Thornock.Org

I created 4 posts today so we should be up to date now. Scroll down for lots of pictures. I’m hoping to keep this blog updated regularly from now on.

We made it! Washington is beautiful! I can’t wait for all of you to come visit us. We’ve been here a week now and we are still unpacking. It’s taking forever. We have made countless trips to Target, Costco, WalMart, and Fred Meyers trying to fill this home with groceries, cleaning supplies, yard supplies and furniture. We still have a lot to do. We went from a 2 bedroom apartment to a 5 bedroom house. Our living room and dining room are empty…hopefully not for long though. We still haven’t done a lot of exploring but in a week or so when this house feels like home, we’ll be getting out a lot more.

For the first couple of days our dining room was filled with moving paper and boxes. Where’s Allie?

There she is:

The kids (even big kids) had fun with all the paper.

I signed Allie up for soccer and she had her first day of soccer practice on Saturday. For being as unathletic as she is, she did quite well.

And last but certainly not least, Mia is smiling! She is such a sweet baby! I love this little girl.

The second weekend in Utah was mostly spent with my family. Here are some pictures to document what we did:

Jake blessed Mia:

Our family

The men who were in the blessing circle.

My pops and me

My sisters and me (yes, I look obese…but that’s because I am )

Jake and his brother, Greg

We celebrated the 4th of July by watching the parade on Provo Center Street.

Then we went to a park to celebrate my dad’s 60th birthday. It was so much fun! We ate and played water baseball (each of the bases were a kiddie pool). I don’t have many pictures of this but I have lots of video. Maybe I’ll post a video later on. I’m too lazy right now .


That night we went to Hollie’s and watched fireworks. The girl cousins pretended to be cheerleaders and the older boy cousins had fun lighting the fireworks. It was a beautiful night in Utah.
Jake, Luke and Mia enjoying the fireworks

The moving truck took about 8 days to go from NC to WA so we made a trip to Utah to visit family. The first weekend we were there we had a big reunion with the Thornock side. We went to a fun pool in Provo and then had a BBQ at Jared and Melissa’s house. It was so good to see everyone and the food was amazing, as usual. It was the first time we had all been together in a very LONG time.

We hung out at Jake’s mom’s house most of the week. The kids have so much fun in Grandma’s preschool. Allie bonded with her older cousin, Savannah. I rarely saw Allie while we were in Utah because she was always downstairs playing with her cousins.

Jake had to make a quick trip to Seattle to receive our stuff and while he was gone for 2 days, I was able to visit a couple of friends. We visited Molly, Mya and Beckham. They were friends from NC who had moved a year ago to Utah. Allie loved playing with Mya; we were just sad that we didn’t have more time to hang out. We also got to visit my best friend from Elk Grove, Shirley, and her family. I don’t know why I didn’t get pictures of these awesome people. Oh well, we’ll be in Utah again and hopefully we’ll have more playdates.

Family hanging out on the backyard deck; a daily activity

Playing in the pool with super fun Aunt Ashlee and Kelli (not pictured)

Abe holding Mia.

Saying good bye to friends and to North Carolina was really hard. We loved our time there and cherish the friends we made. If only Duke had hired this year…

Anyway, here are a few pictures of some friends that we had to say good bye too:

We said goodbye to the Green’s a month early since they moved before us.

We went to Marbles Museum for one last play date with Ami, Kristin, Mary and their kids. We exchanged babysitting with these families every Friday night and the kids always had a blast when they were together. Allie always looked forward to Friday nights (as did Jake and I).

Me, Ami and Mary (Kristin took the picture).

Allie and Iliana dressed up for Fiona’s baptism.

Luke and Shane

Me, Liz and Fiona at Fiona’s baptism luncheon

The Morgan’s came over for one last play date. The girls had a tea party and then Liz made tacos for dinner. I LOVE her tacos. They are seriously the best!

We said good bye to MANY other friends as well and I want you to know that I miss you all already. I have shed many tears saying good bye to our good friends. Thank you for making our four years in NC so memorable. We love you.

All, here are some pictures of our new baby, Mia. So far, she is an angel–she sleeps nearly every hour of the day and never cries. Hopefully that will continue for a while!

Here’s an update on the birth of our daughter. Since Kerrie always delivers via C-section, we had scheduled to have the baby on Thursday at 8am. However, on Sunday morning at about 1:30am, Kerrie woke up with labor pains. After about 3 hours, she was satisfied that is was more than just Braxton Hicks labor pains, so we headed to the hospital. She was born a couple hours later.

We’ve decided to name her Mia May Thornock. She was born on May 23rd at 6:47am via C-section. She was 7 lbs, 4 oz and 20 inches long. There were no complications at all. I’ve posted a couple videos below of her and I’ll try to post some pictures later today or tomorrow.

Well, it has been a busy few months for us.  I’ve been traveling around the country, interviewing at universities for faculty positions.  I visited 11 different universities in 5 weeks, racking up about 19,000 air miles in the process.  We had three different schools make offers: USC, Northwestern and University of Washington.  We’ve decided to take the job at UW in Seattle starting in late summer.  So we’re moving back to the West Coast!  We’ll keep you posted as more details emerge.

Merry Christmas! We hope you all had a great Christmas holiday. We certainly did. On Christmas Eve, we had a get-together with several other families in our area. Every family brought a different soup and dessert and it turned out very well. The kids played while the adults chatted. We then went home, where our kids opened one present: a new set of pajamas. We read the story of the birth of Christ in Luke 2 and then the kids went to bed.

On Christmas morning, Allie woke up at 4am. Luckily, Kerrie convinced her to go back to bed. At 7:30, we all went out to see whether Santa had brought gifts for the family. Here’s a video of the moment and of the kids playing with their new toys:

That afternoon, we had our family’s traditional Christmas dinner, lasagna with meatballs and Italian sausage. My cousin, Matt and his wife Amanda, dined with us and we had a great time.

In case you haven’t heard through the grapevine, we found out this morning we are having a girl! She looks healthy and is on target to arrive at the end of May. Allie has been saying it’s a girl all along so I’m glad I didn’t have to disappoint her with other news.

Now I’m going to have to sort through all of Allie’s old baby clothes and see what’s still usable. We also need to come up with a name for her. Deciding on a name has always been hard for us. Luckily, we still have 5 more months to decide. (BTW, when we told Allie the baby is a girl, she leaned over and whispered to me, “I want to name her Tinkerbell.” Hmm, not so sure about that one hon).

Here’s a scanned picture. That is her foot above her forehead and her knee above her chin. She’s a flexible one.