Dang! Where has the time gone? I can't believe how long it has been since I last wrote!  So much has happened in the last year. My goal is to now stay up to date on our family however here is a semi brief overview of what has gone on since last May....

At the end of May I was given the amazing opportunity of working as the Office Manager on the pipeline that was going through Maine. I ended up working from 6am to around 6 pm Monday through Saturday and a few hours on every other Sunday. The pipeline became my life and I loved the guys that I worked with! Growing up I had my reservations about construction guys because they seemed rough around the edges, however there was never a dull moment with the guys I got to know. While I was working in the office, Eric also got in on the pipeline as a laborer. Thankfully he had to be to work around the same time I did so we were able to work our schedules out to be about the same...

As the work started winding down (with the change of weather) Eric and I made a HUGE decision to make another cross country move. We purchased a small trailer, built a wooden box over it, packed all of our stuff inside it and traveled back to Utah. Bostyn and Salem did an amazing job traveling across the country and seemed to enjoy every moment of it...

It was so nice to see my family after not being home for 2 years! We ended up staying at my mom's house for a few months while trying to get everything figured out... We searched for places to live and for jobs and nothing really panned out. I was able to work a temp job for about a month and a half. While working this job I realized how unhappy I was with the line of work I was in and how I really wanted to make a change... Once realizing this and talking things over with Eric we decided to make another move (smaller this time) and both of us decided to go back to school. Once the decision was made everything fell into place. We were able to find a place to live, which for once had a yard for the girls to run around in. It is a fixer upper, however it is our fixer upper for now!

At the beginning of April we made our move and started school in May. Eric is going into Construction Management and plans on starting his own company doing all kinds of different types of construction. I started out in History Education, planning on teaching either junior high or high school until I got my master's degree then hoping to make the move up to teaching at a college. However, over the summer while taking my Western Civilization class I found my love for Ancient Greece. I have since decided I want to major in Classical Studies and emerge myself in all things Greece and Rome.

Over the summer we spent a lot of our spare time outside with the girls and also going and spending some time with my family in Provo.... At the end of May my little man Rykert was baptized. I was such a proud Aunt that day. He did such an amazing job! Here are a few pictures from our summer of fun...

My handsome Ry boy...

Ry, Lilly and Asher before Ry's baptism

Baby Ladd...

Ash chilling...

Ry loves snakes and was so excited when Uncle Eric found a snake and let him hold it!

Salem loved her pool... She was often found in it all throughout the summer...

Bostyn became our outdoors dog... She loved chilling out in the yard...

Lilly giving attitude...

Cori and baby Ladd at the carnival...

Going down the slide with a scared Asher...

Salem getting ready to send her balloon up to Pa... it has her paw print on it. She was very into the whole thing.

Bostyn up in the mountains...

Bostyn loves people watching from our kitchen window...

Salem...

At the end of August Eric decided to breed Salem. We are expecting to have puppies by the end of October and are super excited! That is our last year in a nutshell :)

Life Recap....

I can't believe that a year has gone by without me updating our blog... so much has gone on this past year. Some of it amazing, other parts of it were full of major drama that was endured but will hopefully stay in the past where it belongs.

Last May Eric and I moved to Nashua, New Hampshire and found ourselves in an amazing ward that was very welcoming and we enjoyed getting to know people and attending ward activities (which happened a couple times a month)... While living there Eric was ordained as a Priest in the Aaronic Priesthood. It was such an amazing experience to see him go from being a new convert to getting the priesthood. Around the end of July we got a phone call from Eric's mom in Pennsylvania. She informed us that his grandma's health wasn't the best and also that she was bleeding internally and that things were looking good for her as well. After hearing the news we made the decision to once again pack up all our stuff and make another move.

Right from the start of being there we encountered trial after trial. Everyone at his grandma's house smoked and I had a very hard time being there around it. I struggled to breathe through out most of the house... A few days after arriving in Pittsburgh we attended a funeral of a family cousin. While there, one of his mom's cousins pulled me aside to talk to me about some things. He is a minister in some faith that I can't remember... anyway, he said something that really struck me. He told me that no matter what happened while Eric and I were staying with his Grandma that we needed to stick together as a team and not let anyone in the family divide us, because they would be trying. At first I brushed it off but the longer I lived there the more and more I thought of it.

Eric and I love to joke around that Jerry Springer has nothing on his family. They could do a whole dramatic series about them and make a ton of money. His oldest uncle was constantly beyond drunk and always causing drama of one kind or another... unfortunately though the biggest problem ended up being his mother... who by the way was only bleeding internally because she drinks too much and was in no real danger of dying, she just wanted to get Eric back down to Pennsylvania to live and decided to lie to get him there. She also can't accept the fact that Eric has another woman in his life and would constantly demand she be put first. There were many times she got in my face over nothing at all but to let me know this. There were many times during this period of time that I wanted to just let it all go and walk away... however I found ways to keep my head on my shoulders and move on from each and every dramatic day.

In January I was talking to my mom on the phone about how fed up I was with everything that was going on in my life and how I didn't know if I could take much more. She was always good to talk to and was a very good listener. I am thankful I have her in my life. I guess she had just had home teachers over that day and was given a lesson about writing in your journal. They talked about how sometimes it seems like you have nothing good to write about but later on your children are going to love reading about your life. She challenged me to record the stuff I was going through so that my children could later look back at my life and see how I dealt with the challenges I was faced with. While months have now gone by since I was challenged to do this... I am now doing it.

When it comes to the 7 months I spent in hell (aka with Eric's Pennsylvania family) some of the things I have learned or re-learned is how grateful I am to have the gospel of Jesus Christ in my life. Through this I have become the woman I am today. I am thankful that I grew up in a family that is super close and always there for each other and where abuse was never acceptable. Without my family behind me I don't know where I would be today. I am grateful that I know that I am a choice daughter of God and that he is always there for me. I also learned that I don't deserve to be treated the way I was and while running away from trials isn't a good thing, sometimes leaving and moving on from them is the only thing you can do....

While there was a lot of drama going on... Eric and I also took some time to go out and do a few things while we were there... here are a few pictures of things we did...

Exploring Downtown Pittsburgh

At the Hookstown Fair...

Fun in the Snow...

At the beginning of February Eric had to go back up to Maine for court about his car accident last year. We took a week and came up to Maine, did his court stuff and spent time with his family here along with look for a place to live. Thankfully we were able to secure ourselves a cute place to live... While up in Maine we had some fun with the huge snow storm that came.

We headed back to Pennsylvania and packed all our stuff up and within a week made the move back to Maine. I told Eric that all I wanted for my 31st birthday was to have moved to Maine and I wanted clams... we ended up leaving Pennsylvania on the 15th of Feb and being back at his dad's place around 5 pm on my birthday and having clams for dinner so I got my birthday wish. Now here we are living the slow life once again...

Moving...

Eric and I spent the beginning of this week packing up our place in Bath so that we could move closer to his new job. For the past month or so he has only been able to work at it on the weekends, since it is kinda far away. After thinking it through we decided to make the move to New Hampshire so that he could follow his dream. This meant giving up my job (which I was happy to do) and making another big move.Eric drove the U-Haul full of all our things with Bostyn as his co-pilot and I followed behind him in the rental car with Salem. I couldn't resist getting a picture of the New Hampshire state line sign.

 Truthfully I am super happy to be leaving Maine. In my opinion Maine is a great place to visit and I will love going back and visiting family and friends but it is not the place for me to live. The whole time I was living there I felt like I was camping. Anyone who really knows me knows how I feel about camping. I probably got these views from my dad, whose philosophy on camping was "I paid good money for my bed, why do I want to go somewhere and sleep on the ground"... Every time I talked to my mom I would tell her about feeling like I was camping and she would laugh.... that was until I told her about moving down to New Hampshire and we decided to do a little research. 


I grew up in the cities of Orem and Provo, Utah. They really aren't big cities and in my opinion are the perfect sized places. I went online and looked at the 2010 Census results.
Orem, Utah had the population of 88,328
Provo, Utah had the population of 112,488
Bath, Maine had the population of 8,514
Nashua, New Hampshire had the population of 86,494


Anyone else notice the huge drop in the population in Maine? I really was out in the middle of nowhere! I am so happy to be back in "civilization"... 


Here are some "before" pictures of our new place (I have tons of decorating to do) and some pictures of the community we live in (Please ignore all the boxes and clutter)...

The outside of our building...

Our place :)

The closet in the living room... As of right now it is a room for the dogs.

The Dogs playing in the living room...

The Dining Room...

Kitchen...

Laundry Room...

Bathroom...

Bedroom...

Dogs checking out our bedroom closet...

The Dogs favorite new area... a playground just for them!

Part of the Pond

Tennis Courts...

BBQ Area...

Pool...

Sand Volleyball

Fountain in the Pond

Weight Room...

BIG ANNOUNCEMENT...

Eric and I have a big announcement that we will be making later on this week(probably around Friday or Saturday) ... Any guesses??? :)

Eric's Accident

Last week Eric and I had plans to go on a date and I was super excited! He had been out all day at work and he finally called me around 3:30 to let me know he was on his way home so I should get ready to go. About 20 minutes later he called me again and said, "I don't think I am going to make date night tonight. I just flipped the jeep 4 times." That is definitely something I never want to hear again! They ended up taking him to Maine Med, which is in Portland. I was really confused over this since there were a few hospitals closer to us. I later found out that because his accident was as bad as it was and because of the trauma they took him there.

He was driving home and came upon a car going really slow so he went to pass in a passing lane. However the guy decided to speed up. Eric decided to slow down and get back behind him. however the guy decided not to let him back in and slowed down. This went on until another car came at him going in the opposite direction. The guy pointed at Eric, the other car and laughed. He finally decided to let him back in but not before Eric hit a ditch and rolled the jeep 4 times. The guy then took off.

We were told by the officer who responded to the accident that he didn't think Eric was going to walk away from the accident. Eric definitely had a guardian angel looking out for him! Here are some of the pictures of everything...

Thankfully the bruises were all that really happened...

All 4 tires looked like this

Amazingly enough the windshield and top of the car looked great...

Passengers side of the car received a lot of the damage... Along with the undercarriage of the car. It was completely destroyed!