it's valentines day!

A day for love.

Hope your day is full of love!

an exciting day

It was an exciting day around here.  Austin came running up the stairs this morning to surprise me with this! HE LOST HIS BOTTOM TOOTH!!!

I seriously had no idea that he was even close to losing a tooth.  He has been dying to lose one because he said "everyone" in Kindergarten last year had lost one.  His was slightly wiggly but Chloe worked on it and wa-la, out it came.  Chloe is actually magic with teeth that way, I'm thinking she might be the tooth fairy or a future dentist.  This isn't the first time she has yanked someones tooth out.  We hurry and texted a picture to Travis at work and he texted back that he thought Austin looked so cool he pulled his tooth out to match.

I thought that was a pretty clever trick. Austin spent the afternoon wiggling his other bottom tooth which is surprisingly very loose.  I am sure it will come out in the next day or two.  Who knew, the other kids have been SO slow to loose teeth I thought for sure it would be mid-first grade before he had one out.  I am going to have to go look at school pictures from 1st grade and see if he is ahead or behind.  I know for sure that Holden was minus his 2 bottom teeth in his second grade picture.

Now on to the other exciting news...

WE FOUND A HOUSE...FINALLY!!!

(not the greatest picture)

We close on September 19th...can't wait.



the pool is done!!!!

these pictures were taken at 5:30 a.m. Friday, April 1, 2011

When I woke up to the noise of a backhoe, I said darn I never took a "before" picture, so Travis got up and did his best in the dark.

The kids are so excited (Chloe too, she just missed the photo shoot)!  The pool was filled just in time for our first day of 100 degree weather, yes, I did say 100 degrees.  On both May 5th and 6th we hit the triple digits! The pool is complete, now we are just waiting on the landscape and pool fence which should be done in the next week or so and then I will post the "final" finished yard.  I am so happy to be rid of the dirt and dust and to have somewhere to go and enjoy the outdoors.  Hopefully we will get to enjoy some time out on our patio before it gets unbearably hot!!!!

salsa update

I just wanted to give you all an update.  I just returned from another Friday of "boutique" shopping (this is a very popular thing down here).  The "salsa girl" was again selling her goods at this different boutique, I was instantly worried because I have NOT been able to get a hold of her this entire week, but then I saw a large sign that said... KEEP REFRIGERATED.

I'm not sure how I missed the sign at the boutique last week, but I did.  So there you have it.  It wasn't canned salsa at all, just fresh salsa put into jars. 

But now you all know, that if you put fresh salsa in an airtight bottle on your pantry shelf after leaving it in your car for a couple of hours, it will EXPLODE in the middle of the night and make a huge mess.  Never do it.

compter hog & the dining room

I haven't been able to post lately because I literally have to fight Austin for computer time.  He discovered nick jr. dot com and that is life now, forget about T.V., Wii, or the D.S., all he wants to do is play his nick jr.

On Sunday we had an official dinner in our almost complete, new dining room.  Chloe has been asking to eat in there since we got the new furniture back in May but I told her we were not going to until it was complete.  Well...it's close enough.  After trying five different shades of blue I finally picked one and got it painted.  We had the chandelier hung so now just a couple of finishing touches and it will be done for real. 

Chloe preparing for the feast

We decided to put the room to good use, we will eat in the dining room every Sunday.  Does that mean no tuna sandwiches for Sunday dinner?  I sure hope not.

cleaning day & a bloody nose

Saturday was a cleaning day. I made the kids clean all day with me.  They hated it and I loved it.  We got so much ground covered and I love getting everything done in one day so then you can just sit back and admire your home and how great it looks when it is perfectly CLEAN. I wish it would last but it is so short-lived and then I'm like "what happened", it was just so clean??? Oh, yah -I have four kids, that's what happened.

Here are the two that were a little more cooperative about the cleaning day than the others.

While we were cleaning Austin was trying to run and slide across the tile on a piece of cardboard.  His surfboard got away from him and he face-planted on the tile and got a HUGE bloody nose.  I was holding him all covered in blood and he almost immediately says, "play the piano-head,shoulders." I am like whatever makes you feel better buddy.  So Chloe holds him while I play with blood covered hands, Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes.  We all start to sing & then he joins in -

head, shoulders, knees, and toes

knees and toes, knees and toes,

head, shoulders, knees and toes

Austin- eyes, ears, BLOODY NOSE.

real words- eyes, ears, mouth and nose

We all burst out laughing.  Austin is a crack-up, where does he come up with this stuff?  And how does his four year old brain think oh, "bloody nose" will fit right in to Head, Shoulders, only 60 seconds after smashing his face on tile?????

wd40

This did the trick along with some elbow grease by Chloe and the silly putty from yesterday is out of the carpet!

I'm sure you have been wondering what I have been up to the last week, well remember the post about this-

I thought I could get this all organized and put away in one day.  Boy, was I WRONG!  It turned into this-

And now it finally looks like this-

I now plan to get out one folder at a time and put it into a scrapbook.  It shouldn't be too hard now that everything is labeled and everything is in order.  I am actually excited about it instead of dreading the piles & piles I had before. Since taking the walk down memory lane I want to do it more often. Looking at all those pictures and memories was so fun.  That is probably why this took me so long, I spent way too long looking at all the old pictures and reminiscing.

P.S.  Happy 1st Birthday to London & Brookelyn! and Happy Cinco de Mayo to the rest of you!  Enjoy some Mexican food today.

oops I forgot to post this yesterday, got busy, then went to a baseball game, got home LATE!

weekend recap

Another weekend come and gone.  Of course it was a busy one, but it was really fun too!

Friday night Holden had a baseball game which they won big time, like 15-3 or something.  His team is doing awesome!  After the game he went of to a birthday party.

Saturday, Travis and I went to a movie at 11:00 in the morning because sometimes it is so hard to sneak in those date nights.  Afterwards we went home and picked up the kids to take them to The Bass Pro Shop in Mesa.  Our kids love that place almost as much as Cabello's in UT.  The boys had fun shooting in the Gun Gallery and Chloe and I had fun looking at shoes and clothes.  Surprisingly they have some pretty cute clothes there. After we had our outdoorsy fix, we went to this great yogurt place. It is now a family favorite, delicious! Travis & I  went to a potato derby at the neighbor's house on Saturday night.  Everyone thought they had stiff competition with us being from Idaho but our potato carving and racing skills proved not so good.  After our potato not quite making it down the track and then a wheel falling off, we just went with "we ARE from Idaho but we eat our potatoes not race them".  Anyway it was a fun night and helped us get to know more people.

Sunday Chloe had to give her first talk in Sacrament Meeting, she was NOT excited to say the least, and Holden was just as nervous for her, but she did GREAT!  She received many compliments about her talk on repentance.  Sunday our neighbors across the street invited us for dessert, he is from IF, so we had a good time talking about the commonalities.  The kids had a great time playing, it was very fun!

I didn't take a single picture this weekend so sorry for the boring monologue with no pics but I have a list of a bunch of things to accomplish today.  It's Austin's birthday tomorrow so of course I need to get ready for that.  But here is the main thing I am tackling today.  Remember this.

Well now it looks like this.

And I want to have this mess cleaned up by the end of today!  Wish me luck!

partial tour of the house

O.K. mom & sisters.  I am finally going to show you a few pictures of our house.  I keep getting asked but I don't post anything because I think I will just do one more thing, or wait until I get one more thing. This might  go on for years so I just decided to show it to you as it is now. This is most of the main floor minus the master bedroom.

entry way and then second entry way with staircase to 2nd floor

formal living room, this little nook area with the bookcases is what I had thought of closing off and making into my food storage closet but I fit in all in the kitchen pantry so unless I really bulk up I am o.k. for now.  Plus I didn't really have anywhere I loved for putting my books if I did that.

The formal living room is off to your left from the entryway with front door, pictured above.

the lovely dining room as it looks now, but hopefully not for long (hint to Travis)

These are the only boxes the remain to be unpacked.  They are like the plaque to me, these contain every picture & scrapbook item since about 1995.  I took a organization class when I first moved here that gave me some pretty good ideas on how to tackle this mountain, now I just need to dedicate myself to about a week of work. 

This is the kitchen area.

I'm sorry for some reason this picture will not turn when I upload it to my blog.  You will have to turn your screen or your head.

The family room.

And the laundry room

So there you have it ladies, that concludes the tour. I will post more pictures later. I really do love my new house and especially love being in a place that is ours and we can feel settled in. At least once a week Travis walks around and says, "Boy, this is one nice house!" I completely agree, love it!

(just a note I have never done a post that was as big as a pain as this one, it failed to post twice, erasing everything I had done.  So the orginal was pretty good, the second version was good too and since this is the third time I have typed and downloaded the pictures, it is just ok.  I just want to be done with this one!)

keys

What are these keys to?

OUR NEW HOUSE!!! We are so excited and it is officially ours.

I have been a little busy this week, therefore no blog posts. Lots of little things that had to be done leading up to the big day...

Now the work begins, I will try to post some pics tomorrow.

New House

The most exciting thing that has happened since we arrived in Arizona. On Thursday Travis and I signed the papers to buy a new house! YEAH! I can't tell you how excited I am to be settled in our own place. I am also excited to set up house since decorating and such is one of my favorite things. We will close in 35 days which is now only 31 days away. Thank you, thank you to Travis who finally gave into my tears and bought me the house I had orginally picked back at Thanksgiving when we where here house hunting.