Now that Above Average Joe is working again the kids and I have a lot of time together. Kiya has a new bumbo that she loves...
Garrin likes it too...
...for several reasons...
Kiya has an exersaucer (thanks to a generous neighbor) and she loves playing with it...
...almost as much as Garrin does! 
Stats are as follows: She weighs 13.4 lbs and she is 25" long. She smiles, giggles, coos, blows bubbles like no ones business and has the family pretty much tied around her little finger.
For those who do not have or have had 4th graders let me show you the fun we have! They are learning about Utah's geographical mapping. To really help the kids learn this they get to make a cake! Luckily, Utah is shaped easily enough that all you have to do is cut out a square of a standard cake and you have UT! Then we just had to frost the 3 different sections to represent different parts and then Trevin got to take a bunch of candy to class to "make" things like the rivers, lakes and moutains of Utah. I don't know about you guys but I'd probably remember UT a lot better if I knew it in chocolate!
This picture is the night before school with just the frosting done representing the Great Basin in green, Mountain Range in red and Plateaus and rivers in blue. I particularly love this picture because of Trevin's blue teeth.
This was the finished product when he got home from school!
The Reces & Kisses were melted from the walk home in the sun but Trevin tells me it made it look even more like the real plateaus...so he was happy about it! Yummy!
We had a fun Labor Day weekend. It was quite labor intensive. We were able to visit Above Average Joe's parents in Delta to kick off our weekend because our little man kept climbing up the drawers in our kitchen and finally broke one. So daddy had to head down to the family wood shop to fix it. Any excuse is a good one though to visit. We love it down there and they love having the kids there.
We only stayed one night though. When we got back I phoned my parents and they were heading down to St. George to their newly purchased condo to move some furniture and spend some time with my sister who is getting her nursing degree. We decided to go down with them...why not? Just a few more clothes into the still packed bags was not a big deal. When we got all funned out in St. George we headed back home but not before going to Richfield to visit my grandparents (on my dad's side). Just enough time to have dinner and a minor visit, but again, worth it. We were all over Utah for the weekend. It was a lot of travel but great to see those we don't get to see regularly.
While we were in Delta I did get a few pictures of the kids that are pretty funny. Our Miss Kiya is so freakin' independent already that she won't sit in anything that reclines so the rocker was out. Well, grandma has an old walker and Kiya loved it. She spent a lot of time in there and we just wheeled her around with us. She looks too tiny for it, but I promise she was thrilled to be in it!
And Garrin discovered that Grandpa Western had this great stick that made it really easy for him to take him to wherever he wanted. Every time Garrin wanted Grandpa he would go grab his cane and take it to him and then lead him all over. Joe's dad was a great sport about it. I just kept thinking...talk about the blind leading the blind...
Thankfully Above Average Joe has FINALLY received a phone call that made him happy. He has been offered a job at Symantec. Officially, it is a temporary job but Above Average Joe is crafty and will do everything he can to make himself indispensable. It came at a good time because that unemployment stuff was just about to run out...
Thank you all for keeping us in your thoughts and prayers and helping Joe get his resume out to everyone. He will continue to search for jobs that may be a bit more permanent but this gives our family another few months of non-panic, which is just nice.
Dinner time can be stressful, at least for me. There are some days that I plan a meal and can execute it well and most the time it's edible. That's when I plan ahead, follow a receipe of sorts and have all the ingredients at hand. But those nights that I have not planned, I can stare into our pantry/fridge/freezer and just be completely dumfounded. It's the same thing that we women go through when we have a special occasion and want to look really good and just stare at our closet as if we have never dressed ourselves before.
Now on those nights, my Above Average Joe can look at that same pantry/fridge/freezer and find ALL KINDS of things to make. I think it's magic, or witch-craft or something. Because I was just there...and there was nothing speaking to me other than a huge sign pointing to take out menus. One of these nights happened last week. We had a bunch of fresh veggies that parents dropped off so Above Average Joe decided to make a "veggie gulosh". I put that in quotes for a very specific reason. I have no idea how to make gulosh (and i don't think joe does either) but that was the term that we agreed upon as he started cooking all of this into a saute pan with oil and seasonings and ground meat. And here's the kicker...it turned out great. Well, not totally great, but not by any fault of Joe's. The cucumber was a bit bitter but that was the veggie's fault, maybe the farmer...but not ours! Otherwise, it was quite tasty and Above Average Joe was SO PROUD of whipping up this little meal that he made me take a picture.
He was mostly proud of how he browned his cheese to perfection. It was good, folks. And this is only one of the reasons that he earns his nickname over and over.
