July GBOMB

It only took me two days to post the monthly GBOMB versus last month when it took me two weeks. July went by so fast and was full of family visits. I'm glad we filled our July up because August is looking pretty blank so far. So here is the Good, the Bad, and what's been On My Brain for the month of July.

G O O D
+Our 4th of July was so fun. There were fireworks here in Vail on July 3rd and then we drove to my mom's community pool on the 4th to go swimming. The kids love to swim and have been begging to go back to Grandma's pool ever since.
+Matt and Mimi (plus Josh, Jude, and Adele) were in Arizona to see their new house because they're moving here from Seattle in a few months. We stayed a night in Tempe to hang out and they came to us for a day trip. While they were here, we went to Colossal Cave for the first time (it's about 10 minute from our house) and then all got Bahama Bucks after the hot, humid walk through the cave. We even saw a Coatimundi in the parking lot of Colossal Cave.
+We were in our new ward for about a month before our boundaries changed. With this new change and many callings empty, I got called as a Mia Maid advisor. I've never had a calling in the Young Women's program and I'm really excited to work with the girls in our ward. (For those not familiar, wards are what we call local congregations in the LDS church and Mia Maids is an organization in the youth program that encompasses girls from age 14-15.)
+We got a brand new niece! Her name is Scout and she was a complete surprise! My sister-in-law Stephanie managed to keep her entire pregnancy a secret. We didn't know she was pregnant until she FaceTimed us AFTER the baby was born. We already love her so much.
+Speaking of our brand new niece, Stephanie is absolutely insane and drove by herself from California to Arizona with all 5 of her kids (with Scout being only a week old)! I don't know how she managed it, but we're so glad we got to hang out with them and meet new baby Scout. Once we found out she was in Tempe, we decided that day to get an AirBnb for the night and do a quick overnight stay with them. We had so much fun in the tiny condo we found and managed to take seven kids swimming twice in the 24 hours we were there.
+Michelle and Great Grandma Snow also visited Tempe. They drove down to Tucson with Andrew's mom and all of Stephanie's crew to see us for a day. We love when people come all the way out to our house in the middle of the desert.

B A D
+We did a lot of quick trips and saw a lot of family, all of which is on the good list. The bad part of this is late nights with kids who end up grumpy for lack of sleep and thrown off schedules.
+Andrew was out of town for work. All three kids decided to be little terrors while he was gone. Those four days felt like years. I'm guessing Eliza is going through a growth spurt or maybe getting some teeth. As for Taylor and Olive, I think they're plotting ways to drive me to the brink. It's the only explanation.
+Andrew's car is dead. We're replacing the engine because it's more cost effective for us to buy a new engine for our reliable Toyota Corolla versus buying a new car. It's not the worst thing in the world, but definitely not a cost we were anticipating. We have been without a second car for two weeks now and it looks like we have another week left of being homebound while Andrew is at work.

O N  M Y  B R A I N
+Mesoamerica. I realize that seems pretty random, but I have always been fascinated with Mesoamerican culture, particular pre-columbian Mayan history. I've been reading a few books on it recently including the Popol Vuh and watching lectures by archeologists like George Stuart, David Stuart, and William Saturno so I've been thinking about it a lot. It's one of the things I get really nerdy about. I've decided that one day, when the kids are older, I'm going to go on a excavation trip in Mexico or Guatemala.
+I only have three more classes left until I have my Associates in General Studies. I don't know if I've really talked about my dilemma in picking a degree on here before, but here's the cliff notes version: I want a graphic design degree. It wasn't available online when I started, but the program I was in was new and there were talks of that potentially being available eventually. So I started a web design and development degree since that involved some graphic design work and could easily morph into the degree I wanted if it ever became available. I took a few graphic design classes that I enjoyed, but the bulk of it was a variety of different coding classes. I'm not good at coding. I can get by, but it's really difficult for me. With many more coding classes in my future that I was dreading, I decided to change course. I had enough credits to get a Web Design Certificate so I cashed in on that, but there wasn't any degrees of interest to me so I decided to get an Associates in General Studies and then hopefully be able to decide what I wanted for my Bachelors. Being only three classes away and having no desire for any of the Bachelor degrees available, I'm not sure what to do. I could transfer somewhere else, but my current tuition is highly discounted and will continue at the same low cost as long as I attend. I'm not sure I can justify transferring somewhere else and paying way more to get a degree that I probably won't use for much.

June GBOMB

Man, is this post late. It couldn't be skipped though since it's the only post that I seem to get around to. Without further ado, here's a quick rundown of the Good, the Bad, and what's been On My Brain for the month of June.

G O O D
+Eliza had her baby blessing on June 1st. We invited our immediate family to our new house so everyone got to be there for Eliza's blessing while also getting to see our new place.
+We broke ground on our backyard. We have all of the brush cleared out and are now waiting to hear back on a few estimates to fence it in.
+My dear friend Hannah got married! I drove up to Saint Johns for her bridal shower on Friday morning, her sealing in the Snowflake temple Saturday morning, and her reception Saturday night. It was fun to see Hannah as well as Jenna and Cassidy. We don't see each other often and we're all terrible at keeping in touch, but whenever we get together, it's like we've never been apart. I was also happy to be able to be back in Saint Johns since I don't have very many excuses to go back, even if it was just for a short while.
+We have loved watching the wildlife around our house. We see lots of quails, roadrunners, coyotes, and rabbits. I've been trying to film little clips of all of our animal visitors so I can put together a video.

B A D
+I had a cold in June which was no fun at all. Lots of body aches, sore throat, terrible congestion. Taylor and Olive had quick runny noises that only lasted 2 days which was good. But as hard as I tried not to breath on Eliza, she got it full force (I mean how could she not when I hold her 24/7). We all seemed to have recovered, but when I went on my solo weekend trip, my sickness reappeared. Sore throat, congestion, headaches. I think it's from my lack of sleep. It's been rough as of late and my body is not happy about it. The good thing about getting it when I was up at my friend's wedding is I was staying in a hotel and got two nights of uninterrupted sleep (my first full nights of sleep since Eliza was born). I got better a lot faster than my first time around. Hopefully we can avoid getting sick for the rest of the year (hahahahahaa).
+We have a wolf spider problem. We ordered some chemicals and sprayed our house so hopefully that takes care of them.

O N  M Y  B R A I N
+I waited too long to do this GBOMB so I can't remember what was on my mind in June. I'll do better on my recap in July... maybe.

May GBOMB

May was spent moving into our new house. Not much happened besides settling into our new place so this is going to be a short GBOMB and more of a photo dump from the month of May.

G O O D
+Before we left California, we wanted to do a fun Disney event that we hadn't done before - a character breakfast. We did Goofy's Breakfast and it was so much fun. It was also our last day spent in Disneyland as annual passholders. I'm thinking of writing up a post about our experience having an annual pass.
+Moving went as smoothly as moving can possibly go (so still stressful, but nothing went wrong). We actually unpacked and got things in order in our new house relatively quickly compared to some of our other moves.
+The kids are thrilled with the new house. Taylor and Olive love their new rooms and being outside in the desert and most of all, the chimney for Santa to come down. It's fun to see the silly things kids notice and get excited about. Everything is new and entertaining for them.
+We have plans to break ground on our backyard! It's going to be many, many, many years before we finish everything that we want (i.e. grass, pool, a chicken coop, sand volleyball, other grand schemes) because landscaping is pricey. But we will hopefully have our acre cleared, graded, and fenced by the end of this year.

B A D
+There actually isn't anything I can think of to put in the bad category. Maybe just the struggle of parenting three kids? It's hard when Olive is screaming in the other room while I'm trying to get Eliza down for a nap or when Taylor is begging me to cut up an apple for him, but I'm busy feeding Eliza. I don't have enough hands because my hands are always holding Eliza, but I still have two other children demanding help. It helps to know this is only a season and soon Eliza will be able to sit up on her own and won't need me 24/7. But then we'll run into our next challenge because parenting never ends. Haha.

O N  M Y  B R A I N
+Honestly, nothing is on my brain. My brain is barely hanging on. Newborns and lack of sleep really take a toll on my ability to think. See thoughts on mom brain in my March GBOMB post.