Of Weddings and Such....

Well my darling little sister got married a couple of weeks ago. As there are 15 years between us (almost to the day) I found myself feeling kindof old. Andy and I have been married for just about 1/2 of my life, and its been a while since we where sealed in the temple.  Its amazing the power of the priesthood that it does the same thing for my little sister and her new husband today just as it did almost 18 years ago.

This is almost all of us we are missing Daniel who when faced with the option of coming to the wedding or the birth of his son, chose the right one. What is really amazing is that for my wedding there was some very drastic differences in height that just are not a problem now! Of course that is just because my cute step-mother Lauraine has 4 in heels on!

At the wedding Andy let Coulton and Taylor take the camera and take pictures just as long as they didn't take pictures of people without asking permission first. My kids have gotten the picture taking bug that my family has and we got some really great shots of temple square and the reception center but not really any of people! But the 3 on this bog where all taken by them. Coulton took the top 2 and Taylor took this great picture of Lexi, Who looks way to grown up!!

The house is comming along nicely, and thank heavens we seem to be settleing into more of a routine lately. Homework is even getting done, and chores too!

Its hard to beleive that with as much as we have been blessed with lately I am still having a hard time with some things. The lord has truely worked some miracles in our behalf this year. And I feel kindof guilty wanting more. There are other things that I need help with and that I am having a terrible time with this year. I think that I worked myself up to think that as soon as we moved that within the first 2 weeks everything was going to fall into place. The house would all be unpacked and decorated perfectly, finances would be perfect, and my children would act like I really want them too. But of course that is not how things work out. I am not sure why after all we have been through that I still have a hard time with faith and with patience. Maybe one day I will finally get it, but somedays I think that there is no possible way to have the faith of a mustard seed when your heart and your head don't speak the same language. But one day I am going to get it! Christmas is coming and I am so excited for the season! I wish my christmas shopping was started and finished and I wish my life was perfect but then, maybe perfection is boring!!!

WOW where does the time go!!

WOW I have no idea where the last month went!! We have now lived in our new house just a couple of days shy of a month and it has been quite a transition! First of all trying to combine everything that we had in storage for a year (which I found out that I really had no clue what was in storage) and the stuff that we had accumulated over the last year living with Andy's parents has been one of the hardest thing that I have ever done. This is move 16 and seriously it has never been this hard. Usually I know what is in most of the boxes and have planned out in my head before hand where I want things to go tentatively. This time I have gotten things set and then found 2 more boxes of stuff and have had to start over. Also during the last year the children have grown (big surprise I know), but when we packed to go to Grandma's we only packed enough clothes to last 2 weeks, we where trying not to bring to much stuff to grandma's because we where only going to be there max 9 weeks! When we went to unpack the kids we found BOXES of clothes that no longer fit anyone. Lexi made out like a bandit and accumulated alot of clothes that she will fit into next year and the others girls found a handful of shirts that they could still wear. However, an hour project putting away clothes turned into 4 hours of trying on, sorting and huge mounds of clothing.
We are still trying to get everything sorted but it may be another month or 2 before I can get through everything. We did get the entire main part of the house painted, except for some of the trim. Unfortunately, that means that we still have alot of painting to do. All of the bedrooms, bathrooms, and doors still need the benefit of having more than one thin coat of paint. The girls are going through the growing pains of all being cramped in a 10 x 10 room together. They have all really wanted to bring all of their treasures out of their room boxes up to their room. However, there just isn't room for it, and that has been pretty hard on all of them. We hope to be able to finish the basement bedrooms before to long but right now, with Christmas looming on the horizon we figured that we need to calm some of the craziness before we try to add more.
The kids are adjusting to the way that we do chores again, which has been pretty hard on all of them. Things where pretty different at Grandma's house, and mom had very little control over alot of things and Grandma was really good at rescuing them from chores, or having things done the grandma way so we are really out of practice. Tonight alone it took 2 of them over 2 hours to do the dinner dishes. Its enough to make a mother pull her hair out!!!  To add mroe excitement to our life we also got a new car 2 weeks ago, we desperately needed something that got better gas mileage and was better in the snow than our 2 wheel drive Sequioa. So despite the fact that we loved it we now have a shinney new 2009 Chrysler Town and Country that has been kindof fun to have so far. All in all we are hoping to be able to have a house warming party so that everyone can see our new digs sometime in December should be fun!!

Moving Day!

We are FINALLY going to move in! If you can spare some time Wednesday night we could use all we can get!

House address is:


4103 Dakota Drive

Directions: From I-15:

Take I-15 to the 1st American Fork Main street exit and turn left to go on the new Pioneer parkway.

Take Pioneer parkway to redwood road (it doesn't go any further) and turn left.

At the first light after turning left turn right (Pony express parkway, this will be on the south side of WestLake High school)

Follow this road until you go over a hill

After coming down off of the hill take the second left (this is after the red brick church) on Porters Crossing
take Porters crossing to the top of the road and turn right on golden eagle

at the roundabout take a left and go to the top of the road and turn left on Yakima

Yakima turns into Dakota Dr and we are the house in middle left hand side of the street with the PODS in the front.

Just in case you didn't hear...

We are not able to move in until the middle of the week. The city of Eagle Mountain will not grant a certificate of occupancy until our missing (for 4 weeks now) cabinet. We have a guarentee that they will have the problem fixed monday morning and we will have the occupancy certificate by Monday afternoon. Until then we are putting off the majority of moving until later this week. Not happy about it but not really anything that we can do about it.

Almost Finished!

We could close as early as Friday!!! However if you look in the corner by the sink you will see the hole where my missing cabinet belongs. Unfortunately, it has to be installed before the city will grant occupancy so they better get on it quick! 

This is the front room

This is the closet in Mara's room

This is Lexi's Room

My Room

My Bathroom and it has 2 sinks!! (I bet that you can't tell that after 17 1/2 years of marriage, we finally are going to have our own bathroom and I am excited!)

This is the kids bathroom so they will not be using mine

Doesn't my grass look pretty!

The more we walk the path the closer we get to the end...

Well so things are not exactly progressing as planned, we have had a couple of setbacks. Like the sheet rock guys getting caught, by me, smoking in my house and then after getting in trouble with thier boss not returning to work at all. Of course this made it so that the texturing on my walls got upgraded, for free, because the only guy not busy was the guy that did the other kind of texture, but it put us back a couple of days.

The outside has been coming along this is the start of them putting the final coat on the stucco

And this is what the final coat of stucco looks like all done!

This is the cabinet guy and the countertop guy working on my beautiful new kitchen!! However, one of the cabinets was mis-ordered so I am missing my lazy suzan corner cabinet and I am not sure how long its going to take to get this one straightened out. But aren't they pretty!

This is what the outside of my house looks like!! They finished the stone today so all that is left to do is install the A/C (which you can see sitting in the garage), put on the small deck out back, grade the lot and put in the front yard. Inside they still need to do the finish plumbing, carpet, countertops, all of the closet systems, and the rest of the trim. So we are getting pretty close!

New House Pictures

OK Nikki I am doing this just for you! Of course if the rest of you are interested Yea House!! We are only 1 week away from the final walk through and I am just not convinced that they are going to be totally done. However they have done a TON!!

My bedroom in studs

My bedroom in sheet rock

Front Room in sheet rock

Lexi's room in sheet rock

Before the concret work

WooHoo driveway (this is for shoveling snow off of)

The starting of the stucco work!!

The agenda for the rest of this week- Today Tuesday finish the sheet rock texture, first coat on stucco

Wednesday- finish work trim etc, stucco work

Thursday, Friday and Saturday- Paint , stucco work and maybe stone

But there is still a huge list of stuff to get done like the finish electrical and plumbing, flooring and cabinets, and fixtures. So can they do it in a week? I will keep you posted!

WOW~~~~

 I must admit that I am extreamly impressed with our builder. Our house just passed its 4 way inspection (that's electrical, plumbing, framing and HVAC) the insulation is in, the shingles are on the roof, the sheet rock has been delivered and they started wraping the house in preparation for the stucco today!!  We are getting closer to our September 20th close date and for the first time I actually am starting to think that they will make it- Andy isn't so sure but what can I say I'm an optomist!

Its amazing what they can do in 10 days!

Flat work

Starting The Framing

More Framing

Trusses

Wow it looks like a house!!

There's a hole in the ground......

This is a Tractor pronounced "Trac-hoe" by my Husband. Not that it matters, because this is the tractor that dug the hole that my house will sit in! Isn't it lovely!! (Of course this may be the only time that I ever think a tractor is lovely!) And I know that I am behind in letting you all know what is going on- but lets face it no one else has had time to blog either!    They started rather late on our house which means that they wont have time to finish it before school starts but it wont be to long until it is finished (we are shooting for around September 15th) which is really not that far away I know I can make it!  This is the hole in the ground that the lovely tractor dug for me itsn't it great!

This is the lovely bit of concrete that makes up the foundation of my house! I know that the back looks way to small but believe me it is on purpose. We built on this slope -on purpose- so that we could have a walkout basement. The purpose of a walkout basement is so that one day in the future we can build an apartment in the basement. Not sure why yet but its one of those inspiration thingy's that I am unwilling to not listen to. So its going to have a kitchen and everything- kindof excited at the prospect of having more than one kitchen!

One last picture to top this blog off this is the view off to the east of our house. Isnt' it great! The lake out there is Utah Lake and it doesn't even look like there is anyone else that lives out there. I think that I like that part :)

A piece of dirt to call our own-

I know that it may not look like much especially with all of the weeds BUT this is the patch of dirt at 4103 Dakota Drive in Eagle Mountain Utah that is going to be our new home! If I had taken another picture of it you would see that we are up just about as far on the mountain that you can go (there is only one street up farther than ours), also we have an amazing view of Utah lake out the other side. They are supposed to break ground for our 3 bedroom rambler in just about a week from now and we are so excited that we can hardly stand it! They are going to try and get it finished for us before school starts but we may miss the start of school by a couple of weeks. This of course will mean more driving back and forth so we are crossing both of our fingers and toes to have them get it done sooner! I have tons of details in my head about how we are going to do things and colors and how the cabinets are going to look, its amazing how that happens after you go and pick everything out! But if I tried to put it all here you would have no idea what I was even getting at so I will hold back for now. We will be posting pictures as the construction moves forward and then you will all be able to see the house we have been waiting for, for way to long now!

So here is to hoping that my kids survive the summer at Grandma and Grandpa's house and that I survive them surviving the Summer at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Here is to praying every day that they get the house done QUICK! And here is the thanks to both our amazing realtor who helped us through this grueling process and didn't kill us when we said can we see another 10 houses? Not to mention our thanks to our Heavenly Father for helping us to see his hands in this and for guiding us to where we where supposed to be. The experience has been comforting and rewarding all while being the most frustrating thing I have ever experienced.

The Doctor is In!!!! The Fabric Doctor that is..

I am so excited! My Dad who has been in the Drycleaning business his entire life has deceided to help his 10 stain challenged children by starting a blog to help us get stuff out! The good news is that you get to read it too! When I was growing up I NEVER worried about getting anything on anything I owned because Dad could get it out. I now call him about every laundry day to ask him how to get one thing out or another and well the rest of my siblings do too (so my questions times 10), so a blog has turned out to be much easier!  Please go and check it out its at http://www.thefabricdoctor.blogspot.com/

He has started out his journey with this technology with his first of what I know will be many posts so go and check him out!

Houses!

SO it has finally gotten to the time where we get to look for houses! I seriously didn't know what I was thinking but I really thought that it would be very simple process and we would either go with what we had found 6 months ago or we would be able to find something else easily and move in and it would all be over really quickly! Ya, well not quite that fast or even really that fun. We looked for houses for 4 weeks before stumbling on to 2 perfect houses and one build to suit. Believe me I have seen some of the most interesting (take this as stupid) floor plans on the planet and decorating schemes that made me wonder where these people came from! We even walked through one house that the bank had not been in yet to clean and these people had just left what ever they hadn't felt like moving, there was stuff (ok stuff is to nice, more like garbage and crap) everywhere!!  I would post pictures of them but who knows if we will really end up with any of them so I am not getting my heart set on any of them. The 2 houses that we put offers in on (did I mention that) both are 4 bedrooms, but one is almost 600 sq ft bigger than the other, but the other has a 90% finished basement (it just needs flooring). So its a toss up. Both are short sales so we have to wait for bank approval on the price. However, one of them qualifies for the new bank response in 10 business days program that just went into effect. So who knows! I do need my kids to be moved in by the end of summer (I am not driving 45 min each way to get them to school any longer after the next 5 weeks are up!!!!!). Yes I am a bit at the end of my rope with everything. After 6 months of our very long commute, keeping the kids in their schools, and living with almost no storage space at all (including no dressers) I have had enough. I do just know that the lord knows this and he is making sure that things are still going according to his plan (and not mine). I do know that this having faith stuff is hard, but I am trying, and even sometimes succeeding. I know that my husband has thought me nuts sometimes,  but some of the things that are keeping me going are simple but effective: 

Listening to church music in the car- I am not talking hymns here but LDS music CD's (I finally had to buy more my kids where complaining that they where sick of the same songs) I think that they have actually calmed my  kids down on our afternoon commute, which as you can imagine is not a real fun one. 

Going to the temple once a week- I know for people who didn't go for years because we lived in Wyoming and there wasn't a temple close its pretty amazing, but we have been able to do a lot of work for our ancestors which has made it more rewarding.

Genealogy- this is when I can fit it in, but it energizes me knowing that I am doing something for those who went before me that they are unable to do for themselves. We were able to get all of the work done for my dad's grandparents family, now that they have all passed on, and reunite their family for the first time in a very long time. Plus we have even made strides on Andy's side as well. 

Afternoons with Heather- My amazingly talented sister has been amazing enough to let me crash at her house between when I get out of work and when my kids get out of school. It has helped to refresh me so many times as we have helped each other to carry burdens or decorate or plan. The time that I spend with her soothes my soul, and helps me to be a better person.  (Thanks Heather)

Family prayer and scripture study- I know when we are doing these like we should because it helps everyone in the house, even grandma and grandpa. We have been slackers lately with everything that has been going on and it is a noticeable difference. My goal for the next couple of weeks is to get us back on track, because its good for everyone. 

I will keep you posted but for now I have tied a knot at the end of my rope and I am just swinging :)

He's Done it!

I would like to shout out congratulations to my sweetie! He has earned his Assiciates of Arts degree in Psychology. He starts his Bachelors degree in government at Regent University (he will also minor in religion) next month!

YES! I am still alive...

Ok So i haven't posted for 3 weeks! It has not been for lack of material but lack of time and energy! We have really done alot in the last 3 weeks, and on top of it all I have been sick. Coulton brought strep home from the winter jamboree and gave it to Taylor who gave it to me. Taylor already had a cold which she imparted at the same time so I got a double whammy. I am so glad that they finally learned how to share.... On Mara's birthday (did I mention that we have had 2 in the last 3 weeks) My brother Peter and his wife Stacey gave her the ultimate birthday present- a new baby girl cousin! On top of it Mara Jade and Madison Jane have the same initials~ needless to say it has put Mara on cloud nine. Unfortunately, due to my cold we have not seen her yet but we will be able to soon! Coulton officially turned into a teenager on the 1st~ heaven help me. I don't think I am ready for this yet, but he of course has different ideas.
On top of it all we are getting really close to being able to buy a house. We have found one and should be able to start everything in the next 6 weeks, if everything goes ok. I really cannot wait I am SO tired of driving the kids back and forth to school, its amazing what it takes out of you. Right now we are using our tax return to make sure that we don't have any debt floating out there, it feels so good to pay things off! We are still trying to get rid of Jedi so if you want a really sweet outside dog- he is all yours. Our new house doesn't have a yard, so we wont be able to keep him.
We have reached a milestone for us, Andy got Wednesdays off so that we could actually have the same day off and see eachother. For the last 3 weeks we have made it to the temple every Wednesday! It has been just amazing I am so glad that our heavenly father gives us a sanctuary to go where we can feel of his presence and love and be away from the rest of the world and its influences.
Hopefully it wont take another 3 weeks to get another post out of me but, with my life you never know!

My Bucket List

So I have been challenged to make a bucket list. I never knew it would be so HARD! I feel rather boring but I am thinking that the list will probably grow. Maybe my short list just means that I am content with my life... or it means that I stopped dreaming because I knew that it would never happen... I think that I should figure that out!

1- Visit the Polynesian cultural center in Hawaii
2- Visit Scotland
3- Go inside a real castle
4- Visit all the church history sites from Palmyra to Salt Lake
5- Visit Manti and take pictures of all of the family headstones located in the cemetery and attach the photos to their genealogy in PAF
6- Take a cruise
7- Visit islands like the Bahamas and be able to look into the water and see all the way down :)
8- Go to Disney World
9- Take my kids back to Disneyland
10- Visit London and tour the tower of London

Food.....

SO I love new recipies~ Um.. who doesn't! My sisters turned me on to this FANTASTIC blog called Our Best Bites  Its here on blogger and if you have not been there than you are missing so many things! They are just 2 girls with families, but they spell everything out- yes even with pictures to show you what to do to make some just amazing stuff! If you haven't checked it out- You should! Its my new favorite spot to go when I just have a hankering for - I have no idea- I just hate those nights but there is almost always something that I want to eat!

Christmas

Well I would add cute pictures of Christmas -----> here..... But they really turned out crappy, so I am just chocking it up to the fact that I had only had 3 hours of sleep and it was 5 am....

HOWEVER~

My Children proclaimed it the best Christmas ever, so I must have done good!

Coulton got an MP3 player, the book of WHY, the Teen Survival Guide (by John Bytheway I love his stuff!), and a book called From Deacon to Man of God (can you see a theme here- he hits teenager is 1 month!) and Pj's (Coulton also got a Webkins even though he is a bit old for them his is a brown dog named Jack)

Taylor got a  PINK Telescope (yes I know that she is 10 but she is a total freak about space, if the weather would just cooperate we could try it out), the American Girl book the Care and Keeping of You, a book about space, and a Plantsphere (it tells you where the stars are supposed to be). A Webkins Turtle (named Fred) and Pj's with Monkeys on them her fav animal.

Mara is my little me and she got her very own Sewing Machine this year ( a Brother one so its not the top of the line but its not bad). Along with a couple of projects and all the necessary sewing stuff that you HAVE to have. She also got a Diary of a Whimpy kid book, a Cockatoo Webkins (named Moe) and Pjs with Kitty's on them (her fav animal).

Lexi is my little mother and LOVES her American girl dolls. She got American Girl outfits, a hair styling kit and her Pet this year (she wanted Sugar which is a cute little dog with long hair). She got 3 Fancy Nancy books that are just barely over her level so that they will challenge her, and Pink Frog Webkins (named Pinky Heart) and Pj's with Butterflies on them.

And then .... We bought them a Wii!! I know I have said in the past that I hate Video games but I like the fact that it makes you MOVE! Which is a wonderful thing. They got 4 steering wheels 3 extra controllers, the sports pack of stuff you hook on your controller, and like 7 games (but I could be wrong it could be more). We have already had several  family bowling tournaments (even Grammie and Papa get in on the action) and Lexi is by far our best bowler! I think its because she doesn't worry about it and just flings it out there- but its super cute!

And all this stuff really doesn't count what everyone else gave them! So it was the best Christmas in years! Plus I think that it felt more like Christmas to them because we have spent more Christmases at Grammie and Papa's house than any where else- due to the whole Wyoming thing- so it was good that way too.

Now I have to go and get ready for 2 birthdays at the end of the month- and I have no idea what to give them!