Charlie 21 Months

21 months old but as talkative and dramatic as a high school girl. Charlie is a total chatterbox. From the second he wakes up, life is a constant stream of Charlie narration."  From his crib in the morning after he wakes up from his nap, you can hear Charlie have conversations with himself "Its a train! I see it! Mine monkey. I have it. I kiss him. Hug him." Although hes been stringing many words together, his first complete sentence was "Watch this Blakely!" as he tried to get his dads attention while throwing a ball across the room. Not sure if he associates his Dad with the name Blakely or if it was a phrase he picked up from his little 3 year old cousin but either way, so unexpected and funny.

Since we have moved in with Blakelys parents while we find a place to live, he has been surrounded by other family and cousins and has suddenly become very concerned with identifying the owners of everything. "Daddys keys, mommy's glasses, Charlies cookies." He is already sneaky enough to identify all treats as "Charlie's treats". Right now we are all sharing a room and Charlie is sleeping in a pack-n-play at the foot of our bed and we wake up every morning to hearing "Mommy's toes and Daddy's toes" as he tickles our feet sticking out from the blankets.

Current Loves:

Swings: He would spend hours on the swings if I had the patience. He requests them at least three times a day.

Animals: Charlie has no fear of animals and loves to give hugs and kisses to all the animals he comes in contact. Poor Sadie, Blakely's parents little Shih Tzu is smothered constantly with Charlies attention.

Cars: His complete obsession has taken a whole new level as he can now identify every different construction vehicle and is insistent on bringing a different toy car into the car with him whenever we go out.

Reading and the Library: So glad this little man still loves books. We are at the library at least once a week if not more and his face lights up everytime I tell that is where we are going. As we were leaving yesterday he screamed out in frustration "NO! Books fun!"

Moving

Life has been a bit of a whirlwind the past couple of months. In May Blakely was invited to come to Utah to interview with Instructure, a small tech company in Utah. While Blakely has enjoyed his time with Dell, he was thrilled with the opportunity to work for a small company. He interviewed and received the job offer to begin less than one month later. We felt completely torn because we love our life in Round Rock but we felt this was the right time for Blakely to make a change in career and the mountains have been calling our names since we left Utah 3 years ago.

With our last month, we managed to only be home for few days spending time at a friends wedding in Utah, a few days at the beach in Galveston with Austin friends and a 7 day Carribean cruise just days before our move date. It was a little overwhelming to not have any time to process our huge life change. We are going to miss beautiful Austin and the many wonderful people that became our family for the past three years. Luckily we were able to squeeze in a few get togethers with our dear friends before we began our trek across the country.

A girls night outing to my Kawaii Ice snow cones. My number one craving while pregnant.

Picnic at Old Settlers park with Dell work friends from the FDP.

Last CGAO pool clubhouse party with all of our dear neighbors and ward friends.

Cavenaugh fam and grumpy Charlie.So sad we wont be around when baby boy Cavenaugh comes in Sept.

Reichart fam and stubborn Charlie. Kristen is due just a couple of weeks before I am!

Darling Kellers, McFarlands, and Seely families. No Charlie present as he was currently throwing a fit.

Sweet Allison and naked Charlie. Allison is due with her just one week before me! 

Thomas family. 

Evans fam.Kaytie was one of my dearest friends since 6th grade. She and her husband just moved to Round Rock about a month before we moved. I'm heartbroken we never got to enjoy being neighbors and that I won't be around when her sweet baby boy is due in August. 

Sadly we didn't get pictures with everyone. Lees, Macias, Bradshaws, McBrides, Nields, Hamiltons, and countless others, you are all greatly missed! My heart hurt as we drove away from all these wonderful people.

Luckily our 22+ hour drive went as nearly as smoothly as we could have hoped. The only major flop was when our trusty Mazda Protege started breaking down halfway through day one driving (boo) and we had to end up towing it behind the truck. I was proud of myself for the driving the truck and trailer a huge chunk of the time even though I ended up having major shoulder pain from stress. 

Charlie was a total dream traveler. He LOVED riding in the "big truck" and was totally content pointing out other trucks, trains, and cows. He was however NOT okay anytime I tried to listen my audiobook which meant lots of radio surfing.

Safely in Utah, we are staying with Blakley's parents (bless them and their generosity) while we house hunt. Unfortunately its been a bit of a slow process especially since we had to pause looking for a house while we went car shopping. The past few weeks I have felt somewhat stranded living in someone elses house without my own transportation. One month later, we finally have a new car, a 2010 Hyundai Sonata (which feels like a Fararri compared to what I have been driving the past 7 years) and we are hopefully close to purchasing a home.

Life is a little rocky now as we figure out our long term plans and work to establish routines but we feel very blessed with the opportunity we have to be here and and look forward feeling settled in a place of our own.