We are growing!

Hey everyone!!  I think by now everyone knows our news but if not...We are PREGNANT!!  We just found out that we will be having another baby boy.  He is due on June 1st and is very active already.  The kids are very excited, especially Robert who has declared that he is the favorite since the baby likes to wiggle when he reads to me but not when I am reading.  We are doing well and keeping busy despite being exhausted this pregnancy.  The boys are doing great in school and Katy is loving her dance and gymnastics class (she just did a flip over the high bar this week and was totally psyched).  Ryan is about 1 month from his year mark working at Baz Allergy and is happy and doing really well there.  Hope everyone is well and happy.  Love you all.

guest house

The "guest house" is almost done.  With the front being 12' high, we could almost put a loft in it, if we need more bedroom space.  Of course there is no electricity, water, or insulation in it.  In addition there is no door on the front yet.  It is built but putting in a door that is 8' by 8' is a little too heavy for mom to hold up while I put the wheels into the track.

Who is going to make the first reservation???

Love,
Dad

Locks of Love

The day has finally arrived,....Keilee and Makeila chopped off almost 12 inches to donate to Locks of Love. They were excited to be able to donate their beautiful hair to help make wigs for children that have lost their hair due to illness. Keilee has already said that she wants to grow it out and do it again! She says,..."It's just hair!, and it will grow back!" (Cut on Labor Day (Sept.3) 2012)

Hi all,

It was certainly fantastic seeing all of you.  Now it is up to the pictures to keep all the memories fresh in my mind.

I just wanted to let you know that there are some changes in the works for Mom and I.  I will be released as the Colony Ward Bishop on Sunday, July 15.  That is our Ward conference, so the entire Stake Presidency will be there.  I am hoping that they go through the sustaining of the Ward leadership, and then continue on with Stake business and release me, and sustain the new Bishopric.  I think that that would be very funny.  The other change is that Mom will be released as the Young Women's president.  Since I will be released from my calling, and she will be released from her calling, we are then able to serve together on a service mission.  We have been called to manage the storehouse.  Looks like we will be busy for the next 2 years here in Alaska.

We were called last Sunday by President Hobbs, and after we accepted the call, he told us that he already had out missionary name tags in his possesion.  I guess the Stake Presidency was pretty sure that we would accept the calling.

On a side note, I told Cassie that I was being released and that Mom was going to be released because we were going on a mission.  Her reaction was quite funny.

Obviously only my Counselors and Mom's Counselors know about the change coming along, so don't tell anyone.

Keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

I love you all.

Thank you for your efforts to come to the reunion and making it so fantastic!

Love, Dad

We miss y'all already!

We had such a fun time at the family reunion this year! It was so awesome to catch up and see how everyone has grown! I am so blessed to be a part of this family and so thankful to have been able to spend time with you this summer. The boys had such a fun time and keep talking about the next family reunion. I told them it may be another year or two before we see everyone together again. I just finished up a little video with clips of the kids at play at the reunion and will try to get it posted here. I also managed to post a good sample of the pictures I took at the reunion on Facebook. Hope to talk to you all soon!

Yvonne

We had a family night lesson last week on building relationships with our extended family and as a result, I thought about how little contact I have had with many of you lately.  We all get busy, but we need to remember what is most important and each of you is among the top of my most important list!   I tried to post a couple weeks ago and the pictures kept messing up and so I am going to post sans pictures and try to get them up later.

Courtney is finishing up the 6th grade and preparing for Jr. High- I am not ready for that, but she is a great girl.   She continues to excel at school with a perfect 4.0 and at her three instruments- saxophone, viola and piano.   She also sings in the school chorus and is currently preparing for a performance as a River City Girl in The Music Man.  She also had a lead role in her school production of The Pied Piper.   Our ward has discovered her babysitting skills lately and she is called most every weekend night now for a job- she is such a sweet girls, she has also babysat for free many times for couples attending to callings, meetings or temple prep classes.  Her most exciting thing right now is that she goes next week to Camp KEEP, a week long camp at the beach- I don't know what we will do without her here, but she is very excited.  

Aubrey is loving third grade- she is in a combination class for the third year in a row, but she makes the best of it.   She also was in the school play and loves playing trenchball in the school intermurals.   Aubrey is a natural at the piano and works hard to do well.  She too has a perfect report card and was disappointed that her spelling grade was a 99% instead of 100 like everything else.  She is a sweet girl who's always ready to help out, especially with Caleb and is adored by everyone around her.

Elijah is at the end of first grade and trying to convince us that he is ready for 3rd grade, so should skip 2nd- he's doing great, but that is not in the cards for him!   He loves to read and he loves to play video games.  He plays basketball EVERY recess and played on a team this winter with Mark as his coach.  He started piano this year and works very hard to get every piece perfect.  He was also in The Pied Piper as a Rat!

Christian is still our little firecracker, the life of the party!  He will start Kindergarten in the fall and our district has just decided to go to all day this next year, so he will be in the first group of that.  He is very excited and Caleb is very sad that he will be gone all day.  He wants to play baseball ( not Tball), so I am looking for a team for him.  He works hard to make right choices and loves to be surrounded by friends.  He along with Aubrey and Elijah ran at a community track meet a couple weeks ago and they all did great.  We were especially proud of Christian who was adamant that he wanted to run the 400 so he could go all the way around the track.  That is a long way for such a little guy, but he fought through and ran the whole way!

Caleb is the darling of our family.  He is the sweetest little boy that gives hugs, kisses, and I love you's freely to the family.   He just moved into a big boy bed and is almost completely potty trained.  He loves nursery and we can hardly believe that he is already almost a Sunbeam!

Mark has had a great school year with building a collaboration between his seniors and the local university.   With his work through that, he has traveled to present at various conferences and has built friendships with key players at the University.  He recieved a statewide excellence in teaching award, for which we are very proud of him.

I am still serving as the Relief Society President and Girl Scout leader as well as committee chair for a few things at the school.  Mostly though, I just try to keep up with everyone else's activities!   I am trying to run a few races again and picking fun ones to do like the mud run I did in the fall.

We are VERY excited to see everyone is a short 6 weeks and look forward to building memories and even stronger relationships through that time together.  Love you all!

I never feel like I have any real news but I will write a few lines anyway. Dad is finally pretty well healed and doing very well. He starts working full days tomorrow which he isn't too excited about but it does mean he is back to normal.

We are enjoying a real Alaskan winter this year. We have lots of snow and cold. We have also had the opportunity to see lots of moose as they come down from the higher elevations when the snow is heavy. The northern lights have also been active this year so that has been neat to see.

Since we changed time it is still light and it is a little after 8 pm. The long spring and summer days are definately my favorite thing about Alaska.

We are looking forward to going down to meet Kellen (and see his family) in a couple weeks.

I sure wish that you could all move to the same state so we could see everyone at one time.

We are definitely excited for the Family Reunion. We are flying in to Sacramento on June 7.

Hope you are all able to work out plans to be there.

Love You All!

Our New Home

Hello, I sent you all an email as well, but thought I would post here as well. Our new home closed yesterday, so we are now officially homeowners! A little scary that we went from absolutely no debt to a 30 year commitment to debt (though hopefully we can pay it off sooner than that), but also very exciting. It is a large house with extra space, so plenty of room for visitors, so help us put it to good use and come visit! (Though if you want anything more than an air mattress to sleep on, please donate to our furnish our new home fund) Anyway, our new address is:

4924 Portview Dr
Fort Worth, TX 76135

Introducing Kellen Riley Stewart

Here he is, our new baby boy! Kellen Riley Stewart, born January 11, 2012 at 3:29 am. He weighed in at 7 lbs. 1 oz. and was 21 inches long. (I was going to post more, but now he is awake and crying for his Mama to feed him! Hopefully I will get back to this later!)

Just made an offer on our first home! Wow, sometimes I thought this day would never come...now we wait to hear if it is accepted. Here is a link to the listing if you want to see: http://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/4924-Portview-Dr_Fort-Worth_TX_76135_M75460-40894?source=web

It has a small yard, but everything else about the house is more than I ever imagined having in a first home. We are so excited!

So, there are so many things going on in our life right now, I figure I better post regularly or else I will never keep up!

Trever graduated last Friday, the 17th. He graduated with a 4.0 GPA which earned him a summa cum laude ranking within his graduating class. Considering he was not even sure college was for him when he started it, we are all very proud of his accomplishment. He truly is amazing and excels at everything he puts his hand to.

His new employer took a little too long getting their paperwork together for us to be able to get full service movers, but we were able to get the u pack set-up where all we had to do was load the trailer and someone else drives it for us. Thanks to lots of help from family and friends we got that all done by Saturday afternoon and were able to spend a relaxing Sunday visiting friends and spending time with Trever's Grandma and Mom before they headed back to their respective homes.

Monday morning we piled in the car and took off on our adventure. Despite on small hiccup where the road we planned to take was closed due to snow, we made it to Trever's Dad's house on Wednesday evening as planned. The kids loved the hotels, especially the pools.

So now we are here in Cedar Hill, Texas trying to figure out what in the starry heavens to do next! Trever has gone in and signed all his official paperwork. We have decided that we want to seriously look into buying a house here, but of course with the holiday everything is running a little slower than usual. Hopefully early next week we will be able to get in with some lenders to see what are financing options are. Homes seem quite affordable in this area of the country, so hopefully we can find something we will will be happy with and can comfortably afford. For the time being we are staying at Trever's Dad's house, which is very small and not really designed for guests, we actually sleep in the camper trailer in the driveway because that is where there are beds available. Weir (Trever's employer) will actually pay for up to 60 days of temporary lodging, but we want to find out about house stuff first. We don't want to move into an apartment just to move right back out, plus most of them have a lease we would have to sign. We may look into an extended stay hotel, we are just not sure. At the moment we are mostly just trying to get through Christmas and then we will figure out the next steps. We did all the kids Christmas shopping yesterday, and I will never do all my shopping in one day so close to Christmas again, Toys R Us was a mad house!

Anyway, Trever should start his job on January 3, so we have all of next week when he is still around all the time to try to get some more things figured out, so wish us luck!

Hope that you all have a wonderful Christmas, we love you all!

Also, in case you missed it, our temporary Texas address is:

525 Flower Dr

Cedar Hill, TX 75104

OK - HOW DO I MAKE COMMENTS? I have tried with no luck. Anyway- Amber we are sooooooooooooooo Happy for you guys.

And my new home will be...

Well, I guess the Lord has a sense of humor. As most of you know, my whole life there has been only one place I said I would never live. However, Trever just heard back and in one week we will be moving to Fort Worth, Texas! Even with the Texas part of it, we are very excited. Trever has accepted a position as a Mechanical Engineer in their rotational program. That means that every 2-3 months he will move to a different position in the company and get to try them all out. One position will even be overseas! (Hopefully we will be able to go overseas too, they have never hired someone for the rotational program before who has a wife and kids, so they were a bit unsure how they would handle that, keep your fingers crossed that we will all get to go). He is still planning to go to graduate school, but we will either wait the two years, then go, or else he will do it part time while working. We will have to look in to the options available in the Dallas area and decide what we want to do in that regard.

We are all excited to get out of the cold, and Trever especially is excited to live close to his father who moved to the Dallas area last April. Hopefully we will be able to make visits to see the rest of the Southern half of the family more, since so far we haven't been able to visit them at all!

We are supposed to be out of our apartment by Monday morning (the 19th) at 7am. Weir (the name of my husband's new employer) will cover relocation costs, however, they have to get all the official hiring paperwork done on their end before we can start taking any steps toward getting the movers lined up. If they take too long then we will have to all the moving and driving ourselves and then get reimbursed. While that is certainly possible, I am hoping to avoid that option. When I told my doctor that I might drive across the country almost 8 months pregnant he told me I was crazy to even think about it! But as you all know, you do what you have to do.

Anyway, we are very excited for the next step in our adventures as a family. I am very proud of my amazing husband and all that he has accomplished and being able to land exactly the job he was hoping for. We love you all, and hope your lives are going as well as ours!

It has been fantastic to see what all of you have been doing. I Love opening the blog and seeing new things posted.
Our first craft show experience is done and we did pretty well. The expenses on this one were pretty high but we still managed to come out ahead so all is good. The nativity burls and some other things I made from birch were definitely the best sellers. The trip back from Fairbanks on Sunday night started out pretty terrible. It was snowing hard and very difficult to see but by the time we got to Healy it got much better. It was nice having some time with Dad and visiting with Rosculps. I brought some projects to work on so I kept busy the whole time. I don't think I could just sit there without something to do.
We are doing the bazaar at Colony after Thanksgiving and then we are done for now. I will probably try ETSY after Christmas.
All is well here. It is around zero and we are suppose to get wind tonight so tomorrow should be pretty chilly. We have quite a bit of snow on the ground but driving isn't bad.
Hope you are all doing well. I wish you could all be headed here for Christmas.
Love You

Hello! My name is Yvonne.

And I know we've been terrible about posting on this blog for quite a while now. Fortunately, Sharolyn reminded me when we visited them last month. As most of you know, we've moved to Louisiana and so far, we are really loving it. Scott is working at the Schlumberger offices in New Orleans and we live about 40 miles away in Slidell. He has about an hour commute to work, depending on traffic and is really enjoying his work life. The boys and I have settled in. We moved here at the end of May just in time for the beginning of a really hot, humid summer. We spent most of our time at the pool at the gym and making new friends there. Xavier started Taikwondo shortly after we got here and now has his cub green belt. He also started a new preschool this fall and is learning a lot! One of the things he's learning is how to talk with a southern accent, which I'm not too sure about. Toby is our little handful. He loves doing whatever Xavier does and wrestling with his dad. While Xavier's at preschool, Toby and I go to story time at the library or various playdates with our new play group we joined. It was a little difficult for me at first because I forgot how to get out and meet new people. I had such a great support group of mommies in Alaska, that I didn't think about how much I would miss them. I finally found a group of mommies and kiddos that I really like and that has made all the difference.

Since we moved here, we have made a couple road trips and head into New Orleans for family fun a couple times a month. We've been to see Nate and Sharolyn a couple times. They let us crash at their place last month while we were on the way to visit my Grandma Helen in Sioux City, Iowa. Which we were especially thankful for. The boys were appreciative of the dinosaurs for the road trip, but Scott and I may have gotten a little tired of the constant roaring ;) Thanks guys! We also drove to Houston, TX to visit with my old friend Aryn and her boys. It was during Tropical Storm Lee and we decided to just get out of town for the weekend. There was some flash flooding near our house, but no major damage. We are happy we made it through our first hurricane season without any troubles.

We've also discovered a ton of kid-friendly activities in NOLA. We love going to the zoo and the aquarium. It's nice because if you have a family membership to the zoo, you get into the aquarium for free. I think our membership has more than paid for itself at this point because we're there so often. There's a children's museum the boys love to run around and play at. I'm in love with City Park where there are parks with playground equipment, open areas to run and play, a place to rent paddle boats and get out on the lake, a Story Book Village where the kids can run through little houses and play structures based on Mother Goose stories, and even an amusement park area. I think if I would have toured City Park before moving here I would have been more excited about the prospect. During our house hunting trip, our hotel was right on Bourbon and it was a little overwhelming going to sleep and waking up to the sounds and smells of poor choices. I thought, "where are we moving our boys?" But once you're off Bourbon, it really is amazing. A really neat place.

Here's a couple pictures of our family since our move. The first one is of Toby at the pumpkin patch in Iowa. He had a fun time at the petting zoo area and kept picking corn from the corn maze and then taking it over to feed the animals.

This is Scott with the boys at the Insectarium for Crawl-o-ween. We were all suppose to be characters from the show Yo Gabba Gabba, but when Toby backed out, I did too. But Scott still dressed up as DJ Lance Rock because Xavier was Brobree and wanted his daddy to dress up with him. Best dad ever.

Scott has made it to a couple Saints games. He meets clients there as part of his job. I know, rough life. But he's been able to take Xavier to a couple games with him. This is what Xavier does at the games. Eats popcorn and chocolate.

Halloween Greetings

This year we received Halloween well wishes from

The pumpkin patch!

The North Pole!

The Italian Renaissance

The neighborhood black cat

and Mideval Times.

Everyone had lots of fun and way too much candy, we just wish we could have trick or treated to all of your doors!

PS Sorry that formatted so weird...not sure what I did, but it's 11 and I have been up since 5 writing a grant for the kids school and I am exhausted so I am not going to try and figure out how to fix it!

Happy Halloween!!

Tonight was our ward's "Trunk-or-Treat" and Chili Cook-off. Every year we say we/I say we're going to plan out our costumes way ahead of time,...but NO!, night before or even night of comes around and we scramble around the house. The kids are awesome sports about most outfits that are part of the final outcome.

Nathan even sacrificed some of his precious sleeping hours this morning after the kids went to school to make an awesome chili! He has become quite the chef around here, especially in the soup and chili dept. And you must know that he cannot cook in silence,...no fail Pandora is blasting through the kitchen. Actually the whole house and maybe even the neighborhood can listn in to Andrea Bocelli or Josh Groban, accompanied by Nathan. Love this man! He is amazing if I do say so myself!!!

Here are a few pics as we headed out the door. Had to document their costumes since we might change things up for the next party on Saturday! :)ha





***Little side-note: Check out our amazing new vinyl siding and windows (at least part of one).....More pics to come. We have been working, working, doing all kinds of projects. Of course working together on projects has it's challenges, but in the end I am so grateful to be able to spend time and work along side my best friend. We make a pretty good team! :)

Corn Maze

We had a fun family afternoon at the corn maze. We went a couple years ago to a different one, and I must say it was much more fun now that the kids are older. We managed to make it through the whole thing, filling in our whole worksheet, with 18 missing words and 9 rubbing images. It took just over 2 hours.

Christmas Exchange 2011

So I don't know if any of you even look at this anymore...but I thought I would post our Christmas exchange names so we are all thinking the same thing. We are at 2 younger than us, so:

Scott gives to Nathan

Shannon gives to Megan

Nathan gives to Amber

Megan gives to Cassie

Amber gives to Scott

Cassie gives to Shannon

Love you guys!

Amber

Stewart Family News

So I know some of you have already heard my news, and none of you would have a hard time guessing...but I am pregnant with number 3! We will have a little boy, due on January 25th. So far everything is going really great, we were having some trouble getting our medicaid sorted out at the beginning and due to the cost my doctor and I decided against getting a cervical cerclage put in this time. We talked a lot about my history and all the unsuccessful pregnancies as well as the ones with Ayana and Asher and he said he felt comfortable trying it without this time. I will have an ultrasound every month at my appointment and if there is any sign of my cervix opening we will do an immediate rescue cerclage. It is a little scary because it is something that could happen quickly if it does, but we just couldn't justify using all our savings plus getting debt on the speculation of one doctor years ago who said I might have incompetent cervix.

We decided to find out the gender this time for a couple of reasons. Trever said he knew Asher would be a boy from what he saw on the ultrasound, and I didn't believe him, so I told him to prove it. He did and knew immediately it was a boy, I didn't have a clue until every part was pointed out to me, everything looks the same to me in an ultrasound, they are all just fuzz. So he is pleased that I now believe that he did know what he as talking about with Asher. Also, I have been spending quite a bit of time sewing since getting my fancy new machine last Christmas. I have been doing some quilting and am excited to make stuff for the baby, however, I did not want to make everything in neutral colors, so we found out. (Though I have to say finding things to sew, even quilt patterns, for boys is much, much harder) Along those lines, I am not sure we would find out before birth again. It just isn't as exciting, I like the anticipation and the wondering the whole 9 months. Finding out half way through I felt like I barely had time to think about it much before I knew, and Trever agrees. Waiting just makes the excitement for the baby to come that much more sweet because you finally will know what you get. Maybe my feelings will change before the next one, we'll see, but for the few of you left in this family that will still have more kids, you should consider waiting to find out, I really think it is a lot more fun!

We are excited to have another boy, though Ayana bawled her eyes out when we told her because she wants a little sister so badly! Asher keeps us on our toes a lot more than Ayana ever has, and he has a mischievous streak 10 miles wide, but he also makes us laugh all the time and when he wants to be, is the sweetest little boy on the planet. Plus Trever thinks Asher needs a brother so he will stop asking to get his nails painted and playing with dolls, etc. He just likes to copy his sister, so Trever is hoping another boy in the house will give him reasons to not want to be quite so girly.

On other notes, Trever is in his last semester here, and will graduate in December. After that, who knows... We will be going to graduate school, but that will not be until September, and they will not even be making their acceptance decisions until march or April, so we will graduate here without any idea where our next school home will be. He is applying to 5 schools that are spread all over the country, so we could end up almost anywhere. We will have about 8 months of empty time between one school and the other to fill, the plan at the moment is to get an internship during that time. At the moment we feel like just trying to stay as close as possible to here will be the best financial decision to avoid expensive moving costs, but that depends on finding an internship nearby, so wish Trever luck in that regard. As soon as we know where we will be next year, we will let you know. I am excited for the time in our lives when we can plan more than a few months in advance, but I am enjoying the excitement of this time too.

The kids are doing great, Ayana turned four in July and is a constant joy to us. She had a pirate birthday were we hid a treasure chest in some local caves and then made her a treasure map and she led her pirate crew on a hunt to find it. She had a great time and loved the party. I made her cake and find I enjoy doing that quite a bit, but just a few times a year are enough for me, that way I don't get too tired of it. She is not in preschool right now ad misses it terribly, but I am sure she will survive. She loves to imagine and has imaginary kids that are almost always around (and usually blamed for any trouble that occurs) She loves books, and playing store. She talks pretty much non stop and has some crazy ideas. She also loves to sing, and will sing a song about anything for very long stretches of time. She also enjoys pretending that she is a dog and playing with her toy puppies.

Asher loves anything Ayana loves. He also loves food , and will eat almost anything that is not salad. He is a mama's boy through and through and will always choose me over anyone else, but he also loves to roughhouse with his dad. He loves puzzles and books as well as jumping and trying to do everything by himself. He is a constant ball of fun with energy coming out his ears most days. He is a very silly boy who loves to make people laugh and will do just about anything to accomplish it.