Happy Feast of Saint Nicholas!

Today we celebrated the feast of Saint Nicholas (Santa). Last night, after all the children were asleep...

And the stockings were hung by the chimney with care...

(This was the first year we ever had a fireplace, and wouldn't you know we did NOT have our stockings...they are in storage in Salt Lake City, so...)

The SOCKS were hung by the chimney with care, and milk and cookies set out. MMMM.

Saint Nicholas came and filled the socks with goodies...

Which the kids all thoroughly enjoyed before Mass this morning.

Mary Grace enjoyed trying a Fig Newton. Too bad it will be her last for a while. We think it gave her hives today.

Happy Feast Day!

And just for fun...MG has been taking small steps for a month now, but crawling was just so much easier. Suddenly last weekend, she decided she like walking better, and has been walking everywhere. Here is a video from last weekend.

For you, Uncle Dany

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend with the Arcara family, who came over from PA to stay with us! I have more photos, but I wanted to post a few for Uncle Dany, who can be seen in the one below, going down the slide with John Paul, um, sort of.

One of the ladies with the baby girls...

Elena and Mary Grace in their matching outfits...

All the kiddos...

And, all for you Uncle Dany! Just a little reminder of the Spades rounds that the ladies won (yes, I dug that paper airplane out of the trash)!

A Week of Travel

Well, we were not quite done with the road trips. Chad was due to fly back to Utah the week of Nov. 12th to be in a wedding. As many of you know, JP does not do well on planes. It makes him sick, retching and vomiting sometimes for months afterwards. As he was doing so well here in CT, we could not risk putting him on a plane to go back for the wedding, so Chad had to make this trip solo.

We decided since he was going to be gone anyway, this would be a good week for me to take the kids to GA to visit family. So, we left on Friday after his work to head down. A few hours in, near Morristown, NJ, our transmission went out. Perhaps we have worked the car a little hard this year, who knows (hahaha). A call to AAA and Enterprise, and 3 hours and a couple of headaches later, we were back on the road in a little Mazda 6. The only way to even fit JP's special car seat in this thing was to put it in the front seat, so we disabled the airbag and went with it. It was the only vehile with 6 seatbelts at any car rental place in the whole town that evening!

We eventually made it to GA on Saturday. On Sunday Chad caught a plane back up to CT and worked on Mon and Tues. Tuesday night he flew to Utah and was there for wedding events on Wed. and Thurs. (the wedding was Thursday night - and congrats Mr. and Mrs. Duncan). Then Chad took the red-eye back to CT to work on Friday, and then took a Friday evening flight back to Atlanta to meet up with us.

We spent Sat. through Tues at my folks home in Rome, and got to visit with Mimi and Peepaw (my parents), Aunt Ash and Uncle Andrew, and MamaRee. We left on Tuesday afternoon to head over to Lawrenceville to stay with Nana and Grandy (Chad's parents) for a few days. We also got to see Uncle Brandon and Aunt Steph, Uncle Noah and cousins Kylie, Coen and Selah. We got back on the road with Chad to drive home on Sat. morning, and stopped for lunch in Ashville, NC at my Aunt Greta and Uncle Bob's house. The kids had a great time with my little cousin, Mariana, but somehow, we came away with NO photos of that afternoon. Uncle Bob, you will have to send us the ones you took with your phone!

We spent the night in Harrisonburg, VA, and then headed north again on Sunday. We stopped in NYC to visit with newly weds, Chan and Alaina Duncan, attend Mass at the cathedral and then finally we made it home that night. Oh, and Monday after work, Chad drove back over to Morristown, NJ to return the rental and pick up our minivan. Oh! What a week!!!

Here are some photos...Enjoy.

Our New "Home"

The hotel apartment has worked out well, although Chad has quite the commute to work. We see him more than we would have in Utah though! We brought a box each for the kids, with their books and one toy, as well as our clothes and a few things we needed, like a rocking chair and JP's blender. The apartment is fully furnished, with a full kitchen. We also have a hot breakfast 7 mornings per week, and dinner 4 nights per week, as well as housekeeping service daily! Chad gets lunch provided everyday at work, so needless to say, I do very little grocery shopping.

Top of the to do list when we arrived was meeting with new doctors (JP needed a post-op visit), finding new therapists, and settling things with the school system. We met our new neurosurgeon after Dr. Walker filled him in, and got to check out Yale Children's Hospital. We found a new pediatrician that we love; she is an MD who emphasizes naturopathic alternatives whenever possible. And we found a new pediatric therapy center - exactly 0.4 miles down the road from us. The schools were a little trickier. We finally had a PPT meeting about JP one month after I first contacted them, and he is in a pre K class that is half special needs, half "normal" children, with lots of behavioral goals. We hope that this will be a good thing, but have to wait and see - and it does not help that we will be moving to another district mid year when we find a more permanent place here.

Connecticut is very pretty. We are so close to the ocean, but you would never know it (except for the sea gulls - but we had those in Utah too). It is very rocky and there are lots of huge trees, like Utah and Georgia combined, with a beach near by. Gorgeous really, but everything winds around and is hard to get to, and my only real complaint so far is how much time we spend in the car. Well, I do miss the chronic sunshine of SLC a little - not that the weather here is bad, but we do get our share of rain.

We have been exploring some. We made it down to the beach front on Long Island Sound one weekend. We have been down to Central Park in NYC. We went apple picking on a nearby farm, and visited a pumpkin patch in Easton. I have found the library and I managed to start school with Luke and Zaya our second week here. There are Catholic churches everywhere, and we have had our choice of whichever best fits the schedule. Usually, we all get up and take Chad to the train station. We try to have him there by 6:35 am. Then the kids and I get to Mass at 7am, and come home to start the school day. JP's pre K and therapy is mixed into the schedule, and the hotel usually picks Chad up from the train station at 5pm to come home. The days apart are a little long right now. Mostly though, we have been enjoying some down time. Weekends are relatively quiet and restful. We are getting to know the area, which will be good when we start looking for a home in the coming months.

Here are some photos of the new digs and some of our adventures here.

The Big Move

After a crazy last night getting the last of the things packed, we left Utah for Connecticut. It was a week long drive, with a few fun stops. The first day was the worst. An hour in, Isaiah threw up on everything! Then it rained and thunderstormed all the way across Wyoming. We stopped in Sydney, Nebraska that night. The next day was better because we got to stop that night in Iowa and see 3 families we know. We also had breakfast with some of them the next morning. Then we went to South Bend, Indiana and visited with friends there too. John and Monica fixed a wonderful home-cooked meal for us (thank you)! I unfortunately don't have photos of that stop because they are all on Chad's phone, but trust me when I say I have cute one's of MG and John Joseph in the bath tub!! Next we stopped in Greensburg, PA, and actually spent 2 nights there with the Arcara family. After that, we went on to Connecticut, arriving Sunday afternoon. Chad spent a lot of time trying to find a place for us, but there were no short term leases available, and we would not sign a long term until after his work evaluation in December. So, we will be residing at a Residence Inn apartment for a while, in a town called Shelton. More on that in another post. Here are some photos of the trip across the country.

Adios to our Utah friends

Our friends, Richard and Angela Green and their kids, threw us a wonderful going away potluck at our Newman Center Parish. Thank you, thank you, guys! With us leaving so quickly, it gave us little time to get together with everyone. This was wonderful because we got to bid farewell to so many people before we left. We lived in Utah for 5 short years, but our friends there were like family and have forever touched our lives. Here are some photos of everyone from that day. We will miss Utah for the beautiful scenery, the awesome children's hospital, but most of all, for all of you!

Packing up to go - our last 2 weeks in Utah

Chad caught a flight back to CT the same day we arrived home from the big trip, as he had to be at work Monday morning. The kids and I worked on packing up. It was harder than usual because about half our stuff was going to storage, about 1/3 we were getting rid of, and the rest needed to fit in our van trailer to come to CT. So, there was a lot of sorting to be done. I am ever so grateful to all the friends who came over to help watch kids and pack, and clean, and also to all of you who stayed over until about midnight the night before we left helping (you know who you are)! It was a busy couple of weeks, full of case closing Dr. appointments, last therapy visits, tearful good byes and final visits with friends, a last trip to the zoo, one last semi-emergency surgery, and an awesome going away potluck - which I will put in a separate post.
Here are some photos from those 2 weeks.