Buying a house

So finally in the beginning of February it happened...we bought our first house!  Yea!

 The kids with our amazing and extremely patient realtor - he is seriously the best!

Closing - with our equally awesome and amazing (and patient and hard working and...) loan officer and my awesome (and patient and long suffering!) in-laws

Celebration dinner afterwards - the kids discovered they REALLY like all you can eat buffets  :)

And then we got to move - we had the most amazing helpers from our ward who got us loaded up fast and several even came to our storage unit to help us get that loaded up and we had some awesome family and friends who helped us unload at our new house and surprisingly a huge group from our new ward showed up to help us unload even though I had just met a neighbor the day before and mentioned that we had hoped to move the next day (we were still waiting to hear if we would get the keys thanks to the toilet delay!) (how was that for a nice long sentence!!).  She got the word out and we were unloaded in record time!!!  And of course we had some awesome little helpers who were SOOO good and helpful that day!

We took a break from unloading to take out the for sale sign   :)

  And a few days later we found the snow clothes and they made our first snow woman   :)

Our families and a family friend were so awesome and stayed with us the rest of the day we moved and helped us get the kitchen unpacked and the beds put together and some coverings on the windows up and other such projects.  We were so blessed to have them stay all day!!!!  When we were all exhausted and ready to call it a night my oldest reminded me that her ear still hurt - oops, I forgot.  So we thanked everyone and the two of us went off to take her to urgent care - sure enough she had a nasty ear infection.  Unfortunately it was late enough at night on a weekend that there weren't any pharmacies open nearby so I dropped her off at home (our home!!!) and drove 30 min to get the meds but it was worth it since she was feeling better by the time she started her new school a few days later!  I got home to find an infestation of stuffed frogs...a parting gift from my family  (we tend to leave random frogs at each others houses...one of the frogs - a very large one - was sent with love from my grandparents in CA where the joke was started - my kids know them as the grandparents who love frogs!).  It was exhausting but so exciting - hooray!

January catch-up

 January was a fun month...at times even more stressful than any other month with so many ups and downs with the house (we really weren't sure if it would even happen or not!)

My little bro and his family came out to visit and we did lots of fun stuff together including a train ride with everyone - such fun!!

My brother in law build an ice skating rink in his backyard and there was lots of ice skating and several ice hockey games...and my sister was a great zamboni  :)

 I finally got more apples and we made lots of batches of applesauce....sooooo yummy!!!  I had lots of fantastic helpers!  (A's favorite part was eating the long peels)

We went with grandma and grandpa to the train show and saw all sorts of fun and different model trains - the kids had a lot of fun seeing lego trains and such

Fun times!

December catch-up

So after all the chaos through December and January I never really updated my blog - here is a quick catch-up for December!

Someone turned 10!!!  Double digits!  We went to the mall with grandma to "find a birthday present" and on the way there grandma asked what she thought about getting her ears pierced...there was much excitement and rejoicing   :)

A few days later someone else turned 6!  She had a lot of fun at her party   :)

I played the piano for the school choir...we had a crazy week of performances but it was a lot of fun (and I got a cool t-shirt!)

We found a new waterfall

 I got to do a stake Christmas musical program again this year - such awesome music!!  and they have a children's choir that my oldest girls got to do...this year I actually ended up helping with the children's choir which was fun

We didn't make it to temple square to see all the lights until after Christmas but we were able to pick the warmest day of the week - it was the first time the girls had seen Temple Square with all the Christmas lights and we had a great time

We rode TRAX (their electric train that goes to and through downtown) into temple square and enjoyed the ride

The girls had fun building another snowman

And FINALLY a month after Christmas we finished building daddy's k'nex  roller coaster that he got for Christmas - we had fun building and playing with it (the car went really fast we were impressed!)

We had a fun month, despite all the craziness of trying to buy a house  :)