Carter's and Riley's Birthdays

My babies are growing up too fast. At times I wish I could just freeze time and keep them tiny forever, but than I would miss out on so much. Carter turned the big ONE September 28th. He has been such a wonderful addition to our family. He is sweet, easy going and full of smiles. Lately he just loves to climb.....on everything. At first I was excited to see him move his little body upon things. Now I am a bit fearful of what his next big climb will be. He has mastered the table, changing table, desk, toilet, tub and it looks like it won't be long before he is out of his crib. He is very stealth and quick in his climbing which has lead us to some close calls. He is just all boy and a complete opposite of his sister.





Now this year we celebrated Riley's 3rd birthday. She is at the point where she realizes what a birthday is. Which added so much more to the celebration. Weeks leading up to her birthday were filled with questions about it, what will we do, will she get presents, can she blow out the candle, how old was she turning, etc. I loved it, no coaching on my part to get her excited this year. We ended up celebrating her birthday three times. Once with her Nana who came in town to help me out with a prior surgery, than we threw her a princess party and lastly on Nov.4th we celebrated it with the family. When it came to her actual birthday, Nov. 4th, she grew a little agitated and was asking me why we were singing to her because she already had her birthday. She is just so cute and silly. It is just amazing how time flies by as an adult, but as a child I felt like time moved oh so slowly.I am happy that she is growing, I just wish time moved slower. By the way, I just love being a mom.

Birthdays Galore!

Well, we all celebrated our birthdays these last couple of months. Greg's was in August. We celebrated it with some of his favorite friends, his family. We had cake, some ice cream,and presents. This is when Riley first started to get excited about her birthday (which is in November).




Next we headed out to Mildgeville to celebrate Riley's cousin Jackson's birthday. Well, actually he is a 2nd cousin,but I feel that his mom, Kelly is just like a sister, so we consider him a cousin. Kelly's family just moved to GA to start a Little Ceaser Pizza business. We are excited for them on their new adventure, but we are even more excited to have family close by. They are going to be living in Augusta which is about 2 1/2 hours away. After two years living in the South and in the Midwest and having most of my family in Utah or CA, 2 1/2 hours is close.












Than came my Birthday, it was two days before I went into surgery. I was so worried about the sinus surgery, that I could hardly even enjoy it. Plus there was a whole list of things that I should not eat due to causing excess bleeding.The big highlight for me was the gift of my mother coming to visit to help with the kids after surgery and Greg got me tickets to Wicked!



About 5 days after my birthday, we stopped by one of our new Georgian friends to celebrate their daughters Birthday. Um...I m going to stop now. I would just save this post, but I am afraid all the pictures I have embedded into this post would be lost. So stayed tuned for more birthday stories(Carter's and Riley's Birthday)

I am definitely not much of a Blogger.

Ok so I love reading other peoples blog, but for some reason I hate doing it. Well, I don't hate it, it's just not a high priority of mine. Those quite moments I get when the kids are a sleep are usually filled with bills, random projects, cleaning, hanging out with Greg and calling family and friends. But I do want to post some catch up info on our family. It has been an active couple of months. We ended up celebrating everyone's birthday, starting in Aug (Greg's) than September (Carter and I) and November ( Riley's). Also during this time, I ended up having surgery, had a princess party for Riley and monster Party for Carter, cousin Brooklyn came for a visit, Kelly and Mark moved to Augusta,ga and I refinished some furniture for Rileys new bedroom. Lastly we have had yet another problem with a rental-MOLD!. Seriously, I cannot wait to be in a spot long enough to own a home. I plan on making a post for each event starting tomorrow.

Sinus Surgery

Well, I just wanted to let those who knew and those who didn't know that recently I had sinus surgery. I found out last March that I had developed nasal polyps (yes, it does sound gross and it is). I could never see them because they were deep in my sinus, nevertheless they needed to go. They were only causing slight breathing problems, but basic medicine was not going to cure them and they were causing me to start having headaches and consistent stuffiness. So I put off the surgery until now, and everything went better than expected. What I had done was a complete right endoscopic frontal sinusotomy, right endoscopic ethmoidectomy and bilateral endoscopic maxillary antrostomy with tissue removal. Basically alot of technical words explaining that the sinus opening were enlarged, and polyps were taking out. I had been so nervous to have this done and I have heard numerous horror stories from people who have had it done. For those who are contemplating having this surgery, I say go for it. Recovery time flew by and everything is clear.I am so glad I did it.I was only down for about a day or so and really did not have much pain. My mom was a sweet heart and flew up to help out Instead of taking care of me, we just played around with the kids and hit up a few of my favorites here in GA such as the aquarium and Noah's Ark ( a small zoo).

Our Last Day in Chicago, IL (This was in June)

 

As you can tell I have been having blogging block and had not posted much since our move to GA. Before I move on to our life in GA, I thought I would just post some pictures of our last day in IL. We had a blast staying downtown and wondering around Navy Pier. I think Chicago would be a fun town to live in without kids, but hauling kids in a busy city just would not be for me. Oh and parking at the Hilton downtown was $50. Luckily, we found another garage a few blocks away for the low low cost of $35.

 

Carter and I walking along the lake.

 

A fun architectural boat tour. It was cool to cruise through the city and under some really unique bridges. A Funny thing about this tour is that it is close to one of the only thing Riley remembers about Chicago and it was only an hour. She will still talk about it like we did it last week!

 

A shot of Greg taken by our little photo bug, Riley


 

Sears Tower from boat

 
Riley's Marilyn Monroe pose.
We sat in the front row and Riley kept dancing and lifting her dress right next to the tour guide, so everybody got a bonus show on our tour.

 


Riley wanted to get closer to the kids playing in the fountain





Riley having a blast!


 
Cater having a blast!


The boys having fun.


 
Navy Pier at sunset.

It has been way too long!

Really I cant believe it has taken me this long to post. I have been busy, but I need to be better than this. Well, we are now living in Locust Grove, GA. So far it has been a great move. This will be our third move in 3 years. Moving has been somewhat exciting and adventurous,but I am really getting hungry for some stability and I would love to own a home again. This renting thing just bites. It is hard to make a place your own if you know you may be moving within a year and your hands are tied as far as painting and such. Really living with white walls after two years just gets to me. Luckily this year we found a rental with some color. Actually every wall is painted in nice neutral tones. Our neighbors are really nice, but I think you can expect that in the South and we love our subdivision. It is just beautiful with great amenities. Check out the pool. The bigger pool is heated(to a perfect temp every time I have been there) six-lane Jr. Olympic-sized pool, there are 2 water slides, and they have splash pool for the kids with brightly colored umbrellas that spray water.


We walk there at least 3 times a week. We can take tree lined sidewalks there or we can cut through some hiking trails to get there. It is about 1 mile, so I am finally getting some much needed exercise. Having Carter has totally changed my body and exercising habits or lack of. I am closer to my pre prego weight, but my body just looks different and this not one of those good differences. Men just don't realize what us women go through, and frankly either did I. ( Thanks mom, you sacrificed much for our family)



We have now been here since mid July and it took about 1 month to really unpack and get things organized the way they should be.I am planning on getting rid of a bunch of stuff before we move again to hopefully cut my time down in unpacking. Before we moved out to GA, Greg and I flew out there to secure a place to live. During that week long trip, we had tons of fun without the wee ones. My mom came out to babysit. Again thanks mom. Here is what we did during that time.




In May, Greg and I flew up to Ga to find a place to live for this next year. Here are some fun things we did



River rafting in Chattagoo river



Here we are at the Atlanta Aquarium. This is one of the largest indoor aquarium in the US. I believe this is one of the only ones that has live whale sharks.


This is the huge aquarium that 2 Whale sharks live



Check out how thick the walls are!


Next we took the CNN tour. That was fun. The building was huge. It was still under construction from the damage it sustained from a tornado, but everything was open.



This is a picture of another building that was hit by the torndao. The windows that are black were blown out. There were around 6 big buildings that we could see from the central park in Atlanta that had tons of windows blown out.

Here we are hanging out in the park watching everyone run through the water while a band played in the background.This made us miss our kids.


We than headed over to the Coke factory. This was great..a little history on Coke and lots of free sodas from around the world for tasting. I left a little sick and very wired. After that we at a restaurant name Lucky. That place was tasty. It was a total high tech restaurant as well. They had the coolest restroom I have ever seen. Cool lighting ( even the water stream out of the faucets had a glow)and TVs in the mirrors.Before leaving Atlanta we spent a day at Six Flags. It has been a while since I've been on a roller coaster, so I was so excited to be there and I didn't care that it was sweltering humid and everyone was sweating just standing in line. However, I was upset and a little worried mid day when all the rides were closed and everyone was told to seek shelter due to sever weather. Luckly, no tornadoes hit us and we were able to resume our fun 2 hours later.


After spending some time in Atlanta, we headed north to a town called Helen. There we went hiking in the Tlalluha Gorge that is filled with waterfalls, and a natural rock water slide.









Of course, more exciting than our trip is our children. So I thought I would just throw in a quick updated photo of them

Some videos of the kids

Here is a quick video of Riley practing telling everyone where we will be moving too.

This next one she has a little bit more energy, but starts to get distracted when Carter begins to slip out of her lap. You may not be able to hear her say this but she starts to get worried and says,"It's slidding."( It = Carter)

Lastly, Riley loves to try and spell things. Here she is practing her favorite word.

The allure of cookies

The smell of chocholate cookies was just too much of a temptation for our little buggy. I had baked a batch and had placed them on the counter to cool when Riley came runing in asking for a cookie. Well, let me restate that, she was actually demanding one. She told me that she "needed" the cookie. Lately she has decided to use the word "need" instead of "want or I would like". It makes me laugh to think that someone would "need" a cookie. Anyway, I told her she would have to wait unitl after dinner when the cookies have cooled. She stomped around a little bit and than found something else to occupy herself. A few mintues later, Carter needed his diaper changed. So I headed upstairs, changed him and by the time I came back down, Riley had moved a kitchen chair to the counter and was proceeding to finish her second cookie. I was a little mad, but amazed at how her desire for this cookie lead her to figure out a way to reach the top of the counter. Being a softy for her cute smile, I had to pull out the camera to capture her disobedience. God sends us these kids with these adorable smiles that make it so hard to be a stern parent. What do you do...I guess just love them.

 

Goodbye to Illionis

 

Finally, this journey in the mid west is almost over. We will be heading to Georgia mid June and can't wait to go. Greg will be relocating with the company Caterpillar to a town called Griffin. We have heard it is a smaller town with most shopping about 20 minutes away. That sounds great to us, last year any real shopping (unless you count Wal-Mart) was 45-1hr 20 minutes away. We have been looking forward to this move, or any move, since we arrived in Illinois. In a few weeks we will go on a getting-to-know-you trip to Georgia to find a place to rent. It will only be Greg and I. Over this past year we felt like we have missed out in building our friendship. He is my best friend, but I hardly see him. He works so much. One of his longest work days was this last Monday. He got up at 7:30 to head to school until 10:00 am, came home, helped with the kids, took a short nap, got up, ate and took off for work at 2:00 pm, came home at 5:00am slept for an hour and than had to be back at work by 7:00 am. He was there for an hour, came home and slept for another hour and than had to be back at work at 11:00am. Truly that is a hard working man. He is amazing, but like I said, we need some time together. Hopefully we will find a place quickly so we can just relax. Our last move here to Illinois was a huge headache. We lived in Motel 6 with our dog for a month. And yes, at one point a tornado was heading our way. I thought I was going to die in the Motel 6's nasty bathroom. Greg, Riley and I could barely squeeze into it(mainly because I was huge with child)and our poor dog was outside the door. His whimper was mixed with the horrific siren screaming our impeding doom. Hopefully that experience will never be repeated. Anyway, Riley and Carter will stay at home with Nana(my mom). I can't thank my mom enough for flying out to help us. She is seriously the coolest woman I have every met. I don't know how I got so lucky that she happened to be my mom, but I thank the Lord almost every night for the family that I was raised in ( and of course the family that I have)!

Yes it is true....I have been a horrible blogger!

Wow it has been now over month since I have last posted a blog or even really looked at it. Things have just been so busy and lately I have just been too tired to restart the blog. It is one of those things that once you decided to put it off, the next time you think about it you have developed this habit and you figure, heck what is another day...I will do it tomorrow. Well finally tomorrow is here. Of course, life has been fun and filled with adventures mixed in with taxes and finding new tenants for our rental in UT. Lets start with what had started this slippery slide into the blog black hole. TAXES- really, need I say more. I am hoping that one day someone else will be doing this for me. This year we had to file taxes in 3 states (almost 4). This really took me a long time to figure out. At first I enjoyed doing it, but by day 3 I was done. Every time I would review the stupid figures, it seems I would have to spend hours on the internet to figure out what you can claim as deductions for a rental property and a bunch of other confusing things. I will warn you, never file in Mississippi, their tax forms for a partial resident is as backwards as the state. I apologize if this offends anyone, but they really need to have someone rewrite some of their directions. So far, I believe I filed each state right. I guess, I will have to wait and see. My next reason for my slacking is due to finding new tenants for our home in Provo, UT. Luckily we have not had a problem with interest in our home, but the overwhelming responses I have received from an ad I posted on Craigslist kept me really busy. We posted the home on Craigslist on a Friday and I removed it by Monday because I had over 40 responses. It was nice to know that we would not have to struggle to find a tenant, but it kept me busy sifting through everyone and trying to get a great tenant. If you are bored here is a link with pictures of our pad http://picasaweb.google.com/joymetzgar/ProvoHouse?authkey=xoZVmbEB8vY. We spent our first 4 years of marriage remodeling the place. We learned alot about home improvement, each other and to never buy a hundred year old house. The place turned out great, but we spent so much time working with this granddaddy that I am surprised we just didn't give up. There was one time were Greg and I literally did not sleep for 2 nights. We were so set on finishing our bathroom and trying to cut cost by renting equipment overnight that we couldn't seem to find time to sleep. Another great story would be when Greg went to rip of the shingles of the roof and after three layers he got down to an additional 2 layers of shake. The only way to get the roof up to code was to take everything off down to the frame and start over. It was a dirty dirt job. When he was done with the destruction, he was covered from head to toe in this black soot. I thought he looked hilarious and 5 years later, Greg finally agrees too. It was really a great learning experience..one that I hope to never repeat. Also, here are two quick photos of the kids. Now that I have explained my lack of writing, I will start posting some everyday fun stuff.

Every wonder about your credit?

Get a free credit report at www.AnnualCreditReport.com. You can do it once a year. Unfortunately if you want your credit score you have to pay $7.95. I just finished looking at mine and realized that I have an account at Target that I opened up in 2000 and never use. I am planning on closing that tomorrow. If anyone has any insight on the number of revolving accounts and how the effect your credit please let me know.

Carter's Blessing

Well, we finally blessed Carter. We had hopes do to it in California because of the large cluster of family. Unfortunately, Greg could never get enough time off of work to warrant spending the money to fly out there. We were given an adorable blessing outfit from my cousin Kelly and realized that if we don't bless our son soon, he will no longer fit into it. (Yeah, our boy is 4 1/2 months and he is 20lbs.) Despite not having tons of family and friends around to witness his blessing we were very blessed to have Carter’s Grandma and Grandpa Swisher make a 4 hour drive to come. Now that is some family love! We really just wanted some family to be there and could not thank them enough for coming. A baby blessing is such a special time for us, it means the world to share it with those that have a genuine connection to our lives. It was a beautiful blessing given to him by his dad. Greg was so cute, after the blessing he took some time and wrote down some of the feelings that he had about the blessing. I recorded these thoughts in a book for Carter. Hopefully he will refer to these special words often in the future.

A new perspective of life

Hey, here is a man who takes his adversity and turns it into a learning experience for us all. Check it out: http://video.stumbleupon.com/#p=ithct48cqw

Brag about your hubby!

What is his name: Gregory Michael Metzgar

How long did you date: It was a short time (11 months), but long enough to know that this was it!

Who eats more sweets: Well, for those who know us, you already know the answer. Just in case you don't, it is I (Joy). I would rather eat dessert than dinner anytime and sometimes I do. It is a shameful habit. Just shameful.....

Who said I love you first: I believe that would be Greg. I think I wanted to say it before, but would not dare. We were at his sister house out on a balcony when the magic words were spilled.

Who is taller: Greg is 6'3" and I am 5'10"

Who can sing better: Maybe Greg, but he doesn't know it yet. He has always been shy about singing and only until recently, have I heard his voice. With a little practice and the use of his strong(loud) volume when speaking he just may be amazing.

Who is smarter:I think we may be equally smart, but in different ways. His intelligence, especially in math, always amazes me

Who does the laundry: I do, but he is a helper. He almost always put his clothes in the laundry bag.

Who does the dishes: I generally empty the dishwasher and we both load it.

Who pays the bills: I guess technically he pays the bills. I just make sure the respective company receives the payment.

His guilty pleasure: Movies, movies and more movies. This boy just loves his movies. The nice thing about that is I am never short of an idea for a present. He also loves Karate. When every he gets a chance he will practice. I have caught him trying to teach Riley a few moves too.

Who sleeps on the right side of the bed: Greg.. it is strange, but no matter where we are at, that seems to be the arrangement

Who mows the lawn: Greg. Yet this is the first time we have actually had a lawn that needed to be mowed. I take that back, in Provo, I used our push mower a couple of times. Here in Illinois we have a large lawn and we use a gas mower. During the summer, I really wanted too, but Greg didn't want his pregnant wife out mowing the lawn. Maybe this summer I will give it a try

Besides you, who is his best friend: I think Greg has a lot of good friends. I don't think there is one in particular

Who cooks dinner: If he is home for dinner, which is rare, he will

Who is more stubborn: Definitely him. Yet, if you asked him, he would say me. So I guess we are equally yoked.

Who kissed who first: Greg was the brave one

Who asked who out first: Well, I guess I did. I mentioned that I was going running and that he was welcome to come along.(at that time he was running too)

What was your first date: Running along the shoreline trail in Provo. I don't know if I would suggest this as an ideal first date. He was in better shape than I, and of course I didn't want it to look that way, so I had to push myself. It is hard to have a conversation and look cute when you are all sweaty and out of breath

Who proposed: That would be Greg. He was so nervous he actually placed the ring on my finger before I had a chance to say yes. It was too cute

Who has more siblings me:- I have 2 brothers and 3 sisters. Greg has 2 sisters

Who wears the pants: It depends on the situation

What is your favorite thing about him: This is a tough one. There are so many things I love about him. I guess you could say his commitment to the gospel and our family. I admire him so much in this area and feel so blessed. We both try to live our lives as the lord would. We may never be perfect, but he is definitely perfect for me