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.