I am a dead woman

Tonight I am so incredibly tired that I feel like I just ran a marathon, passed out at the finish and woke up asking "Where am I? Did I make it?!" I feel like my head is spinning, I don't really know where I live and my body is exhausted.

In the last seven days I've lifted every belonging we have and relocated it; Unpacked it; Hosted houseguests; kept up with a household of ten, pulling most things out of boxes as we needed them; Did Thanksgiving; cleaned and closed on the old house; made 50 3-D snowflakes for a ward party; hit black Friday; watched Luke learn to ride a two-wheeler; saw the Temple Lights; visited Santa; felt like Santa; and a partridge in a pear tree....

What day is it? Is it December yet?? And why is someone else's PODS in my driveway?! What just happened....

The week in pictures in no particular order (monster upload done a day after this post, only after having gone to bed at 7:30 and now feeling much better):
















missing something?



We TRULY are blessed this Thanksgiving with so many wonderful things. Among them, our families, our good health and our testimonies of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Another great Thanksgiving.

A Hillstead Holiday Greeting

Happy Thanksgiving!
"From our little Turkeys,

To Yours!"

Sorry, I had to share it again! Thanksgiving 2006, my mom bought a 16 pound turkey and baby Jake weighed 16 lbs too! When she got the turkey out to prepare it, I was getting Jacob out of the bath and the resemblence was hysterical! We had fun trying to get his picture! I think someday, he'll really love me for this. ;)

The Holidays are Upon Us

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

"Hillstead Blood"

At school Luke has been practicing dummy roping. His equestrian teacher told me a few weeks ago that she thought he was good enough to enter into a little competition that they were having this weekend in an ACE hardware parking lot! Luke was excited about it, though clearly one of the non-cowboys in the bunch by what he was wearing...

He had two tries to qualify for the second round and he succeeded on his second try! Unfortunately my camera missed the moment, but it was cute! He was beaming. In the second round he only got one try and had to stand further away and missed, but that was okay. It was a fun thing to try. And we were proud of him. I knew Poppi would have liked to be there to see the cowboy coming out in his grandson. It's that good old Wyoming blood, I tell you.

It's a Go

I just wanted to post an update on how our move is coming. We are big time getting into boxes now, and the house is looking bare. Everything has gone smoothly with the sale; the appraisal came in "fine", although I still don't know exactly what at, the inspection was good and we have just a few things the buyers want us to fix! We got word today that their house in CA closed so they are definately on their way!

As for us, we are moving out next Saturday, the 22nd. We've got a rental in our neighborhood lined up, it is actually the house one of my friends just moved out of! We are excited that we can stay in the ward and close to the school, etc so as to avoid moving the kids around too much in the next few months. We close the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and hand over the keys on the 29th.

The job search in UT has begun a little bit, but not too much until after we get settled into our new place... one thing at a time. We plan to at least be in AZ until March and anything goes after that.

The kids have been amazing with this transition. My mom came and worked her head off to box this week for a couple days, and Tyler is finally coming home from NY for good... at least for a few good weeks. He's had to be gone the last two weeks... which has not been fun for either of us.

Life is good though.

Drew is the face of DearElder.com!

Remember the post about nominating my handsome brother to be the face of Dear Elder. com - and winning? This week the billboard went up (all except for the top of his head, which is coming) click here to see pictures that my sisters took: http://www.kendallmugleston.blogspot.com/ and the website is up too! http://www.dearelder.com/

I think it is so fun that my mom and sisters can see his smiling face each time they head up to Salt Lake on the freeway and I can't believe it was my nomination that got him up there! If only prize money had been part of the deal... then I'd be shopping.

We love Elder Mugleston!!

"I Play Tennis!"

Last weekend in Utah Jakey's Nanna played tennis with him and he LOVED it! When we got home he took his racket everywhere with him in the car and even to bed until I confiscated it. Ever since then he begs to play tennis and finds anything small which can be the ball (plastic cups, dolls, legos, etc) and anything long which can be the racket (wooden spoons, toy instruments, sticks, etc). He basically plays baseball, but thinks it is tennis and it is so cute!! This is a picture of him playing "tennis", as he put it. :)

I'll have to get a picture of him with his tennis racket and put it on here later. SOMEDAY I might get a camera that takes decent video so I can do that on here too... someday.....santa?

Wrapping things up around here.

So by now, most have heard that we are on our way out of this house (barring all continues to go well through the weekend.. the appraisal was today and inspecion is tomorrow...) Our minds are still wrapping themselves around the fact that we will be out of here so soon, that we are really moving.

I've begun boxing all the non-essential items. It is fun work, but a lot of work. Also, we went out and picked our watermelon finally as a good-bye party to ourselves on Sunday. It actually tasted really good. And then Luke went a plucked a bunch of peppers and ate them like apples! (my kids do that with peppers can you believe it? And they also eat broccoli crowns like ice-cream cones!)

Lots of great memories here in these walls!

My turn

I thought I'd take my turn to post pictures of the fun Hillstead weekend in St. George. Such a great time with wonderful people. When it was time to go it made me very sad to watch the others head North while we went South.. but hopefully not for long!

Tyler, his dad and brothers Zach and Blake
Handsome Andrew at 11 months
Tyler relaxing on a beautiful night
Cute Nat, 8 months prego if you can believe it!