The Job and Kadenisms

Curtis has been in the process of interviewing for jobs for what feels like forever. Two weeks ago when we had the sister missionaries over for dinner Curtis got a call from Zions Bancorporation, (the company that owns Zions Bank) from the corporate finance group and got a killer job offer! We were so shocked at how good it was.  Of the 4 jobs Curtis has interviewed for in recent weeks, this one totally came out of nowhere and has been the job on the back burner the whole time.  They found his resume in their system because he'd applied for another job with the same company, they contacted Curtis, rather than the other way around and flew him out to interview.  We were pretty sure we were going to accept an offer from Wells Fargo in Charlotte, NC or Hertz (rotational program),  but this job totally blew us out of the water. Curtis used this offer to contact the other companies and try to move the process forward with everyone.  He ended up getting 3 offers and of all of them, this one with Zions Bancorporation was seriously so much better than all the others in every way.  We are excited to be moving to Bountiful, UT in June and Curtis will start working in Salt Lake on June 16th. This whole process has been bittersweet.  While we are excited to live by family, we also really had our hearts set on Charlotte, NC.  Maybe someday… for now we know after much thought and prayer that this is where the Lord wants us to be.

Here are some of our recent Kadenisms: Kaden loves to clean. He loves to dust, to sweep, and of course to mop.  I think it rather funny that some of his earliest words have all been things like "mess, broom, mop, and dust." Perhaps I am too much of a neat freak sometimes. But maybe he'll be a good helper once he gets big enough to be truly useful, right?  He doesn't just like to clean.  I notice when I go to the Y to pick him up from ChildWatch that he's usually trying to pick up the toys and put them away. Ha ha! He's an organizer too!

Kaden loves to wear my headbands as of late. It's becoming quite a fight some days to get him to take them off before we leave the house. :)

I recently did a Busy Bag swap with 9 other girls in my ward. I organized it because it's still so cold in Rochester that Kaden is so bored with his toys, but yet it's too cold to go outside or too rainy, and we needed new activities, but I don't have the money to buy a ton of new toys.  One of his favorite activities has been to play with magnetic pom poms.  He and Evie played with these FOREVER over the course of several days, while I watched Evie so her parents could pack.  The MacLeans moved to Salt Lake on May 3rd and Kaden has asked every day, "Mama, Ebbie, play? Pwease…"  How do you explain to your 21 month old that your best friend doesn't live here anymore? He doesn't get it at all. I'm glad we'll be fairly close to them soon because I think it would break Kaden's little heart to not have his best friend around anymore.  Heck, it's been breaking my heart to have to always say to him the last few days, "Evie's gone buddy. She can't play today."

Easter

We took Kaden to Highland Park the day before Easter to do some pictures in his Easter outfit.  I'm sure glad we did.  (I'll explain in a minute.)  It was not the world's greatest lighting, so Kaden has the squinty face going on, but he had a lot of fun gathering up eggs, sitting on his turquoise "chay-uh" (chair) and holding his bunny.  We saw a groundhog while we were there.  My attempts to capture a photo were in vain though, since it was faster than I could whip out my camera.

I love this one- Kaden looks so sweet! 

 Even though this facial expression is a little goofy, Kaden makes this face a fair amount lately. Haha!

 Poor kid. Always teething… almost done cutting his last four teeth though! 

For Easter Sunday we had a little egg hunt inside our living room since we were too lazy to get Kaden out of his footie pajamas and into shoes to go outside.  I think Easter might be his new favorite holiday because he's discovered inside every egg there is candy! Hooray! That's all he asked me for over and over- "Mama, candy? Pwease…." 

He loved his Easter basket.  The Easter bunny brought him some new animal cookie cutters for his play dough, his own broom and dust pan (since he tries all day to use mine), and an Elmo movie where he sings songs.  And of course some candy and goldfish and bunny crackers.  

 Best of all though are the Elmo eggs that I found at Target! Kaden thought they were so cool, he carried them around all morning. He also wanted to watch his Elmo movie on the "tb" all morning.

We had church as usual in the afternoon and then after that, while I was getting dinner ready, Curtis took Kaden outside to play.  He was playing on our swing set in the backyard and a few neighbor girls came over to play.  Curtis was helping one of them get into the swing and Kaden went down the slide by himself, while Curtis had his back turned.  Kaden totally ate it and face planted onto the cement.  He was bleeding pretty bad and screaming.  Poor boy! Since the backyard wasn't safe for Kaden, Curtis took him around front to play.  He was all concerned because there was a rose bush. While Curtis is standing guard and making sure Kaden didn't get into the rose bush, Kaden was tapping on our window well cover and fell through! Luckily it was only about a two foot fall, but the poor kid was pretty banged up.

Just as Kaden had fallen into the window well, the dinner guests arrived.  We had the Bowens (Matthew, Kara and EmmaLynn) and the MacLeans (Kyle, Miranda, Evelyn & Rose) over for dinner. It was fun and Kaden of course loved having "Ebbie" come to play.  Miranda made this awesome bunny cake, which is a tradition in her family each Easter.

Mr. Independent

We went ice skating as a family a few weeks back.  We took the umbrella stroller and Kaden was having a good time being pushed around… until we got about 5 minutes in. Then he just kept shouting, "Done! Done!"  Cue crying and arching and trying to get out on his own… Once he decides he's "done" doing anything, good luck trying to make him continue.  So we took him out and let him have a break from the stroller.  He climbed all over benches for a few minutes, then wanted to go back out on the ice.  We tried many times to put him back in his stroller, but it was useless because he was so angry and fighting us so hard.  So, poor Curtis ended up bent over and skating like this for the rest of our ice skating time.

 Kaden is truly 100% toddler right now and just wants so badly to do things by himself, that even though he was slipping and sliding everywhere, he was determined that's how he wanted to spend his time skating. Not in his stroller. Ha ha!

The Egg Hunt

Our ward hosted an Easter Egg Hunt at the church.  Kaden wasn't even crawling last year at Easter, so this is his first egg hunt.  They had the kids divided up by ages and had hidden eggs easier/harder according to age.  In theory this is great, but the problem was that the big kids were so excited to get the eggs that when the Primary president said "go" all the kids took off running, scooped up every last egg out of the little kid section before any of the little ones like Kaden could get any, then kept going onto bigger and better things.  It was so sad! He didn't get any eggs until I realized that there were a whole bunch hidden on the hill, in the bushes and in the trees behind the little kid section.  So we climbed the hill and I was lifting Kaden up into trees to get eggs…

 Kaden and Everett trying to find eggs as all the big kids take the easy ones...

Not exactly ideal but oh well.  He still got a few of them.  We're going to do another egg hunt for him on Sunday morning in our yard so that he can actually pick some of them up because that's his favorite part anyway.  

 He certainly had fun with "Ebbie" (Evie) even if he didn't get to pick up many eggs.  Miranda and I were saying if these two get married someday that these pictures could go in their wedding video montage.  He loves holding Evie's hand.  It's so sweet.  He just loves Evie.  All day long about the only words I hear out of him are, "Play? Ebbie?"  (Meaning he wants to play with Evie.) :)

Bunny Hunting

Here in Rochester they have a bunny hunt at Wickham Farms a week before Easter.  In my mind, I was envisioning a fenced in field of bunnies that were tame and the kids just got to chase them around to their heart's content.   It wasn't really even close to what I thought, but it was still fun. They had clues all over the farm that you had to follow to figure out where the bunnies were.  Along the way, they had different activities you could do.  The clue part was obviously way over Kaden's head, so we just went right to the activities and straight on to pet the bunnies afterwards.

First stop, Kaden made a bunny hat.  (This is the closest I could get to him holding still so I could take a picture of it, ha!)  

 We skipped the clues and went right to the rabbits to pet them.  Kaden kept saying "hop, hop" the whole time he was petting them.

Kaden saw the Easter Bunny (and was terrified!!!) One of our friends (Tianna Zundel) was there with her kids, so her son Liam offered to stand by Kaden and the bunny so he wouldn't be so scared. What a sweet kid! :)  This was the only picture where Kaden wasn't totally scowling… but he still looks terrified.

 After the bunny scare, Kaden got to ride the train with Curtis.  He loved it and kept saying "choo chop."  He was mad that we only had time for him to ride it once.

Because we all know how much Kaden likes getting pictures with me, I had the brilliant idea to request a picture with him right after we told him no for the train… (Ignore that these are a little blurry. In all fairness to Curtis, my new lens is rather tricky to get nice, clear pictures with unless you're really used to using it and know how to adjust it.)

 Look at that pouty face!!! Priceless.

Yeah…after trying several times we realized he was still mad about the train and he wasn't going to smile so this is me telling Curtis to just turn the camera off. He thought it was funny because we both look mad.

At the end he got to eat a "bunny sundae" (a Peep on a scoop of soft-serve ice cream with sprinkles).  He loved the Peep (eew!) but didn't like the ice cream much.  He kept stealing my sugar cookie, so I finally just switched him treats.  What a fun little idea! And to think it was only $5 for Kaden to do all of those activities.  Pretty sweet deal if you ask me.

Sunshine and Sunny Weather

We had a little patch of nice, warm weather (finally) this past week, and so we took advantage of it by going to the park every day, as many times as we could.  It was heavenly! It's amazing how much difference a year can make, in terms of what Kaden can do on the playground now vs. last year.  It was so fun for him, since he's big enough to climb up and do all the slides by himself.  I felt like this was a nice boost to his independent toddler ego. :)  (Please excuse the floody pants.  He just hit a growth spurt a few days ago and I utterly refuse to buy the boy more long pants since I'm hoping spring/summer are actually coming soon and we won't need pants again for awhile.)

He loves sporting shades wherever we go.

We went to Powder Mills Park with Janelle Olson (a friend from high school that's in our Rochester ward) and Christa Sagebin.  Janelle's son, Hudson (exactly one year older than Kaden) and Christa's son, Asher (just turned two) are both darling little boys and they all play really well together. This is a cool park because it has a fish hatchery, where you can buy fish food, and they jump out of the water to grab the food. It's really cool since you're so close.  They splash a lot, which Kaden loved.

I've got to say Kaden is very influential.  The other boys didn't dare lean down and put their hands in the water until Kaden showed them how to. What a little rebel! Ha ha.  

(From left to right, Asher, Kaden, Hudson)

Best Seat in the House

Sometimes when I am busy for a minute and then turn around and can't find Kaden, he's often sitting on his favorite seat.  Anyone that knows Kaden, knows that he loves chairs ("chay-uhs") of any kind. Big, small, couches, or hard chairs.  He doesn't care. He loves them all.  But he especially likes a certain white, porcelain chair.

 Try as I might, I can't keep him off of it most days.  It's such a part of his life right now that I figured I'd let him get a few pictures on it, then go wash his hands and lock the bathroom so he can't sit there anymore.  (We have to keep a penny above our doors to allow us to unlock the bathroom most days.)

Someday Kaden may find this gross, that he loved the white throne so much as a boy, but for now, it is truly the best seat in the house!