Kate is Two!

Kate had so much fun on her birthday this year. She still talks about her party saying, "cake, ice keem, outside, sing happy bid-day, pesents!"
We invited all our nearby family for pizza, cake and icecream, and Kate had a great time playing with her cousins and aunts and uncles. The weather was perfect!
Very much a girly girl, Kate loves putting on pretty dress-ups. She was very excited about this Princess Rapunzel dress with matching shoes
I love the following video because it was so cute how happy she got when we started singing "happy birthday". And we were all very impressed that she legitimately blew out her own candles!
. Here she is post-cake:

A few things about Kate at this age: Her vocabulary has exploded and she loves to have 'conversations' with us. She is very calculated when she speaks and will take her time to form sentences and express herself. She loves to say prayers, especially when Finn helps her. She is very good at saying please and thank you. She is excited about her baby brother on the way and frequently points to my belly and says, "baby, pop out, two monts, mom?" and I say "yes, soon you'll have a baby brother" and she replies, "oh, cool mom." She worships Finn and copies EVERYTHING he does. She especially loves the 'snuggle time' she gets with him at night before I make her get in her own bed and go to sleep. She is potty training (totally her own idea) and actually tells me when she needs to go...still working on staying dry all day though. Her tantrums are no longer cute, but she is very good at accepting consequences and often says sorry without being prompted. She is such a fun little girl and we are constantly amazed at her cuteness and sweet personality. Happy Birthday Kate!

Lagoon Trip

Since Aaron got the offer for his new job so quickly, we ended up having some extra cash from our severence and knew we had to celebrate. So we took the kids to Layton for the weekend, stayed in a hotel and went to Lagoon!
This was the first ride we went on. They were both so good while they waited in line.

We had such a great time. Since there were no other adults with us, Aaron and I didn't get to go on any big roller coasters but we didn't care; it was so much fun watching the kids experience all the rides and soak up the wonder of it all. I have so many fond memories of Lagoon as a kid and re-living it with my own kids was just a total blast.
On the train -- it was actually pretty cool! I forgot how many animals they have to see.

It was so cute watching them sit side-by-side on the rides together. Click on this one to see just how much Kate is enjoying it.

Kate got her nap in while the rest of us enjoyed a nice break on the ferris wheel. After that we got some dinner, watched one of the musical shows and hit a couple more rides before packing it in.

We got back to our hotel just in time for free cookies and milk in the lobby -- such a great end to the day! The kids were so excited about the hotel but calmed down quickly after a bath because they were so exhausted. At this point, Kate was still in a crib so we brought our playpen for her but she really wanted to lay by Finn so we let her. We thought it was so cute that she just snuggled next to him and went to sleep when she'd never even slept in a regular bed before.

The next day, we enjoyed the yummy breakfast at our hotel, went swimming in the pool and visited the Hill AFB Aerospace Museum before heading back to Orem. It was so wonderful to do something fun with our little family that we normally wouldn't have the means to do.

Blessed

On May 1st, I dropped Aaron off at work so I could run some errands. Typical day. About an hour later, he called to tell me he had been laid off.

Just like that.

Novell has been recently acquired and as a result, hundreds of jobs were cut company-wide, with no regard to performance or seniority. Aaron's entire team was slashed. My brother Tom worked in Aaron's department and was also let go with the majority of his team.

Aaron actually took the news pretty well. We were offered a severence to lessen the blow, but suddenly we didn't have medical insurance and I am pretty much a ticking time-bomb of medical expenses right now. If we wanted to keep the coverage we had through Novell it would cost us $1500/month!!! Yeah, OK. I'll go discover the cure for baldness and then I'll sign right up for that.

So I started filling out all kinds of Medicaid applications and seriously considered going home to Canada for the summer to have the baby. We felt like something good was going to come...but after a while that feeling starts to fade.

Then Aaron got an interview for a job that we were sure was the answer to our prayers. His second interview went really well and one of his former collegues just got hired so he was a shoe-in. We started making all kinds of plans and were just waiting for the offer to come.

Then the rug was pulled out from under us when he got a rejection email. Wow, we were really depressed. I have never been wrong about something I was so sure of. It felt like that was our one shot to come out of this thing ahead, and it was gone.

Only two days later though, he got an interview at Henry Schein, a medical supply company whose Utah office deals with software. He got a second interview the following week and we sat on pins and needles for 6 long days while we waited to hear the news. Words cannot express the relief I felt when he got the call offering him the position. This new job is closer, has better hours and significantly better pay than the one we were originally hoping for.

I am still in awe of the hand of the Lord in our lives during this time. We thought we knew what we wanted, we were sure of it. And when we didn't get it, we felt so let down. But now we KNOW it is by the Lord that we are led. I would have never asked for this experience, but I am so completely thankful for it and will rely on it when trials come in the future.

Aaron has been at his new job for about a month now and is really liking it! It is very busy now while he learns the ropes, but he already feels so much more fulfilled than his previous job and sees the potential to advance in the company...which is something he never really saw at Novell. Thank you SO MUCH for the prayers and support from so many of you. We were stressed, but we felt loved. And now we just feel really really blessed.