Happy Halloween!!

Here are some pictures of our adventures at the pumpkin patch and Carter and Ally in their costumes.

This is Carter at the ward trunk or treat eating a cupcake

I had a lot of fun making this costume out of our moving boxes! I think I might hang it in Carter's room for a while.

Adios Utah (warning: long post)

 We are officially New Yorkers. Weird. Here's how it all went down.  In August Mike flew out to New York for a job interview with a company called Sodexo.  He had a connection with the general manager there so we always new that if nothing else worked out, we could probably count on a job in New York. At first I didn't want to go but the more we looked into it the more "ok" with it I became. Well nothing else worked out and 3 weeks after he flew out to New York they offered him a job and asked if he could start 2 weeks later.  We knew it would take a while to get there so we had one week to pack our entire apartment and make plans to move to New York.  It was a crazy week but we got it all done. And here are some pictures of our adventure across the country.  Carter got to ride in the moving truck with Mike and he LOVED it! He was the best little travel buddy for Mike and he didn't cry once! It was great bonding time for the two of them :)

 Carter in the truck.  What a cute kid!

 I followed behind him in our little Carolla with Ally.  The first day we drove to Denver and spent the weekend with my parents.  While driving I decided to take pictures of my view every day to see the change in scenery as we went.  This is Utah, of course. As dead as can be.  

 My mom drove with us from Denver to New York so I could have some help with Ally as we drove. It was nice to have my mommy with me as we went through this big change. 

We decided to stop in Nauvoo. It was the off season for Nauvoo so the entire town was deserted. It was weird to be some of the only visitors there.  The entire town closes down at 7 pm during the off season so we struggled to find dinner and breakfast in the morning.  Good thing the hotel we were in had a kitchen!

This is Carter swimming in the pool at our last hotel. I was going to take lots of pictures but I guess I didn't or else I can't find them. I'm not sure, maybe some are on my moms camera.  Anyway, it was a fun little trek across the country.  We did it in 5 days. Our first stop was in Omaha, Nebraska. Second stop was in Nauvoo, Illinois. Third stop was in Elkhart, Indiana where we ate the best Chinese food I have had in a long time.  And our last stop was in Erie, Pennsylvania where we found a QDOBA!!!  I couldn't even believe it when we got off on our exit for the hotel.  Mike called and told me there was a Qdoba and I was in heaven. For those of you who don't know about  Qdoba, google it :)

We also stopped in Kirtland, Ohio and took a tour of the Kirtland Temple. I'd been there before but the temple was closed so we couldn't go it. It was a little weird and the tour was a little cold to me. That's the best way I can describe it.  I think if the LDS church owned the temple it would have an entirely different spirit to it. But it was still interesting to learn more about it.  

The drive wasn't all that bad. I was so glad to have my mom with me and it made the trip go a lot smoother.  Ally did ok. She was so sick of her car seat that every time I put her in it she would start to scream. Poor girl. She had a lot of melt downs and I'm pretty sure she was going through a growth spurt while we were driving here because she was always so hungry.  But alas we made it!

Now, onto the more exciting part of our move to Geneva.  Before we moved out here we found this house on craigslist.  I contacted the landlord and after about 35 emails, because she never wanted to talk on the phone, we decided we would sign a month to month lease so we could all drive out together and have a place to stay.  We thought, "we can live in anyting for a month".  Well, good thing we only signed a month to month contract because the house was totally misrepresented in the pictures we saw.  The next day we went and looked at another house that we renting for the same price just to see what the standard of living was like in Geneva. The new house was a hundred times better so we decided to not unpack boxes and move into that one in a month. So I called our landlady to let her know that we didn't feel comfortable in her house and we that we had found a new place to live and would be out by the end of the month. We thought would be ok since we were only on a month to month contract. But then she came back and told us that we needed to give her 60 days notice and would be required to pay rent through November unless she could find new renters before then. Blah blah blah...to make a VERY long story short, we have had a very difficult time working with her. It has been such a nightmare and I can't wait for it to be over! We are still moving out at the end of the month and because she is a hater, we will have to pay Novembers rent even though we won't be living there.  Below are some pictures I took which don't really show how nasty and crappy this place really is. 

 In this picture all you see is the broken blind. But if you were to look closer at the floors, you would see caked in dirt and scuffed up baseboards. But this blind broke when my mom touched it to open it. When I told the landlady that the blind broke she got mad and told me the blinds were there for our convenience and then threatened to come take them all down and leave us with nothing.

 This is what we are living with right now. Nothing is unpacked.  It's been a long month.

 Here is one example of the nasty floors. There are old radiators all around the house that haven't been cleaned in years and therefore there is a lot of old dirt all around them.

Like I said, these pictures really don't do a good job of showing how gross this place really is.  If you can tell, there is a lot of caked on dirt here.  And this is what ALL of the floors look like. 

 Can you imagine Ally crawling all over this??? SICK!! 

 All of the windows are old and dirty as well.  Lot's of water stains and dirt.

When the landlady painted she spilt a lot of it on the floor and never cleaned it up.  All over the house you'll see paint spots on the floor or the walls.

Needless to say, I can't wait to move into a clean house where I can feel comfortable and make it a home for our family. What a pain it has been to deal with this.  One day we will look back and laugh, I hope.  But aside from all the headaches, we have met a lot of really nice people here and the area is absolutely gorgeous! We live right by a lake where we can go on nice walks. I think we will really love it here once we get settled.  

Busy Summer

There's a lot I need to update on but our internet connection is not the greatest right now so I'm just going to put a few pictures up. We had such a busy and fun summer, here are a few of the fun things we did:

- Welcomed Ally into our family
- Spent 3 wonderful weeks in Colorado
-Mike visited his family in Minnesota for a week
-Andrew Taylor came home from his mission!!!!!!!
-Had a family reunion in Logan
-Mike graduated college!!!
-Blessed little Ally
-Celebrated 4 years of marriage!
-Moved to upstate New York

The last one was/is kind of a big deal so I will make a special post just for that one. In the meantime...here are a few pictures, in no particular order :)

So it looks like Carter is pulling her head off but really he is being sweet with his little sister.

This is Carter and his cousins coveting the "trash" truck at Grandma's house.

The Graduate!!

All things must come to an end....

And for Mike, it was his college test taking days. He took his last final on June 17th and we made a cake to celebrate!!!

Ally Mae

I should probably mention that I am not 42 weeks pregnant as the little countdown timer indicates. But every time I sit down to blog about my delivery, I realize that all the pictures are on Mike's computer and he takes that computer to work every day. So, pictures to come, I promise. But for now, just the story will have to do. There really isn't much to tell because it all happened so fast. Allison Mae was born on June 2nd at 6:07 am. A whole 2 weeks and one day before her due date. It totally caught me off guard and just the night before I was telling a good friend that I was in no hurry and was actually not feeling totally ready for 2 kids. Well, Ally must have heard me say that and thought she'd pull a quick one on me because seriously about 2 hours after I had that conversation, at 2 a.m. because I couldn't sleep, I was sitting in our recliner and my water broke. (Don't worry, I was sitting on one of Carter's pee pads from potty training, so the recliner was not harmed). I sat there in denial for a good minute and then decided to get up and go tell Mike. The second I told him he was on the phone with my little brother so he could be here with Carter while we went to the hospital. But I was still in denial. I couldn't believe what was happening because it was so early. After about 3 minutes of denying that I was actually in labor the contractions kicked in pretty strong so it was a good thing David showed up cuz we needed to get to the hospital quickly. Once we got there I got my epidural because I'm a whimp and can't handle ANY part of labor. 4 hours and 3 pushes later, Ally was here. It was a breeze delivering her compared to Carter which was so nice. It was such a surreal moment and while I was totally unprepared for her to come I kind of knew what to expect as far as delivery went which was nice because it made it so much easier to enjoy her little spirit entering the world. They let me hold her immediately and I got to hang on to her for a good half hour before they took her to the nursery to clean her up. It was one of the greatest 1/2 hours of my life. It's amazing how much love was in that room, she is the sweetest baby in the world and I'm so lucky she is all mine.