Utah Summer 2010 Trip Part 1

Matt had about a two week break from the time that he finished up residency in PGH to when he started his new job at our new location. So we thought before we start using up vacation time let's get a trip in to UT. Well, we are feeling a little poor right now with all the expenses that come with buying a new house so we decided to drive. And with the small children we thought driving through the night might be less brutal. So when we arrived at 9 am the next morning after our fun welcoming by family we handed the kids off to Tim & Nic so we could nap and this is what they did:

Carter was hooked on this Utah thing from the beginning.

The next day we got out to visit Grandma Ione. I don't know how many visits are left with her so each visit is bitter-sweet.

In this video, Carter & Hayden have a great game of footsie going on:

Snowbird Condo

Grandma Yvonne has a snowbird condo timeshare that we love to use when we are in town. First stop is the playground.

Shocker that the two boys are on their phones prolly Cougar Fannin it. They are both totally oblivious to the world. This is a daily scene with my husband. The I-Phone is a blessing and a curse.

Next the tram:

Precious. We had a little boy that was getting tired - he was having too much fun in cousin heaven.

COUSINS!

I will eat you!!

Back at the condo after we went swimming. My brother Dan with his adorable son Sawyer.

Fourth of July (Utah Style)

Since the 4th was on a Sunday, in Utah the 4th was mostly celebrated on the 3rd. We started off the day hitting up the awesome Park City Outlet Mall and then we met up with my siblings and their kids at a park to play and then to Stac's for a BBQ.

All the cousins. Carter thinks cousins are pretty much the coolest things ever. I told him one day that we were going to go see his buddies and he said, "Not my buddies, my Cousins!" And he's right, Cousins are pretty special.

Chris's youngest, Lilly, couldn't get enough of her cousin Hayden. She wanted to hug and kiss her all day long. (Notice Hayden is now sitting.)

Then that night we were off to fireworks.

I love this picture of Carter and KK.

Beautiful Babes!

Jen & Sawyer

Here we are dressed for church on the actual 4th of July and no matter how sickening sweet it is, I just can't help dressing the family up for Holidays.

The Sunday night tradition for Matt's Utah paternal side is to meet at Gpa and Gma Nielsen's for ice cream. We love going up and seeing the family grow. This is Matt's "twin" cousin Andrea.

This is our handsome little nephew who is obsessed with trains. He labels everything in two categories. If it is a train he shakes his head yes while saying "train." If it is not a train he shakes his head no while saying "train." This particular night he was pretty fascinated by this big truck and kept walking around it saying "train" while shaking his head no. He is such a cutie putootie!!

Hayden Takes Her First Bite

Last month (June) we gave Hayden food for the first time. Her "scowl" face in the video down below pretty much describes her relationship with food.



She actually got quite a bit of food down for her first time eating, but ever since this day she has not been a fan of food. She turns away, swats away our hands and spits it out no matter what we give her even the sweet things. It's frustrating, but I keep trying hoping that she will eventually decide that food is a good thing and start swallowing.


For fun, I posted pictures of Carter eating for the first time. Carter (like most babies) thought the food thing was pretty awesome and LOVED it! Plus, it's fun seeing both kids side by side at the same age.

I love seeing his arms extended and flexed like that. It brought back so many memories. That is what he did every time he was really excited and into something. He would extend his arms and do a grunting noise.
The video below is of Carter making Hayden laugh as we were moving into our house last month:

Dreams Do Come True

Ever since I have known Matt he has always talked about wanting a BMW. That seemed like a FAR FAR time away... Well, we left Pittsburgh on Wed. closed on our house here on Thursday and on Friday...
Matt walked into the local BMW dealership on a mission.

This was the first car that caught his eye. And sure enough it was the car he had come to drive.

And SOLD!! (It didn't take much.) One of Matt's big dreams came true this day.

Can you tell he was excited!?! He was about to jump out of his seat. And I won't tell you how fast we went on the way home. It was pretty scary.

Looks pretty good decorating Jay and Bonnie's drive way don't ya think? It is now safely parked in our garage until Matt's return.

Another one of Matt's dreams that came true was being a Daddy. Thanks Babe for being such a great Dad. We love you so much!! Happy Father's Day!

So Hard to Say Good-bye!!

Flashback 3 years ago, and who would have ever thought that I would shed so many tears over leaving Pittsburgh. Go back a year before that when Matt and I went to PGH when Matt was a student and we strongly disliked the city. I remember driving into the city for the first time reading sign after sign about road rage and being frightened to death and vowing to never drive in the city. Now just abotu 4 years later and it is so hard to leave that city, mostly because of the people I love.

Soul Sisters

If girls could could be soul mates, I think I found mine. God has taken care of Matt and me during every step of the way during this whole schooling path. But I feel like He took extra care of me when He sent me these beautiful ladies in this picture. Matt's residency program has been an extremely taxing 3 years emotionally, physically and spiritually. I know there would have been no way I would have gotten through it with my sanity in tact if it wasn't for my mentor Emily my first year and these three ladies next to me my 2nd and 3rd years (next to me Allison - spouse of podiartry resident, Heather - spouse of podiatry resident, Marie (in back) - spouse of anesthesiologist resident and fellow). Since they are all spouses of residents we were able to bunker down together and share our heartaches and trials and our little mini victories and we all understood what each other was going through. We each have had our struggles with fertility, miscarraiges, pregnancies, misbehaving children and especially learning how to deal with an absentee spouse. We've cried tears of joy and anguish, but lately for me it has been tears of good-bye. I don't know if I will ever have friends like this again and I will miss them tremendously. They were so sweet, when I left they gave me letters they had written to me and little note cards (one for each hour of the trip) to open and relive memories. It was so very kind and thoughtful and very indicitive of our last 2 years! I love you ladies more than I can express thanks for sharing yourselves and your beautiful families with me!

Buddies

The crew except for Allison's oldest, Elizabeth.

The Boys. These boys have learned a lot of social skills together, they've come a long ways!!!

This is Claire and Carter. Claire's mommy is another one of my good friends. She is my visiting teaching companion and I have never had a companion that I have worked better with. I felt on the month's that I was off and would just let it slip, she always called and got it going. She is a great person and I adored getting to know her.

Hayden and Evan (Callum was sleeping).

Anthony and Carter. Anthony is one of the sweet older boys in our neighborhood. He would ride his bike around in the evening and if Carter was outside he would always stop and talk and play. Carter thought Anthony was the coolest thing ever! Anthony would tell Carter stories about whatever Carter wanted. The picture above was the day that we left our house in PGH and Anthony came to say good-bye. He hugged Carter really tight and cried. He then told Carter his last story. It was very sweet and touching. Carter adored him, but Anthony obviously adored Carter as well.

We had some of the sweetest neighbors. Richard and Netti were substitute grandparents for our kids. They always brought over Birthday and Christmas Presents and a goody of some sort for every other Holiday. We will greatly miss our little block of neighbors and friends.

Farewell Pittsburgh

After Memorial Day we went into hard-core packing mode. We lived for quite a while with bare-bones stuff. But the kids made the best of it.

The day for packing the truck arrived. We had a TON of help from our church. Richy was a key player in figuring out how to make everything fit in the truck.

Done!

Since we did ABF we had to pack the truck up Thursday with all our stuff and send it on it's way even though we didn't move till the next Wed. Our furniture consisted of these few camping chairs, some air mattress' and a friend's pack n' play. It was luxurious.

That Saturday we had a garage sale with our friends. The weather ended up being poor so it wasn't super successful. Oh well. At least we were able to get our Karaoke on while we were waiting for customers.

Oliver striking a pose, this is SOOO Oliver!! "Hey everybody come see how good I look!" - Anchorman.

Monday was cleaning day. I had a bunch of girl friends come to the house and clean while Jess had the hardest job of staying by herself at Heather's watching all the kids. Afterwards, we had a picnic of Taco Bell in Heather's family room. Once again, I have the greatest friends in the WHOLE world. Missing you ladies like crazy!!

Memorial Day Weekend 2010

To start our weekend we went a little retro with our friends and went to a Drive-In theater. We saw Shrek 4.

The boys were ecstatic as you can see.

This is how the Nielsens roll at Drive-Ins. We blow up our air mattress, put a blanket over it, throw in a ton of pillows and there you go - a super comfy Drive-In set up.

On Saturday we went to our church's Memorial Day Weekend picnic. Hayden was all dressed to party including what people like to call her "satellite" honing in on the situation. I just refer back to our family motto, "Go Big or Go Home!"

We went straight from the church picnic to a work buddy's BBQ. Carter's sipping back on a little soda while Hayden is chilling with her buddy Christian who is one day older than she.

After all that food and partying, it is time to get a little exercise doing some tummy time.

She loves to play with her toys.

On Monday we went to visit the family I part-time nannied for one last time. Siddharth and Carter were so CUTE together. Siddharth has always been so good with him and Carter has always looked up to Siddharth, but this time with Carter being a little older it was even more so.

Here I am with some of the kids I love most. Aren't they each so beautiful?

And here's the whole family. It is only fitting that Carter is in this picture because the whole time I have known them they have treated Carter like one of there own. I will miss them tremendously!

After all our fun and visits with friends we headed back home to get more packing done. We are now "moved in" to our new house but more posts on that later...

P.S. I broke down and got a new camera - a Cannon Power Shot. It's good to be able to take pictures again!