Birthday/Conference Weekend

Last weekend we were able to get away to my parents' house to enjoy our last General Conference weekend with them. Since Justin and I had birthdays at the end of March and 2 of my sisters, Cindy and Marianne, have birthays in mid-April, we decided to have a big birthday bash to celebrate everyone's birthdays since life for us has been quite busy lately with house stuff and Justin's graduation falls right on the April birthdays. We enjoyed yummy cake and some great presents. Thanks for putting on a great party mom!

Conference was wonderful as usual. We always enjoy the spiritual uplift and the great talks! And it's a nice reason to get together with family. We'll miss that when we move! Lindsey and Katelyn had some excited aunts that wanted to put their hair up in rags after their bath. If you don't know what that is, the pictures will give you an idea....

and the next morning....

And since some of us are moving away in the near future, we decided to take another family picture for my parents' wall. This is one that ended up on our camera. It's a good picture except for the washed out background. We had to go to another location to re-take the pictures and those turned out better. 

It's been nice to have a place to get away on the weekend during the MBA program. We're sure going to miss living close to family!

Drumroll Please....

After months of research, time on the internet tracking homes for sale, researching school districts and boundaries, neighborhoods, shopping areas, commute possibilities, calling bishops and other people we've never met in 7 wards in the Kent/Covington/Auburn area, going on a house hunting trip and making an offer on a house 

that fell through, we have finally found 

OUR HOUSE!

Please meet the next member of the family:

This home is located in Auburn, WA. To be more specific, Lea Hill, which is just south of Kent and fairly accessible to the train, which is how Justin will commute to Seattle. He'll be able to work on his laptop with the Wi-fi connection on the way to and from work, so hopefully the commute won't be too hard for us. 

There are so many great things that we love about this house, the schools and the ward. It is a model home currently and is just beautiful. It is BIG and will take some getting used to, but we're so excited to have some space to spread out and settle down in a home of our own after almost 8 years of marriage. This is the kind of house that we wouldn't normally be able to get into, but because of current market conditions, we really got a great deal on it. We've got lots of room, so if any of you are in the area, we'd love some company!

For more interior pictures of a model similar to this one, click here.

And for those of you who want more, here are a couple of videos that we took while on our house hunting trip. Starring Justin behind the camera, Jenn, and of course our wonderful realtors Jerry and Tom.

Downstairs

Upstairs

It's done! (sigh of relief)

Press Release #2

Here is a quick update to this blog post. The press release about Omniture just came out this week. Way to go Justin!

The official press release:

http://marriottschool.byu.edu/mba/news/?article=445

House Hunting

Well, we just got back last night from a 4-day house hunting trip in Seattle! It was a great trip and very productive. We were so blessed to be able to leave the kids at my parents' house so that they could play and we could work hard. I sure did miss these cute faces!

We were so lucky to have some friends that live in the area that we were looking at. Allan and Jenn were so hospitable and gave us a great set-up. Allan got his BYU MBA 2 years ago and now works for Amazon, so it was nice to talk with them about how they like their area,  the commute, etc.

In total, I believe that we saw about 35 houses. We got through them pretty quickly since Justin and I definitely knew what we didn't like. Some of the foreclosure properties were kind of scary. It's so sad that some people neglect and mistreat their homes. We have now narrowed the field down to four homes which are all beautiful and would be great for our family. Two are new and two are a few years old. Unfortunately, they are all overpriced. So we will see if anyone is willing to deal! If we can get one into our price range, then we might just have a house to buy! If not, that's ok. We will rent and look patiently for the right one. We are confident that as we seek inspiration from the Spirit we will find the place where our family needs to be. 

So stay tuned! Big decisions ahead!

MBA Talent Show

Every year there is an MBA talent show and it is so fun to go to! There are so many talented kids, students and spouses in the program. This year I was invited to be a part of the "Barbershop Beauties" and sing in a great barbershop quartet. It was so much fun! 

Thanks to Anika for putting it together. We don't get opportunities to do things like this very often as moms, and it was really fun!

Brandon and Lindsey got in on the action during the Twinkie eating contest for the kids. They put in an A+ effort!

And I just have to say that one of our most vivid memories from the MBA talent shows will be our friend Sam in the program. He can do Michael Jackson like no one's business! Thanks for doing it again this year Sam. It was very memorable! :)

 

Bigfoot

I'm not sure what nick-name our new TV will have, but I'm thinking about Bigfoot, the Big Cheese, Max or the Giant. He and I are going to have to get used to each other!

Here is Justin picking up his well-deserved prize from the Omniture competition.

It obviously won't have a permanent home on the top of the entertainment center. Justin just couldn't wait two months until we move to Seattle to get it out and set it up, and there just isn't a place for it in our current condo. But hey, we might like laying on the couch so that we can watch our movies! Welcome to the family, Max!

The Big 4

Lindsey is getting so big these days! This last week we celebrated her birthday. It's hard to believe that this little lady came into the world 4 years ago.

What a beauty!

Lots of hair 

Very silly with Brandon

And lots of smiles

And when Katelyn was born she took to being a big sister so well

Now she is 4 and it's hard to believe!

We had a fun family party and enjoyed a great spaghetti dinner that Lindsey requested. She had a fun time opening presents and spending time with everyone.

Happy birthday Lindsey girl! We sure love you!

 

Justin's Press Release

Well, we feel incredibly blessed to say the least. This press release finally came out yesterday about the Hawes scholarhip that Justin was awarded last semester.

http://marriottschool.byu.edu/news/release.cfm?article=442

I must be married to some guy! I love you Justin!

Omniture Competition

Yesterday was the culmination of a long month of hard work for Justin and his team. They competed in the Omniture Web Analytics competition. Basically, Omniture is a large technology company here in Utah. They are hired by online companies to track all kinds of info about their site so that they can make recommendations to that company about what is working for them and what they could do to be more effective, etc. It is quite complicated, but I guess some people find web analytics fun! :)

So this whole thing started at the end of January. About 80 teams signed up to compete from BYU and about 40 teams signed up from the University of Utah. Then about 80 total teams submitted their presentation slides to be reviewed by Omniture and 20 teams were selected to present their findings at Omniture for the semi-finals. Out of that group, two teams from BYU and two teams from the U were selected to compete in the finals, which happened yesterday at BYU. Let's just say it has been a long week with lots of very early mornings, late nights and hard work! I think this first picture is very appropriate to start things off. The kids found their daddy still home when they woke up on Thursday this week and decided to spend some quality time cuddling in bed. They definitely miss him when he is so busy.

Thankfully I was able to attend the competition because Marianne, my sister, came to watch the kids. Thank you so much Mar! I was pretty nervous for Justin and his team all afternoon. They presented first which was nice because then they got to watch the remaining presentations. They did a great job! After a long 2 1/2 hours of presenting and questions from the judges, they were ready to announce the winners. Here is a picture of all the finalists on the stage awaiting the results:

It was so exciting when they won first place!

And yes, that is a big check with a big chunk of money for them to split. What a blessing for us! Along with the cash, each of them get a 50" plasma tv to take home. I'm not sure what we're going to do with it. I mean, that's a big tv!

Here is a picture with Justin's team (named .convert) and the Omniture executives.

Here is the happy and relieved team, Oliver, Nate and Justin

Here is Nate wishing that he was as tall as Oliver and Justin

Here is Nate on a stair so that he is as tall as Oliver and Justin

Here is the happy wife (me!)

And here is Angela, the happy wife of Nate, who sat with me as we nervously waited for the results

And here is Brandon modeling the other winnings from Omniture:

an Omniture blanket,

an Omniture towel,

an Omniture backpack,

an Omniture t-shirt,

an Omniture hat,

and an Omniture water bottle with candy and 2 Utah Jazz tickets in the box seats with dinner included for tonight which we won't use because it's my Mom's birthday and we're going to see Mar's play, but we gave them to another happy MBA couple

And to top it all off, this is the first time in 8 competitions that an MBA team has won. It's about time! So there you have it! Whew!

To celebrate last night, we decided to take the kids out for a fun dinner at the mall and ice cream cones from McD's. That was the favorite part!

Here are the happy kids that are glad to be spending some fun time with daddy!

And of course the happy wife again, who is happy that it is OVER!!!

Congrats Justin! I'm so proud of you!

Finally!

Today was the warmest day of the year so far.  

And it was glorious! 

I took the kids to the park with a neighbor friend for the first time in months. The snow has finally melted enough for the kids to play outside. Today is also the first day that I have opened my windows for a long time. Ahhh. Fresh air!

The swings were a favorite, 

but so was collecting pine cones 

and running around in the grass. 

Free at last!

Busy Weekend

This past weekend was pretty crazy for us. Besides the normal school work, church work and house work and going to the temple, we had the task of putting on my last big fireside of the semester. I serve as the Spiritual Committee co-chair and sit on the board for the MBASA (MBA Spouse's Association). My co-chair Alanna and I have had a very busy this year trying to put on the events under the spirutual committee, including monthly FHE groups, choir rehearsals, mini-firesides and a few other small things. But by far the biggest events we have done have been the MBA firesides. We invite all students and spouses, we provide babysitting for everyone so that the parents can actually sit and listen to the speaker, and then we provide refreshments following the fireside.

This may seem pretty straight forward, but as soon as you realize that you will have about 100 kids in babysitting (ages 15 months and up), then the simplicity flies out the window. I think this past round of babysitting has been our most successful yet. Our first good move was to get three wards worth of young women and leaders to come in and run the show (we had about 25-30 helpers). We divided up the kids according to age (15-18 mo., 19 mo.-2, 3 and up) which helped a lot. For the younger ones we did toys, coloring and fruit loop/straw necklaces. Then for the older group we divided them up so that half of them did a movie for the first half hour while the other half did an obstacle course/relay, coloring on huge endrolls of paper spread out on the floor and fruit loop/straw necklaces. Then the groups switched for the second half hour. I think we managed to avoid chaos this time and we got very good reports back on the babysitting situation.

So once you get the babysitting figured out, then it becomes more of a normal fireside situation. We got some amazing speakers. Randy Bott is a professor in the religion department at BYU (a very well known one) and we got him and his wife Vickie to come and speak to us. 

It was such an enjoyable night. I wish that they could have gone on for another couple of hours, but one hour was quite enough for the kids in babysitting. 

The spouse choir did an amazing job once again. I will miss being able to conduct that choir!

We had a great turnout; we were pushing 130-140 adults. Then to top the evening off we all  enjoyed BYU mint brownies and ice cream. I'd say the whole thing was a raving success! Whew! I'm so relieved that it went so well and that it is over now! We've got other things to stress about next month, so it's good to have it done.

 

Balloon Art

We went out to the Brick Oven for dinner on Friday to use up some certificates we had from Brandon's reading program. It's been so long since we have been there. It was a fun night and the food was great! We were very surprised to see a balloon man doing free balloon art for all the kids at the resturant. He came over to our table and graciously offered to make our kids something. So he did! 

Lindsey requested Belle from Beauty and the Beast, 

Brandon requested Star Wars which is funny because he has never seen it. So he got Luke Skywalker. 

And Katelyn got a cute butterfly. 

We were just amazed at the talent that this guy had! And he was fast. Who knew that you could make over 300 things with balloons off the top of your head?