Moving on!

It's taken me awhile to post since our move here to Fairfax, VA! It took awhile to get our internet up and going, and its just been busy getting settled in! But we are here and settled in to our place here. (Pictures of our place will come soon). I'm really liking our place here--its a townhome with three levels in a real quiet cul-de-sac. The basement is by far the greatest thing--we have all the toys downstairs and its been GREAT to just send the kids downstairs to play! So, its starting to sink in that we really LIVE here now! Cameron started 1st grade.His school is just down the street so he loves that we walk to school everyday. Blaine started his LLM program at George Washington University, and life is going good. I am less than 2 miles from my dear friend Natalie and that has been so fun to see her just like our Lexington days. Our ward is really nice---there are A LOT of attorneys in our ward. Senator Hatch is in our ward--he was there on Sunday. It was really hard to leave Lexington. It has been home for the last 5 years and really hard to leave such a great place, and even harder to leave all or our incredible friends there. Y'all better come for a visit! We miss you so much. Thank you for being our "family" in Kentucky.

We are also excited for Baby Blood #4 that is on the way (if you didn't know already)! I am about 12 weeks now and I'm due in March! We (unlike the Westovers!) are just having ONE baby. I was going to do some cute post to "announce" in a more exciting way--but we better just finally let everyone know! It's gonna be an exciting year!



Cam our 1st grader!



We went to the Nat'l Air and Space Museum Annex--which is a huge hangar of full sized famous planes. Here we are by the SR-71-the world's fastest plane, Blaine in front of the Enterprise--a full sized space shuttle (really cool) and my Dad in front of the "Enola Gay"--the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. So many cool things to do here!

Ellie turns TWO!

Ellie and her bday cake!

Enjoying her cake and presents!

Our little chatter box and copy cat Ellie Jane turned two on August 18th! She was thrilled with the cake, the presents, the attention! Here's some of our favorite things about Ellie:
1. Those dimples and blond curls just make her cute no matter what she's doing.
2. Her talking--she is quite the talker. She has quite the vocabulary these days. One of our favorite thing she says is when we ask her what she's doing she replies, "nothsing". She loves to tell everyone what to do, 'Cameron don't do that" or " Guys, stop it!"
3. Her dance moves.
4. She loves dresses and when we put them on she twirls around singing, "ahhh ahh ahhh" like Ariel.
5. Her kisses come with a big "MMMAAA".
6. This shouldn't be funny but it is--she loves to tattle on us. She comes up when she's sad about something and says (while pointing at the person) "Cameron did it" or "Daddy did it".

Thanks to Brian and Liz for celebrating with us! We love you Ellie!!

On to Kirtland, OH from Michigan

We went to Kirtland, OH on our way home from Michigan. That has been on our "to do list" since we moved to Kentucky 5 years ago and we wanted to make sure we got there since we are so close!
We had a great visit. The Church has a beautiful visitors center there and we saw the N.K. Whitney store and home, the Kirtland Temple, the Isaac Morley farm (who is my 3rd great grandfather), and the John Johnson farm. Every site was really special. We stayed in a hotel--the kids love that. My sister Aleta and some of her family came with us from Michigan--which made it all the better!!


Our family at the Kirtland Visitors Center

Sitting in the room where the "School of the Prophets" was held.

In front of the Newell K. Whitney store

At the Isaac Morley farm. Notice how much "fun" Ellie is having--this documents the mood
she was in for the majority of our time in Kirtland.


In front of the Kirtland Temple.

Summer Vacation To Michigan

We headed back up to Michigan this last week to visit the Michigan Moffitt's (Jaimee's sister and her family). We went up for several reasons:

1. Our brother-in-law Mike has recently acquired a sweet 1971 Stingray Corvette and a 1996 C-4 Corvette that he had in a big classic car show. We wanted to see the cars be in the show and the show itself (called the "Dream Cruise") is really fun to go to. Cars are big time in Michigan. Mike was nice enough to let Blaine take the Corvettes for a test drive--now he thinks that he too must have one. They were really fun to ride in!


Mike and his 1971 Stingray


It started to rain while we were at the car show--the kids had a ball playing in the rain.

2. Our great nephew, Dylan, turned 16 at the beginning of the month and was ordained a priest on Sunday, so we were happy to be there to see that. Dylan--you're awesome! Love ya lots!


Jaimee, Dylan, and Blaine

3. It's just fun to visit the Moffitt's. Thanks for a fun time.

Going to Court with Dad

Today was Blaine's last day of work at Yunker & Associates!! Blaine had to go to court today, and thought it would be great chance for Cameron to go with him and hang out for a bit at his office. Cameron said it was fun. He looked great in his suit. (I told Cam I hoped it was the ONLY time we would take him to court in his lifetime :) Cam sure loves to be with his dad.

Dad and Cam at his office and in front of the courthouse in Lexington.

Out pickin' berries in Kentucky!

Kentucky is known for its delicious berries. The kids and I headed to an orchard in Paris, KY to pick some incredible blackberries. It was great! The kids could do it all on their own--even Ellie. She knew that she was only supposed to pick the black ones that were ripe and ready, and she did great. We came home a made some blackberry jam, and a blackberry cobbler is on the menu for dessert! We are going to miss being able to do "country" stuff like this when we move (which is just two weeks away!)


Here are the berry pickers!

Can you believe we've been so lucky to live in such a beautiful place for the last 5 years?

This was taken from our car window on the drive home---that's a beautiful tobacco field in the distance. (They really are pretty. )

Feeding the Ducks!

I used to love going to feed the ducks when I was a kid! My Mom would take me to Weber State University once in awhile to feed the ducks so I decided my kids would love to do this--especially Ellie--she loves ducks right now. So--these were pretty smart ducks. We pulled up next to the pond where the ducks live, and before we even got out of the car, all of the ducks (probably at least 40) had surrounded our car waiting for us to get out.

We walked down the sidewalk to a little gazebo so we could maybe keep a little distance between us and the ducks. The ducks formed a line and followed us very closely down to the gazebo.



We threw our bread out to the ducks from the gazebo, but then a few ducks figured out they could walk around and come into the gazebo themselves. Before long we were surrounded in the gazebo.


Our bread didn't last long, the ducks were well fed, and the kids had fun. The ducks figured out we were out of bread, and they headed back to the water.



Successful trip to feed the ducks, but Kelsey has told me several times since, "Lets not go feed the ducks today." I think the brave ducks were a little much for her.