I had a few people asking when I was going to post pictures of the new house, so I'm finally getting around to doing it! Now I am not done decorating, organizing, or even unpacking. But this is how everything looks at the moment. When you walk in our front door we have a formal living room on the right (our piano room), and a formal dining room on the left. And you can see straight into the family room which is at the back of the house. Piano room:
Dining room:
Looking through the dining room from the entry near the garage, you can see our entryway and our piano room:
This is our family room from above, it is at the back of the house (and I just realized that there is an extra toy sitting on the mantel that is not usually there, so ignore the object on the far left):
Our kitchen, which is right next to the family room at the back of the house:
Looking from the kitchen into the family room:
(Sorry about the awful lighting on this one) Kitchen from opposite corner:
Back yard and fence which we just barely got finished a few weeks ago:
Main floor bathroom:
Derek's office/ guest room (definitely still needs some work!):
Well that's the main floor, minus the little entry by the back door which will be getting hooks for jackets and coats soon. Our basement is unfinished, and I'll get pics of the upstairs soon.
I promise I have not forgotten that I have a blog! Moving was just overwhelming, and I just didnt know quite how to catch up. But I'll try to post current stuff, and maybe go back and do highlights of the summer.
This Halloween for the first time ever I had kids who all went with one theme! I'm sure Ethan wouldn't wear something like this next year, so it will probably be the only time ever. Introducing our Angry Birds! Yes I did make the costumes, and if you looked closely I'm sure you'd be able to tell, but they look decent if you're a way off. :)
Halloween night is my sister Kristen's birthday. Every year we do a birthday dinner for her, and this is the first year that we hosted it at our house. (Wish I had pictures of everyone but I was a bit preoccupied.) It was so much fun having everyone over.
Our older kids went trick or treating with their friends right after dinner and gifts. And Char and Andrew and I took Chase, Daphne, and Olivia out together not long after. The kids were so cute. Chase cheerfully said "see you later" as we left each house. At one house after receiving his candy he just stood there and waited for more because he could see that there was plenty left, lol. And my favorite moment of the night was when he heard someone's spooky Halloween sounds and asked if it was "Merry Christmas." We told him that it was "Happy Halloween." At the next house we visited he went up and said "Trick or treat, Halloween," and after getting his candy said "thank you, Halloween," and patted the man on the hand. He was cracking me up all night! Soon after we decided to walk up a hill to some houses, and he wanted to go down the hill. He was not happy about it. He had a huge meltdown and I ended up carrying him home, where the meltdown didn't stop. Finally after throwing him in the bath he calmed down and we were able to finish off the evening happily.
Overall it was a fun Halloween, and we had SO many more trick or treaters here than in our old neighborhood. Check out the spooky moon coming over the mountain as we were out trick or treating:
Well, we're out! We finished getting everything moved out of the house last
weekend, and we closed last Monday. We saw signs of the new people at our old
house on Tuesday. So weird!!! We're living with my parents right now until our
house is finished in August.
Moving with a 2 year old is an adventure,
let me tell you! Chase was pulling stuff out of boxes almost as fast as we were
getting them in. And packing glass kitchen items? Nightmare! Luckily he was
due for a nap before anything actually got broken. I'm now sure how everything
survived.
Julia enjoyed having
picnics on the dining room floor after the table and chairs were moved out:
Here's the last pile of boxes ready to head
to our storage unit:
Chase is obsessed with
Toy Story right now, and he watched it several times while we got everything out
of the house. This was our last day there:
And they have indeed
broken ground on our new house. We drove over yesterday to check out the
progress and saw not only the hole, but also the footings for the foundation!
Those weren't supposed to be in until today so they're a couple days ahead of
schedule, yay!!
Sunday, May 6, 2012
This is the house that we are building. We looked and looked at houses for months, but never found anything that really worked for us. I found the floorplan for this house online and thought it would really be perfect for us, so in February we went up to Herriman to see the model home so see if it was as great in person as it looked on paper. It was! We continued looking at houses for a few weeks just to see if there was anything already built that was even close. There was nothing on the market that could compete, so we went for it!
So here we are 2 months later, moving out of our house. We have lived in this house for over 14 years, and it's crazy how much stuff we have accumulated in that time. Moving is THE WORST! I hate it, but I will be so excited when we finally get to move into our new house. They should be breaking ground on our new house within the next week and a half. It should be done by the middle of August (crossing our fingers!) so in the meantime we will be moving in with my parents for the summer.
I hope we don't drive them crazy!
And did I tell you that we met some of our new neighbors a few weeks ago? I'm so glad that I will know somebody when we move in!!!
This year we spent the week of Spring Break in St George. Derek's brother and his family flew in from New Jersey and met us in St George, and we had quite the week together!
On Monday we spent most of the day at Snow Canyon. We did a few hikes and let the kids climb all over the rocks (petrified sand dunes).
Ethan was a major trooper and carried Chase all over the place when Chase refused to go in the baby carrier we had brought.
We all really enjoyed the hikes and the scenery, but when we got back (we had rented a condo together) the kids were ready for the pool!
That evening we enjoyed a wonderful late Easter dinner together, prepared by Derek's mom. The condo had plenty of room for all of us to sit and eat, it was perfect for our needs.
The next day was our day at Zion National Park. We decided to do the Emerald Pools trail first, and Buzz and Susan even went up to the lower pool area with us.
At the middle pool the kids hiked around a bit, and found a cave that we hadn't seen before. Chase had finally fallen asleep in the baby carrier, so Jill and I decided to go to the upper pool ahead of everyone else since it was taking me much longer while toting around a sleeping toddler.
The upper pools were spectacular, as always, but it was much more crowded than normal. That didn't stop the kids from wading around in the water and playing in the sand though.
We enjoyed lunch at the Zion Lodge and relaxed a bit. Our second and final hike of the day was the River Walk trail.
It was really fun seeing how much fun the kids were having being together.
On Wednesday we went on a Safari Jeep ride. I didn't really know what this would entail, and it ended up completely different than what I had expected.
I found a youtube video that looks really similar to what we did:
It was CRAZY, but the kids loved it!
We had 2 vehicles rented, this army truck, and a dune buggy. Only 3 people fit in the dune buggy, and everyone else went in the army truck. The ride was CRAZY! We went up trails that felt like we were going straight up the mountain, and climbed enormous rocks. In one section the tires were spinning on the rocks and it really felt like we were going to roll over backwards in the truck. At that moment I wasn't too sure that I'd be enjoying the rest of the ride, but thankfully the driver was very careful on the vertical drops we took on the way down, and we made it back safely. (Although it didn't help my confidence in our driver when he would look back to answer questions and didn't look at the road for what seemed like a VERY long time!)
I have to admit that the views at the top were awesome, we had a great view of St George and all the surrounding cities.
Thursday was our last day together. Mark and Jill and kids had to head back after lunch, but Derek and Mark took the kids (they did leave Chase) and went back to Snow Canyon to do one last hike.
They said it was the best hike they'd done at Snow Canyon, sounds like they had a lot of fun!
We stayed in the condo one more night and enjoyed the pool again, even though it had cooled off quite a bit.
Friday morning we headed to Las Vegas. Derek had a business lunch scheduled, so we dropped him off and headed to the outlet mall. The kids both ended up getting shoes at the Vans outlet, so I guess it was a successful trip. After Derek's lunch we picked him up and headed to our hotel.
We let the kids do some games at Circus Circus, enjoyed a buffet, and saw some of the few kid friendly stops on the strip. The Bellagio Fountains:
The Eiffel Tower:
And we also saw the volcano erupt at The Mirage.
The next day we headed back up to St George and had lunch with Derek's parents before heading home.
The traffic on the freeway came to a complete stop and we ended up deciding to take a little detour which ended up taking a lot longer than we had anticipated. This was our view during that part of our trip:
We hadn't seen snow like this all winter! We were trying to get back to I-15 through one of the canyons and had to turn around because we didn't have chains for the van. Thanksfully we were able to get the next highway that got us back to the Interstate and we finally made it home.
