Tunnel Vision

For the longest time it seemed like school was never going to end. The frustration kept building with each class taken along with all the other responsibilities of keeping the house clean, making meals, kids' homework and school, work, moving, 3 dogs, and the desire to exercise on top of it. It seemed like there was never enough time or energy to get everything accomplished and to maintain a good attitude in the process. Finally, I am now beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Tom will be completing school and getting his degree in less than 2 weeks. I am starting one of my final 4 classes I have left to complete mine.

The move is finally over and some of the stress is lifting. Tom is getting settled into his new role at work and enjoying being able to stay at home while working. I have been applying for work over the past couple of weeks and was beginning to feel discouraged until I received two calls yesterday requesting interviews. One is for Miracle Ear as a receptionist/administrative assistant and the other is for a chiropractic office. I am so excited and looking forward to the possibilities of working for either company. Although I am leaning more towards the chiropractic office since my degree is in medical records and I will be able to gain the experience necessary for future employment in other medical fields.

As for the working out to get fit and healthy...mostly to lose weight...I have started walking in the mornings with my friend and then following it up with half hour on the elliptical. I even took the dogs to the park this morning to run around and play (they are horrible at playing fetch). I am starting to feel better and more energetic which is helping with the positive attitude.

Each day the light in the tunnel grows and it feels good.

House Update

After we bought our home last year I went around painting all the rooms in house except for the bedrooms upstairs. For the most part the colors in the house were terracotta orange, mustard yellow, and cactus green...can you guess the theme? For one reason or another I just never got around to painting the rest of the house.
Before we moved back here our friend, Sam, painted all the bedrooms upstairs for us as a surprise (yes I knew he was painting, I just didn't know what colors he ended up using). So once we moved back it was a surprise to everyone to see new colors in their rooms. Sam did a great job picking out the colors and getting all the rooms painted before we came back. Here is how it turned out. The colors are a little hard to see but believe me...they are much better than they were before!

The photo above is of course Tayler' s room.

This is the master bedroom where the walls used to be green with mustard yellow squares to enhance what painting were hung on the walls before us. Now they are a chocolate brown and tan.

This room belongs to the boys. It was once terracotta orange with green squares. The color now it a very soft grayish blue. (Becky, this is almost the exact same color that is in Heather's salon).

I didn't take pictures of the other two rooms because they were to messy to show, but take my word for it they look much better now.

No Place Like Home

It has been a week since we moved back into our house here in Arizona. Can I just say how nice it is to be back in my own home?! I LOVE my house and DESPISE renting! This move was definitely one of our hardest moves because it seemed to take forever to unload the truck. However, since we were moving back into our own home, finding a place for everything was super easy. Holes were waiting for pictures and televisions to be hung in their previous places and empty rooms waited to be filled with our belongings. Boxes seemed to unload themselves in no time. Even the kids adjusted nicely to their old school and old friends as if they never even left. It's good to be HOME.

bIG nEwS...YeS, i kNoW...AgAiN

We are moving...again, but this time back to our home in AZ. The job didn't turn out like we thought, however Tom will still be able to do it from our home in AZ. We are looking forward to being back in our home, but sad to leave behind family and friends...we will miss you all. I am hoping to keep up with my blog so that you can still see us and what we are up to.

EveN biGGeR nEwS!

Conner was ordained a Deacon today!! I am so proud of him and his decision to do what is right.

BIG NEWS

So in true Francis family tradition we are moving..................again. I know this comes as a shock to most and even a bigger shocker that I (Tom) am blogging about it. My phone rang last week on Wednesday at work. On the other end was the owner of a company I worked for about four years ago. He informed me that we were on speaker with others and presented his offer for the General Manager position. I hung up and was upset that he had ruined my perfectly good day by presenting another decision in my life, and this was a BIG decision. I went home to my BEAUTIFUL, HUMBLE, CARING, GIVING, PATIENT, and most of all smarter than myself wife, and told her that it was her turn to make a life altering decision. LOL, yea right! She declined the decision and told me that we would have to decide together. I decided Wednesday afternoon (little did she know) to move back. Now, I know what you are thinking I made the decision without her but I really had nothing to do with it. I was simply driving home debating between my two options and on the radio as I said, "stay with University of Phoenix, or work for Rob Lewis"? On the radio it said that is Robert Lewis with blah blah blah song. I looked down as if my radio had just kicked me in the gut ...........................watch out Utah here we come!!! We let the kids decide when the move would happen (yes we are suckers for punishement). The two options were wait till the school year ends or go on April 5th. If they go they get to meet kids in their class before summer, and have all agreed to go to summer school if needed, our school district stinks here! So off we are on another adventure! I promised Kelli I would go to classes for my very apparent addicition to moving. Stay tuned we are sure to have an exciting month with less than a month to pack and move!!!!!!!!

Catching Up

Wow it has been way too long since our last post. So there will be lots to catch up on. We are still alive and doing well. Tom and I are still in school and working full time, so yes, things are crazy. The kids are trucking along in school and are doing great, according to their last parent teacher conference. Conner had a huge school project due today and with the help of some awesome people he was able to create a super cool castle for the Renaissance Fair.

(the Coolest Castle EVER)
It is nice to see Conner excited about school and proud of a job well done. He is sure to get an A!

This week I was able to take a break from work to go chaperon Tayler's field trip to the Museum of Natural History. It was a very eventful experience. As soon as I got to the school a boy in the class felt inclined to tell me that his dad is in jail. LOL...I wasn't sure what to say back to him other than sorry. On the way to the museum all 4 buses had to pull into the gas station to let one little girl go to the bathroom. Once we were just about to the museum one of the other buses hit an RV as they were turning the corner (I think the old guy driving the bus needs to retire). We did make it to the museum and thankfully I didn't lose any of the kids in my group. We all had fun running through the museum, panning for gold, looking at fossils and geodes, playing in the jail, and posing in front of bones...and can't forget riding the elevator. Oh and after the museum the buses for lost on their way to the park for lunch.




Sunday we had a Superbowl party at our house. Conner and I have been huge Colts fans and we were so excited to see them play in the Superbowl against the Saints. We were so bummed that the Colts lost, but we did have a good time anyway.

Tayler with her friends Bella, and Madison looking super cute with their face painting.Of course, Porter fell asleep during the WHOLE game and slept through all the cheering and screaming.
Me and my friend Christina cheering for opposite teams.

Our dogs are still as crazy as ever. Sissy still chases lights, and Charlie loves to help with laundry.


A few weeks ago we got an amazing amount of rain which flooded a lot of the streets and made it a little difficult to get to work. The weatherman said that we got about 75% of our annual rainfall in 24 hours. Crazy!

It finally stopped long enough for us to take the kids to the park to play. Porter had a blast showing me all the cool things he can do on the playground, making sure that I was there to take his picture.

He even hopped up on a rock and posed for me. Such a cute little guy!


Tom has been collecting toys so that when it warms up we can all go out camping and have some fun toys to ride. He even got a mini quad for Porter and Tayler...it's too small for Conner. They absolutely love it and can't wait to take it out to play.

Another One

In order to take that awesome tent trailer camping, we needed something to pull it with and our Camry's are not the vehicles to do it. After looking at several different trucks and SUV's we ended up buying a Bronco. This will be the 5th Bronco we have owned. Out of all the vehicles we considered, the Bronco will be able to fit all of our needs...and Sissy. We needed a car big enough to fit the whole family, Sissy, and pull the tent trailer and still be cheap. Now just to find a place to park it.

Looking Good!

Today the kids were invited by Grandma & Grandpa Francis to go to a baptism of a boy in their ward. The kids were so excited to go and rushed to get all dressed up for it so we had a little photo shoot before they left. What a bunch of cute kids!

A Parachute or Slide?

Today Porter's friend Bella came over with a new parachute and wanted the kids to go try it out with her. I decided to go over to take pictures and caught them using the parachute as a slide. They said they didn't know how to use it!? Crazy! Don't all elementary schools have parachutes for P.E. or did that get banned too? Anyway, I showed them ow to use it and they had fun.


The kids wanted to have a picnic on the parachute so they got lots of good things from all the houses and set off for the park. I let Tayler take the camera to take pictures. What goofy children we have.

Lately they have had a fascination with making pyramids. They were bummed that they didn't have enough people to make a taller pyramid.

Tent Trailer

We decided since we enjoy camping so much that we would invest in a trailer to make camping a little easier and more comfortable for all of us. Tom searched and searched for a few weeks until he found a great deal on a pop-up trailer. We took it out to try it for the first time and boy did we break it in. We took the whole family, both dogs, and Conner's friend Abraham and it even rained!

The inside in nice and spacious with room for a lot of bodies. There is a kitchen sink, stove for indoors or out, a toilet and shower, air conditioner and heater, electricity, and lots of storage.

While walking around I found this really neat tree stump that looked like it had another tree growing through the center.

We had lots of fun camping in the trailer while it rained...even though we were all asleep by 9:00.