CHRISTMAS!

We had a wonderful Christmas in Utah! It was nice to have a couple week break before continuing the move to California.

Making her own rolls with Grandma!

 Yummy Prime Rib Dinner!

 Acting out the Nativity at Grandma Carole's! Ellie was Mary, James was Joseph and McKay was Baby Jesus!

 Brinley got to be an angel

 Julianne was a Lamb!

 Someone wanted to be an Angel!!!

We stayed at a hotel in SLC for a night!

 Our little Elf on the Shelf

 Christmas Eve with Grandpa and Grandma, before they left for uncle Jared's

Spoiled as always!

 Christmas Eve At Maryanne's

  Christmas morning!

 Julianne got a guitar and microphone, and lipstick.

 Brinley got a Dr. set, and a new jump rope

 And both of them got a Barbie house and Barbies!

 McKay got some cute baby toys!

 AND WE SURPRISED THE KIDS WITH DISNEYLAND SEASON PASSES!!!

 Singing and playing!

 Addie, Julianne and Eve

 How all of us felt at the end of  Christmas!

The Drive :(

The only thing worse that packing and loading all your stuff into a moving truck is driving the distance to your new place!!! Unfortunately ours was a three day grueling drive to Southern California! My oh so very wonderful in-laws helped us out by coming along to help drive the big Penske truck and entertain  Brinley and Julianne. It was a life savor having them come! 

I hated nearly everything about this drive and so I don't want to bore myself or anyone else with all the details. Just know it was NOT FUN!!!

Instead I wanted to do my traditional top 10 things I'll miss and not miss about living in St. Louis

We will start with the top 10 things I will NOT miss.

10- The lack of good Mexican food

9- All the construction work on river des pres rd!!

8- The crazy scares of tornadoes, luckily we never had one touch where we lived!

7- Ice storms!

6- Not being able to open my van doors in the morning because of the ice storms

5- Cockroaches and Spiders in my house!!!!

4- The poor excuse for grass (or lack of grass where i lived ;))

3- The constant sound of creepy bugs 24/7 during the summer

2- The million mosquito bites in the summer

1- THE HOTTER THAN YOU KNOW WHAT HUMID SUMMERS!!!!

Top 10 things I will miss

10- My friendly landlords and being able to call them with any problems!

9- our cute little park and sandbox 

8- our complex swimming pool

7- The smell of my neighbor Cynthia making bread every two weeks 

6- Living 1 minute from our church

5- all the people I went to church with

4- Brinley and Julianne's school and their teachers!

3- Trick or treating in St. Charles and Pappy's

2-Monday night "Mentalist"

1c- Game night at "Fenway"

1b- My kids' friends

1a- My wonderful friends!!!!

Living in St. Louis was truly a highlight in my life! I'm so glad we were able to be there and experience all the amazing things we did, both the good and the bad! Looking back at what our family looked like when we first got there, I can't believe how much we grew, both in size and spiritually. 

I was surrounded by some of the most selfless, Christ like people I'v ever met. I hope that I, as well as my family, can take their examples and all the things we learned into our new home and share it with those around us. Good bye St Louis!! You will forever stay in our hearts!!!!!

Graduation Day!!!

I felt this deserved its own post, seeing it was the day we had looked forward to for nearly 8 years!
Greg's final graduation. It was a wonderful night. They held it at a building near the school. We had dinner and then they did a beautiful ceremony.

Me, Greg, Mike, and Carole.

Our wonderful friends, The Clowards! Heather and Dan became such great friends. We were in the same ward together and hung out often with our families. We will miss them dearly! They are amazing people!

During the ceremony, one of the professors, Dr. Guss, (who is like 86 years old) wrote poems about each graduate, 14 total! He did such an amazing job! 

Then they let each student say a few words to thank everyone for their support. Greg did a wonderful job as always!  

Receiving his orthodontist certificate.

Such a great feeling to be done with school!!!!

In front of the School 

This was Greg's station where he worked on all his patients!

It was a memorable night for sure!!!!

On to the move!!!

Can I just say I HATE moving! Normally I don't use that word, I'll say "don't love" instead, but when it comes to moving I feel it calls for stronger words. Even "hate" seems to kind, more like "loath moving", or "detest moving". Anyway......the day came non the less. We also had Greg's graduation on the same day so i knew this day was going to involve a lot of careful planning to make sure we were ready for both big events.

The biggest obstacle to take care of  was our darling new baby McKay, who was barely 6 months. Now McKay is one the greatest babies ever to be born on the planet, but still he is a baby! If you have ever tried moving with a baby you know what I mean. It adds about a million more complications!!! So months in advance we arranged for him to stay at my Moms. My mother in law Fly's for free so she was coming to get him to take to Utah and then she was flying right back to St. Louis to help with the move and be there for the graduation.
Well the day she flew in to get McKay he was diagnosed with RSV. Thankfully he was OK to fly but it made me so sad to have to send my sick, sick baby away. Lucky for me he was heading to my Mom's where she could give him 24/7 attention, unlike I would have been able too. We are so blessed to have such wonderful people in our lives.

On the day of the move of course it had to snow, right?  It added a few more obstacles but thankfully everything fit!!! That was my biggest concern.

This was the night before our move, but the girls' last night in there room

During Graduation, the girls got to spend one last night at their friends the Lee's. I don't have anymore pictures of them together, but the parents said it was way sad to see them say goodbye to each other!!!

Lets Start At The Very Begining

Well it happened, we made it through another move. Barely, but we made it! I have so much to catch up on so I decided to start where I left off. Which is Thanksgiving...........

We had a marvelous last Thanksgiving in St. Louis. We spent it with great friends the Gublers and the Newmans. Everything we ate was pure heaven! I can not tell you enough how amazingly wonderful these friends of mine are at cooking! I have got so many awesome recipes from all of them! Truly talented they are!

Greg and I were assigned pies, sweet potato casserole, and stuffing. I'm so glad that Greg enjoys making pies with me. We ended up making four (all from scratch). No short cuts when it comes to thanksgiving! We had a blast making them together!

 There was two pumpkin (different recipes) lemon mareign, and a banana cream.

 The kid table!

Next comes fall!
These pictures are making me a little sad because its been a while now since we saw them! But here are some of the neighbor kids playing in the leaves on the way home from the bus stop.

Having a leaf flight!

Coming to my house for Popsicles because Greg is the only one crazy enough to have these stocked in our freezer year round! Love these kids!

Moving on to Red John!
The Gublers, Lees and Us would get together every Monday night and watch The Mentalist! This was SOOOO much fun! On the night that they finally revealed who Red John was I made these!

IF you watch the show, you'll know why :)

 What our Monday nights looked like after the kids were in bed!

These two became quite the buddies during the day, while Brinley was at school!

Bath time together. 

A couple days before our big move my sweet friend Diana gave us the best going away party! We had cafe rio salads and yummy desserts and they wrote all of us little notes with things they will miss about us! It was amazing in every way! A night we'll always remember! 

 Crazy kid table!

All of us together, minus Diana who was taking the picture :)

The Gubler Family left for Utah a few days before we moved so we said goodbye to them early. SOOO Sad!!!

 Best Buddies!

 Cynthia and I. What an incredible person!

Then life got REALLY crazy!!!!! I'll save all those details for a different post because I have to go. Coming soon!

Our Christmas card this year!

I know this is a lame way to send out our Christmas card, but I'm just amazed I got it to this point. I wasn't going to do anything since we are so swamped trying to move during the holidays with a "newish" baby and two other kids. Life is crazy!!! But here it is anyway!

                              Happy Holidays 2013

          We hope this letter finds you well! This has been a huge year for our family with lots and lots of changes. We have been so blessed to have amazing support and love from our family and friends. We are in crazy mode right now, but wanted to share a little bit about what is going on with our family.

          Brinley: She is five years old and has grown up so much this year! She learned how to ride her bike with no training wheels back in March. She graduated preschool in May and then started all day kindergarten in August. She LOVES school and is learning to read very well. She also enjoys math and writing. She constantly asks us to give her math problems to solve and loves writing stories and making pictures to go along with them. She has non stop energy and loves doing anything outside. She is very thoughtful and a wonderful friend.

          Julianne: She is three going on thirteen. You will never find this girl without my shoes (especially high heels) on, a purse and some other kind of dress or scarf. She loves anything girly and “grown up.” She started preschool and loves it! She also has this crazy obsession of playing the guitar and volleyball. We have no idea where this came from, but she pretends to do these things all the time! She is so sweet and is willing to do anything that is asked of her.

          McKay: Baby #3! He was born on May 29^th. Everything about his birth was perfect! I was able to do a VBAC, which was sooo much easier for me than my previous c-section. He is an angel! We are so lucky to have him in our family. He is 6 months now and the girls still act like Christmas morning every time he wakes up. He loves to play with toys and he looks just like his daddy!

          Greg: Lots of things going on with him! He is going to be graduating from his ortho residency on the 14^th. We are beyond excited about this. He was also able to find a good first job in Southern California. We are in the process of moving to Eastvale and he will work out of two offices in the surrounding areas. He was very involved with the young men in our ward this year, going to activities and camp outs. He is a wonderful husband and father!

          Me: Staying very busy! I was so grateful that I recovered so quickly from delivering McKay. Honestly it was amazing. I only took one pain pill the day of, and after that nothing. I felt fine. It was a good thing because adding #3 made things a lot crazier.  Good crazy though. I feel like I adjusted to three a lot faster than adjusting to two. I just got released from being the primary chorister (again) in our ward. I love that calling. Now I’m just trying to get ready for our big move and establishing our new home.

          We are anxious to start our new life in California. We have mixed emotions, however, because we love our little life here in St Louis. Our kids have amazing friends and schools and Greg and I have a wonderful support system as well. We will miss everyone so much! We hope that moving closer to family and friends will attract more visitors (especially since we will be so close to Disneyland.)

          Reflecting on our past year, I can’t believe how greatly we've been blessed. We've felt the Lords influence often as we have had to make major decisions and so thankful for His love toward us. We look forward to the New Year and all the opportunity’s that await us.

With Love,

The Carr Family: Greg, Jenna, Brinley Ruth, Julianne Carole, and McKay Michael