In Idaho...awaiting the close of our HOUSE!

We're at my sister, Erin's house. Daniel is in Utah working at Questar...and we (the kids and I) are Migrants. We've gone from my mom's in CA for over 2 months, to Daniel's sister's for a few days, to Leah's (my sister) for a few days, and now at Erin's. Getting a little sick of our homeless state but feeling very thankful and IN DEBT to the many hospitable people we are blessed to have in our lives.


Here's a picture of (soon to be) our house in Layton!
I'm so excited. Daniel found it and sent me lots of pictures and we put a bid on it before I even saw it in person! But we did get to see it last Saturday and we like it a lot. 5 bedrooms, 3 baths. Not a huge backyard (my one regret) but it's all nicely landscaped. Can't wait...but I am. Hopefully we can get in next week sometime, since it's vacant and they are willing to close quickly. Yea!

The Maritime Museum-San Diego, CA

This should be our family Christmas photo....except it's February here, not December.

The Maritime Museum, where you can go onto ships like the Star of India, an old Russian submarine and a few other cool boats, is one of our favorite places to go as a family. We bought a family membership (which is almost cheaper than paying for a day for each one of us individually) and have already gone 3 times.

Daniel is really quite happy. He is.
I don't know what Justin is.
Natalie (my neice) and my mom, they're just super cute!

Bunking on the submarine.

Garrett

I lOVE OWEN!

I Love OWEN!!!

Skinners not in Florida, Skinners in CA, Skinners soon to be moving to UTAH

Most recent in the "Where are the Skinners NOW?" saga we find them still biding time in sunny Southern California, which hasn't been all that sunny of late, with Ivy's ever so generous, patient parents. 

Good news? YES! We are no longer searching for jobs. Daniel found out the day after his birthday that he got the job at Questar in Utah and so....

Skinners will be headed to Utah!

We're very excited to go to a place we both know and love...(we could have ended up almost anywhere!)

...just not exactly sure where in that place we'll end up. We plan to head to Utah soon (probably just Daniel and I) to look at houses both north and south of Salt Lake and try to decide where we want to end up. It's exciting, but also pretty mind boggling. There are a lot of houses out there, even in the low prices we qualify for. :-) 

For now, we don't know the details of when Daniel will start or when we'll be moving. But the relief of know where and that it's fairly soon is pretty great. 

So it turns out that all the Skinner's did was one, big 5,507 mile circle (that's 81 hours of driving if you'd rather count that way). Good thing we aren't leasing cars!

Ian's Birthday

Ian's Birthday. He's 11!

First Indiana Jones, Idiana Jones and I all made a cake for Ian's birthday.
How many of you have ever gotten to make a cake with Indiana Jones before, let alone TWO of him?

Look at that smile on the smaller Indaina's face... ahhhh.

Here's Ian's much wanted air soft gun and a holster. Lookin' hot. He swears he didn't know what he was getting, but I had several signs that he DID. First clue: I had drawn a picture of an alien gun and was showing it to Owen. "Hey, Owen. Did you see my gun?"

Ian perked right up. "What gun?" I explained that I'd drawn a picture of one and then I showed it to him. Not one minute later...totally out of the blue, Ian says, "I don't know what I'm getting for my birthday." I laughed. "Oh...REALLY, Ian."

Not much later I was asking Ian if he wanted to go ahead and open a couple of presents that day (his actual birthday) or save them all for Sunday, the day we were having family over for dinner and cake and stuff. He promptly said he wanted to open some. I said, "Are you sure?" His response, "I just want to open the...." and then he stopped, with this surprised look on his face and glanced at me.
"Which one, Ian?" I teased. "You already know what you're getting, so just tell me which one you want to open and I'll get that one."

He protested that he really DIDN'T know. And said, "I just want to open the good ones." Nice save, NOT.

Grandad also gave him micro flyers, which WAS a surprise and which he also loved.

Remember the Flowbee?

How many years has it been since this was the big infomercial?

Well, apparently my parents bought one recently on ebay and swear it's the best thing for cutting little boys' hair. And it was, though a little loud with the heavy duty vaccuum it needs to work. Not only was it fun and exciting, it gave a pretty decent haircut. Since I usually do it myself (sans flowbee) it's not the most even cut job in the world. This thing cut it pretty even all over. They are all super cute now. (They were all super cute before.) I'd like it a bit shorter on the sides and back, but otherwise, this is probably the best haircut they've had.
FYI, Justin is still sporting a longer, "cooler" look.

Gardening with Gram

I've never had a beautiful garden. My mom's almost always got one though. Not to mention all her various rose and flower gardens/landscaping spread across her acres of land. Here it is February and she's still gardening and trying to get my city slicker kids to help. I was sort of surprised at how inept they were. :)

But I guess that's not something I've really taught them. And it's been a while since I've had to any yard work as we were living in a vacation home complex in Florida.

Before that, well, I only had to feel guilty about not gardening for a few months out of the year in Utah. That was one good thing about the snow. No guilt in the winter. Anyway, I would love to have a great vegetable garden soon. In fact...I'll hope for this spring. Maybe we'll live somewhere of our own by then. If not, I'm sure to have one with Mom.

This is how you do it.

Justin got the hang of it.

I think this is such a pretty picture of Emily. After I took it I wished there wasn't an ugly worm in there to mess it up. Anyway, she thought this was pretty cool. Being the only girl, shouldn't she have the following look on her face and not Ian?

Okay, so I guess I made my kids sound like they've never done yard work. They have, but they were so "out of their element" out there actually working, it made me realize how long it's been. Sigh.
Sadie was a big help too.