Easter 2011

So weird. I posted this the other night and it apparently unposted.. hmmm
Well either way, here's our Easter stuff. Stay tuned..... someday when I get more settled into Life in Price I will post about EASTER DAY, GRADUATION etc etc etc
So stay tuned :)

 We had SO much fun camping. Even if it was only for one night.

We headed down Friday evening and got out to the campsite just as it was getting dark. We got to stay in my parent's bran new trailer which was fun--- until the kids woke up LITERALLY at the crack of dawn. Ah well, camping had never meant sleeping well : )

The day was filled with dirt, more dirt, food, more food, and lots and lots of fun with our family and friends.

 They loved their rides!

And their cousin time

 Easter Egg Coloring

 .  That crazy Easter Bunny always seems to know when the children are away from camp. Weird.
 Uncle Jason had taken them on a walk... but when word of the E.B. reached them they were all eager to get home quicker. It was funny seeing all those kids rolling up in the Rhino together

The Goods

 Adelia had momentary interest in the kaleidoscope. Then all attention was directed to CHOCOLATE. And chocolate only :)

Time for the EGG HUNT: I bet there were well over 200 eggs hiding in the rocks and trees surrounding our camp. 

Perfect place for hiding eggs? I think so!

 The Easter Bunny left a picture of Christ in an egg. Even he wanted her to remember what the REAL purpose of Easter is.

Give Me a "PRE!" Give me an "E!".. Give me a "STER!" What do ya get??

PREEASTER! (yeah, i am a dork. and I know it!)  But what else do you call a post about the stuff you did to get ready for Easter?

Easter is one of my favoritist holidays! Actually, there aren't many holidays I have met that I don't like... but Easter is a definite LIST TOPPER!
First and foremost, I love honoring our Savior, Jesus Christ, and His miraculous life, death, and resurrection.  I love talking about it with my children. I loved talking about it with my primary kids. I love spending time with family (usually out in nature, preferably camping etc.) and I love coming home and attending church on Sunday. I like the worldy stuff too-- I think egg coloring is so fun! and don't forget the egg hunts! Loved them as a kid... love them even more as a mom! And really, come'on doesn't love bunnies and chickies?

This year we had to steal daddy away from all the homework he SHOULD have been doing to color some eggs. It came at the end of a very busy day... him with school and me with PACKING (yep, starting to pack up the house. Yikes!)  This is a picture of Adelia "packing" while Tianna played The Easter Bunny by hiding eggs amongst my messes while I packed boxes.

 But late Wednesday night, we snuck in EGG COLORING 2011

Did I mention I was packing? So ignore Scary Mary :D

 I had my last card group with my awesome friends from Logan. Chandra and Angie (and Shannon who couldn't make it) I will miss you so much! thanks for letting me "in the group!"

After card group on Thursday I rushed home to make our other Easter Eggs.  I mad them last year and thought they were really fun and I think they are so cute... come to find out, some of the Frandsen Men think they are ugly. But they insisted that if they closed their eyes, they tasted really good. Well guess what.. TOO BAD. I'll keep them for myself, thank you very much.

 Some friends brought me more boxes. Turns out, they make a pretty good "house" too!

Friday I had to get us ready for camping! yay! Adelia was wearing her cute jacket and then eventually put on the hat... which would have been enough to make it picture worthy, but then 

 CHECK OUT DEM HEELS! Yowza!

 And... I always feel weird posting pictures of myself.. but I've only had pictures taken of  me lately when I look pretty scary. So just for my future benefit, i want to remember that once in a blue moon I did take some time to get ready! :D   Just in time to go camping-- which will be the next post!

And the Verdict Is............

SUNSTONE ENGINEERING IN PAYSON! 

http://sunstoneengineering.com/site/

Woooooooooooooooooo! We are so excited. I can't even begin to tell you how relieving it is to have a decision. There's no going back now. The acceptance letter and the rejection letters have been sent! His 2 weeks notice was given to Juniper Systems...
Now we just need to have the details work themselves out!

He graduates Friday, May 6th.  If anyone is interested, the ceremony is at 1:30.  We don't have set plans yet on the "party" like we did last year... i guess we've been a tad distracted or something. But we do know ANYONE who wants to come is welcome, but really, don't feel obligated. We can have a pizza party afterwards (or something) and if you want to stay over, we'll figure that out too!

But, you might have to over-look some boxes because I guess we need to pack now.  We haven't sold our house yet, but Luke starts working somewhere between the 9th and the 16th.  [side note] see, one of the factors that lead us to choose Sunstone is how personal and caring the atmosphere feels. They originally told him his start date would be the 9th. That would make things crazy with graduation Friday, company staying over till Saturday, I'm speaking in church on Sunday, which is Mother's Day, and then we need to get him down to Payson for Day 1 of the job.... Whew! But tonight, after realizing that he graduates only a few days before, his supervisor called him up and told him he can take a few more days before he starts.We thought that was so considerate! And a couple days to regroup would really will help a TON!

We don't know how long it will take for our house to sell. We pray it's soon! But until we sell it, we cannot buy another one of course. And that itself takes (way too much) time.  So for the time being, we plan to move most of our stuff, store it, and live with my parents in Price. If he has to commute, it's just over an hour. He might end up staying in a camp trailer or something... but for the time being, that is the plan.

So basically, life is about to go FULL SPEED AHEAD!And a lot of stuff is up in the air, but we know WHERE we are going and that, is worth gold!

A is for April

To get the full coverage of what's been going on at the Peacock's home, I wrote a small novel tonight about it in a previous post.
If you don't care to read it, let's just say, life has been crazy!
Our very last semester is going full speed ahead and post-college is starting out with some major stress. He has 2 job offers on the table right now. That's wonderful. and difficult at the same time! One is at a small company in Payson called Sunstone Engineering.  The second is at the Space Dynamic Lab here in Logan.  Both are great opportunities, but for different reasons.

Meanwhile, on April 14th, Luke Defended his thesis. It was A SUCCESS!  He gave a 35 minute presentation on his Equine Distress Monitor project and then they grilled him, kicked him out while they discussed it, and brought him back in to congratulate him.  It was a very happy day!
Interestingly, with all his job interviews and everything, this was the first time he's really been nervous.  But he did a great job and I was glad I could be there to witness it.

Aside from school, jobs, thesis defenses, (how in the world do we have time for anything else?!) We've been trying to squeeze in some time with our funny, silly, cute, little girls. (okay, I have tons of time with them, but Luke isn't quite as lucky)

So rain or shine (and we encountered a whole lot of rain!) We took the girls to the American West Heritage Center for some Baby Animal Days. 

Ducks and cows.  The cow is sucking on Luke's fingers-- he was a bit hungry I'd guess!

Here's a pig, there's a pig, everywhere's a pig jig!

I was surprised at how readily Adelia approached this goat.  She loves animals and certainly doesn't fear them like her older sister!  Tianna squeals in fright even when a baby chick touches her.

Turtles!

Face Painting!

Our little chicky got a baby chickie on her cheekie.  I have never in her life seen Adelia hold more still.  She didn't move a muscle the entire time they were painting her cheek.

Tianna thought the butterfly across her entire face was the best thing ever. I have to admit, they both looked pretty cute!

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-HAH!  I kinda feel like my face is too small for my body. What do you think?

On the train!

It was a wet, but wonderful day! 

And just a few more gems that need to be posted somewhere:
She is yet again becoming Tianna-mini.  Our little dress up queens! 

And probably one my favorite pictures of all time was taken this morning. 

"JUST ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE!"

Decisions Decisions... so very many Decisions!

If this is too long for you. Sorry! But it's important for our "family journal". Read on if you care to.


There are reasons for our long blogging hiatus.  For so long there was so much, and yet, so little to blog about. (nothing with fun pictures anyway)  Life has been a bit of a whirlwind for us.  The semester is winding down at a scary/jubilant pace for Luke. We knew this day would eventually come, but it still feels surreal.  The college student life is the only life we (as in, US together) have ever known.  Now, in about 3 weeks, it's over...

With that said, that means we need to board the REAL-LIFE train.  Luke applied and applied and applied, for almost any electrical engineering job he could find within Utah's borders, beginning in January, as well as attending any sort of job fair the school offered.  That resulted in a several phone interviews with various places, one interview-ish type thing at Hill Air Force Base and a whole lot of rejections. But we didn't give up hope.
Even when it got rather discouraging.  But alas, about 2 weeks ago it felt as if everything was finally falling in place for him.  In one week he got an (personal-not just phone) interview at the Space Dynamic Lab here in Logan, several phone calls from people from companies he applied at and was rejected by, saying there were new listings and he should reapply AND his current employment explained that they were still trying to find a way to keep him on.  He also got a call to go down to Payson for an interview at a small company called Sunstone Engineering for the following Friday.  Well then he got word that he was probably going to get an offer from SDL (Space Dy. Lab) and we felt that it would be best to see if he could arrange for his interview in Payson to be moved up. He got a hold of them Monday morning and we were down there interviewing by 3 pm that afternoon.
He came away from that interview very excited.  I was already excited.  When I first heard about Payson as a possible place I had a really good feeling about it.  So while he was interviewing I was driving around the city trying to picture us living there. I became more excited!
They also seemed very interested in him and said if they decided to do a second interview, it would probably be the owner and his wife taking Luke and his wife out to dinner.  The next day, the phone call was made and we had dinner scheduled for Friday.
Meanwhile, he didn't hear back from SDL as he had expected.  Yet he continued to hear back from other companies, including Hill Air Force Base about new job listings.  We decided that one was just not for us... and we looked forward to our dinner interview.
Friday came and we had our "interview" at Shoots, a place in Provo. It happened to have a live band just outside of the restaurant and after only a few minutes it was relocated to Ruby River.
The dinner was delicious, meeting and getting to know the boss and his wife was very nice, and learning about the company was very interesting.
But the best part of the night........... he got a job offer!  It was a happy moment!
He explained he did have an interview with Rio Tinto (for the following Friday-which was 2 days ago from now) and they said he could have until the following Monday to tell them. That day is tomorrow!
We spent Friday night at our friends, Blake and Chantel's, house. They were kind enough to watch our girlies during the dinner, and let us stay with them. They even kept us company while we looked at several houses with our great Realtor, my brother James.
We tried to come home Saturday after looking houses, but we nearly got in a car wreck, witness another one, and drove through the after-math of one, within 5 minutes of leaving their house. SO we stayed until early Sunday morning and drove home before Fast and Testimony meeting.

Well, after thinking (and fasting) about it over for the weekend we were about 90% sure we would take the job.  It being a smaller company, it can't pay very well like the larger companies... but hey, it was a lot higher than no job pays! And... like previously mentioned, it just felt good! We even got really serious about selling our house (as For Sale By Owner hasn't been successful) we decided to list our house with the afore mentioned Realtor.  He came up Tuesday afternoon to finalize the paperwork and put up our new lawn ornament. (it's not quite as cute as our other new one)

Back to the story. Tuesday a wrench got thrown into the plans..  SDL (logan) called him up  and extended the job offer.  Immediately looking at it, we thought, "oh it's not that much higher in salary.. we can still easily take Payson) But then we looked into their benefit's package that was broken down for us.  It started to look AMAZING! Salary wise it wasn't a whole lot more, but when you take into consideration the retirement and everything else, it brought the actual pay to be a much MUCH higher sum.
I hate to complain about this. We are SO SO SO GRATEFUL to have 1 job offer, let alone 2. That is a huge blessing for us.  We understand so many people can't get jobs in these tough economic tines, and here we are with 2 offers at 2 great companies.
We are grateful , but you'd think that having a really nice paying job would make me happy. But I was so excited about moving to Payson and now this offer is so good.... it needed to actually be considered.

This has been the hardest decision of our lives! Each company is great for their own reasons. Each has a lot of benefits and he feels like he'd enjoy both jobs. They are both in a good places to raise a family. We have loved Logan... but Payson is a lot closer to our families--which was a major goal of ours.  The small companies have so many benefits, but so do the large ones..and so on and so on. When we prayed about it, we could never get a distinct answer either. That would have made things easy. It just felt like either choice would be okay.  We have gone back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. It's been a real roller-coaster.
But ready or not, tomorrow we have to give our answer.

Until it's finalized, I can't say what our decision is................ but I'm here to tell you, it has not come easily.

However, we went to the Temple yesterday with an answer in mind and wanted to have it confirmed. We had such a neat experience. We both felt like we'd be the witness couple, and we were.  And the spirit was very sweet in the temple.  There is so much power found by going to the House of the Lord.

April Fools Classic

I don't want to forget this so I'm posting it now.
Preface: I have been trying to teach Tianna about all of the holidays we celebrate, even the silly ones.  April Fools was no different...I told her on April 1st you play tricks on people and we needed to think of a good trick to play on daddy.

On her way to preschool Friday morning she said, "Oh Mom! Today is the day we get to play a trick on Dad, huh!" I said, "yes, have you thought of anything to do?" and she got this bright smile on her face and said, "Yes! I have a good idea. I'll do a somersault on him! Or a pike!"  It took me a minute, but then I realized when I said play a TRICK on dad she was thinking of her gymnastic tricks! haha. I love how children make two-and-two in their smart little minds.

Another funny Tianna story that I don't want to forget, happened a few months ago. I got the old scrubber toothbrush out to scrub the hard water and gunk build up from around the bathroom sink. She got in the drawer where I keep my spare (travel) toothbrush and pulled it out and said she wanted to help. I said, "No no that's not one for cleaning. I still use that one.."
She was quiet for a minute and then said, "Mom, I have something to tell you.  (she had a rather horrified expression on her face too)  Every night when I come up to brush my teeth I get that toothbrush and scrub the counter with it." "Wait, what? You scrub the counter with it?" and she said, "Yes, I go like this:" and she then demonstrated how she scrubs the counter, and the walls, and the mirror, and the towel rack... with my toothbrush.    All I can say is THANK GOODNESS I forgot to take it with me the last time I went out of town.
She was glad I wasn't mad. Honestly, since I hadn't used it since she had been doing that, I found it quite funny.  However, I did tell her I really need her to ask before doing stuff like that. She's such a silly and funny and wonderful little girl. I sure love her!.