He's Here!!!

Ethan Grant Hartley was born on Feb. 9, 2009!!! He weighed 8lbs 14oz and was 20 inches long. He is a very sweet and mellow baby, the only time he really cries is when he is getting his diaper changed. His sisters adore him and are constantly showering him with hugs and kisses.

We're a little late getting the news out because his birth was followed with some complications for me which resulted in an extra week in the hospital. But we're all home and healthy now and we're excited to have Ethan in our family!

Pictures of Ethan

Hello Seattle!!

We are just about settled into life here in Seattle. Clark has been at his job for about a month and loves it, we found a great house in a great neighborhood, Isabelle started school and we're starting to make some friends in our ward and neighborhood. Here are some things we love about living here:

-The neighborhoods are wonderful! Everything is so clean and nice and there is a park or a playground on almost every block.

-Half day kindergarten. I LOVE half day kindergarten. Isabelle is in the afternoon class so we don't have to wake up and rush out the door. We walk her down to the bus stop at 11:15 and she's home by 3:20. I am amazed at how much she learns in just those few hours at school, it seems like she does more in those few hours that she did all day in her previous school. Isabelle loves it too. She loves her teacher and her class and has made lots of new friends.

- We are so close to Costco!!! Oh Costco, how we've missed Costco!! Since moving here we have spent a lot of time and a whole lot of money at Costco.

-The people are so nice here! I went to Target and an employee came up to me and asked if I needed help and then actually took me to the aisle I needed! If you've ever been to a store in Owings Mills you would know why this made me so excited. And it's not just the people at the stores that are nice, it's just the people in general here are nice.

-The cost of milk. Wow. In Maryland we were paying $4 a gallon, here it's $1.98. We'll be able to go on a vacation with all the money we're going to save on milk!

-The bus system. Clark has gotten familiar with the bus system here and has found it to be a great way to get to work. He doesn't have to deal with traffic or parking, it's great.


We found a fabulous house to rent until we find something we love enough to buy. Things we love about our new place:

-So much space!
-2nd floor laundry room (I'm never going back to laundry in the basement!)
-2 1/2 baths, we've never had more than one bathroom!
-Walk in closets. Wow. I've never had this much room for clothes, now I need to go shopping!
-A walk in pantry in the kitchen
-A garbage disposal (I've never had one, now I don't think I'll be able to live without it)
-Gas stove. I've always heard how gas stoves are so much better than electric and now I believe all the hype.
-My absolute favorite thing about the house is that it has a huge soaking tub in the master bath.
-It's in a great neighborhood with lots of kids that are the same ages as our kids, in fact there are 2 little boys on our block that are in Isabelle's kindergarten class and one of them has a sister Kate's age.

Here are some pictures of our new place.

Good-bye Maryland!!!

Good-bye Maryland, Good-bye Owings Mills! Here are a few things we're really going to miss:

-All of our great friends (how will we live without the Clausers?)

-Being so close to Aunt Cherie (luckily Southwest runs some great sales so she can visit often)

-The wonderful Hampstead ward

-Being close to DC and all the great stuff there

-The metro (yeah it could be scary but it was so convenient!)

And of course we're going to miss our house. 15 Walk Ave. was our first house, we put a lot of work into that house and we had some really great memories there: pool parties, campouts, birthday parties and holidays. We were lucky enough to sell our home quickly to some great people, hopefully they'll enjoy it as much as we did! Here are some of our last photos of Walk Ave (I can't figure out how to get the pictures to post where I want them so the post starts with our last pictures of Walk Ave., you get the idea).

PODS

So we moved our stuff out of our Walk Avenue house between Christmas and New Years. We rented shipping pods to send our stuff (aka junk, worldly possessions) to Seattle. It was too difficult to get the pods up our street so we made 2-3 trips by truck/van/SUV to the pods shipping center in order to pack our stuff.

Thank you Derrick Stark, Matt Clauser, David Taylor, Paul Anderson, and Cherie Jones for all you hard work! It was fun to have so many well educated people trying to figure how to pack pods efficiently. Let's just say at times (during pod packing) we looked at each other and laughed at "how many graduates do you need to figure out how to pack a pod?"

Laura and I decided that we would only take to Seattle what would fit into the two pods. The rule became "If it doesn't fit, it doesn't go". This rule really helped us both 1. dejunk and 2. replace old stuff that we should have replaced long ago.

Once the pods were filled, we sent them on their way. Clark followed a few days later (Jan. 1st) in order to begin work on Jan 5th, 2009. Laura, the girls and Grandma Jones followed on January 8th, 2009.

Seattle, WA!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, it's time to go WEST! After 7+ years in Maryland, it is now time to say good bye to our Friends on the East Coast and make new Friends on the West Coast.

This week, Clark accepted a management position at Harborview Medical Center in downtown Seattle, WA. It was a rather large promotion and an exciting position that will allow him to work with senior level leadership at a Harborview, local hospitals and the Seattle Emergency Medical Services (Fire & Rescue). Together they will be planning, organizing and executing a plan to reduce the overcrowding of the emergency departments at Harborview as well as 20 additional hospitals in the greater Seattle metropolitan area.

We are beginning the packing process, so you can imagine the next post will include plenty of "moving" pictures.

DisneyWorld

We just returned from our fun family vacation at DisneyWorld! We stayed at a DisneyWorld resort and spent 9 days going to the Disney waterparks, Animal Kindom, Magic Kingdom, Hollywood Studios and Epcot. We had such a fun time it was really hard to come home!
We had a fun time going on all the rides and Splash Mountain was Isabelle and Kate's favorite, they could ride that over and over. Natalie and I were somewhat limited when it came to rides. Pregnant women and kids under 35 inches can't go on most of the big rides but we still had lots of fun ( I did go on few of the milder rides that said no pregnant women allowed. Clark was waiting for some brave Disney worker to ask if I was pregnant and kick me off, but no one did!) Natalie loved the Small World ride. I love going on Small World with the girls because even though I think it's very simple and somewhat cheesey they love it and it is so fun to see them oooh and aahh over all the dolls and watch them with wonder and excitement.
When we booked our vacation Disney gave us the dining plan for free which meant that we could eat anywhere in the park for free! We did lots of character meals; we ate breakfast with Cinderella at her castle and we went to a storybook princess breakfast where we met most of the princesses. We also had a couple of meals with Mickey. By the end of the trip we were really glad that we didn't have to pay for our food because the girls hardly ate a thing! They were so into the characters at every meal that they didn't bother to eat. I would have been pretty upset if I had paid $25 a plate and those plates were hardly touched!
We planned our trip with our good friends the Clauser family which was lots of fun. We had all of our meals with them and we would meet up at the parks every now and then and go on rides together. We love having the Clausers as our travel buddies! My sister Cherie also came and joined us for the last couple of days we were at DisneyWorld. The girls loved taking Aunt Cherie on all their favorite rides.
We really enjoyed the Disney waterparks! It was great to be in sunny, warm Florida and we spent lots of time at our hotel pool and at the waterparks. Isabelle and Kate loved the wave pool, that is where they spent most of their time along with Clark. Natalie loved the water slides so I took Natalie on the water slides over and over again. We also spent some quality time in the lazy river.
We had such a fun time it was really hard to come home and get back into real life, but we're already planning our next trip to DisneyWorld!






Aunt Cherie joined us for a couple of days






The Clausers and the Hartleys

At the end of a fun filled day at the Magic Kingdom