Playing House

Here are Brad and December playing house together. I thought it was so cute, seeing Brad as he helped December make-believe a story and put the baby bear to bed, etc.

Then December decided the Santa bear had to go on top of Daddy's head.

December is continuing with her troubling anti-sleep ways. When we put her down for bed, she just stands in her crib and screams. If we have mercy on her and let her out, she grows more and more cranky and tired until she's so overtired and upset that she can't put herself to sleep anyway. So then our choice becomes this: put her to bed now and have her cry herself to sleep, or put her to bed later and have her scream herself to sleep. That's quite the choice we get to make every naptime and bedtime. I can only hope this phase doesn't last very long...other than that we are all doing well. Well, I am getting a cold, but that's not that big of a deal. Brad really enjoyed his seminary classes yesterday! He had a Hebrew quiz yesterday and a Greek quiz today. I'm a little bit able to help him with studying Greek because I can read the language (not that I understand what I'm reading), so I sound out the Brad's vocabulary words, and Brad tells me what they mean. I still have to learn Hebrew, though, so then I can help him there, too! I like doing that.

December Finally Naps

Here December is catching up on her missed sleep from yesterday! She took a small nap this morning, but when she woke up and tried to play, she was still so tired. She laid down on the floor in the hallway and went to sleep.

It was so cute! Usually she's so particular about where she goes to sleep, but she was exhausted.

I laid down next to her in the hopes that if she woke up, she'd see another person sleeping and go back to sleep (somehow seeing other people sleep makes her go to sleep, too). It worked! She woke up, saw me sleeping, and crawled over so she could share the pillow with me.

Here's what we got on Saturday! Yay! We had sold our piano before we left, so we were looking for an digital piano so that I could plug in headphones and play whenever, without waking up December or disturbing anyone in the apartment complex. I'm so happy that we got it! In this picture December is playing with a little dollhouse that I had when I was little. She loves that house!

Stories and the Creation Museum

Here are some more pictures from the Creation Museum that I promised I would put up a loong time ago. This is my family in front of the museum.

The dinosaur that you see on top moved its neck and chomped on some leaves it had in its mouth...I think it might have moved its tail, too. This is one of the first things you see when you enter the museum.

Here's my brother Klynt. This picture makes me laugh because the dinosaur is about to take a big bite out of his head.

The museum was filled with these kinds of cool signs.

This is Martin Luther nailing up the 95 Theses

Here is Adam, naming the animals

Here are Adam and Eve hanging out -- you can see the serpent hanging in the tree above them (you may have to click on the picture to enlarge it in order to see the snake better)

This is a diagram/cut-out of what the Noah's Ark looked like

Mom and Dad took December for a walk on the museum grounds while Brad and I explored the museum without our busy baby!

Here's a pretty picture of my Mom and Dad

This is another pretty picture taken on the museum grounds

This is Brad having fun with Makenzi in our hotel's pool

Oh, December, December. As I'm writing, December is "sleeping" in her bedroom. Lately, sleeping means that she's screaming away, not wanting to be in bed. She was doing so well here, adjusting well to her new room, but for the past two days, she thinks going into her crib is pure, unadulterated torture. I would take her out right now -- after all, it's only 7:50pm -- but I can't...because this is what comprised her naps today: 5 minutes in her car seat just before we reached church this morning, and then 10 minutes on our way back from the church's lunch. That's it for the entire day! You can imagine that she's been less than pleasant all day long! We tried to get her to nap this afternoon, but after letting her cry for a good 25 minutes, we let her out of her crib. So now, it's finally bedtime, and that means she's going to go to sleep, no matter how she feels about it! :)

One thing we really like about living here is that the weather is wonderful! However, we didn't like the weather at first. The first couple of days after we got here were beautiful, but the next 10 days were extrodinarily HOT! Unbearably hot, like over 100 degrees. I think the hottest our thermometer read on one of the days was about 107 degrees (42 degrees Celsius). That wouldn't have been quite so bad if our car had air conditioning. Worse, it wouldn't have been quite so bad if our apartment had working air conditioning, either! Ahhhh! Brad had taken a look up into our air conditioner and found it covered with dust/mold. Gross stuff! The bad thing is that our apartment is abysmally slow in getting anything fixed. The apartment manager said that the A/C guy would come on September 10. So Brad fixed it himself, which was wonderful....however, the air conditioner has another problem. It leaks water, like buckets of water! It was soaking the carpet, and the ceiling now has water stains. Right now we have a baking pan in our ceiling to try to catch the water. We have to change the A/C's bedpan every so often so that it doesn't overflow.

Last Sunday, it was extremely hot as we were driving home from church. December's face looked like a ripe tomato. I was so excited to get back to our apartment to escape the heat. As we rushed into the apartment, we were like, "Whew! It feels better in here. Finally, some relief from that heat!" Then I looked at the indoor temperature, and it was 90 degrees inside (32 degrees Celsius). Ha! Speaking of ripe tomatoes, during the hot spell, we got a couple of tomatoes from the store in the morning and wanted them for tomato sandwiches later that day. They were pretty unripe and hard, so I put them out on our deck to get some sun and soften them up. Hehee. I kind of forgot about them...completely. Brad discovered them later in the afternoon and came in saying, "Kristin! Look at these! You've baked our tomatoes!!" They were seriously baked. I cut into one of them, and if you've ever opened a can of stewed tomatoes, that's exactly what these looked like. The tomato skin was barely holding the mess together. I found that fairly amusing, although our yummy tomato sandwich idea was kind of ruined.

Needless to say, we have spent alot of time in the pool! December has been enjoying herself in it, although if she is given the choice, she'll run to the hot tub every time (no matter how hot it is outside). On Friday, two of the seminary couples that live in our apartment (there's about 8 or 9 seminary couples living here) invited us to go to the ocean with them. We had great fun! Brad went boogie-boarding with the guys, and the three of us girls watched our babies. Then Brad took December in the waves, and she thought she had never had more fun! She was giggling like crazy and getting soaked. We had so much fun there that I think we're going to go back again tomorrow. I like how big the waves are, and watching people attempt to surf is pretty fun, too!

From There to Here

Here are some pictures of our apartment. Ours is the one you see in the top left corner of the building. In front is the pool.

Here's our front door! These pictures were taken by Mom and Dad when they came out to the area for a youth convention (before we moved there). They kindly checked out the apartment and took some pictures for us.

This is our front porch and shed, although it looks different now. Last week we went to Home Depot and got some green outdoor carpet to cover the cement. That way December can play on softer carpet. I think it looks great now! I'll have to take an updated picture for you.

This is the path we take to the carport (you can see Dad walking around in the carport area). Our apartment is the one on the top right.

Here's the view from our balcony.

Now for indoor pics! This picture was taken standing in December's room (you can see her closet on the left), looking through the whole apartment toward the front door/balcony.

This is Brad and I's room. There's the walk-in closet and the built-in vanity on the right.

Here's the living room and dining room, which is what you walk into when you enter the apartment.

This is the kitchen. Pretty retro, eh?! :) We got a new fridge, though, and a new stove is on order (it will NOT be this lovely avocado color, thank goodness).

We made it!

It was a looong drive over, and yet it all happened so fast! We left on Wednesday, August 22 at 4:20am, with Brad driving the U-Haul, towing our little car behind us on a 2-wheel trailer. Brad drove pretty much the entire way (I drove for a piddly 3 hours -- I think both of us were much more comfortable with Brad driving!) The first day we drove and did not stop until 1:00am Thursday morning, when we tried to catch a few hours' sleep at a rest stop. December was asleep until we stopped driving, whereupon she woke up and screamed to be let out of her car seat (understandably so). We took her out, but she didn't want to sleep on us, so she just started playing jungle gym in the cab of the U-Haul at 1:15am. Brad and I did NOT appreciate that (understandably so); all we wanted to do was rest for a little while! So after a sleepless hour or so at the rest stop, we decided to keep driving to make December fall asleep again. It worked like a charm! We pulled off at a truck stop down the highway more, and Brad quietly escaped the U-Haul to sleep in the back of our car. Thankfully, December mostly stayed asleep for the next three hours, and then we hit the road again.

On Thursday, I was convinced I had become narcoleptic. We'd drive along, and if there was a span of 3 or more minutes where Brad didn't talk to me, I would fall asleep, no matter what I was in the middle of doing. I'd get little naps of 30-90 seconds before December would chatter or Brad would say something, and I'd jolt awake. But if the U-Haul was quiet for another couple of minutes, I'd be snoozing away again. It was the strangest feeling!

We also had a run-in with a tornado. It was stormy all Wednesday, and no matter how far we drove, we just went into more storms. In Nebraska, we saw the sky turn dark once more and prepared ourselves for more heavy rain...but then we noticed the sky turning green. Brad and I both knew that was a sure sign of a tornado, so we flicked on the radio. The National Weather Service was sending out all kinds of tornado warnings and severe thunderstorm warnings for our area, and we were driving straight for the worst area. We decided to take an exit torwards the north and try to go around the storms, but as we drove north, another announcement was made that where we were now heading was under a severe thunderstorm warning. At this point, it was soo windy and soo rainy that we knew we couldn't stay where we were. Brad pulled off the road and saw a house. He got out of the U-Haul and ran up to the house to see if we could go in and wait the storm out inside. He came back, soaked through all of his clothes. He told me to cover December with blankets and sprint for the house. The house was only maybe 100 yds away, but by the time we got in, we looked like we had just stood under a waterfall with all of our clothes on.

The people inside were very kind...and they had six indoor dogs, ranging in size from a black lab to a miniature chiauaua, which, of course, thrilled December. The lady of the house threw December's blankets in her dryer and gave us something to drink, while we watched the storm rage around the house. We stayed there for probably an hour before the storm had quieted enough for us to leave. By the time Brad got back the the U-Haul, the right side front and back tire were in about 6 inches of water. We were safe, though! We started driving down the highway again before I realized I left my wallet at these people's house. Ooops. Absent-minded Kristin strikes again. So we had to turn around and drive back to their house.

The rest of the trip went pretty smoothly, though. Las Vegas was entertaining to ride through, but it was very difficult for me to restrain Brad from his desire to drop by a casino and try out his new skills at Texas Hold'em (thanks to Matthew). We arrived at our apartment around 3 or 4 pm (Pacific time). We were very grateful to have a bed again, and we were very grateful that the Lord kept all three of us safe across so many miles.

Boy, this post is the longest one I've ever done, I think -- sorry, everyone; if you're still reading this, your eyes are probably about to fall out of your head. I still have more stories I want to tell you, but I guess I'll wait and tell you in other posts. Once we finish getting everything unpacked and set up, I'll take new pictures of the apartment so you can see what it looks like all finished!