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I realize that Easter was quite awhile ago, but hey, better late than never. We attended three Easter egg hunts this year; a community hunt, a preschool hunt and a friend hunt. Allie is a pro at it. Luke, however, could care less about the eggs. He was way more into the rocks and sticks. Here are some photos from the egg hunts:

Jake is currently in Seattle and will thankfully be getting home tomorrow. I wish I could have gone with him. He has rented a car and is driving all around Seattle checking out areas, neighborhoods, houses, etc. He has fallen in love with the place. We are so excited to be closer to family again (although we will miss NC and all of our friends).

I’m hoping to keep you updated since there is a lot coming up in May and June with graduation, kids birthdays, family visiting, new baby and then the move. But I’m not promising anything since I’ve been horrible at keeping this blog current.

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.

Once upon a time we updated our blog regularly. That time is not now. I’m so sorry if you have kept coming back for updates on the Thornocks only to find the same old Christmas post. I know I LOVE reading your blogs but updating my own has become homework…and let’s face it, I’ve always been a procrastinator with homework. Instead of updating you on the past three months, which have been full of adventures, I’m not going to burn myself out of blogging and instead keep this post to the point so that I’ll want to come back and update you some more. Fingers crossed.

We love holidays! I love making them a big deal because I enjoy seeing Allie get so excited for the big day to come. So I tend to go overboard at times, which I may have done this St. Patrick’s day. But, we’re Irish, so I have a good reason to celebrate it. In past years, we’ve made leprechaun traps, wore green, had green breakfast foods, had the traditional St. Paddy’s day meal: corned beef and cabbage, potatoes, rolls, etc, and we have always ended the night with some delicious green dessert. This year was no exception.

However, this year we caught the elusive little leprechaun. We made the trap with rainbows and shamrocks, sparkly gold glitter and a welcome sign. Inside the trap was a homemade blanket and pillow (made by Allie with my help) to lure him in. Allie was informed the night before that leprechauns turn to stone when you look at or touch them but they quickly run away and hide if they have a spare moment. So when she awoke to find the leprechaun sleeping in her trap, she snatched him out and would not let him out of her sight for fear of him escaping. She carried him everywhere; he even came to the park with us. Every once in awhile when she’d leave him alone for a minute he would sneak away. But she always found him.

Other than catching the leprechaun, which was really a garden gnome that I painted green, she found a trail of gold chocolate coins that led her to a green sparkly box with treasures inside. These treasures included a clover planting kit, chapstick, a green crown, Lucky Charms cereal and more gold coins.

After our traditional corned been and cabbage dinner, we had rainbow cake with lime sherbet. Allie tucked Pat into his homemade blanket right next to her bed that night. Unfortunately, he was gone the next morning and in his place he had left a note of thanks for such a fun filled day. We hope Pat will come back to visit us next year.

That pretty much sums up our St. Patrick’s day. Now it’s on to planning Easter. To enlarge the pictures, click on the picture two times.

As for other news, Jake had been gone for about 6 weeks interviewing for a job. He had 13 interviews lined up. He is done with the interviewing phase and is now receiving offers. We are trying to decide between three wonderful universities and hope to come to a conclusion within the next week. We’ll keep you posted.

Lastly, our little girl is scheduled to come via c-section on May 27th. We are excited to meet her.

P.S. I stole some of my St. Patrick’s day ideas from a super fun and creative friend. Thanks Gina!

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.

I know…I’m horrible at blogging lately (this is Kerrie, not Jake as it says above). It’s not for lack of time. I just HATE uploading pictures and videos; it takes forever and I’d rather be surfing all of your blogs instead Anyway…

Allie has been taking a dance class these last 4 months and has loved it. Her dance recital was on Friday and she was ecstatic to dress up in her costume and wear make up. She was the oldest in her class but it didn’t seem to phase her. She loved every minute of dance. We’re sad that her dance teacher is moving away.

Here’s a video of Allie at the recital:

Allie and I went to Disney on Ice with our good friends, Elizabeth and Iliana, last December. With Christmas coming up again the season must have reminded her of the show because she began asking to see it again this year. Luckily, our friends have a connection and were able to get us discounted tickets again. Yesterday, I surprised Allie with the announcement that we were going to Disney on Ice by putting a little picture of Disney characters in her advent calendar. (We have a calendar with little doors and every morning she opens one to reveal a prize: usually Christmas books, stickers, stencils, and family outings). She literally squealed with excitement…it was exactly the reaction I was hoping for. All day long she asked if it was time to go.

While watching the show she had a smile on her face the entire time. She danced in her seat to the groovy music and giggled at the silly parts. Although the show was fun for me to watch, it was more fun to watch her reaction to it all. Of course the first thing she asked when the show was over was, “can we see it again?” It would be fun to make it a yearly tradition but who knows where we’ll be next year and if Disney on Ice will be in our town. We might have to find some other fun girly outing.

And by the way, I’ll be blogging on Wednesday with news of the gender of baby #3, which by the way is due around May 24th. Yes, I know. Shocking that I’ll be blogging twice in one week and shocking that we are having a third May baby. We love the month of May!

We had a great Halloween! On Friday night we went to the Carrboro Carnival. (You can see a pic of me and Luke on page 2 of the website). They have the carnival every year and it’s usually held on Halloween night. This year it was the night before. It’s perfect for young kids. They get to play games and win toy prizes. Allie and Luke spent a lot of time looking through hay for toys.

On Halloween we went to the student family housing party then came back to the apartment for a chili dinner with the Greens and Morgans. Afterward, we went trick or treating. This was Allie’s first time trick or treating. In the past we got so much candy from the ward trunk or treat that we decided to go to the Carrboro Carnival on Halloween instead. Since we missed the ward trunk or treat this year (we were in Utah) and since the Carnival was the night before we got to go trick or treating. Allie caught right on and was dashing from door to door. It was hard to keep up with all the kids. We then came back to our place to snack some more and hang out. It was an awesome weekend!

P.S. I’m embarrassed to say that I lost my camera (again!) while in Utah. Luckily it was a small, cheaper one this time. Anyway, if I happen to get it back, I’ll post pictures of Utah. I’m blaming it on pregnancy (I was pregnant both times I lost the camera). Oh yeah…did you catch that? We’re expecting again.

Over the past month, we’ve been to some fun sporting events and we’ve got the pictures to prove it.  In September, I took Allie to the first UNC game of the season versus The Citadel with some of the other dads in the ward.  It was a fun game and we made it through half time before the kids wore out and we headed home.  We live about 8 blocks from the stadium, so it is a fun little adventure to walk to these games through campus past all the tailgaters.  Allie loved watching the cheerleaders and kept saying, “Daddy played football and Mommy was a cheerleader!”  I think she may want to follow in her mom’s footsteps. 

I was also in Chicago for a conference a couple weeks ago. I was able to sneak away for a couple hours to catch a Cubs games with some friends. The pictures are blurry because they are taken with a cell phone. The game was super fun–it got rain delayed in the top of the 4th inning–but it didn’t matter: I was at Wrigley Field chowing on a foot-long bratwurst and a giant Pepsi. All in all, a great night.

And just yesterday, we took the whole family to another UNC football game and had a blast. It was Kerrie and Luke’s first UNC football game. The kids probably liked the half-time show the best. We took off during the third quarter because the kids were worn out and it was a blow out (final score: UNC 42, GSU 10).

It’s been a fun month. Here are few pictures of the games:

My super cool sister-in-law, Kelli, took pictures of Allie and Luke when we visited them in Carson City a couple months ago. She put Allie’s photos on her blog and Luke’s will probably be up tomorrow. Check out her Photography blog. I LOVE the pictures she took! She really knows how to capture their personalities. She is so much fun and my kids adore her. Thanks Kelli for sharing your amazing talent with us.

This is officially my last year with my little girl before she goes to all day kindergarten. I’m getting a glimpse of what it will be like now that she is in preschool 3 days a week for 4 hours. She had her first official preschool day today and although I couldn’t get much out of her on how the day went, I think she had a great time.

It was really weird not having her home. I should have gotten a lot done but somehow I didn’t. I found myself watching the time pass wondering what Allie was doing then, if she was enjoying it and if she was getting along with the other kids. I did, however, blog while she was gone (two blogs in one day…what the?) Anyway, hopefully I’ll become more efficient and productive with my time while she is gone so that I can focus on her when she gets home. Luke naps in the morning so I will be getting a lot of “me” time (although I’m not sure how long that will last since he is going from two to one nap).

Here is my sweetheart right before preschool:

Things I learned (I’m a novice at this preschool parenting stuff):
Send her with socks: she hated getting sand in her shoes at the playground and they wouldn’t allow her to take her shoes off.
Get her a backpack: she came home with like 10 different papers/flyers.
Pay tuition before the 10th: I just assumed that they would take the tuition on the FIRST day of school with out any fees, but I was wrong. It was due YESTERDAY! I was a little embarrassed and frustrated that I had to pay a late fee as were five other parents who assumed the same thing.

All in all, it was a good day for both of us and we are excited for the preschool year.