An update

18 months, well, a little more, but not much.
Coralynn Flannery is a fat cow with a personality to match. She has the sweetest "I'm gunna do it, but I'm gunna cock my head to the side and give you my dimpled smile while I do so you can't get mad" face. She uses it all the time. Cora is an interesting one. She enjoys climbing, writing on anything, with anything, and exploring. She already plays with imagination picking up toys and chattering to herself as she wanders around the toy room or outside. She LOVES playing outside when the weather is nice (and even when it's not). She enjoys copying her sister and brother, although she knows how to try to get them in trouble if they aren't doing what she wants. DVD cases are her favorite toy, and we've lost quite a few of the children's favorites because they were left down too low.
Her favorite pass-time is reading, surprisingly, but she doesn't so much like to be read to as she likes to flip through the books herself. For the most part she's gentle with the pages, but she'll go through several books and switch you out for one or two in the process. It's adorable.

Kryton is 3 now, taller than a viking and more willing to destroy than ever. He's a tank in boy clothing. At the same time he can look at me with those deep chocolate eyes and just melt my heart. He's still my snuggler, and wakes much earlier than any of the others ready to play and scatter toys everywhere. He loves to explore and play rough, although with me he can also be incredibly gentle as we wrestle on the bed. He loves to torture Alisabeth and gets in her way constantly, but he loves to play with her and follow her around like a lost puppy too. I think, if he stuck with the second only, that she'd have no problem with him tagging along everywhere, but as it is he drives her bonkers.
He's also a huge helper. He is day-trained for potty training, can get himself fully dressed, and when he's in a good mood he's even willing to find clothes for his little sister to wear.
In this photo Jason's work had a giant service project to pack 4500 gift boxes for all of their clients. Kryton is helping move the empty, taped boxes, to the packing assembly line. He was a little slower than the line wanted, but the fact that he was helping didn't go unnoticed by anyone in the area as the rest of the kids ran screaming around and through the working adults. :)
On top of that he LOVES his daddy, especially when Jason is doing anything involving tools, cars, or being outside. The other day he helped Jason change the brakes on a friend's car.

Birthday Party at her Karate studio.

And Alisabeth. She's a yellow belt in karate - one step away from taking her orange belt test. She still has a gentle heart, and a friendly disposition. She is constantly surrounded by people who enjoy being with her, although she struggles with the concept of 'hosting' when friends come over to play. She skipped part of first grade, flew through second with straight A's and in 3rd grade she's been nominated for the Talent program (it's the advanced program). The Talent program focuses on spacial and out-of-the box concepts and this is where she seems to excel. I'm hoping she can find enjoyment in the additional class and the challenge of going above and beyond the classwork already offered to her. Her reading level is already well beyond fourth grade, although she doesn't get absorbed into books like I did when I was her age. Still she enjoys reading at times and can fly through a book in a few hours.
She loves candy and ice cream and spends the majority of her time asking for these items despite knowing that if she asks for them prior to eating real food, or as soon as I pick her up from school, the answer will automatically be no. She also LOVES electronics (TV, Minecraft, IPad games, and computer games). We limit her ability to do any/all of this so she's pretty frustrated with me, but considering the frustration disappears within minutes as she disappears outside to play with friends, I don't feel too bad, and I don't regret denying her screen time.
She also made the choice to be baptized soon after her 8th birthday. It was a great day filled with lots of friends and fun and as her father baptized her I felt so proud to watch her solemn little face. She took it absolutely seriously and worked hard coming up to it making sure to read her scriptures and say her prayers daily. Now we just need to keep her in that habit. :)

 Jason is doing well too. He loves his job and is working hard at it. His co-workers are often praising him, and he's had many opportunities, especially lately, to serve his co-workers and help with cars. He's enjoyed the ability and he's grown quite a few friendships out of the experience.
One of his best friends here in Atlanta gave him "Betty," an old '73 Pontiac Catalina. The poor thing should be let loose in the old car graveyard, but he's working her back up. It was towed over here, but within weeks he had it running, purring sweetly in the driveway. He's worked on the sound system, engine and steering. It has a lot of work to go just in that department, then will also need considerable bodywork (did I mention that you can see in the trunk from 3 angles with the lid closed?) but it's a nice project car and he loves it. Because of all of the restrictions here he hasn't been able to keep up a lot of his other hobbies, and budgeting issues (and forgetfulness) dropped his X-box Gold account, so he hasn't kept up with his friends quite as much either. (Not to mention the 2 hour time difference).

Theresa is having a good time too, although the move to Alanta wasn't as easy as she thought. Despite thinking she was laidback, she's learned otherwise. Bugs, especially, are EVIL, And Georgia is full of them. After almost 9 months of trying to stay at home she took a part-time job with a local company and works daily split between three departments doing basic book-keeping, using her skills in random ways, and just trying to do what she can. It's helped with the sanity, but not with the housework.

So that's an update on the people, but now for the bigger news:
We're changing our lives again. . . 18 months was enough to convince me that Atlanta is full of wonderful people. . . but not a place for me to live long-term.
On the heels of this understanding came our hardest decision ever. I love to work, Jason doesn't much care what he does so long as he gets to play occasionally, but he did miss the time he used to have with the kids, and serving the neighborhood around us. Car maintenance has been put off, and he spends almost 2.5 hours a day driving to and from work. After almost 3 months of deliberating and thinking we received an offer for employment (versus contract labor) at my job. The offer was either to continue on my part-time schedule or become full-time in the same type of position. I put off the decision as long as I could as we continued to debate pro's and cons and determine what our family ultimately wanted to do.
Finally I accepted the job offer as a part-time employee. We had a tentative plan of 18 months, but I still wasn't comfortable with it. Jason was more than willing to quit working and become a stay-at-home dad while I would return to work full-time, but I didn't want to be a 'quitter' and I wasn't sure if I was making this decision just because working is easier for me than child-rearing. I fought with it for another month. I prayed, we fasted, and then we found out we were pregnant (something we knew we were waiting for, and part of our 18 month plan). It was exciting, fit perfectly into the 18 month timetable, and everything felt like it was moving forward, except I still felt like there was something wrong/missing.
Still, we moved forward. I had to call my old firm to update some records I hadn't brought with me, but that my new employers needed, and while speaking to them I mentioned that our 18 month plan might consist of heading back to Idaho eventually. A few days later I got an email from my old boss. I emailed him back and he asked again about our 18 month plan wondering if we could/would consider coming sooner. I wrote back with 'no' but at the same time forwarded it to Jason just to show him what my boss had said. Jason immediately replied - heck yeah our time table can change. And things started happening.
Two or less weeks after accepting employment at my current, local firm I accepted a managerial audit position with my old firm taking the place of the audit manager who had literally just given his notice. He wanted to find a 9-5 job now that he'd had his first child, and as understandable as that was, my old firm didn't want to try to hire someone new and grow them up to the position, they wanted to find someone they already knew.
So, along with having a baby in June, I will be starting as an audit manager (my dream job) in January, we will be moving back to Idaho (my home), and Jason will become a full-time stay-at-home dad with all of the perks that this entails (including new power tools). As soon as I began considering this the feeling of 'quitter' slipped away replaced with an answer from God that He was okay with our choice, and that as long as we maintained Him first in our lives, everything else was up to us. Peace began to settle within me again, and excitement began to build.
And that's the last 19 months in a nutshell. . . here comes another (but hopefully the last) big change for our family.