, frosting is still frosting!

We love you Ty-Ty and are grateful for all you bring to our family!!!!

Our miraculous blessing!

July 30th, 2009

I never thought I would say that I've been in two rollover accidents but now unfortunately I can (my first was when I was a freshman in college). Our family was driving to Cali for my brothers wedding and we had lots to do before we left and both Jeremy and I hadn't gotten much sleep the last week or so. We got up at 4:30 Thursday July 30th and left at 6:30 am, we were trying to make the broadway play "Wicked" by that night in San Diego. We had only been driving 2 1/2 hours and then Jeremy fell asleep around Beaver. I had just talked to him ten minutes earlier and we were going to try make it to cedar city and then I was going to drive. Jeremy fell asleep and veered towards the center median. I woke up from the noisy groove things and yelled Jeremy which woke him up. He over-corrected and we spun through both lanes of traffic missing all the cars and then rolled when we got to the dirt on the other side. Gratefully we were all ok. Both boys were sleeping and were just a little scared but are totally fine. Luckily we turned Tyler forward for this trip since he was 11+ months. When we rolled, the back windshield blew out so dirt and glass poured in our car. If Tyler had still been backwards he would have gotten a face full of dirt and glass. We were extremely blessed and watched over in so many ways. I didn't know my older brother Greg was an exit behind in beaver eating breakfast. My mom called him and he met us at the hospital. I was strapped down to a board as my neck was already hurting. So Jeremy was left to deal with both boys by himself. Luckily my sister-in-law helped out giving Jackson a shower and entertaining him and Ty. Jeremy said he probably would have lost it if they hadn't been there. After we were done at the hospital they gave us a ride to cedar city to rent a car. We the drove back to beaver to get our stuff and clean out our car. It was definitely overwhelming to see our car and see what we survived. The rest of the trip I constantly thought about what I could have lost and feel so grateful that my whole family was protected. Anyways, I thought I would just give a little personal reminder to NEVER drive drowsy and for me I will not sleep as a passenger ever again either. Our Camry held up well as far as safety but was totaled. So if anything good will came of this we got to get a new car. We wanted to sell our camry so we could get a bigger car, and now we didn't have to deal with selling it and got more for it being totaled than we could have trying to sell it in this market.

New Year's Resolution - 3 months later!

Okay, so I have been WAY out of the blogging world. My last post was July for Jackson's b-day, and so much I would have liked to blog about has happened (Ty's b-day, selling our house, moving to Provo, Jeremy starting school, all the holiday's, Jackson in pre-school, and the list goes on and on). So I decided I want to get back into posting more often for our family memories for our scrapbook. With that said, I have a new NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION (3 months late), but to start blogging more often.

I may try post some significant things that happened previously so I at least have them for our scrapbook I want to make. So bare with me if things I post may have happened 6 months ago.

Anyways, here's to keeping New Year's Resolutions! :)

Happy Birthday Jackson!!!

I can't believe my little boy turned 3 today!!! It is crazy how fast time goes. Jackson is the greatest little boy and I love every ounce of his being (even his tantrums) :) I am so lucky to be his mom and laugh every day at this little kid. He is so full of personality and ENERGY!!!! He loves everyone and is my little social butterfly. We had a fun family birthday party for him yesterday and he loved every minute of it. He kept saying "Thanks mom for making me have a special day" gotta love that kid! :) Jackson was in heaven opening presents and kept saying, where's my next present mom?Anxiously awaiting presents... Look how patient he looks!
This is the smile we get every time lately. His face is towards the camera, but not the eyes... Like the black teeth and lips, he was licking the cake before we even started the party! :) Jeremy and I love this kid so much and are so lucky to be his parents.

Memorial Park

We went to the Memorial park with my family and had a great time. I love when my sister is in town and hate that she had to go home. Luckily I will see her in a few days. I thought I would post a few pictures from our day. I realized I don't have hardly any picture of my boys lately on here. :) Oops, I'm a bad mom!!!
Look how still he is sitting while getting his face painted. He does not sit still, so this was amazing and too funny!!!My cute little Indian boy!!! He took the headband off after five minutes and said "mom this paper is bugging me and this feather is bugging me too!" :)My little Ty-Ty!!! I love this boy so much, and that smile makes me smile more than anything!!! Ty is doing really well - he has been cured of his milk, egg, and wheat allergies. We've been going to a quack doctor and it seems to be working. He still has lots of allergies, but at least I am not nursing anymore and he is taking normal "cheap" formula! :)

It was such a fun day - my boys miss there cousins that went back to Vegas and Cali, but we will see them soon and we can't wait!

Happy Anniversary Babe!!!

Jeremy and I have been married 4 years today! I'm the luckiest girl in the world to be married to Jeremy. Its amazing how time flies especially when we had 2 kids just after our 3 year mark. I'm so lucky to have Jeremy in my life and I thank my Heavenly Father every day for allowing me to run into Jeremy at a singles ward 5 1/2 years ago. He is the best husband and father I could ever ask for. He is the most caring person you'll ever meet. He is always concerned about my feelings and how he treats other people. I can't wait for what the next 60+ years have in store for us!On our honeymoon at the port Cozumel. Wish we were still there... :) Maybe for number 10!

I love you babe!!!

Etta Lane

I have always been a jewelry junky and can't seem to ever have enough of it. :) Jewelry can make a plain outfit cute and a cute outfit even cuter. I've always wanted to make and sell jewelry but didn't ever dare to actually start the adventure. Well.........I have finally started my own little jewelry business and am loving doing it. "Etta Lane" (after my middle name Loretta) has kept so busy lately that you can see why this blog (and my husband and kids) have been so neglected lately. I'm having so much fun and loving every minute of it. Today we are in the car and Jackson says, "I don't want to go to the bead store....beads are bad". Poor kid, I've traumatized him from my bead/jewelry obsession. :) If you want to see anything I've made check out my new blog (I actually have a lot that isn't on the blog yet, I'm trying to get everything on there but also trying to be a mom and wife so it is coming slowly).

http://ettalane.blogspot.com/

Let me know what you think... I would love any input and suggestions! And if you're looking for a mother's day gift, all girls love jewelry! :)

Jackson in Whoville...

A few weeks ago Jackson was running around a chair at my moms house and couldn't stop and flew into a big bar stool. He chipped his front tooth and his mouth was all bloody. The next morning we went to get him and he looked like this...He looked just the the Who's in Whoville. His lip was swollen for a few days and then went dark black purple inside his mouth.
So sad... Everytime I see him smile I get sad. I loved his smile, (and still do of course) but now you see one front tooth that is chipped, and the other has already turned grey. Good thing he's a cute kid cuz he'll have this smile til he loses the teeth.

My little Vampire...

Edward or Ty? I'm a little partial.... :)