no, we're not dead

we haven't fallen off the planet, but have had our lives turned upside down since my last post. since our house sold a week and a half before we were supposed to head home for the holidays we decided to spend said week and a half packing everything up and heading home for good. "packing everything up and heading home for good" might be an easy phrase to type but getting it done was a whole other ball of...(add any word you want that has a deeply negative, foreboding connotation). if you remember, matt is cozy, cozy in his parents home in sl and i am packy, packy by myself with 4 kids, teaching preschool, planning and carrying out the relief society christmas dinner, planning isaac's class christmas party, and getting all christmas shopping and wrapping done, in denver. needless to say, my heart goes out to all my denver friends who kept my kids and i alive that last week. with dinners (thank you stacey, amanda, niki, and audra), late night packing excursions (thank you stacey and tara), extended-extended playdates (thank you christy, niki, tara, and audra), moving box donations and tape (thank you rachael and stacey), 20 or so guys to pack the truck (thank you too many to name but you know who you are), a warm bed our last night with a hot breakfast the next morning (thanks, todd, tara, tori, ellie, brin, and taegan!!), and countless hugs and tears of "you'll be missed". with so many wonderful people that we've grown to love in denver, moving away has been harder than i thought.
now that we're here, our routine is basically that we don't have one. my kids have been out of school since dec 21 and probably won't be going until the beginning of february. salt lake doesn't really feel like home yet, and probably won't until we find a place to call our own. we still feel like transients, leeching food, shelter, and child care off of matt's parents while we figure out where to live. the kids have loved it but it's starting to wear on matt and me. we're looking in south jordan and herriman since matt works so far west. hopefully something will turn up soon. well, enough debbie downer for one post!

we spent the holidays shuffling between holiday functions, missionary homecomings, baby blessings, and spending time with matt's sister and her family visiting from arizona. it was fun to see our kids interact as they don't see their mcqueen cousins half as frequently as their hawes ones. they spent their days sledding, playing mini ping pong, watching mallory's favorite christmas present, high school musical 2, and completing the numerous crafts and activities that matt's mom spends weeks preparing before our arrival (she's grandchildless for the majority of the year, so when there's a chance to "grandmother" she goes all out and we're more than willing to sit back and let her do what she does best). we stayed up late every night playing games and catching up (fortunately, matt and i got the dark downstairs bedroom which facilitates sleeping in all the more).

time spent with my family is a little different. kids bouncing off the walls, pans and pans of food, at least 3 napping children at any given time which makes parents crazy about the bouncing off the walls issue, 2 football games on at any given time, the wii in full swing, "planet earth" on the big screen, some sort of political discussion that anne is having with whomever will listen (love you mom:)), gallons of ice cream, cans of pirouettes and grandpa able to sneak a nap on the couch in the middle of it all. i love my family and we are so looking forward to being a part of it again.

some major events that i haven't blogged about yet but need to...isaac lost his first tooth (well, if you consider "losing" a tooth having brother duncan yank it out of your head), megan went skiing for the first time, matt's grandma ardes turned 97 (i promise to have a grandma ardes post one of these days), eli is talking up a blue streak, and i have looked at nearly 60 houses in the past 2 weeks. be sure that i'll catch up and post pictures as soon as i get my computer back.