Update

Ok, so Nathan wanted me to correct myself...we were not in St. Cloud for 2 weeks, we were there for a week and a half. We got there on a Thursday night (late) and left yesterday (Tuesday) a week and a half later. :) We were very busy with everything going on and trying to get everything accomplished in a short amount of time. Nathan was busy out on the land over-seeing the construction of the road that is being built for the development. It is coming along nice and it should be done by the end of the week! Okay, so now that I've corrected myself, I will let you know what's going on with the job......

Nathan called right away on Tuesday morning and spoke with the lady from the union hall in Iowa that left him a message last Friday. She told him about the "Mason City" job and he accepted. He will be putting up a transmission line that will run from Crystal Lake Iowa to Manly Iowa (I think) and they project it to take 3-4 months or longer. Like how they give us a set time? :) He will be working 6 - 12s (6 days a week, 12 hours a day) which is very nice compared to the 7 - 12s we thought he'd have to be working.

So yesterday morning we left St. Cloud for Des Moines Iowa to get his referral slip from the union hall. (I took us 4-1/2 hours drive time, 5 hours with stopping once) Then from there we back-tracked north to Mason City (about 2 hours) to find a hotel to stay for the night. Nathan's training this week was being held at the Holiday Inn so thankfully they had a room available!! So this morning Nathan is in training and we are playing in the hotel room :) It was quite a scene last night here with trying to get all the kids to settle down after being in the car all day long and then all packing into one little hotel room. But we made it! I went to get some groceries last night and once I left Nathan was able to shut off all the lights and the kids were out shortly after that.

So we have a couple days here. He will be finding out today how many days of training he has, either 2 or 3 and then it will be back to Luverne (3-1/2 hours) to pack our things and move them down here!!! We will be looking at a few places tonight to live at. Two of them are in Garner and 1 is in Forest City. We don't have many options because of the fact that we just want to rent for a few months and most people want a 6 month to year lease. The other reason is that the guy in Forest City told me that there is a feed mill crew and two other wind power crews looking for places to stay so we are competeing with them too. We are too worried about it though, the Lord will provide!

I will keep you updated as I know more......and later I will post pics of our stay here and in St. Cloud. But for now we are off to play in the play area here at the hotel!!!

Real Quick.....

I just have a few moments, but I thought I'd give an update of where we are at..... We've been in St. Cloud for almost 2 weeks waiting to here about the next move. We got a call from the Iowa union on Friday but Nathan's phone battery was dead and he wasn't by a charger so we missed the call. We will call Tuesday (tomorrow) morning to see what the call was all about and we will go from there. If it is the job that we've been waiting for, we will most likely be moving to Forest City, Iowa. Well, that's all for now...the kids (and my husband) and waiting in the car so I better run! I will update as soon as I can!

New Hobby

My new hobby??...dehydrating food!! :) I bought a dehydrator a few weeks ago and it's so cool. It's an awesome way to make snacks for the kids and since you take the majority of the water out of whatever you are dehydrating, it's mess free! (I've also learned that almost ALL of the nutrients stay in the food when you dehydrate!) Here are some of the foods I've tried so far; pineapple, apple, oranges, bananas, strawberries, watermelon, cantalope, and tonight I'm doing kiwi. The favorite fruit thing we make in the dehydrator.....fruit leather!!! It's SO easy and it tastes just like fruit roll ups from the store, but SO much healthier and cheaper! We've made combinations of apple-strawberry-banana, apple-strawberry-yogurt, apple-strawberry-watermelon. I've also made fruit leather out of applesauce (yummy!) and out of yogurt. BUT....the ultimate fav thing from the dehydrator???....JERKY! Yes, I made my own jerky and man, is it good!! We just got some more beef from our farmer and we get our milk from, so I'm am looking forward to making more. It's easy too...just take the beef, mix in the spices, put it in the nifty little jerky gun, squirt it out onto the dehydrator and in 5 hours you have amazing jerky! :)

Brayan has starting eating solid foods and now that he's started, he eats a TON! He'll eat ANYTHING we give him and he'll eat it all. Last night he had avacado, brocolli, mango and banana (of course, all fresh!) and finished off the whole plate full! Since he's eating so good, I've pre-made some baby food and froze it in ice cube trays and then put them in plastic bags (about a weeks worth) so then I just have to take them out of the freezer a few hours before and it's ready to go! Other foods he likes are carrots, pears, yogurt, blueberries, applesauce and this morning he had blueberry waffles! So basically, he'll eat anything :)

Tiernan is doing GREAT with potty training and is now pretty much accident free! He continues to practice his counting and is currently up to 20! (although he tends to skip over 13, so we are still working on that!)

Not too much new with Caedmon...he still loves to sleep (praise God!) and he is OBSESSED with reading books!..but I guess that's a good thing :)

Not too much new with the job situation. They still will not lay him off so he'll continue to work until the end of the job, which Nathan thinks will be in a couple weeks. The job in Iowa got pushed back a month so now that is scheduled to start in June. We're not sure if he'll be on that job or not, but it's still a possibility.

Tiernan "helping" me make bread....he really just licks everything he can get his little hands on :)

Tiernan says "that's good dough, mom!"

Brayan has started pulling himself up on everything and standing...our baby is growing fast!!

Smile :)

My 3 yr old is washing the dishes...that's right, start 'em young!

Playing in the Thomas tent!

All 3 of them!

Tiernan put together this puzzle ALL by himself!! And as you can see by his face, he was pretty proud!

Just waitin' to go to church

Tiernan is Potty Trained!!

WOOOOO HOOOOOO!!!!! It's been almost a week and a half now since Tiernan starting going on the potty! Last Sunday morning, Nathan made Tiernan sit on the potty until he went and since then he's been going ever since! I didn't think it was going to work because a couple weeks prior, we had been trying to get him to go and put him in underwear, only to have lots of accidents. Well, he's hardly had any accidents since last Sunday and he even wears underwear to bed too! I'm sure he'll still have his share of accidents but this is WAY better than changing his diaper! He likes the whole routine of going too. He'll run to the bathroom, go potty, flush, put his underwear and pants back on, wash his hands, shut off the light and then run back out and say "I did it!" It's cute :) We also took his nuk away about a month ago cold turkey. And for those of you who know Tiernan, this was a big deal! But he did much better than I thought. He only asked for it that first night when he went to bed and we just told him no and by the next night he was much better. So now we finally feel like we are starting to have a little boy instead of 3 babies :)

We went to St. Cloud last Thursday night so Nathan could plant trees again this year on our land. Well, not exactly the nicest weather to plant trees in, so that was kind of disappointing. He was out there by himself on Friday morning for a short while and got about 25 trees planted when the rain was just coming down too hard that he had to stop for the rest of the day. (I took the kids garage saleing...not the nicest weather to do that in either, but the kids were such troopers! They just sat so nicely in the car while I ran in the sales quick...I found a lot of good deals! ) Then on Saturday it snowed and the wind was about 30 mph but in the afternoon him, Tom and my dad went out and planted a bunch more. Then on Sunday morning, Nathan, Tom and Mary went out an planted the rest. It was a much nicer morning, but still plenty chilly! It was about 275-300 trees in all. Now if the gophers don't eat them all.....

Many people are asking what's going on with Nathan's job, etc. Well, we don't know yet :) All we know is that we were praying for a clear direction in the way that we should go and we were wondering if Nathan should take the lay-off so he could go sign the union books in other states to get on those jobs starting in May. They seemed to be giving most anyone a layoff who wanted it, and Nathan decided he should take it. He told the guy in the office that he was going to take it but then when he told the forman, he said that they had plans for Nathan until the end of the job so they wouldn't lay him off. Sooooo, at least that was an easy decision since there was no decision to be made! :) So for now the job has gone down to 4 days a week 10 hours a day (instead of 60) b/c of it getting close to the end. He doesn't really do too much at work and there's not really much to do so he's curious as to how long they can drag this out for. Some people have said that this current job will last until June, others have said another month (mid to end of May) so we are just taking it day by day. There is still the Iowa job that is a possibility that is supposed to be starting May 15 (that's the 7 day 14 hour job that would last a couple months) and there's talk of a job in Fargo that would be a possibility. There are also jobs in Colorado, California, Utah....and the list goes on. It is just a matter of time before we know where the next job will be, (and we will be sure to update you when we know!) but for now, we wait..............

Caedmon and Brayan playing together

Before our date to the movies

Tiernan on the potty! :)

Cool Dude Brayan

Brayan with Grandma Mary at their house

Just In Case You Were Wondering.....

For all of you who 'wish' you could come see us, but probably won't....here are some pictures of our place. I took pictures of stuff around the building as well, so I can give you the virtual tour! Just like being here! :-)

This picture is from our table area looking into the kitchen. On the right side of the hallway, there is Brayan's room and Caedmon's room; straight ahead is our bedroom, then on the left of the hall is the bathroom and Tiernan's room.

The big door (next to the freezer) is our front door.

This is from by our front door looking into our living room.

From my kitchen sink.

Our dining area

This is to give you an example of the atmosphere around here. This is a lady's apt that is close to the laundry room. A lot (almost all) of the people decorate on and around the outside of their door. This is one of the things that makes us feel like we are in a nursing home :-) (the other is that most people living here are 80+ :-)

The first door on the left is our apt, I took this to show you how close we are to the elevator!!

This is taken right outside of our apt. Notice no apts on the other side of the hall!

The carts that we are able to use to and from our apt to our car...SO nice!!

THE GYM!!!!! :-)

Our very light and spacious laundry room!

Three Peas In A Pod!

My "peas"

Before church a couple Sundays ago


So handsome!
(Notice the "artwork" in permenant marker on the wall...yes, that is from artist Tiernan :-)

Tiernan loves his littlest brother!

Well, not too much new stuff is going on with us. Biggest thing lately is that Brayan starting crawling on his hands and knees yesterday! To my surprise, he's actually really good at it and will crawl fairly fast to whatever he wants to get. Now I have to watch out...three boys tearin' up the place...yikes! :-)

Another Cousin!

There has been another addition to the family!! On March 28th, Faith Arabella Legatt was born to Jonathan and Becky! She was 7 pounds 1 ounce and 20-1/2 inches long. Faith joined big sisters Grace (almost 4) and Mercy (almost 2). For those of you who don't know, Jonathan is Nathan's youngest brother that lives in Texas. That makes 21 cousins on the Legatt side (number 22 due in June) and 5 cousins on the McKeever side. How fun! Congratulations Johnny and Becky!

PINK...and ruffles...and lace...and flowers...maybe one day I'll know what that's like :-)

SO CUTE!

Jonathan with his little bundle!

Becky, Mercy, Grace, & Faith