New to Me

We have a piano!!!! (Pictures to come soon!) Patrick's grandparents gave us their 100 year old player piano, and we love it. It's in our bedroom so that I can practice and sing during Alex's naptime. I didn't anticipate how much Alex also loves the piano. When the movers brought it in we had fun playing "twinkle twinkle" and "the little lamb song". (Mary had a Little Lamb)

Alex: This is Grandma's piano.
Patricia: Well, actually this is Mommy, Daddy and Alex's piano--it's ours.
Alex: ours?
Patricia: Yep.
Alex: Ours?
Patricia: yes its our-
Alex(interrupting): IT'S OUR PIANO!

Then Alex laid his head on the keys and started to cry.

Patricia: "Alex, whats wrong?"
Alex still crying: "I love piano."


Well Alex, I agree!

Saying Goodbye

Well it has been a while since we last posted to our blog. It has taken us a while to get settled and unpacked. Now that we are finally getting pulled together I can start posting to our blog again. We have taken a lot of pictures since August.

On August 11 Patrick rode the 111 mile Utah Lake Century something ride (ULCER) bike race. Patrick was on team road killers along with Catherine, Mike, Dad, Blake Rigby and Alex Knudsen.


He rode the whole race with Catherine. Mom Alex and I gave everybody moral support.

Patrick and I had a few friends over at grandma and grandpa Barnes house to say goodbye before we left for Boston. We said goodbye to friends in the ward, Patrick's missions companion, and friends from Patrick's fraternity.
Here Laura Vernon snuggled with Alex for a little while and shared all her mommy secrets with me.

Cyd Vernon chatted about recovering from pregnancy and was very encouraging. I got great advice from our last third Sunday family gathering before the move.

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Video sent by patriciabarnes

Here Grandma Kohler let me record her singing to ALex. This is a song that she sang to Linda and Linda sang to Patrick. Linda and Grandma taught it to me so that I can sing it to Alex.




Here we had family night at Grandma Pats house. Adi cam up from the Y and the whole family was there. Grandma made family style tacos and we had ice cream for desert. During the meal Carsen killed a bee with a salad fork.


Check out these two babes. We took this gorgeous picture of Adi and Raegan while we were there.

The night before we left we had dinner with Steve Melissa and the kids, Catherine and Mike and Mom and dad. Melissa made the coolest cake with a lobster on it as a symbol of Boston.The cake was incredible it was made with rolled fondant and rice crispy treats. I thought it was awesome. She even made little sea creatures to go with it. There were snails and clams made out of fondant on the cake.

During the party Patrick gave Carsen a book about bugs as a goodbye. It was a very tearful night as I kissed Melissa, Steve Carsen and Raegan goodbye. (I miss them soooo much!)
On Wednesday the 21 of August we pulled out of the driveway and said out goodbyes to our parents. It was really cool that mom made us a yummy breakfast before we hit the road and Catherine and mike came up to join us to eat it. It was really cool that they were there at 5:30 in the morning. We love you guys so much and we miss you alot!

We've Moved!

Last week Patrick started his training for the 111 mile "Ulcer" bike race. On Monday
Mom and Dad took us to Pearl Izumi in Park City and helped Patrick get bibs, a jersey and shoes for the bike race. Dad is lending him a custom built titanium Schwinn road bike. It is beautiful and it was built for Greg Florez who has a similar build as Patrick.

On Tuesday, Patrick and I went on a family bike ride. It was only ten miles, but it was pretty fun. We went with Catherine, Mike, Mom and Dad and Jacob Francis. We rode out by the airport. Everyone biked so fast and looked so cool on their rode bikes. I wore flip flops and kept up pretty well with my beach bike.

On the fourth of July we decided to help Laura move. She had been in a house which turned out to be a bad situation. The landlord really tried to rip her off. So, Laura found another house to move into, owned by a friend from work, Steve. (NO NOT STEVE EROR) Any way he had been trying to sell his house for a year and it just wasn't happening so he decided that he would take it off the market and let Laura and her roommate Tara rent the place. We moved all her things into a moving van and we got in our car... and we got a phone call. It was Steve. Coincidentally Steve had just sold the house. Laura was welcome to move in for a few weeks but that was all. She had no where to go and it was the fourth of July.

Patrick and I looked at each other and thought... well our lease has technically started in Boston and we currently have two apartments. We were only staying in our current apartment so that we can have the baby here in Salt Lake and then move to Boston in August. Well, we decided that we might as well let Laura live in it now. That way she has a place to live and we will only be renting one apartment at a time. So we moved all of Laura and Tara's things into our apartment and Patrick's cousin Linda let the girls stay with her while we took the rest of the week packing. Laura is letting us put our boxes going to Boston in the corner. Otherwise all of our stuff will be at mom and dad's house.

After a long exciting day we went to watch fireworks with Patrick's parents and aunt and uncle at the Hotel Park City. (see pictures)

We finally packed our last Boston box at 2:00 am on Saturday night with Sterling. Laura has been wonderful. She helped us pack our kitchen for Boston and she has given us time to move. Mom has helped with everything from shampooing carpets to chocolate donut deliveries for me. Dad helped us move our mattress to their house in his brand new pick up truck. (I have to say it is a gorgeous truck.) Anne Linda and my mom helped me with DI runs and helped me move all of our things into mom and dad's basement on Friday. Sterling is a good friend who helped us decided that their is no way the ply wood cabinet is making it to Boston at two o'clock in the morning. Catherine and Mike made the basement ready to live in. They got the nursery, bathroom, bedroom and kitchen ready. Thank you thank you thank you everyone!!!!!
Well, we had a crazy week last week. I really appreciate all the help that we got from everyone.

By the way it is week 39 of the pregnancy and the baby is still not here... and with the move it turned out to be a good thing because we were able to get everything we needed to finished!

A Picnic with the Kohlers

This week has been a crazy week! It seems like we have been double booked every night! We have had fun though. We watched the Jazz lose on Wednesday and they are now out of the playoffs. I wish the Spurs the best of luck as they play Cleveland in the finals. This has been a very fun playoff season.
This has been an emotional week. It has been the last week of tutoring and I have said goodbye to a lot of old friends. I hope that I am able to keep in contact with some of the families that I know really well.
On Thursday we had dinner with Patrick's grandparents. We had a picnic in their backyard. Grandma Kohler made pizza and pie it was very fun the spend the evening with them. Grandma and Grandpa also brought lemons from Arizona and made fresh lemonade. I think I drank all of it. I forgot my camera but I did get a photo of them and I will attach it to this post at some point.
he baby basket
This week Mom and I were digging in the back storage room when we found a treasure. It was the baby basket that my mom put Catherine and me in when we were babies. She let me have it but we had to make the basket more masculine. (it was pink and green with strawberries all over it.) We went and found blue and yellow ribbon and made new sheets for the basket's mattress. It now looks ready for a baby boy.
On Friday night Patrick had six sigma graduation. He finished a big project at work which showed the completion of his training. Afterwards we rushed over to Alex Lowe's house. We wanted to see him before he leaves for a summer internship in the UK. We had a lot of fun and got to spend time with Bobby and Alex until very late. We are so excited for both Bobby and Alex and their cool summer opportunities. Bobby is in Utah for his internship, so it will be fun to have him around. We will see Alex in the fall because he is also attending Harvard MBA school. He is just one year ahead of Patrick in the program.
This has been a big week for the baby. I have now been pregnant for 33 weeks, so he probably weighs around 4.5 pounds. Patrick and I attended a birthing class at LDS Hospital. We will have the baby there in July. The class didn't teach us anything new, but it made the whole experience of pregnancy and parenthood more of a reality. We had a lot of fun except when we were learning relaxation techniques and I got the uncontrollable giggles.