July, Part I

All right!  Let's dissect some more missing time...  Here is what I have from the first 18 days of July...

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FB - July 2 at 7:35pm: Ava walked! It was totally legit, too! She was holding onto the coffee table, turned toward me, let go and stood there, then took 3 steps over to me! :D - YAY!  It was AWESOME!  It took her a WHILE before she was steady, but now she's running around and I can barely keep up with her!

FB -  July 6 at 3:51pm: Ava's new trick: Blowing raspberries. Favorite time to do this: Mealtime. .... :P - Oh, THAT was fun!  Fortunately, she only did that for about 3 days.... but blowing raspberries has a completely different affect when you have food in your mouth... :P


Photo - July 10 at 10:54pm: Random picture of Josie.

FB - July 11 at 4:42pm: The downside to having a baby who sleeps 10.5 hrs at night: nap time is nearly nonexistent... - Oh, boy, Sara... you have no idea!

FB - July 11 at 11:38pm: FRIENDS WITH KIDS: How do you transition a kid from nursing/baby food to cow's milk/table food? Ava is nearly a year old now, and I'm wondering how this is supposed to work. I can't imagine you should just go, "BAM! No more of anything you're used to! Here's some whole milk and a sandwich! Good luck, considering you still only have 2 teeth!" Thoughts/ideas? What's worked for you? - I got a lot of great advice, and Ava did just fine with the transition.  She doesn't eat NEARLY enough grains, so I'm working on that.. But she's got 8 teeth now, and she's learning how to use them!  She LOVES fruit!  She'd eat nothing but fruit all day long if I let her!

Photo - July 12 at 10:14am: Ava at story time at the library!  The lady who runs story time (in the cropped pants there) blows bubbles for the kids at the end of each session, and Ava LOVES it!  She always ends up with dried bubble soap in her hair, but that's fine!

FB - Suzi Grant - July 12 at 3:10pm:  Holy 8 years of being married, Batman!! I can't believe it's been that long. Hope y'all are enjoying the ride! Talk to you soon. Can we do math? O:) - Jason and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary this year!  And I use the word "celebrated" VERY loosely!  I think I saw him for 20 minutes that day.  I'm trying to remember if we even celebrated later... I think we might have gotten Chinese or something.  *shrugs*  We'll do something nice for our 10-year. 


Photo - July 13 at 5:22pm: Random picture of Lucy.  Sometimes when we go on walks, she gets tired and just lays down... *eye roll*

Photo - July 13 at 7:58pm: Ava says, "Mamamamama... is it bath time?"

Photos - July 14 at 9:40pm: So, for about 3 months, we didn't have access to our little storage room attached to the building.  The people who lived here before us (who are related to the owners) still had their stuff in there.  So we had a bunch of broken-down boxes stacked against the wall in Ava's room..  Mr. Kiggerz was having fun with them, but then Ava came over to "get" him...  So he escaped and perched juuuust high enough that she couldn't reach.  Butt head... ;)

FB - July 15 at 12:54am: Am I the only one who feels like they can TOTALLY wait to see Harry Potter when it comes to redbox? I've been over it since before book 7 came out... -  Ha!  I was kinda surprised I didn't get lynched when I posted this!  I dunno...  I'm just so OVER Harry Potter... I wonder when it's coming to redbox though.  I wouldn't MIND seeing it.  And in my defense, I haven't been to the movies in MONTHS.  I didn't even get to go see The Help!  I AM going to go see Breaking Dawn, part 1 though.  It comes out ON my birthday, and I'm getting a sitter.  And I might go eat Chinese buffet by myself while I'm at it.  Yummmmmmmmmm....

FB - July 16 at 8:42pm: For dinner, we're doing grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup Mexican style: cheese quesadillas and black bean soup (which has a can of tomatoes in it). I used dried black beans, which I soaked and cooked earlier today.... First time using dry beans.... Wish us luck! - YUM!  So I have a ton of bags of dried beans, but I've never cooked with them before, so this was an experiment.  The soup turned out really yummy!I've made it once since then, too.  The cheese quesadillas go GREAT with it, too!  If you're interested in making the soup, HERE is the recipe.  I couldn't find veggie stock, so I used chicken stock, but the original recipe is vegetarian.  I subbed half a bag of dried black beans for the 2 cans.  A bag of beans really only makes about 3.5 cans of beans, but since it's a soup, exact measurements aren't so important... and I wanted to be able to make it twice!


Photo - July 18 at 9:55pm:  The beginning of Ava's climbing phase.  It's getting worse and worse and worse the older she gets...  (Jason is JUST outside the picture to the left, in case you're wondering... or worried....) The color on this picture is TERRIBLE.  I don't even know which onesie she's wearing, because she doesn't have one THAT color!  And that's Jason's iPhone 4!  Just saying... My phone's camera may have worse resolution, but at least the color is okay!

Anyway, I'm not sure what all this tells you... That we're boring and don't really do anything?  Probably.  The bubbles are a highlight of MY week, too... ;)

At the Park

Illinois has a TON of parks.  There's lots and lots of green around these parts.  One of our first ventures into the nearby outdoors was to a little park near our house.  We could see it on Google Maps, but things are always different on the ground.  The weather was PERFECT, and it was a cute little area!  And the first time Ava had ever crawled around on grass!  She had a ton of fun!

Ava climbed on Josie a bit...

Jason and the dogs hung out...

And, of course, Ava managed to find all sorts of exciting things, like dead leaves and a stick!

It was obviously very fascinating...  She's studying that stick like it's a science experiment...

This park is really just a little green area surrounded by some condos... like maybe the developer was required to have a certain amount of green area included in his plan, so there's a communal park for the residents to walk their dogs or whatever.  There's a little playground, a "sand" volleyball court, a couple of picnic tables, and the green area with a gravel-ish path around it.

Down the street about a half mile are a couple of even bigger areas with these huge fountains that shoot a ton of water straight up in the air in the middle of man-made stock ponds (pic below), big pavilions you can use for various reasons (I've seen family and church BBQs and kids birthday parties complete with bouncy castle), and REAL dog-walking paths.  One of them has this HUGE HILL that is used as seating for an amphitheater.  They had live music every Wednesday all summer...

I took this picture in October, so pretend the trees are green...
We walk around this pond all the time!  SO pretty!

We looked around (online) a LOT for places to live, and we're pretty stoked we ended up in such a nice area!  Plus, we're just down the street from the police station (which is attached to the amphitheater), so hopefully people wouldn't be stupid enough to break in/steal stuff in an area where the response time is under a minute.  :P  We FEEL safe, anyway!

And did I mention that we're half a mile from the beautiful, brand-new public library?  :)

Yay!  :)

The Move

I created this blog in June (I think), but I haven't written a real post yet... and now that I am, I'm going to keep you all in suspense about our lives at present and start back at the beginning.... *cue flashback music*  (NOTE: I just figured out I can pre-date each post, so I'm going to have the dates correspond to when these things actually happened.  I guess that means if there's something I want to blog about NOW, I can!  So perhaps not as much suspense as I originally intended?)

I was born on cold November morning in Utah at 2:30 am... ok, ok, that's true, but I'm kidding, of course.  I wasn't even a Ferrell then!  (Be honest.  Who didn't see that one coming? Srsly.)

What I really meant was my husband, Jason, FINALLY finished school!  After 4 years at BYU and 4 years at Texas A&M, during all of which we were married, he finally walked across the stage in all his fancy-schmancy robes and got a diploma tube... and it was over!  Now he is officially a veterinarian!  WOO!

Not even huge robes can make
Jason look fat.  He sucks.

This year, he is doing an (optional) internship at a couple of large emergency clinics near Chicago!  He's worked like a dog for pretty much a dog's salary.  (yay.)  Suffice it to say, this is a pretty big change from Texas!  So, I thought our drive up would be a good place to start.

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I was a bit worried about driving cross-country with a 10-month-old, and she DID cry a bit, of course.  But for the most part, Ava was a TROOPER!  And when I say "trooper," I, of course, mean "sleeper."  She slept for almost 2 days straight, including at night in the Motel 6 in Springfield, MO.  Here's a picture I snapped over my shoulder while I was driving... hence the stellar quality.  Be impressed.  Be very impressed.  *snort*

Lethargic babies are the best babies...

We saw some surprisingly beautiful scenery.  I say surprisingly because, having never been to this part of the country, I wasn't expecting it to be so green!  Although much of it looked like a tornado would hit at any moment.  Maybe they filmed Twister in southern Illinois?

Top Left: Beautiful Sky in MO
Top Right: Southern IL Farmland (à la Twister)
Bottom Left: Best Picture I took of the St. Louis Gateway Arch, MO
Bottom Right: Long story.  The arch is behind the 20 MPH sign.  See it?

Sorry I didn't take a picture of the Motel 6.  I'm sure you're heartbroken.  We had a few snags along the way:

1. There was a huge chunk of the tread missing from one of the trailer's tires, so we had to get a tire changed before we left my parents' house.
2. At one point, when we stopped for gas, Jason couldn't get the U-Haul started again.  Note: It's best to start a U-Haul when it's in neutral, not in gear.
3. Jason got a ticket in Oklahoma.  Stupid speed traps.  He was coasting down a hill in a massive vehicle.  Of course he got going a bit too fast... but it's not like he was going to even be able to keep that up on level ground, weighed down like he was.  That was super-frustrating... Moving costs enough as it is!

Anyway, we got here, met the landlady and our ward-member/real-estate-agent lady and signed the lease and a bunch of "village" paperwork (we live in a "village"... *eye roll*).  Then a few minutes later, a bunch of the young men from the ward, their leaders, and the missionaries came over to help us unload.  After a bit of a delay getting the car trailer off the truck, I swear the 17-foot U-Haul was unpacked in 15 minutes.  If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't believe it.  Make a mental note: Wednesday night is a great night to move in!  Some of the leaders and the elders even stuck around to help us put a couple of our Ikea furniture pieces back together, namely the crib.

Speaking of cribs, I noticed that our local Ikea has stopped carrying cribs.  I believe this is because they are SO UNBELIEVABLY HARD to assemble, they probably figured it just wasn't worth it...

Anyway, soon the pets were getting settled in.....

Top Left: Lucy and Josie, curled up together on the dog bed
Top Right: Mr. Kiggerz inspecting the local water supply
Bottom Left: Mr. Kiggerz: King of the Closet
Bottom Right: Dogs interrupted by Ava and her Cardboard Box of Toys
Noticeably Absent: Samurai Jack... Dork kitty.

Oooh, and speaking of closets, check out the built-ins in ours!

Be jealous.  I just wish they were ours to keep, not just to rent.  They're awesome!  They extend all along one side of the bedroom.  This is my side of the closet, and it extends to the left with another set of double-fold doors for Jason's side.  His is the mirror of mine, except he doesn't have the tall skinny section (for dresses), just more area divided in half like the right side of mine.  Then to the left of that is a smaller linen closet.  It's awesome.

It took us a while to get to feeling settled.  It helped that Jason didn't have to start work until a week-and-a-half after we got here.  It gave us a chance to get things set up (like the internet) and buy things we needed... like 3 more floor lamps.  (What's up with not having central lighting in the living room and bedrooms?)  We still have a few boxes around... and no pictures on the wall.  I think it took us 9-12 months to put pictures on the wall in Texas.  We'll see if I even bother here!

Oh.  One more thing of note.  We moved from a duplex with a fenced yard to a condo with no yard.  And we have 2 dogs.  We would have loved to find a place with a yard, but by moving into this place, we're saving over $300 a month in rent alone.  So that means (1) I get to take the dogs and baby out every 3-5 hours to go potty (which actually isn't as annoying as I thought it was going to be), and (2) we have new dog kennels to keep the dogs in when we're not here, so they don't destroy the place.  Ava really likes to climb in them.  All the time.  I don't get it, but it's better than her splashing in the dogs' water bowls.  Plus, it's great incentive to keep the dog blankets clean!

Awww!  I forgot that when we moved here, Ava
wasn't walking yet!  What a cute crawling baby!

That's it for this episode.  Tune in next time when the Ferrells brave Illinois traffic, find out Garmins sometimes lie, torture small children, and eat some Chicago-style pizza.  And I'm only sort-of kidding about the torture!  Muahahahaha....

Sara