It’s not every day…

It’s not every day that you get to meet with an apostle of the Lord…

But Rich was blessed to do so this week….WITH ELDER HOLLAND!

Because these amazing people (Rich’s parents) have been called to serve a mission (as Mission Pres.) in Puebla, Mexico.

They were set apart this Tuesday in the church office building by Elder Holland…

I wasn’t able to be there. I was very sad the whole week leading up to the day, but surprisingly, I felt very much at peace the day of just knowing that Rich got to have this amazing experience to meet with an apostle.

I felt the spirit very strong that day and I know Heavenly Father was blessing us here at home too….the kids barely fought that day (which never happens) so that’s proof we had the spirit here with a stronger presence in our home :)

We are excited for Rich’s parents….but we are going to miss them terribly.

250 hours…and still going!

250 hours ago we bought a home. Since then we have been trying to survive all that followed 250 hours after that.

In the past week and a half we (well not always we…sometimes I…one of us still has to work :)….anyway,  we have been spending every waking hour (and some hours that are meant for sleeping…yes pulling all nighters is so worth it if it means no kids in the way)  painting, cleaning, repairing, restoring, shopping, unpacking, organizing and showering in the dark! (Details about that later:)

We are barely surviving. It’s too hot for the kids to go outside, yet the inside is almost unlivable. It’s hard enough to unpack…let alone painting the whole house. And just so I can take all the credit…I PAINTED THE WHOLE HOUSE BY MYSELF in 3 days. Just to give you an idea what an accomplishment that was….my whole extended family helped me paint our West Jordan house in one week. Well this house is almost 500 sq ft bigger and I accomplished it in 3 days. I started painting last Thursday after I dropped my kids off at a friends house for two days! I came back and started that night at 10 p.m. and worked through the whole night and through the whole next day. The only time I put down the paint brush was to take care of necessary business :) We figured it out that I painted for a straight 23 1/2 hours. My arm was dead after that.

As hard as it was on my arm… here are the real survivors….

THE KIDS WHO HAVE HAD TO ENTERTAIN THEMSELVES WITH WHAT LITTLE WAS UNPACKED….(case in point….BANDAIDS…the best thing to entertain a two year old)

Thank goodness our kitty knows how to sing lullaby's…

 

The kids did a lot of this….

Cleaning…

And painting (p.s. we decided to re-due it and get rid of the diarrhea color)

Hiding in junk and empty boxes… (and of course eating all they want all day long)

MASON EVEN MAN-ED UP AND PUT SOME GIRLY BOOTS ON TO HELP DAD WITH THE YARD… (It’s perfectly ok to wear pink boots as long as you’re willing to show everyone your Transformer underwear)!!!!

We played a lot of imagination with these cool magnets Uncle Brian gave us (thank you Brian they have been a life saver)…

Chloe has been such a good sport through it all!

The only time the kids get on clothes is if they can dress themselves (which means the little one ends up looking like this all day…)

And every once in awhile my kids even play cute together….LIKE SO…

Oh so today was the first day I got makeup on in over a week so I could go to church. It felt so good….until I looked down in sacrament meeting and noticed I still had paint all over my legs and feet. Yes I did shower….but WE HAVE BEEN SHOWERING IN THE DARK! We have lived here for over a week with NO BLINDS! So we always wait until late at night before we jump in the shower. We think that showering in the dark has worked out just fine…who knows…really we may have just been giving our neighbors a great show. If so lets hope they keep that to themselves, I would rather not know:)

Thank heavens the blind guy is coming tomorrow!

We are pooped…

But we can’t stop now…gotta keep movin!

GOING GOING GONE!

Last week we bought a house....

We took a chance and bought it at the auction. I was a little nervous because you can't walk through the houses or get them inspected. But after weighing all of our options we knew we were going to get the best bang for our buck if we went through the auction.

So real quick, let me just put in a blurp about the power of paying tithing. I'm not going to go into detail here....but in a nutshell Rich and I have always tried to pay our tithing first. Well about 2 or 3 weeks ago we went to pay our tithing knowing that we needed all the money we could get to buy a house. We decided to pay our tithing and if we had to wait for awhile before buying a house we would.

In the meantime we found a house that we really liked. We looked at the value and knew that we couldn't afford it yet. But for kicks we just decided to put in a low offer of what we could afford. The next day they called us and said WE WON THE BID! We got a steal of a deal!!! We feel very blessed!!!

After we got the official word that we won the bid they said it was up to us to find a way into the home (they don't provide keys)....after spending all day trying to break in, we finally had to pay a locksmith to drill in the door.

We felt even more blessed when we walked in to a beautiful home that only needed a new paint job and carpets cleaned. We were preparing for the worst....but we were pleasantly surprised!

It's crazy how much we've accomplished in one week. Details will come soon!

When the world came crashing down…

So yesterday you would have thought our world came crashing down. The kids left the back door open and a little someone….with black fluffy fur….went missing!!!

We quickly typed up some flyers, and included this picture…. ( which made me laugh that Rich did not crop some things out!!!)

We hung them on every light post, mailbox and park. We also hand delivered about 40 to each house in the neighborhood.  (All of this work was done mid-day in 110 degree weather…ugghhh!)

We came home in despair! Then the doorbell rang….all five of us started screaming and ran to the door (we just knew it had to be the kitty because we don’t know anyone here yet, why would anyone else ring our doorbell?)

I think we scared the door salesman when all five of us whipped open the door. We told him we weren’t interested…but asked if he had seen our cat and gave him a flyer.

It had been about 5 hours since she went missing. Things did not look promising so we decided to move on with life and started making dinner.

Rich went upstairs to change his clothes. We all jumped when we heard Rich scream….CHLOE’S HERE!!!  She came walking out of our room yawning and stretching like she had just had the best nap.

Little did she know I was about to give her the best nap of her life…because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hug her or strangle her. Lucky for her we were quick to forgive and she was welcomed back with hugs!

Down for the count…

So last Tuesday I was out for my morning run (about 2 1/2 miles from home), when all of a sudden something popped in my back and MY BACK GAVE OUT! I’ve had backaches before…but never had anything like this happen before! I barely made it home. I went straight up to bed and literally could not get out of bed for 48 hours by myself. I couldn’t believe how much pain I was in and how worthless I was. Rich had to work those two days but he did come home occasionally to make sure the house did not burn down. The kids had free reign on the house (which was apparent by the amount of food that was half eaten and laying all over the kitchen).

The hardest thing was trying to discipline my kids from a horizontal position and from the other room. I got real good at yelling at the kids (mostly counting to 5 as a warning…..as if I really could do anything if I got to 5 while laying helplessly in bed. Luckily we never got to 5 so they never discovered that). The best part was one time when I was counting at the top of my lungs 1-2-3-4 for Sadie and Mason to get up to their rooms…Kendyl yells out “Yeah, we play hide and go seek. I’ll go hide.”

Apparently, she can’t tell a difference between my angry count and my happy, fun, playing count. She really went and hid and continued to yell “I’m ready…come find me”.

Cute girl!

P.S. Backs as good as new. I think my body just wanted a mini vacation!

Kids and messes…

Does anyone else have kids who find it completely acceptable to make the biggest mess as long as they use the phrase “I was just doing an experiment!” ?

Today I found Mason squeezing dish soap all over the kitchen, dishes everywhere, and water running full blast all over the counter and floor. When I walked in he looked at me and said “It’s ok mom, I’m just doing an experiment!”

Oh ok then! Just let me know when you’re done with your experiment (and destroying my kitchen) so that I know when to freak out!

Kitchen preparedness…

Sadie was helping me with dinner tonight and she asked if she could cut the onions. I told her it may not be a good idea because it may make her eyes burn. She told me she could really do it and not to worry about it. She said “Just leave it there and I’ll be back in just a minute”. I went about doing something else until I heard her walk around the corner and I turned to find her wearing these….SMART GIRL! Worked like a charm!

Side note: (a moment that made me laugh)….Then Rich came in the kitchen to help out. He’s always willing to help out…and he’s also always willing to give advice about cooking too:) He was reading the recipe and said “It says to mince the garlic”…then he repeated in layman’s terms.. “Mincing means you cut it up REALLY SMALL”.  If looks could kill he would be a goner. I responded back to him “Hun, I’ve been cooking for 10 years now, I think I know what mmmm………….AHHHHHH THE BULGARS BURNING ON THE STOVE!!!”

The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. I ran over to the stove to find that I had burnt my pot of cooking bulgar. (NOTE TO SELF: NEXT TIME I GO TO PROVE TO SOMEONE WHAT AN AWESOME COOK I AM…CHECK THE STOVE TO MAKE SURE NOTHING’S BURNING).

Another random note: We went on a family drive again tonight (looking at homes for sale…this is becoming our daily evening activity as of late). Sadie said she needed to do some things to get ready and that she would be out to the car soon. We waited and waited and waited. Then she came out looking like this (in the video). She said she wants to start dressing like a middle eastern woman. Well at least she’s got the tan for it!