Traveling Is Hard

Since moving to Chico 3 1/2 years ago, we have done A LOT of traveling. It was easy at first. Just Dave and I, no children to be responsible for. Then we had Jaron. At first, there was not much of a difference, just more stuff to pack. Then Jaron became mobile, enter responsibility. Still, with only 1 child, traveling is not bad. Then we had Lara. Fitting the 4 of us into a room is not fun. Dave has a saying for this, but I think it might not be considered PC, so I'll leave it at that. It's hard on our children being away from their own beds and in a new environment for too long. It's also hard to come home in the late afternoon/early evening and Dave has to go to work and school the next morning. So we started only staying one night when we would travel, giving us one day to recuperate. Now we have 2 toddlers. Traveling is just exhausting and stressful!
We have recently found ourselves with less options of places to stay when we travel. With our 2 active toddlers, people get tired of us quick. Then throw in an unfounded acusation against me leaving a bitter taste in our mouths, one less place to stay. With there being some family members who make us feel obligated to visit everytime we're in town, we often miss out visiting with friends. I hate this part. I want to see so many people, but miss out in order to maintain peace with others. I realized that in the 3 1/2 years we've lived in Chico, we have made a lot of visits to Sacramento, with pretty much no visitors to our place (except for special events). Of course, I can't expect our friends to visit us when we don't visit them. But what about the rest? We hear excuses of not being able to afford it, but we can't exactly afford to travel back and forth to Sacramento as often as we do either. On top of it, being away from our home as much as we are puts us behind on important chores, which has led to some problems for us as well.
So it comes down to this: we are very broke, negative in fact, so we will be hardly traveling from now on, probably only for special events. If you want to come visit, we'd love to have you. We have an air mattress we can throw down on the floor if you'd like to stay the night. If we make a visit to Sacramento, it will probably be only a day trip, and we will probably not be seeing the people we normally see so we can visit those we hardly see before me move. Day trips are hard on our children, so trips to the Temple will probably not include bringing them along.
We have our blog and facebook that we will try to stay up to date on for everyone. We love hearing from everybody and having "peaks" into your lives as well. Hey, look at this as a trial run for when we move far away =)

We're Going To Start Packing

We had a wonderful Christmas. We had late lunch/early dinner with my family on Christmas Day. We were suppose to go to a party with Dave's family for dessert and games that evening, but by the time we arrived there, everyone had left. So much for it going late, huh Shirley...lol =) We visited with Dave's brother Wes and his family the next day. That was exciting because we finally got to see our new niece Lucy (and hold her!) for the first time. Today was her baby blessing, and we missed it =( Dave woke up with a stomach bug this morning. We were late because he needed to use the bathroom as we were getting ready to leave (and I was making Jaron pick up the toys at Shirley's apartment because we were not going back to her house). We were 5 minutes late for church and missed the whole thing =( I'm sure Lucy's blessing was beautiful! Then we came back home. We were exhausted from the weekend. I'm so glad Dave has tomorrow off from work so we can recuperate =)
While with my family on Christmas, I mentioned that this might be our last Christmas with everyone. We're hoping Dave will be accepted to a pharmacy school, and depending on where, we might be moving out of California. My Aunt Lila informed me that we need to be more positive and act like this is really going to happen. I didn't want to sound cocky, that's why I tend to say "if." But she's right, so..."We're going to pharmcy school!" We'll be moving in 6 months, so we are starting to pack now. With 2 toddlers, we need all the time we can get =) We'll be moving to either Savannah, Georgia, Henderson, Nevada, back to Sacramento or into a 3 bedroom apartment in our complex (because Dave got into the online program at Creighton). Here's to our new adventure!

Cousin Loves

This weekend we stayed with Dave's sister Shirley and her family. It was cute watching Jaron playing with his cousins. It was especially cute at church today watching the Jaron with his cousin Anabelle. Here's their story:

It was love from the beginning...

(This was at Anabelle's 1st Birthday. Jaron was 2 weeks old)

That withstood the test of time (16 months)...

(so Anabelle not really happy about all the affection Jaron was giving)And more time...(So Jaron was actually wanting Lara and Anabelle was trying to stop him)

And then it blossomed.

(that's Jaron's arm around Anabelle too...and yes, he is resting his head on her shoulder)

After this, they walked hand in hand to Nursery. It was soooo cute! I'm glad Jaron and Anabelle get along. I hope they stay friends for a long time =)