Changes and growing up!

So, as I mentioned in my previous blog on our way home from St. George, Ryan got a call from IHC saying that he was one of the top candidates for a position he had applied to in the communications department and they wanted to call his boss for a reference.  He was offered the job a few days later.  Better money and much better benefits and an opportunity to do something different with more room for growth were the pros, longer commute, less flexible hours were some of the cons but really the decision seemed pretty clear that this was the next step.  Health benefits don't kick in for 30 days, so Ryan had to give a little less than 2 weeks notice at his current job to be able to start in time to get the benefits to kick in before baby girl is born.  Health benefits actually start on April 2nd and I am scheduled for a C-section April 3rd, crossing our fingers all goes as planned.

Just to brag a little bit for Ryan, on the first day of orientation out of about 100 people that were there for the orientation, the recruiter specifically told Ryan, wow, congratulations on getting this job, over 200 people had applied and they had interviewed quite a few and Ryan was one of 3 who got the job (and he didn't even think he had done that well on the interview)!

It's been a little crazy adjusting to Ryan getting up earlier, coming home later and also still going into work at CMG most evenings (so that we can stay on their insurance until the end of the month), so its been super busy for Ryan and really long days for me,  and I'd like to say we'll get into the swing of things next month after he stops also working for  CMG too but then we'll add a new baby into the mix so I don't think things will seem back to normal for a while.  But we are very thankful for the blessing of a new job and a new baby soon!

Also, on March 3rd, Tristan turned 3!   What an amazing little guy of ours he is!  He is so full of life, he loves people,  he continually surprises me at some of the stuff he says and he makes us laugh, I love his little personality.   On his birthday we went to Chuck E cheese with Grandma Cindy and ate pizza and pop and let them play as many games as they could handle,  But first this happened on his birthday!  Blizzard in the morning, ruining my plans to take him to the dollar store to let him pick out a toy, but actually ended up loving to play in the snow  and it was totally cleared up by the afternoon!

I started to regret promising Tristan a pirate party since this was Ryan's first week at his new job and he was also working nights at CMG, so it seemed to hard to pull together a party for him that Saturday, but I am so glad we did!  Tristan absolutely loved it!  He loved wearing his pirate costume, cupcakes, presents and that so many of his friends and family came.  At random times the next couple of days after the party he would say to me "mommy, thank you for my pirate party"  which made it all worth while, plus it was fun!

Pirate boats

I'm bummed I forgot to pull down my eye patch for the pic

Love my big 3 year old!

1st Quarter

January is usually boring. It was actually one of the mildest winters I can remember since living in Utah, but still not quite warm enough to go to the parks most of the time, I was going to skip mention of it altogether until found some cute pics that were noteworthy.

I love that they love each other (most of the time)

Silly Tristan

Bedtime snuggles with daddy

 I love that I caught these two cute guys in their matching twinner outfits making bread

 This was a Saturday warm enough to go to the park, its actually a really cool park, I wish I would've taken a pic of it, its like all castley like

 Oh yea, we went dogsledding as  family with Ryan's work, that was pretty cool!

 We also got to go this movie premier, we felt pretty cool, because we got to go to this upstairs lounge place at the theatre and get free food!  And the movie is such an inspiring movie!

February was busy!  Both Ryan's mom and his sister and bro-in- laws family went on a cruise out of Florida at the same time and we kept seeing their cool pics of them at the beach having a blast, so Ryan sent them a pic of what cool exciting things we were up to, it wasn't very hard to get a pic of both kids crying and upset at the same time:) I also got to pick up some extra at home work while his sister and brother in law were vacationing, between 4-5:30 every day which kind of threw off our routine but was nice to get some extra income!

 Another warm Saturday afternoon we went kite flying, Tristan got to pick out the kite (Super Man)

 We had a free weekend, Valentines/Presidents day weekend so we packed up for our 2nd annual trip and drove to sunny Arizona to visit Annaliese's family!  Its safe to say Tristan and Carter became fast friends.

Ivory loved being able to hang outside in Annaliese's back yard. 

We hit up one of our favorite spots the Train Park in Scottsdale.

 The kids liked opening up their Valentines day presents from Grandma,  can't go wrong with chocolate with these kids.

 Here I am looking huge pushing the kids around

We took Annaliese up on her offer to watch the kids Valentines day afternoon while we went to the most yummy mexican restaraunt!  (not pictured)  We had a lovely dinner of cheesey fondue and chocalate fondue goodness after the kids were in bed and/or watching a movie upstairs.  We stocked up on Blue Bell ice cream (good thing I didn't know about the dietary guidelines yet for gestinational diabetes)  And generally had a relaxing, warm fun weekend.  My only regret is that I was unbelievably pooped at the end of each relaxing day and couldn't stay awake to play games.

 On our way back we stopped in Vegas at our fave places -  Bellagio Gardens and fountain show.

  On our way home Ryan got a phone call from IHC that would change things up for us, more about that in the next post!