The Jon Wadley Fam » wadleyfam

The Holidays

wadleyfam — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 17:10:32 +0000

Came and went all too quickly. It’s all good though, better that than having it drag out so that we continue to eat a lot more junk food.

We’ve got our Christmas morning beautifully documented via our video camera (you know, the one we forget we’ve got until Christmas time rolls around) and neither of us thought to snap pictures for the blog. Oh well, rest assured I think the kids were happy with what they got this year and everything went excitedly smooth.

Out of the piles of wrapping paper, bubble wrap and boxes that consumed our living room though emerged a true match made in heaven. In the midst of Brooklyn’s new play kitchen and all of Katelyn’s new girly stuff emerged something I would have given up all my toys for as a boy…I’d say Ethan is pretty darn lucky! But, I think he’s earned it…being the only man about the house during the days to hold down the fort. He needed something to help him make the rounds of the yard insuring it’s security from pooping dogs and stray cats:

Do you think he likes it?

I only made one request of him though…that he let’s me borrow it for the deer hunt next year. I’m pretty sure that thing will get places I can’t get my truck, LOL.

Ending 2011 In Style!

wadleyfam — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 03:43:22 +0000

I’ll be honest, I’ve got a lot to be excited about right now. Christmas is right around the corner. My brother drew a cow elk tag so I may get to stretch the legs in the mountains again. We’re going to Hawaii in February for our anniversary. We’re almost done “making over” our big room in the basement.

What had me more excited than any of that, at least for today? I got this humdinger in the mail:

This probably has you asking either out loud or introspectively: “Why the crap is he excited about that?” All I can say is “I don’t know”. I have just always wanted to serve on a jury. I’ve come across several people who have had to serve multiple times and hope to never do it again and I think they are nuts. Now, I realize this is for jury selection but trust me, I’ll be crossing my fingers that I make it through. I didn’t think I could be a potential juror for a different city but I guess I was wrong.

Oh, I whited out a few things because I don’t know if it’s OK that I put it on the blog. I sure would hate get ruled out because of it!

What A Year

wadleyfam — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 23:14:34 +0000

And I say that in both a good way and a challenging one.

I don’t remember if it was in March or April, but sometime early on in the year I distinctly remember thinking to myself, something like “wow, 2011…what a boring year so far”. Now that the year is almost over, I can’t believe what a crazy one it turned out to be, almost immediately from that point on. There was always something big going on with someone in my immediate or extended family. It seems like some families naturally have more drama than others (on the average) but ours has always been fairly low key. 2011 was a bit different though..we experienced everything from a motorcycle accident to cancer to jail to surgery and a lot of other crazy things in between. Throughout the chaos though has emerged a strengthened family. It has been neat to see family pull together to support and help one another, and testimonies grow and flourish in ways that probably wouldn’t have been possible without experiencing the “refiner’s fire”.

I’m grateful for the experiences we’ve been through. Having said that, here’s to hoping 2012 will be a little smoother ride!

I haven’t provided a job update since announcing that I was moving to another company…I should probably do that. I went to the new place and was there for about 2 months, full time while doing contract work for OS. I’ll sum it up by saying it was a great learning experience, but didn’t go the direction that I or the person who hired me had envisioned and discussed. Instead of doing DBA work they told me that they needed me to do development work for the time being as I had development experience and they were very shorthanded. I said fine, as long as I start to see some DBA tasks as well before too long. I gave it enough time to get a feel for how things were going to go and while I didn’t hate the job, it also wasn’t helping me develop the skills I wanted to further develop and refine. As such, it also wasn’t worth the time and stress it was putting on my family and other areas of my life (elder’s quorum calling, etc). After much thought, discussion with BriAnne and prayer, I felt it would be best to go back to OS full time. It’s been great to be back!

Needless to say, our family is getting excited for Christmas! See, this is what we did today right after church:

Then it’s on to watching Christmas Vacation! Well, not today but maybe tomorrow.

We Interrupt this crazy family….

wadleyfam — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 03:29:58 +0000

For family pictures. If you know us, that’s a big deal! I think our most recent was taken when Ethan was a year old or so. A lot changes in a young family in 3 or 4 years. Case in point:

Between…

wadleyfam — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 03:15:32 +0000

BriAnne being called into the young women’s presidency, Katelyn in 2nd grade and Ethan in preschool….and me working two jobs + being in the elder’s quorum presidency, we’re not worried about dying of boredom anytime soon.

That’s about it, we’ll add something more as time permits

Times, They Are A Changin’

wadleyfam — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 03:24:26 +0000

At least they are a changin’ at our house. After almost 5 years of working at the ‘OS’, an opportunity fell into my lap recently that I just couldn’t turn down. And it would have to be good to get me to leave! It has definitely been a tough decision on me to make; I’ve worked with a lot of the same people for not only the past 5 years but almost 5 years previous at Enhance. I went from being a part time sales person at ah-ha/Enhance through various other positions that taught me new things and ultimately led to where I am now, a DBA/database developer. It’s turned into a career and the way that I’ve chosen to support my family. And the best part is that I love what I do.

The new opportunity happens to be about 2 blocks down from OS, at a company called:

I won’t bother getting into the details of the position, but I’ll sum it up by saying it will allow me to reach the next level in my career, which I’m very excited about!

Even though I am basically ending one chapter and opening another, I’m still keeping my finger in a previous page. I’m not totally leaving OS…I’ve got an opportunity to remain on the workforce albeit part time. In the end, I’ll be a pretty busy guy but it’s really the best of both worlds for me.

Birthday Surprise

wadleyfam — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 19:32:27 +0000

Yesterday was my 29th birthday. I have to tell you, it feels wonderful to be 29! Thanks to so many people it was a really special day. My birthday celebrations have actually been going for a few days and will continue this weekend with two family parties! Woohoo, I’m one lucky lady! Here’s some of my favorite birthday treasures:

Pedicure, dinner and a movie from my sis

Lunch, a super sweet card and some spending $$ from my dear mother in law

Lunch brought home from my hubby

Dinner from hubby

Super sweet comments on Facebook from great friends

Loving phone calls and voicemails all day from awesome family

Great big bear hugs from my 3 adorable children

And last but not least a birthday scavenger hunt from my amazing husband consisting of things like this:

Hoola-hooping together in the park, sweet, funny and romantic poems, pulled-pork sandwiches at the Smoking Apple, snow cones at the Hawaiian Snow Cone Shack, reminiscing together at the temple, and getting tickets to Hawaii…

did you catch that? Yes, you read it right! Hawaii!!! Our big 10 year anniversary is coming up on February 15, and Jon has gone all out! He’s been planning a dream anniversary trip for months and surprised me with it for my birthday. We’ll be spending a week in Maui starting on Valentines day!!!!!!!!! I know, you’re asking if he’s actually human or secretly an angel in disguise. Yes. And yes. So needless to say I’m extremely shocked, excited and overwhelmed with gratitude. Thanks Jon, you completely surprised me, you’re amazing and I love you.

A Wonderful Woman

wadleyfam — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 04:13:31 +0000

The world lost a wonderful woman today, Grandma Helen Wadley. Her passing wasn’t unexpected – she reached her 98th birthday just two days ago and has spent the last 3 weeks in intensive care/rehabilitation/hospice environments following an operation to remove her gall bladder. But even knowing she was near the end couldn’t fully prepare me for how it would feel to lose one of my favorite people on the earth, someone who has been an anchor in my life for something at least close to the 31 years I’ve been alive. It’s hard to explain, but I always felt ‘at home’ whenever I was with Grandma, regardless of where we actually were. Which is significant if you know a bit about her background – the fact that she lost her mom when she was 5 and grew up moving around from relative to relative and never really had a home to call her own or ever ‘felt at home’ as she once described to me. It became clear to me over the last few years that she lived her life in such a way that everyone around her was always made to feel at home, to feel important.

Having grown up less than a mile away from Grandma and Grandpa Wadley, I could write pages and pages of stories and memories – all of them cherished…a few of them funny. But suffice it to say, I consider myself extremely lucky to be her grandson, and that she was a part of my life for as long as she was. In the last few years we visited her as often as we could, but it was never enough. Which we were reminded of, and that we were missed when we’d have stretches of busy-ness that kept us away.

We’ll miss you Grandma, but we know you’re in a better place with relatives that you have missed greatly for much of your life. We love you.

Grandma didn’t like getting her picture taken, so they are hard to come by. This is a few years old but a good one of her nonetheless.

Found a few more:

Hello, Provo

wadleyfam — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 14:54:57 +0000

After 27 hours in the Denver airport (8 of which were spent on airplanes, not moving) the clouds finally parted and BriAnne’s flight was able to leave. Take a look at the flight path below, there was a small break before another storm hit and they are expecting more storms in the coming days. Amazingly, they even found an non-broken airplane to use

I’ll try and get her to write up a post from her perspective but I think she just wants to forget the whole thing!

A Smooth Middle, But Rough-ish Ending

wadleyfam — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 06:10:44 +0000

So the rest of the week with just me and the kids went pretty well. I just about lost my sanity after days of repeating the same stuff over and over again though, like “Ethan, quit yelling” and “You guys quit fighting” and “You asked for 6 dino-chicken nuggets and we’re not going to waste the 4 you don’t want to eat, your going to eat them” and “I told you both to go get your pajamas on” and “No, your not staying up late” etc, etc, etc.

Needless to say we’ve all been looking forward to tonight when BriAnne and Brooklyn come home. We even decided that we’d leave a little early for the airport so we could stop and wander around Cabela’s for an hour or so. I had things timed pretty well and was planning on getting in the vicinity of the airport with about 20 minutes to spare so there would be no chance they’d have to stand around and wait on the curb. BriAnne called as we were walking to the van after leaving Cabela’s and said that it is storming in Denver (oh no, not this again!) but that the sign was indicating that their outgoing flight was still on time. Whew! So we loaded up and set out for the airport. I think we were somewhere in West Valley on I-215 when BriAnne called again and said that they boarded the plane on time, but that as they were pulling away from the gate this hail storm came out of nowhere and spewed out golf ball sized hail. She said it was pretty amazing to see. Unfortunately though, that meant they had to have the plane checked for hail damage before they could leave. “Ok, how long will that take?” She didn’t know, but said she would call back as soon as she heard anything. I pulled into the Valley Fair Mall parking lot and put a DVD on for the kids (we really love our van!) and we hung out there until further notice. BriAnne called back about an hour later and I said something like “wow, that took quite a while. You on your way now?”. Well, no. It turns out that the lightning has to stop before someone can go out and check the plane. She said it wasn’t showing any sign of letting up. Dang.

Reality set in pretty quickly that this could go on for hours. Of course I didn’t think to bring the kid’s pillows and blankets or we would have just camped out up there but I just told BriAnne to call me when they were just about to take off…I was going to head home and at least get the kids (and myself) some amount of sleep. She called back as we were coming back over the point of the mountain and said they received an update and it was going to be at least 2 more hours before they could take off plus the hour and half duration of the actual flight. It’s after midnight now and I haven’t heard anything yet so I guess we’ll see what tomorrow brings.

Moral of the story: don’t fly through Denver. The crappy thing is that we had the option of choosing a layover in Denver or one in Phoenix when buying the ticket. Denver seemed more logical as it was at least heading in the right direction. Oh well.

UPDATE: As it turns out, they determined that the plane was damaged by hail once they were finally able to inspect it. So, they offloaded everyone and then reloaded everyone onto a different plane that wasn’t damaged. At least not by hail. As they were about to pull away from the gate it was realized that that plane had some kind of hydrolic fluid leak. Everyone was again offloaded and then were told that that particular flight was now cancelled. Unfortunately, all hotels within an hour of the airport were then full so BriAnne and Brooklyn spent the night in the airport…which didn’t sound like it went very well. The earliest flight they could get her on doesn’t leave until tonight (Thursday) at 7:30pm so they’ll be hanging out in the airport all day. The good news though is that she’ll be flying into Provo.