Crazy Cousins

Definitely related.

Dream Car

Jeremy and Tenny finally got to buy their dream car:  a Honda Odyssey.  It's got permanent storage space for the camping gear and plenty of seat belts for a couple more kids.  Plus, now we are officially equipped to live in Utah.  (Tenny upon first arriving in UT:  "Why are there so many minivans here?")

New baby, new job, new city, new house, new dream car -- it's been an exciting month.

Julie - 5 Weeks

Desert Cling

Dear fellow Utahns:

Ever since we arrived in Utah, our clothes have had an electric charge and they attract embarrassing amounts of lint.  We hoped that using fabric softener sheets in the dryer would help, but it hasn't.  Any suggestions?

Love,

Ye Stewart Clan

News From The Home Front

Our stuff came!

And so did the snow.

The snow brought out our inner angels.

And made everything so pretty.

And then we spent a lot of time trying to find our floors.  And our kids.

And then our kids discovered the Cartoon Network.

But we were able to pull them away to go to our (amazing!) local Ace Hardware.

And we picked some paint colors.

And ate free popcorn.

And then we headed home with a lot of work ahead of us.

(Though Ace has this awesome new paint that is paint+primer in one, so the work is hopefully cut in half.)  Results to follow.

We really like our new house!  And having chairs to sit on is nice too.

Julie - One Month

Time flies on wings of lightening.  Our baby girl is already one month old!

She already smiles in context.

She melts our hearts every day.

Julie - 4 weeks

Beauty restin'.

Limbo Tenny

Last month, full-time Chinese immersion student.  This month, no school at all.  Last month, DC.  This month, SLC.  Last month, lots of long-time friends.  This month, trying to meet the new neighbors.

What's a Tenny to do?  He's struggling to figure it out.

Julie - 3 Weeks

Home Improvement Surprise (No. 1)

We couldn't wait to get started on our home improvement projects -- we've been wanting to do this for a decade now.  So we started on our first project within 24 hours after arriving:  tearing off the 70 years of layered wallpaper in the dining room.  And then when we started removing the last layer, we began to uncover a secret message painted on the wall when the home was first constructed (early '40s).

Our new walls were speaking to us from the past.  We floated a lot of theories for what the secret message would say.  Tenny thought it would be a clue to find a pirate's treasure.  Jeremy thought it would be a murder confession.  In the end, though, it's basically a very old time card punched at 5:20 pm (before the inception of spell check, evidently).

Home improvement is so fun!  (Hopefully we're still saying that by the time we get to our bathroom.)

SLC Grub

When making our decision to move from DC to SLC, one of the key factors in favor of DC was the food scene.  So many awesome restaurants of every type of food.  Well, we have already been pleasantly surprised by SLC's dining options - we seem to have it all here, just on a smaller scale.  We even live closer to a Five Guys now than when we lived in DC, even though it's a DC/NOVA original.  The one place SLC beats out DC hands-down:  Mexican food.  There are dozens of amazing options within blocks of our new home - there probably aren't even this many Mexican restaurants in heaven.  We began our quest to find the best Mexican food in town by eating at Salazar's Cafe (33rd South 9th East) on Saturday night.

The chef saw us take the above picture and asked us if we thought he should get a "little burro" to keep in the parking lot so the patrons could take pictures with it.  Not a bad idea, though this restaurant doesn't need much improvement.  Delicious, authentic Mexican food for the whole family for under $20 - that will be hard to beat, but we're going to keep looking.  (On that note, we tried the much more expensive/pretentious Blue Iguana a couple days later and it was exactly half as good.)

Tait likes the spicy

Tenny hogged all the chips

But he shared the soda

We think we're going to like eating (and living) in SLC.

Still camping out in SLC

But the movers are telling us our belongings should arrive by Saturday.

The Big Move

Julie is two weeks old, and we celebrated (a little early) by moving to SLC.  She didn't even know it was happening...

We did.  By the time we got on the plane we were physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted from all the change/moving/saying goodbye.  It's a bit hard to see, but the below picture is of Suzy using a diaper (unused) as a cushion in a desperate attempt to get some much-needed postpartum rest.

But we made it and we're officially living in our new home (without any of our belongings, which hopefully will arrive soon).

We owe a giant thanks to all of the people who have done so much to help us with all of our major life events in the last few weeks -- all the people who watched our kids, made us food, borrowed us vehicles, cleaned our home, stocked our new cupboards/fridge, etc., etc.  And we want to especially thank Grandma Julie -- she sacrificed a ton (3 weeks of her life, many nights on an air mattress, child care, cooking, cleaning, moving, etc.) and we quite literally could not have survived the last month without her.

A few initial thoughts on our move:

1. Tennyson on the first morning:  "It takes the sun a long time to wake up in Utah."  (Yes it does, when you wake up super early because you're still on DC time.)
2. Tennyson when we lit our gas fireplace the first time:  "We have an eternal flame!"  (The result of many trips to Arlington Cemetery.)
3. Suzy:  "I love my house!  My house!"