Summer Nomad Adventures

June 14th, 2010

Hi Family!
Mom doesn't know where we are, and Allison was thoroughly confused with our travel plans, so I thought I'd send a quick update on where we are and what we've been up too.

Last week, we drove from Marietta to Niagara Falls where we spent a fun day or two with the Romeros. We flew out of Buffalo the next day and landed in Las Vegas. We drove to Phoenix the next day to hang out with the Ellsworths, and after 3 days met up

with the Quinns back in Las Vegas. Early this morning, most everyone headed out to hike for 4 days in Havasupi....did I spell that right?...and Valine and I are watching babies and chillin' at the resort.

The Romeros are doing great, and our prayers are with Ruben as he prepares for heart surgery. They're so fun! Our time in AZ was a blast. Our first day there, we had ice cream three times: morning snack, afternoon snack, and on waffles for dinner. Ah, it's good to be an Ellsworth. We had lots of fun at the Heard Museum and Science Center, and just hanging out playing games and watching movies. I hope we can have a back yard like theirs some day. I felt like I was living with the swiss family robinson.

Our few days with the Quinns have also been a blast. We discovered shuffle board, which I always thought was for old people, but turns out to be really really fun. Who knew? The boys and I have checked out the strip a couple of times, and spontaniously saw The Lion King Saturday night. We left here at 7:30 and made it just in time for the 8:00 showing. I've been wanting to see it since I was in eleventh grade and wasn't disappointed. Much of the music sent me back to Africa and songs sung from the bottom of the soul. I can only sing that uninhibited if I'm about a mile away from civilization.

This morning Anthony, Nate, McKay, Paul and Camille left for their mega hike, and Ira is napping, Valine is quilting, and Truman is playing with his little soccor ball and looking sweetly mischievous. Life is good.
I love you all!

Sharon


June 26th, 2010

Let’s see, since my last update we’ve cove

red lots of ground…literally. After Las Vegas we headed to California to visit my mission. I looooved it. We were able to Visit Aunt Janet, the Holbrooks, and then a handful of people I taught on my mission. I was happy to see that they were active and had been to the temple and sealed to their families. Is there anything in this world more happy than that?

Ira's been a dream travel baby, with the exception of all of his pooplosions. That's word that Allison taught me and I'll bet you can guess it's definition.

It's been so fun to be back with the Quinns and we're setting up visits with friends we haven't seen in what feels like forever. We're looking forward to the Quinn/Arave family reunion at the end of this week!

Love ya,

Sharon

                                                    Grandma playing with Ira in Las Vegas!

 Mesa with the Ellsworths!

The Holbrooks! Uncle Bob is recovering from his stroke well, but he says he still has trouble remembering people's names and anything math related. Janet is teaching Preschool and Zach and Alvin are cool!

Aunt Janet is as cool as ever.  She let us use her hot tub, gave a piece of her pottery and hosted a yummy breakfast with an old investigator.

We enjoyed the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield.  Mmmm.  All the free samples you want.  Their new flavors include Mango Chillie and Babywipe, and both taste freakishly accurate.

                                    Beautiful Fort Bragg along Highway 1.  This is at Glass Beach.





Avenue of the Giants
I'm proud to say that the whole avenue is in my old area.

                                                                 Ira's first camping trip.

Developing Ira

Ira's been growing up so fast. Every day we wake up he seems a little bigger. His fascination with mirrors continues strong. His silent laugh is slowly giving way to a cute little giggle. Yesterday we played peck-a-boo with him and he laughed more than ever before.We played more than 50 times and every time he laughed.

He is entering the stage where he wants to put his mouth on everything he sees. He will focus on something and slowly his mouth opens and he starts leaning toward it making little licking motions. It's cute. Along with that his motor skills are improving really fast. He is good at inching himself toward things and he is getting good at reaching out and grabbing things.

He loves bath time in the sink, he can see his reflection in the

faucet and tries to eat it.

Like I said he loves trying to eat everything.

He loves picking things up and of course putting them in his mouth.

Our New Home

Last week was a whirl wind. We've been waiting to hear where we would be working on our first rotation forever and were excited to learn we will be in Danbury, CT.

Tuesday morning we drove out to Danbury to find ourselves a place to live. We've been looking forward to this and also dreading it because we've been spoiled with Provo and Pittsburgh rent prices, I would say Danbury is at least twice as expensive as anywhere else we've lived. Connecticut also has some weird real estate laws we found out. Anyway, it was an extremely hot three days of patrolling the streets on the look out for a nice neighborhoods and places for rent. It was a head ache trying to get appointments lined up too. In the end we were able to get in and see about 10 places. We feel blessed to have finally found one that we feel comfortable with, it has nice landlord, Italian again, and below the average price for the number of rooms and space we have. It has a spacious bathroom and kitchen, a nice living room and master bedroom and two small rooms, one for Ira and one for guests/office/crafts. So if you want to come visit we would love the company. If you want the address email me.

There are many great reasons you can come and see us which can mostly be summed up in this phrase I heard the Honda dealership using on the radio, "We're minutes from anywhere". This says a lot about my first impressions of Danbury. Locally, nothing is more than 15 mins from anything else, and  more broadly we are only ten minutes from the New York border; thirty minutes from the coast, beaches, and some minor National Forests; an hour and a half driving to Downtown Manhattan (two by train); three hours from Boston; and four hours from Marietta and the Adirondacks.

The Exterior, we are on the second floor.

(This is an old picture, there was no snow when we were there, just a hot sun)

The living room, looking from the master bedroom. You can't see it, but there is a huge heater right next to me that is kind of ugly and we're not sure how we will work it into the interior design.

A nice spacious bathroom, those who have been in our Pittsburgh apartment will know how nice this is compared to what we had there.

Looking into our bedroom from the living room.

The kitchen, looking in from the bathroom.

Looking into one of the smaller rooms. Sharon calls it a midget house because the ceiling is a little lower

than typical and the windows aren't far from the floor.

The floor plan is a little strange and it has it's quirks, but like I said we feel blessed to have found a place that met almost all of our criteria(washer, dryer, room for Ira, etc) in the price range we set for ourselves.