Ordinary life

After spending the last year searching for jobs, houses, and traveling back and forth...a lot, I am LOVING our plain ol' ordinary days. I even took a two week break from unpacking just to soak up some "normalcy".  Our days are spent with school, work, coupon clipping, grocery shopping, laundry folding, and even an occasional nap.  

I am loving the nice weather and our new backyard. There's so much room for energetic boys to skip, run, hop, and ride scooters/skateboards/bikes!  I need to start doing research and figure out what I'm going to plant in our garden.  I'm told I can plant peas in February!

Several neighbor kids have been coming over to play Nerf dart tag after school. 

 Todd is extremely busy with work.  He currently has 16 kids on his caseload, in addition to being the equine therapist and doing all the horse sessions on the ranch.  He is working to build a private practice in the evenings, and has a few clients then as well.  I am so grateful for his education, and all the work he does to provide for our family.   Oh, how I love living under one roof again!

As soon as we knock out a wall and extend my quilting studio, I will start quilting.  It's so different to have just one kid at home all day.  When Brayden was six weeks old I started doing daycare at home, so I've never really been in this position before.  Justin and I are having fun grocery shopping (so many choices here!), taking walks, and figuring out our new "groove".  We were at DI when it opened the other day.  I can now cross that off my bucket list.  If you've never done it, you should.  It's not as bad as Black Friday, but still good for some laughs.

Todd and Justin hard at work on their laptops.  Like father, like son.

This is a video that I caught when the kids weren't looking.  They're singing our new favorite song.  It was even requested for Family Home Evening this past Monday.  You may recognize it from my previous post.

Looks Like Santa's Been Here Again

This means more to me than it will to most of you, but I didn't want to lose the link, and putting it on my blog means I'll be able to find it again whenever I want.

My brother and his wife wrote a family Christmas song for their gift to us this year.  He took our old home movies and included clips throughout the music.  I get choked up every time I watch it.

For those who don't already know, I was raised on a dairy farm.  Every year on Christmas, we had to wait for my Dad to finish milking the cows before we could open presents.  We waited by the kitchen window and watched for the lights of his truck to come down the road.  When he got home, Dad would go downstairs and light a fire, take pictures of the "spread", and then finally we were allowed to run down the stairs.

It's funny, but after all these years, my favorite memories are not of the gifts I received, but of that time in the kitchen window while we waited for dad...the anticipation.  Thanks, Ben and Carrie, for portraying the magic of our Christmases in such a beautiful way so that I can share it with my own kids.  You have inspired me to be better about taking pictures and video of my own family.

And thanks, Mom and Dad, for "the magic".

bathroom pics

Well, I'm not finished decorating, and it's a good thing you can't see the pee on the toilet seat, but here are the pictures to prove that I did more than eat ice cream today.

10 points to anyone who can guess the "theme" of this bathroom before I finish the decorating.  I've been planning it for a few months and was bummed to realize that these "neutral" walls are ever-so-slightly lavender, so I will be painting this room (I don't "do" purple).

Here are a few hints:

1- It's not sock monkeys (although that would be fun).  Justin's monkey just happened to match so I sat him there.
2- The colors (brown, tan, cream, and bits of yellow) and the red/white polka dots are "key".
3- I was inspired by a children's book.

Brayden is sitting next to me and he guessed that the theme is "Not lavender".

Just so you know, that's not it.

motivation wanted

My brother and his family stayed with us last night on their way back home.  I love that we live exactly half way between them and my parents so we'll get to see them more.  Since they left this morning I've struggled to find motivation.  The holidays are officially over and it's back to "real life".  

Only I haven't figured out "real life" in this house yet.

I've managed to keep up on the kitchen, living room, and laundry (a miracle in itself), but our bathroom(s) still look like this:

So, here's my plan.
My blog is my deadline.

If I haven't posted pictures of a clean/organized bathroom by tonight at 9:00, will y'all please start nagging me?
Apparently my kids have me "trained" and I only respond to whining now.

I'll go start now...

right after I check facebook.

and eat some ice cream.

and check out the 90% off clearance section at Target.

just kidding.

Merry Christmas from sunny Southern Utah!

(Thou shalt not covet thy neighbors weather...)

We are slowly getting settled, and so far we are loving our new house, neighbrhood, and ward.  

I managed to get the kitchen, living room, and dining room unpacked (and decorated), but in the bathrooms and bedrooms we are still living out of boxes.  Hopefully I'll be able to post pictures soon.

This picture makes me laugh. It may take awhile to "grow into" our new house.
(We have our projector downstairs for movies and Wii, but our only TV is a 17"-er)

We are enjoying our holiday (and break from unpacking) immensely.  This morning (before church) we went through our stockings and saw what Santa brought us, then we attended a wonderful sacrament meeting (I love Christmas on Sunday). Now we're relaxing and waiting to skype with Grandma before opening the rest of our gifts.

Dillon has mentioned over and over (and over) how badly he needed a red scooter now that we have such a scooter-friendly yard.  Taking turns with Caleb's blue scooter was such an inconvenience.  He was thrilled  (and very lucky) that Santa got the message on such late notice!

Caleb got a ripstick.  These pictures give the false impression that he actually knows how to ride it.

He doesn't...but I have a feeling that it won't be too long before he's "rippin'" it up out there.

Santa brought Brayden a new bike.  It has hand brakes and 21 speeds.  With this gift, his brothers each got a "new-to-them" bike handed down, and now they can all ride bikes together.  They haven't been able to do that ever since "nobody" rode Dillon's bike into the middle of the driveway and parked it behind Dad's truck...

Justin got new sand toys, and some sidewalk chalk.  We haven't tried the chalk yet, but the sandbox has been a raging success since the minute we arrived in the moving truck.

Christmas with a 16 mos. old has been one adventure after another.  We re-decorate the tree daily, and we are dilligently trying to teach Justin to take the candy OUT of the wrapper before he eats it.

After Brayden rode his bike for awhile, I caught him out on the lawn trying to figure out his new maze game, "Perplexus".  

Have I mentioned that I love the weather here?

This helicopter arrived from Amazon a few weeks ago (to Todd; from Todd) and I wrapped it up before he had a chance to see it.  After a mad search for batteries this morning, he was finally able to get it off the ground.

I don't have a picture of it, but Todd surprised me with an ipod touch!  Someone (who already had an iphone) won it at Todd's Christmas work party and gave him a deal.  Now if I can just figure out how to use it...

I can't even begin to name all the blessings we've had this year, especially in the last couple months, but I hope to somehow convey my gratitude in a future post.  It's just too hard to think right now with all the unpacking/Christmas chaos/kids out of school.

I didn't get Christmas cards out this year (again), but we've loved hearing from many of you, and wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a blessed new year.

Blog headers of 2011

just an update

We are closing on our house tomorrow!  We can't move until the seller leaves (probably the 16th-19th) so it's going to be an interesting Christmas for us.  

We've all had the stomach flu this week.  Yuck.  At least it's over now.  Dillon was the last to get it and he's up and running now.  Poor Todd drove through horrible weather to come home last Friday night, only to spend Saturday packing by himself and taking care of me and Brayden while we were sick. He returned home to the trailer on Sunday at 7:00, and was sick himself by 11:00.

Moving is a pain.  I've been throwing away, giving away, and selling things for weeks. We've made a dent, but there's still so much to do.  I'm waiting for the last of our Christmas stuff to come from Amazon so I can wrap everything up, and pack it to go.  

The other day, I asked Brayden to watch Justin in the tub while I ran to get his towel.  When I returned, he had been entertaining the baby with equations. Oh, how I love my Brayden :o)

I found 17 rolls of dental floss when I cleaned out my bathroom closet a couple weeks ago.  Then we had dentist appts. and brought home another 3 rolls.  It's funny the things you find when you move.  We also had around 25 shirts with the name of our town, county, or school on them.  Between the soccer, basketball, baseball, 4-H, and 5 years worth of "Falcon Friday" elementary school shirts that I'm not taking with us, I just took a huge chunk out of my future laundry pile!