The Morley's: 2012

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Major Catch Up Time

I know I am in major need of a catch up session. The last few months have been crazy, I don't know where the summer has gone! June was filled with swimming lessons, a trip to Bear Lake and packing up our old house for our move. In July we finally moved to our new house and we couldn't be happier. We have lots of remodeling to do, but we are going to love it once it is done (pictures of the remodel to follow at a later date.) In fact, it seems like between packing, moving, painting, hanging new baseboards and trim it doesn't feel like we have done much else. We have had lots of fun trips to the park, play groups and other outings. Also, a trip to instacare to find out that Tess broke her collar bone. Nice, I know. She fell down the stairs her first day at our new house. I will hopefully get back to taking pictures and doing regular posts but this is it for now!

Luke turned 5 on July 5th. Unfortunately I have lost the memory card to my camera which has the pictures from his birthday, so hopefully I will find it soon and post pictures later.

Some things about Luke at age 5:

Favorite color is red and loves the Utes!
He is probably the sweetest kid you will ever meet.
Loves his little sister and is so patient with her and is constantly helping her out
He is the best helper. He is always willing to help me and hardly ever complains.
Adores his dad, and wants to do everything that he does.
Such a smart kid, amazes me all the time with little tidbits of info he learned who knows where
Favorite food is PB&J and quesadillas
Has the best laugh, I absolutely love hearing him laugh
He is an absolute blessing to have in our family

In July Luke Graduated from the Waterford Institutes Rusty and Rosy program. It was a program on the computer that he had to do 15 minutes a day 5 days a week for a year. He didn't always love it, but he sure learned a lot! Here he is with his friend Sophie who also graduated from the program.

Our cute little girl turned 2 on May 21st. She is such a funny girl.

Some things about Tess at age 2:

She loves everything pink
She is super naughty, but does it in such a cute way that it is hard to get mad at her.
This girl loves to talk and will talk and talk all day
She is super petite. At her 2 year check up she only weighed 23lbs and is in the 3rd percentile. (I think Luke weighed 23 lbs at 9 months).
She absolutely adores her big brother and loves to follow him around
She absolutely loves teasing her big brother as well!
She loves to snuggle with mom and give hugs and kisses
Her very favorite show is Wallace & Grommit
Favorite food is Mac and Cheese and chicken nuggets
Makes us laugh every day

At the end of May Luke graduated from Mrs. Wings preschool class. He had such a fun year, made lots of friends and learned a lot. Just the other day Luke was telling a friend of mine about George Washington and the war he was in and on on. I asked where he learned that and he told me Mrs. Wing taught it to him! It was a great year and he will definitely miss Mrs. Wing.

Here is a cake I made for the son of a good friend of mine.

Monday, May 21, 2012

Guatemala

Back in April Barrett and I were able to visit Guatemala with our friends Rob and Megg. Both myself and Rob served our missions there, so it was really neat to take our spouses back to see this amazing country. We started our trip in Antigua. Antigua is where the Spanish settled when they invaded Guatemala in the 1500's, so much of the architecture there has a Spanish influence. I think we walked the entire town a couple of times while we were there. Highlights of Antigua were the street painters, some yummy food, jade factory, chocolate museum, great live music at restaurants, Megg dancing with a local to the marimba music, exploring the market (especially the girls from Ragina Canada), and people watching. Antigua was a great place for me and Rob to start getting back in the speaking Spanish groove. I served in an area just outside of Antigua and spent many a P-Day there, so it was fun to go back.

The Famous Yellow Arch in Antigua

This girl had a "special price" just for Megg! I need to learn to carry my babies on my back, way convenient.

From Antigua we headed up to the highlands to place called Panajachel. I served in an area about 15 minutes up the mountain from Pana, in a place called Solola. In fact, you have to drive through Solola to get to Pana. The highlight of my trip was finding my friend Teresa who lived in Solola. At first we were not successful, we went to her place but nobody was there. So, we went back later that day and her son Gustavo was there and told me she was working at their Carneceria (butcher shop) down in Panajachel. So back down the mountain we went to local market to find them. We were quite the talk of the market, because tourists usually don't go there. Guatemalans are short and as we were walking through the market Barrett said "so this is what it feels like to be tall." Loved that statement from him! Anyway, we eventually found Teresa and her husband deep inside the market. We had a great reunion. She is a dear friend, a kindred spirit even, and someone I didn't know if I would ever see again. What a blessing it was to see her again and visit with her, even though it was with chunks of meat hanging all around us. Rob and I were used to things like that, I'm pretty sure Barrett and Megg and could not wait to get out of there!

Victor, Me, Teresa, and Barrett

Me and Teresa

On our last day we went and said goodbye to Teresa, here we are with her daughter-in-law Yenni and her son Gustavo (who was 3 when I lived there and is now 16, crazy)

Guatemalans don't smile for pictures, they are happy, I promise!

Panajachel is on the border of Lake Atitlan, which many church historians believe could have been the Waters of Mormon

While in Panajachel we took a day trip to the famous market up in Chichicastenango. Other than the fact that I was sick and threw up about 10 times along the trip (I will spare you the details), it was great. There is no other place like ChiChi. If I would have let him, Barrett would have given away all our money to the little kids begging for money. He couldn't bare telling them no, so he was handing out money left and right. It was really cute to see the smile on their faces when he would give them some.

Rob standing on the steps of a famous church in Chichi

The Locals hanging out on the church steps

Typical way to get around, as a missionary I rode like this more times than I should admit

Man from Solola in his traje. You can tell which village someone is from from their clothes.

This was a typical house that I would visit as a missionary

Guatemalans have an amazing sense of balance, they can balance anything on their heads, even with a baby strapped to their backs.

We ended our trip on the coast, in Puerto San Jose, and had a great beach house complete with our private pool, hammocks, maid and pool boy. It was a very relaxing way to end our trip.

The black sand private beach, we were the only ones there.

Barrett and Rob went deep see fishing and caught 8 of these huge sail fish

We spent our last night in the capital and met up with one of Rob's friends named Erwin. We went to dinner with him and his family, they are amazing people and we had a great time.

This trip was a dream come true. We had so much fun and it was great to back to a place I get homesick for often. Good memories!

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Girly Girl!

I had lots of errands to run this morning while Luke was at Preschool. Tess was such a good girl that I told her when we got to the last store she could pick a treat. In my mind I was imaging swedish fish or some fun Easter treat. Not what Tess had in mind. At the end of an isle she spotted the nail polish and right then it was all over, she knew what she wanted...hot pink nail polish with glitter. I tried to offer her a giant chocolate bunny instead but she was having none of it, she knew what she wanted! So we came home and now Tess has bright pink glittery finger nails and she couldn't be happier!

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

The Wind, Laman and Lemuel

A few nights ago, during our family scripture reading, we read about when Laman and Lemuel tied up Nephi on the boat on their way to the Promised Land and how the Lord caused there to be a great tempest. Tonight Barrett picked Luke up from my brothers house and it was really windy, as they got in the car Luke said "Dad I think I know why it is windy...maybe because Nephi's brothers Laman and Lemuel tied him up."

Love that kid.

Sunday, February 19, 2012

Night Ice Fishing

Last weekend Barrett and I went with his dad night ice fishing up (sounds awful, doesn't it?) at Strawberry. I didn't absolutely love it, but didn't hate it either. It actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be! Barrett and I each caught one and Ike (got lucky) caught four!

St. George

A few weeks ago we able to take a long weekend and go and visit Barrett's grandparents in St. George. We had a great weekend, great weather and fun just being together and relaxing. Barrett was able to go golfing with his grandpa and they had a great time! We went fishing, we visited the La Verkin cracks (they were very cool), went to the park, and hung out with Nana and Pops. Thank you to Nana and Pops for letting us come down!