She Is Talking

Taryn has just been talking and talking since we got here to Manassa. These are some of the words she can say:
Da Da (dad)
Tysee (Tyson)
Mom mom (mom)
hee hees (horse)
ssside (outside)
NO (she learned this one quick)
uhha & ya (yes)
gasses (glasses)
aheyes (eyes)
nosss (nose)
soes (shoes)
Each day it is something new! I love this age where they learn new things and then are so proud of themselves.

Dinner with Jenny, Easter with Friends, Empty Apartment, Moving and Driving Across the Country, and Finally Time At Grandpa and Grandma Jackson's

The last supper! HA HA HA At least that is how Jenny and I saw it. This was our last "Girls Night Out" for a long time. She is headed to Evansville, ID and I to Knoxville, TN. We aren't too far away but far enough that we can't see each other in five minutes. It was nice to have one more chat session with my good friend. Good Luck Jenny, call you soon.
(Ok so this blog entry is a bit off on the time frame. This all happened about 3 weeks ago. I just haven't had time to write. This one is going to be a long one, 3 weeks long, so bear with me) We have been packing, packing, packing and almost packed up our whole house, and with that I have also packed up most of our food and fun. So the kiddos didn't get a Easter, but our good friends the Johnsons and the Buccellatos came through and invited us to an Easter Eggs hunt and dinner. My kids were excited. So on Easter Sunday, after long hours of cleaning, we headed over to Jen and Jason's for some fun.
Looking for Easter Eggs. The older kids hid them outside all over the place. Tyson and Bodie were the hunters of the day. They had tons. Unfortunately we couldn't take all of Tyson's spoils with us, since we were moving the very next day, but we did take two eggs for the road.
Even Taryn got in on the action. She found two eggs and was finished. The child is easy to please. She had her eye on other things.........
She was all about the little car that she could get in and out of with the opening and closing door. She didn't ever try to move it, just wanted to get in and out of it. Love the smile sis!
All the kids on the trampoline. These two families have been so very, very good to us these past 2 years. Thanks you all. We will miss hanging out with you and seeing you all.
George, Vaughn and Jason. The three stooges, just teasing. These two guys have been good friends to Vaughn and I and they were so kind to help us pack up the POD yesterday. Thanks to them the job was finished earlier than I had expected.
After the Easter festivities, it was back to the almost empty apartment to clean, clean, clean. The office staff has changed since we moved in our apartment 2 years ago and this new staff is a bunch of swindlers. We made sure everything was cleaner than it was when we moved it. We also wanted our deposit back. So we scrubbed walls, and carpets and ceiling, etc.. The place was spotless by 1 in the morning. We spent the night on our air mattresses. (Not very comfortable)
Sniff, Sniff. It was kind of sad to move out everything and then to look back at the empty apartment. We have made some fond memories in Michigan that we will always cherish. We all are going to miss this place immensely.
Bright and early Monday morning they came and picked up the POD and away went our stuff to a storage facility in Knoxville, Tenn., awaiting us when we return in June. We then were checked out of our apartment and it was time to leave Michigan. Tyson cried when we left the parking lot of the apartment. He was sad to leave all of his friends. It about broke my heart. For anyone that has never had to pick up and move, and pick up and move and do it over and over again, they will never understand what it is like to do this process and how emotional it all is, but for Tyson he knows this process all too well. I think he is getting sick of it. It is hard to leave everything and everyone you know and move to a brand new place and make friends all over again. I told him that he would love Knoxville and that he and I would make lots of new friends. That helped a little bit. So on we drove. Vaughn was in the truck and I was in the Edge with the two kiddos. It took us about 11 hours to drive to Knoxville, Tenn from Auburn Hills, MI.
Notice how happy the kids were to travel. Thank goodness they slept for a better part of the trip. The rest of the trip was spent singing lots of songs and playing the ABC game. (Q's and Z'z are hard to find). We got into Knoxville, Tenn., around 9 at night and checked in to the Days Inn and all passed out. The next morning was spent meeting our landlady Melinda, looking at our new home, going to Tyson's new school to pick up paper work for that evening Kindergarten sign up, going to the health center to have Tyson's shot records put on Tennessee forms, then back to the school for the Kindergarten sign up, lunch was in there some where and then back to the condo to rest. Melinda was so nice to let us stay in the condo for that second night. We slept on our air mattresses again, but it was better than spending a bundle for a hotel room. We also had brought some of the more fragile things with us, lamps, pictures and such to store in the condo; another sweet thing of Melinda to allow us to do. See she is still fixing up the place for us and it is about 1/2 way finished. She is redoing the whole thing. She has put in new carpet, lights, vents, floors, doors, paint and redoing the back yard and the front. It is going to be so nice when it is all done.We were up again at the crack of dawn and ready for another day of traveling. This time we were headed west. We traveled across the whole state of Tennessee, and across the top part of Arkansas. There were some tornado storms coming across Tennessee as we traveled. I got a pretty good picture of one, above. That night we stopped in a small town in Arkansas. We had been traveling about 9 hours and the kids were tired of sitting in their seats. I didn't blame them. The country we traveled through was beautiful and did make the drive a lot nicer.Up again the next morning and onward to Colorado. This is a nice picture of Oklahoma City, OK. Never been to Oklahoma, now I can say I drove across the whole state. It looked a lot like Kansas, (sorry Jenny). We were going to stop in Amarillo, TX, but we got there sooner than expected and still had a good part of the day left. We decided to just stick it out and get to Manassa. We rolled in about midnight and we were so dead tired. The kids were ready to kill us because we made them stay in their seat for about 13 hours. Sorry kiddos!!The next day we slept a long time. Once we got up the kids run and run. They were so very happy not to be in the car. Taryn tried on all the boots she could find throughout the house.It didn't take her long to snuggle up to Papa. They spent a lot of time watching TV in his big, comfortable chair. And she also learned to love the horses, or "hee hees" as she calls them. And she will con anyone into taking her outside to see them. She doesn't care what time of day it is, she just wants to go and see them. Funny kid. She loves to be outside.
Tyson too, has enjoyed the time outside here and the room to roam and run. He loves to jump on the trampoline and makes up new tricks daily. Here is his vertical jump. Pretty good huh!
These two have spent most of their time here, outside. When they get up and get dressed their shoes are on, and out the door they go. They hate to come inside for any reason. I am sooo glad. They had such a long winter of being cooped up in the apartment in MI, that the time outside is so important to them. During our stay here in Manassa, Uncle Brett had his senior prom and Tyson and I were able to go and watch him march. Tyson even got a picture with his uncle and his uncle's date. While we were there Tyson asked me to dance. AHHH! What a little gentleman. He is going to be one sweet kid!Tyson the motorcycle man. Vaughn bought this bike a year after we were married. When we started medical school, his dad housed it for us. Now since we are still far away it just stays here in Manassa. Whenever we come home Vaughn will shine it up and ride it around. Maybe one day we will be able to take it with us. Tyson likes to go on little rides with his dad.Another favorite past time is to go out and feed the horses. I love the fact that Tyson and Taryn aren't afraid of the horses and dogs and other animals. They revel in being around the animals and feeding them. We have been here in Manassa for 2 weeks and it has been blissful. We have been able to relax after weeks of stress and packing. We don't have to return to Knoxville for another month, so it is just relax and enjoy ourselves for the rest of the time.

Time Out With Friends

Saturday night I was able to go out to dinner with two of my good friends here in Michigan. Kind of like one more "girls night out." We went to Kruse and Muer, and the food was excellent. I wish I would have gone to this place more often. Bethany and Jen have been absolute sweethearts to me and my family. They have welcomed us into their homes for many holidays and hang out activities. They are like family and it is going to be so very hard to leave them. I think the hardest part about leaving Michigan is loosing friends, not that you loose them literately, you can keep in contact with emails, facebook and cards, but it isn't the same as hanging out and laughing till you pee your pants. Vaughn and I have agreed that this journey through medical school and now beginning residency is great and has been awesome with so many experiences and opportunities, but it has one downfall and that is leaving friends and having to move away from them only to go and try to make new ones. IT SUCKS!!! BUT.....this is what we signed up for, I think we all, and I mean Vaughn, I and even Tyson are ready to settle down permanently somewhere.
Thanks Beth and Jen for such a fun night of hanging out, laughing and just having a great time. You two have made my time here wonderful.

My church class. L to R: Megan, Cayanne, Angel, Alyssa, Natalie, Nick G., Nick D., Justin. I have been teaching these kids for a little over a year. They have been a lot of fun to teach and to see grow into little adults. They have brightened my life with their quarkie ways and funny comments. I will miss them immensely.

It's The Little Things

Taryn has been learning to mimic much of what we do. Her latest thing is to sing the Primary song "Baptism." She doesn't know the words, but she can sing the melody. It is the cutest thing. She will sing it with a Da Da Da Da. And to hear her sing it when Tyson plays it on his CD player just melts my heart.

Another thing she is doing is saying, "NO, No, No" But she does it in a playful way. She does it to tease her daddy. What a girl.

Tyson's new thing is to take his dad's walkie talkies and play spy games... He loves it and is having a ball. He can count all the way to 100 without any help and can count backwards from 20 down. I am impressed with this little 4 year old.

And The Winner Is.............Knoxville, Tennessee

YES! It is official. We have a job and a place for the job. We are headed to Knoxville, Tennessee and we couldn't be happier.
Thursday was the day we found out where we would be going and let me tell you, we didn't sleep much the night before. Thursday morning was a whirlwind of events before we found out. We had to go to the county offices at 8:00a.m. During our meeting there about 9, Tyson and Vaughn headed to the Nature Field Trip with Tyson's school. Taryn and I finished up and were home by 9:30. Then it was a late breakfast, since mom didn't get it in before, and then we waited for Tyson and Vaughn to get home around 11:30. Now we waited, and waited and waited...............Till 1:00 p.m. I was making Vaughn check the computer up till one just in case they posted early. (They don't post early in case you are wondering) When one o'clock finally came around Vaughn decided to torture me by saying, "Let's just wait 10 more minutes." I was ready to pound on him. Lucky for him, he was laughing and logging onto the computer as he said it, otherwise he might not have lived. Then...............there it was "Congratulations, you matched at UT Hospital in Knoxville. WAHOO!!! I jumped around and shouted for joy. What a rush to finally know where we were going after months of wondering. Vaughn was happy and we spent the next hour calling family to let them know of our good news.
At 2:00 Tyson had a birthday party and I couldn't stop smiling the whole time we were there. I cannot tell you how nice it is to finally have a direction in our lives and a place to land that direction. Now our lives are filled with exciting new things: finding a place to live, finding a school for Tyson, learning about Knoxville....etc. It is an exciting time in our lives.