WE ARE BACK...

Well I haven't updated for about a month now, so I decided it was about time! Many things have changed in our lives. I am officially a BYU college graduate. :) I received my diploma this past week! We moved to Eugene, Oregon. Leigh has begun his new semester at LCC and is deciding wants he wants to be when he grows up. And I am going crazy every day taking care of 8 babies. We just moved into our second apartment since we've been married, and we love it. It has SO much more space than our place in Provo. We have real furniture and an extra bedroom for storage--It is wonderful. In our spare time we have been spending time with Mom, Dad, Kirsten, Jonathan, and the kids. :) I thought I would post some pictures of a few events from the past month. Starting with our drive from Provo, Utah to Eugene, Oregon which included the worst snowstorm Oregon has seen in awhile.

Leigh and I drove separately in our cars and we managed to fit in our two little cars everything we had taken/accumulated in Utah to bring back with us. I took some pictures out my window as we went along. Our drive started off fairly early in the morning with fresh snow on the ground in Provo. That lasted until Salt Lake City--it was slow moving. Then the weather was completely clear....for awhile. After hitting Boise, it started a slight snow like the picture above.

Things gradually got worse...

And worse... I would love to say this is as bad as it got...but then I would be lying. We spent a lot of our times with chains on our cars. Taking them on and off--not fun. Funny side story: There were many places that required the semis to have chains, and many of these places we chained up also because Leigh's tires are low profile which means they are NOT made for the snow by any means. At one point we pulled over to take off our chains because it was decent (by that I mean, we could see two strips of the road like the picture above). We pulled over right after an off ramp. A state trooper pulled up behind us as we were finishing and got out and asked us if everything was okay. After we explained what we were doing it told us we would be wise to take an exit to do that if we needed to next time, and he mentioned that the road should be no problem for us if we drove reasonably. We thanked him and he got in his car. He went into reverse to pull off the interstate on the off ramp...I watched him and all of a sudden he was sliding off the road--and almost plowed right into the Exit # sign. So much for reasonable driving would help us make it through.

We took I-84 to Portland and then down to Eugene in two days. We stopped in Baker City, Oregon on the first day. We estimated that on a good weather day, we would have made it to Eugene in 6 1/2 hours. It took us a total of 14 hours to make it to Eugene from Baker City. Let's just say we were determined to make it, and grateful that we did without any harm. And I desire to never cross the state of Oregon in December again.

Once we made it to Eugene we bunked at Leigh's parents' house for a few weeks until we could get everything figured out at an apartment. We slept in a room (it was big) with everything we owned surrounding us.


Christmas morning!! Our first Christmas together! It was a lot of fun and good memories. We had Grandma G here for the holiday, it was wonderful to meet her and spend time with her!


I did not have a stocking to be found in all of our stuff so we went to Wal-Mart a couple days before Christmas and the only one under 5$ was this HUGE one. I was not complaining. :)


Isabel got the perfect dresses to fulfill her princess-self.

We have been spending a lot of our time oo-ing and aw-ing over Tessa and Eva. Even though we haven't gotten down which one is Tessa and which one is Eva all of the time, we are working on it, and love them as individuals. :) It has been such a joy to be around them--and the rest of the family--we REALLY missed them all in Utah. Tessa and Eva are so sweet and precious and they fulfill my baby craving. I think I could cuddle with them 24/7. They are so happy and have such personalities--it has been so much fun to see them grow and change even over the short time of two months. Uncle Leigh has had quite the experience with Tessa and Eva. Kirsten asked him to babysit all four kids for 45 minutes one day all by himself. Let's just say that evening he was reconsidering having kids. He said that two hungry infants, and two kids used to getting Uncle Leigh attention was a little stressful for him. But, he MADE IT and he didn't even have to change a diaper--which he vows to never do--so I think he did pretty well. He simply adores Tessa and Eva and is so good with them.

Alright, we made our guesses based on the pictures and we THINK the pink cute outfit is Eva and the purple is Tessa. Kirsten: Correct me if I'm wrong. :)

Me with Tessa. :)

The two people we missed the most in Provo was Preston and Isabel. We have had so much fun with them since we got back. They are so smart and funny. They keep us laughing and on our toes.

I don't know what Leigh is going to do when he has to share Preston with Uncle Ian. It will definitely be fun to watch all three of them play and interact.