2013 HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Happy New Year to everyone!  It's 2013 and it has now been 31/2 years since I started and never finished this blog.  A lot changes in 3 years.  I guess I am not the best blogger.  I was never really good at keeping a journal.  I am making a new resolve to keep up on this now that we are farther away from some our family and friends.
In March of 2012 we found out that my brother David has a rare form of cancer called DSRCT.  It is usually a juvenile cancer that is found in boys ages 11-19 years of age.  My brother was 32 when they found the cancer.  It is so rare the survival rate is only 15% after 5 years.  He began chemotherapy shorty after they found the cancer.  He was on a heavy dose of Chemo and had to be in the hospital a week at a time for the treatments.  David and his wife Stacy have two cute girls that they would need help with; so Stacy could be with him at the hospital.  All of us sisters decided to take a month to help out.  I came up in June and July with my kids to help out.  We spent the summer with Dave's girls and my girls had a blast.  They love playing with their cousins.  Especially the ones they don't get to see that much.  We had a great summer.  Keith even came up two different times to visit with us.  The second time he came up we went to the Mt. St. Helen's.  That was fun.  We got to see a few movies about the mountain and all about the eruptions that is has periodically.  It was an adventure getting there. First I thought I would be sly and try to take the back way from my parents house to Lacey and we found out that it was the same day as the Seattle to Portland Bike Race and we were right in the bikers bath.  It took us way longer than I had expected, definitely not the best decision I have made.  Second, we really didn't know how to get there and our phones were telling us to go one way but our map was telling us something different.  Luckily we finally found our way and with just a little under an hour before the visitor's center closed we got there.  After we saw all the shows we could we walked around outside for a while with the kids but eventually left because the kids were getting bored.

We also did lots of other fun things that summer.  We went to the zoo and Grandpa showed Decatur how to run his riding lawn mower that Decatur would use when he had to take the trash out.  Grandpa also took the kids on lots of tractor rides.  We had lots of fun but were anxious to get home and start school.
After David found out about his cancer Keith and I started thinking seriously about moving closer to my family in Washington State.  We finally decided to give it a try and so Keith set out to find a new job in Washington.  By the time we went up for the summer he had an interview with a company named Alerton.  Alerton is a Honeywell brand that manufactures micro-processor based HVAC controls for large buildings.  In Utah he worked for a company that sold Honeywell parts so he thought it would be a good company to work for.  He flew up to Washington for an interview the last part of June and by the first part of August he was offered a job.  He worked it out so he could start work the day after Labor Day.  We had been working on our house to get it ready to put on the market to sell.  So we decided to rent a U-Haul and take some of the things we didn't absolutely need and take them up to a storage unit in Washington until I could sell the house.  Keith and I set out on September 1, 2012.... more to come tomorrow.