2010

It is a little hard to believe another year is upon us!
2009 just seemed to pass at lightening pace. With lots of changes in our family my days were increasingly busy and the days just began to fly by.
We began the year house hunting and finished it by moving into a semi-custom built home. It is everything I asked for and more. I never thought it would be possible to have a home like this. But the Lord blessed us incredibly and all the right doors seemed to open and everything just fell into place. We are exactly where we are supposed to be, and it feels great to know that! I never imagined we could have a home this wonderful.
All of the kids started school this year in one form or another. Avalon got into the charter school for the area and is absolutely loving it. Alana is looking forward to going there this fall, but is loving Kindergarten and is doing spectacularly! She is smart as a whip, just like her dad! She constantly amazes me at the keen observations she makes and the very complex things she figures out. Adam started preschool four days a week this year over the two days a week last year, and he is absolutely thriving. He loves his class and looks forward to it every day. He too is amazingly smart, he is constantly amazing his teachers. He is always the first one with the correct answer and is doing so well. Archer is doing preschool one day a week and loves it. He gets mad at me everyday that is not a school day. When we drop Adam at his classroom and I don't drop Archer off, he is really upset. He would happily go everyday of the week, but of course, he is only two and they only offer one day a week programs for guys his age. Maybe next year!

I have been thinking a lot about the upcoming year and the things I would like to accomplish. Never resolutions, those seem to be broken before January ends. Goals, that is more my style.

Relationship: Twice monthly date nights with my sweet honey!
Kids: Once monthly "dates" for each child.
Spiritual: Read the Book of Mormon together as a family. --And on my own as well.
Financial: Actually live by a budget! --No more 20 and 50-ing the checking account to death!
Physical: Turn myself into a runner! I still have at least 50 pounds to lose and I will! No move fast food or soda. New year, new me! I am going to make 2010 my prettiest yet, new haircut, hair and makeup done everyday.

Well, things are off to a good start! Oh, and I am going to be a better blogger too!! And I expect you, my sweet readers to be better too, and leave comments!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!

Life is so busy......

Okay,

Another huge catch up post.
It has been so long I hardly know where to start!
Well, we moved into our new house on November 5th. The movers were very careful and really did a wonderful job. So different from our move down from Mass. Nothing was broken, the only surprise (and not a good one!) Was that it actually ended up costing double the quote they had given us. And I had packed the whole house myself. And it is a good thing I did, for them to pack one box was $40 dollars. Yes, you read that right FORTY!! So thankfully I had a wonderful friend in the ward who went out hunting for boxes for me on more than one occasion, she literally saved me thousands of dollars, THANK YOU Sherry!!

The house turned out great and we really love it! It is such a great house and we love the area we live in so much. It is closer to everything we do, now I am not spending several hours a day in the car running the kids to their various appointments. What a relief that has been.

In other news, Rob had to have his appendix taken out. The Saturday after Thanksgiving, we were our shopping (buying a new TV and Blu-ray on sale!!) He mentioned that his stomach was really bothering him. But he thought it was something silly like gas that would just pass. Throughout the day I would occasionally ask how he was feeling, and it was the same. That night he didn't come to bed until midnight. That is when I knew we had a problem. (We are serious grandpas and go to bed at 9:00PM at the latest, typically.)
I asked how he was feeling and he said a little worse, so I asked him to show me specifically where the pain was....lower right hand side. I called my mom just to confirm my suspicions and off to the emergency room we went. I called my good friend Rachael and she rushed right over and ended up staying all night and most of the next day with my kids. THANKS again Rachael!
So by 8:00AM he was heading into surgery. He had a bit of trouble coming out of the anesthesia, I guess at one point he was screaming for me. The nurse had to yell at him to calm down. It was a little scary for a little while.
He has been resting and took a week off of work and it almost back to normal. It is amazing what they can do know laproscopically(sp?)that just a few years ago was a pretty big cut and a long recovery.

Rob stayed busy by setting up tons of appointments with fence contractors. We have had a pretty steady stream of guys coming to give us quotes, not only for the fence but a patio and built-in bookcases too.

No work is being done today though, because we are being pounded with SNOW!! We have not had snow like this in all the time we have lived in Virginia. It is reminding me of some of the storms that we would get on a regular basis near Buffalo, NY. We are going to have a big job to dig back out!!

And in the way of very exciting news, we have two new little guys at our house. We got two new kittens yesterday. Max and Murphey are both orange tabbys and they are so cute and so fun. The kids love them, especially the girls, they are hauling them around and taking care of them like they are babies. It is so cute to watch them. Alana was really excited to help me scoop out the litter box this morning. We will see how long that lasts.
Unfortunately though, I think I may be allergic to them. Last night I went to bed with really itchy eyes and a stuffy nose. And today was bad until I took some Benedryl. We will have to see how this goes.
I really like them and don't want to have to get rid of them, and the kids would be heartbroken, so for now I will just suffer through.

Those of you who I usually send Christmas cards to, please forgive me for not getting them out this year and know that we love and think of you often and wish you all a very MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

The House is Finished!!

We had our quality walk through this last Wednesday and we will be closing next Wednesday!!
And I am pleased to report the house is GORGEOUS!!! Wow! I am so excited. It turned out so beautiful!

It is a little hard to imaging while you are picking tile and wood and carpet and cabinets and light fixtures, etc., etc., etc., how everything is going to look on a large scale and all together. And I must say, I did a good job!!!

We are very excited to move next week. The movers are scheduled, Rob has taken the week off of work, kids are arranged for. And off we go. Hopefully very smoothly!

Happy Birthday Big Boy!!

Our little Archer turned 2 years old today!! I cannot believe how quickly time flies. He has grown into such a fun and sweet little boy. He is usually very happy and loves to laugh.

He has started talking up a storm. He loves to sing the ABCs and count. He knows most of the letter sounds and understands that they make up words, and has tried to sound out many words after watching his siblings sounding out words and reading.

He had a fun day and loved the chocolate cake for his party. He received some new toys and a big ball of his own and some new clothes.

I cannot believe 2 years has already gone by!! It seems like just a few days since he was born. The year he was born there was a huge heat wave that week and I was so happy to have an air conditioned home. He was just a happy little clam in there and was not coming on his own so I was induced at 41 weeks. And his birth was totally and completely pain free, I am not kidding!!
Because I was induced the contractions were not strong at all, I couldn't even feel them when they came in and said, you are dilated to a four, do you want an epidural now? I said, well I am not in any pain at all, but why not.........

So they placed the epi and within 2 hours he was born, and I did not feel one twinge of pain. I will tell you what, that is the way to give birth!! I was so easy I couldn't believe I had even had a baby. (After 3 quite painful no medication births this was heaven.)

I am so happy to have this little man in my life. He is such a joy and sweet happy boy! I love him to pieces!! Happy Birthday ARCHER!!!!

Summer is winding down.....

Well Grandma is here for a couple of weeks and we have already been very busy. We headed up to Massachusetts to check out our old renters and check in the new family that will be residing there.
It was a quick trip, and very exhausting! But I must say I have children who are wonderful travelers. We spent about 19 hours in the car in 3 days and they did GREAT!! The only whines were when they were hungry or tired. (Which thankfully wasn't too often)

The new tenants seem like really good people and are very excited to have our home for a year or two. I hope they are very happy there.

We have all the kids registered for their respective schools and all is well. And school starts the week after Grandma leaves. The kids are all very excited and the girls even did a fashion show for Grandma this afternoon, modeling all of their new school clothes.

Before long they day will be even busier with dropping off and picking up of children from 3 different places. But I think I have the timing down and everything should run smoothly most days. And things will calm down considerably when we are able to move into our new house.

The house is still moving forward, not many noticeable changes lately, they have been doing all the plumbing and wiring and such. We should be ready for drywall in the next week or two. We still have an estimated completion time of "November", no more specific than that, "November", it is kind of making me a little crazy, don't these people know I need to plan and think and stew about all of these things. I cant even schedule movers until right before the move, because we don't have a specific date!! AAAHHHH!!!! But I can still do lots to get ready. And when my mom leaves I am going to start packing like crazy. If I do a little each day it won't take me long until we are ready to go!!

But, I must get going..........dinner is here, get the door it's Domino's!

I promise to have Rob let me post some pictures!!

The house is in FULL SWING!!! We have in the last week; had the first floor completely framed, the slab in the garages poured, and the second floor started. It is actually looking like a house!!
It looks a little smaller than what we envisioned, but it isn't. It is right and I am sure when the drywall goes in we will see. When it was just the foundation I swear I could cry. How much money are we spending on this? It is not going to be big enough. But, we are building the same house as the model and I know it is big enough. It is just deceiving with no real frame of reference.

Other exciting news, Several months ago Verizon came through our neighborhood to put in the fiber optic lines so the neighborhood could get FIOS, well, they had to do some digging in our yard. They put one of their boxes in the side yard and they also dug a little through our front yard. ---So yesterday I was having my sprinkler system turned on for the year and one of the zones was not working. The guy was like, "This is strange, I wonder what is going on..............OH! That's IT!!" Point to a huge mound bubbling up in the yard. He hurried to turn off the water and we knew that there was a broken pipe there. ..........Right where Verizon dug in my front yard!
They completely cut through one of the pipes.
The thing that makes me so mad about this is, I went out and told them before they even started digging that we had a sprinkler system and that they were clearly going to be where there were pipes. They guys acted like I was an idiot and said, "We do this all the time! We are not going to hit any of your pipes!!" BIG FAT JERK!!
Well they did!! It was clearly busted right in half and you could see the cute little fiber line going right over it!
Thankfully it was a fairly easy fix and didn't cost too much either. But now I have to decide if I should contact Verizon or not. I am sure they wouldn't do anything about it anyway!

Time to catch up.......again

Well it is time to play catch up again!!!
I just get so caught up in day to day life, that I don't often spend much time on the computer.
(The past couple of weeks I have spent reading the Harry Potter books again) So that is how I have been spending all of my free time.

And......we only have one computer set up right now. A few weeks ago, Alana was trying to push away from the computer table and shoved off with her feet and tipped the entire table over. Two BIG flat screen monitors, two switches and a host of other "network guru items" (that I have no idea how they really work) went crashing toward the window and floor. Thankfully everything fell in such a way that nothing was broken. I cannot tell you how relieved I was....... Rob thinking he must go out and spend thousands of dollars on new computer equipment is enough to send me over the edge!!
He has been so busy with work he has only taken the time to set back up the things he needs and one of the computers. (I think this is a bit of a punishment for the rest of us. He doesn't like me or the kids using his stuff or being in his way when he is working or studying. (Which is most of the time!!))

So there are my excuses for not posting more.............pretty lame I know! ;)

Well the house is in full swing.
They dug about two weeks ago. We have foundation walls and they have hooked us up the the water and sewer at the street and they are busy plumbing the basement for the bathroom and wet bar and sump pump, drains, etc. before pouring the basement floor. They are moving quickly in spite of the near tropical rainstorms we seem to be having at least 4 days a week! But the good news with that is, I haven't had to water my lawn yet, and it is the middle of June already!!
Thank heaven for that little money saver right there.