Huge post

I have made a few posts recently to catch everyone up on what's going on with our family, but not that many have had any actual information, so here's what's been going on:

As posted earlier, Jack turned 1 and Lily turned 3, we had a little birthday party for them with our pals.

We also went to a little amusement park in Phoenix to celebrate Lily's birthday. She rode on some rides, she was a little scared at first, because we couldn't go with her, but she eventually had a lot of fun.

We've gone to the zoo a couple times, this is a "new zoo", which is different from the one we used to go to all the time, so it's got some new fun stuff to look at, including a big aquarium, and it's also quite close so we can go all the time.

We went to the air show at Luke Air force Base, which was a total nightmare. We waited to get through security for at least an hour, then once inside we got separated and I got lost. Then we were hot and it was too loud and crowded. The planes were cool, but we had to leave before the big "Thunderbirds" show, Jack had a blow out.

We went to the Chandler Ostrich Festival, which had a sea lion show, petting zoo, carnival, etc.

We had a fun potluck dinner with some friends in their backyard.

We went to a fun Safety Fair at the swap meet where they had tons and tons of fire trucks, ambulances, police dogs, garbage trucks, helicopter, and hot fire men. Seriously, the stereotype is true, mostly.

We went to the Tres Rios Nature festival, where they had bird watching (Lily took her binoculars), fishing, canoeing, falconry, walking stick making, pony rides, train rides, and lots of other fun stuff.

Jack is a super-speed crawler. He finally figured out how to pull himself up on stuff and has even stood independently a few times for a couple seconds. No steps yet, not even while holding on to anything. He's also started signing a little. We started showing him how to say "All done" after he is done eating, and he does the little sign but also says it at the same time, which is super cute. So his only words are "What's that" while he points, but it sounds more like "hus-sat", and "All done" which sounds like "Aaaaah-dun" and "Dada". I've been working on "Mama", but it's not happening.

Lily is starting to learn letters. She's very interested in them and asks Jared and I to write words for her all the time. She's the oldest kid in Nursery and seems to be a little bored. I'm excited for her to go to preschool hopefully this fall. I (Jenny) have been keeping busy with kids and my young women at church, doing our weekly activities and such. I've been trying lots of new recipe's lately, baking and cleaning. I've been fully enjoying the weather with the kids, going on almost daily walks, planting a garden, and enjoying Jared's luxuriously green grassy grass. As for Jared, that's the big news of the last couple months, as most of you probably know, is that Jar-bear has been laid off.....again. It happened March 14th. His company laid off about 65 people that day, and unfortunately since Jared was the newest guy in sales, he was let go. Don't be offended if you didn't know, it wasn't really the kind of news that we were excited to share with everyone. We immediately knew that this is our chance to move back to Utah, which we've wanted to do for a while. After a few days, we went on a little road-trip to my parents house. Jared looked for jobs while we were there and had a couple interviews and they look like good possibilities. He's also had a few more come up in the last couple days and will probably be going back by himself in a few days for more interviews.

The part that has been the hardest for the last little while is figuring out what we're going to do with our house. There's no way we can sell it because of the market in AZ, and renting it is going to be a nightmare, we'll see what happens. Call us if you have suggestions or opinions, we are completely lost.

Sorry to leave on such a sad note. We are stressed but not too much, we know that everything will work out OK. This was such a long post, but on the next one, I'll put up pictures and info on our Utah trip, my sister Hannah's visit, Easter, etc.