Church attire

I wore a black dress to church today and I never changed out of if afterward.  As I was getting Kelton ready for bed tonight, he asked me, "why are you still wearing your temple pajamas?" 

Some Pictures

I realized that recently my blog has had a lot of words and not many pictures.  So, here are some from the past few days.

Easter.  The kids had a ton of fun finding their Easter eggs.  Natalie could hardly contain her excitement in the minutes leading up to her turn.  Nate and I were about to gag and duct tape her to the wall.  :)

The picture below has a story.  Damon dropped an egg into his basket and it opened, revealing a bunch of jelly beans, which he started eating.  However, the bag of jelly beans I bought were Lemonhead brand.  Each of the different colors was the same flavor as it's Lemonhead counterpart.  (they do have different flavors, if you didn't know.)  Damon started eating them and picked a yellow one.  And it contained all the sourness of a lemonhead.  Poor kid.  You can see it in his eyes that he is wondering what on earth is wrong with his candy.  As a random fact, Kelton is the only one (of the kids) who sees nothing wrong with the jelly beans. 

This is Natalie, finally being unleashed to the upstairs to find her eggs.

It was so nice outside today.  I went out front with the kids before dinner to let them ride their bikes/scooters.  I didn't get a picture of Natalie because she was off riding her scooter with the next door neighbor (a little girl who is pretty much exactly the same age).

Damon has to be the coolest kid in the whole neighborhood.

Kelton is a bit fearless on this bike.  I was impressed at how well, and fast, he rides especially since he has only been on it a few times.  Our other house was on much more of a hill and wasn't really conducive to bike riding.  So none of my kids can ride without training wheels because they haven't had much practice.  Kelton made me wonder today if he would be just fine without them.  I am going to have to add knee/elbow pads to my shopping list.  I was a bit worried about him crashing at the speeds he was going and scraping himself up nicely.

And yes, that's a girl's bike.  He either doesn't know or doesn't care.  With an older sister I think he is just used to everything looking girly.

In Dad's footsteps

I got a call from the school nurse today informing me that Natalie wasn't feeling well.  This has been a somewhat common occurence.  Natalie gets a headache and a bit of a fever to go with it.  When I found out that was what was going on today, I asked if we could just give her some Tylenol and send her back to class.  (The medicine always makes her better.)  The nurse said that was fine and asked if I wanted to talk to Natalie.  The conversation went something like this:

Me:  How are you doing?
Natalie:  Not very good.
Me:  Is it okay if we give you some of the chewable Tylenol that you like?  And then we will send you back to class?
Natalie: Yes.  I would agree with that.

??? Who was I talking to?  I did wonder for a second if this was my child.

Then the nurse (who doesn't know us at all) got back on the phone and was chuckling a little.  She said, "Sorry, I was just laughing at your daughter.  She sounds like a lawyer or something."

Then I started laughing.

The fight for the top spot

I will be honest.  I am not very good at knowing what will clean certain hard to clean places around the house.  But, I am learning.  Several years ago I was introduced to Magic Eraser.  Many of you are probably smiling.  This thing is A-Maze-ing.  Bathrooms, crayon on the walls, kitchen grease grime above the stove, refrigerator handle, etc, etc, etc... are now so much easier to clean.  I don't know how the world ever lived without Magic Eraser. 

A couple of years ago I was trying to figure out how to clean that blasted toilet ring.  I had tried so many things, so many different [expensive] cleaners.  Someone told me to use a pumice stone.  Huh?  Like I use on my feet?  Yes, they said.  I thought, no way.  That will scratch my toilet, are you kidding?  But one day I tried very gently, and yeah, didn't work.  Fast forward a few years and someone tells me about the pumice stone again and I relate my story.  That's when I found out that no, you don't use the kind intended for your feet, but a special cleaning pumice stone that costs all of $1.88 at Walmart.  When we were cleaning up our rental house, I decided to give it a try for the first time.  And.... it was totally amazing!  The stone kind of crumbles away as you rub it on and away goes the toilet ring.  I used it on some hard water spots around the edges of my bathtub, and same thing, it took them right off.  I was so excited.  Magic Eraser had failed me in these areas.  My top cleaning product was in serious danger of getting bumped from the top spot.

That brings us to today.  Natalie wanted her fingernails painted.  As we were sitting down and laying out newspaper, Natalie decided that she wanted to help by opening the fingernail polish.  I told her no, but not realizing she had already done it... I'm not sure exactly what happened, but the fingernail polish ended up getting spilled.  Some of it, about smudged dime size, ended up on my wood kitchen chair.  You can't use fingernail polish remover to clean up wood.  But, guess what?  Magic Eraser took it off!  I was amazed yet again.  So, for the day, Magic Eraser is back on top.  You know, the real winner would be the one that can take the fingernail polish off my $70 Gap jeans. 

*(I feel like I have to explain why I have such expensive jeans.  I generally buy really cheap clothes.  But after years of crappy jeans that don't fit right, I decided to try expensive ones.  And I love them.  And since I only buy 1-2 pairs every three or four years and they are the only pants I wear, I feel like the price is worth it.)

Equinox

I had someone tell me (and show me) today that you can only balance a raw egg on end on the equinox, which is supposedly today.  I saw somewhere else that the equinox was on the 20th...so I don't know who is right.  But I came home and decided to try it.

It took me less than a minute to get this to balance.  It made me wonder though, can you really only do this on the equinox?  That just seems strange.  I decided to look online.  Some people swear you can only do it on the equinox.  Others say you can do it whenever, but it is easier to do on the equinox.  So, who knows.  Either way, it is kind of cool.  Maybe I will try it again in a month or two and see if I can still balance it as easily.

On an entirely different subject, I took this picture the other night.

If you think this looks like a recipe for trouble...you would be correct.  They didn't all last in there for very long before I started pulling them out.  I hardly ever let them all bathe at the same time, but it was already past bedtime.  They were so cute lined up in there.

Kelton came out the other night upset because his upper lip was bleeding a bit.  I asked him what happened and he said, "That thing scratched me."  I asked him, what thing?  He didn't know what it was called so I had him show me.  Turns out that thing was a razor and he was trying to be like his daddy.

I had to cut a bandaid in half and stick it on his lip because, like any good razor slice, they don't want to ever stop bleeding.

New house and Announcement

We are finally in our new house.  I'm going to break this post up into three sections.  Hopefully it is not too long.  If you get bored by reading about our house, you should at least skip down to section three.

#1.  Getting the house.

This part shouldn't have been hard at all.  The house was not a short sale or foreclosure.  Our loan was ready to go about a week after we entered into a contract with the seller.  The seller was quick to fix the minor little problems here and there that turned up in the home inspection.  But, I think it is a rule that if you are going to buy a house, something has to go wrong.  But for us, what could there possibly be?  If you guessed the appraisal, you would be right.  Because the house was being sold as a flip, meaning the seller bought it just to turn right around and re-sell it without living in it, our loan required two appraisals.  Appraisal number one was done quickly and appraised for the purchase price.  The second appraisal, however, came in at $10,000 under the purchase price.  For those who don't understand what this means, I will explain.  If the bank is going to loan you the money to buy a house, they want to make sure that the house is worth what they are giving you for it, in case they have to foreclose on you.  They want to get their money back.  So when an appraiser says, hey, that house is worth $10,000 less than what the buyers (us) want to borrow, the bank says, no way.  They will only give you a loan for the lowest appraised price.  So we had a problem.  The seller doesn't really want to lower the sale price by $10,000 and we sure can't come up with that much more money, and wouldn't really want to anyway for the same reason as the bank.  The seller, who is an investor who buys and sells houses all the time, challenged the appraisal saying that there was a conflict of interest between him and the appraiser.  They had had run ins before, and the seller had told the appraiser not to appraise his properties anymore because his appraisals were always too low.  But the bank wouldn't throw out the appraisal.  So the seller then wanted to go ahead and do the loan for $10,000 under the contract price, but split the loss with us by having us sign a promissory note to him for $5000 to be paid off in 18 months.  We weren't going to do this for a couple of reasons.  So we countered that we do the loan for $10,000 under and then give him $2000 at closing and be done with it.  He agreed.  We signed loan documents on March 5th and got the keys on the 6th.

#2.  Moving in

We started moving in Thursday the 8th.  Nate's parents came down on Wed. night and my parents came down on Thursday night to help.  We moved all of the big stuff, like furniture, on Friday.  The missionaries in our ward came and helped and so did my brother Rob.  We got most everything moved but there was still a lot of other stuff at the old house.  We are still trying to get it all over here.  But we are enjoying our new house.  On Saturday, Nate and I had tickets to go see Wicked in Phoenix.  Nate had bought them for us for Christmas.  Unfortunately, we had gone out to eat at a buffet on Friday night with our families and Nate ended up getting food poisoning and was throwing up all night.  We were afraid he wasn't going to make it to see Wicked.  (We had never seen it before.)  But about a half hour before we needed to leave to make it on time, Nate decided that although he didn't feel good, he felt good enough to go.  So we were able to make it.  My parents were there too because my sister had happened to give them tickets for Christmas to the exact same showing.

#3.  Announcement

If you saw this word and thought to yourself, I wonder if... 
Well, you would be right.  We are expecting a baby at the end of September.  Hopefully.  Just real quick in a condensed version for those who don't know--each of our babies has a one in four chance of having a genetic condition that is fatal at birth.  We had one baby with it a little over five years ago.  So we will find out what is going on when we have an ultrasound.  We usually don't even let anyone know we are expecting until after we have the 20 week ultrasound.  But this time, we just didn't feel like doing that again.

As an interesting note, I found out I was pregnant on the same day that we found out that the seller had accepted our offer for the house.  The last time I found out I was pregnant (with Damon) I had just been hit in the back of the head with a softball thrown by a man trying to get me out at first base in co-ed city softball.  (I would link back to that post for you, but I don't know how.)  I had been taken to the hospital in an ambulance on a backboard.  The doctor at the hospital did a test for us and let us know the news.  I think I prefered the day I found out about this baby better.  :)

Piano Recital

Tonight I had my first piano recital as a teacher.  I have taught lessons for about 14 years, but with students changing, having babies, and life in general, I have never gotten a recital together.  And, it was also Natalie's first recital to play in.  (I actually am pretty sure that it was a first recital for all of my students.  The recital went really well and everyone did a great job.  I had two students not there; one had strep throat and the other only started lessons a week and a half ago.  Afterward we had brownies and ice cream.

Natalie did such a great job.  She was so excited when it was her turn.  She played her song just about as well as she ever has.  I was very proud of her.

I gave each of my students a chocolate orange for a job well done.

House update

We are hopefully in the last few days of just waiting for everything to finish so we can close on our new house.  But in the meantime...

We have a renter!  After some frustration, that part is taken care of.  We had a few different people we know express some interest, but none of them worked out.  Then a new family in our ward wanted to rent from us.  It seemed perfect, but then right when we were about to get them to sign the lease, they found out that they can keep staying where they are (rent free) until June.  So that wasn't going to work.  After exhausting our avenues amongst the people we know, we decided to put it on craigslist and give that a try.  I had someone contact me about 12 hours later.  (Then someone else the next day, and another person a few days after that.)  It's nice to know that it looks like it shouldn't be hard to find renters in the future.  I think the fact that it is a smaller house has something to do with it.  Almost all of the houses for rent in this area are large, and more expensive.

We went with the first person who contacted us.  She is a single person, my age, non smoker, no pets, and no children living with her.  She will be working full time at a hospital and I think going to school too.  She seems like the ideal renter.  We have a signed year lease, a security deposit, and the first month's (April) rent, plus a few days of prorated rent fot the end of March.  I'm feeling much happier knowing all that is taken care of and we won't have double mortgage payments to make.  We are actually making money from renting our house, although we plan to set it aside to use for maintenance.  It is crazy that we can charge a renter more per month than what we will be paying for our new mortgage.  I guess that is why you buy, especially in the market right now.  (Hooray for our locked in 30 year 3.75%  mortgage rate!  And most of our student loans are at 8%.  Seems so backwards, right?)

Now I maybe should think about putting some stuff in boxes.

Church stuff, for the record

Here is some church stuff, just for my record keeping purposes.  Last Sunday I was released as the Relief Society Weekday Meetings Coordinator.  I think I had the longest title of anyone at church.  Or at least the number one title that no one can remember the name of.  Anyway, I was the person who was in charge of all the R.S. activities, or Enrichment, or Homemaking as it was formerly called.  (I wonder if it will have another new name in a few years.)  I have had that calling for two years now and was on the committee before that.

Along with the release, I was called to be the Ward Choir Director.  If I am to be honest, I'm not super thrilled about this one.  But I will do it and I will do my best.  I also currently serve as the Organist and have had that calling for almost three years.  This leaves poor Nate to fend for himself with three kids on the bench for the first half of sacrament meeting.  He does a great job.

A month or two (maybe three?) ago, Nate was released from being the Sunday School President.  He had had that calling since we were made a ward.  He was then called to be the Assistant Varsity Scout Leader.  He teaches lessons every other week and goes to mutual on Wednesday nights.  I guess they also have a lot of campouts, which he is super excited (not) about.  Let's face it, some people really like to camp, and then there's us.  I'm good with a house.  And a bed.  And a toilet.  Nate feels the same way about life.

Today we got a new bishopric.  It's been almost five years since we were divided off from another ward and became a brand new ward.  So today was the day for our setup to change a bit.  You want to know what is kind of funny?  Our "original" Relief Society president from five years ago is still in her calling.  How often does the RS President outlast the Bishop?  I would say that in our times today, that has to be pretty rare.  I think that being the RS President for five years in and of itself has to be rare.

As for other church news, my post a few weeks ago about having five wards in our building was a little misinformed.  We did have five wards in our building for about four months at the end of last year.  They started at 7:30 and ran every two hours with the last block being from 3:30-6:30.  They decided not to do that again this year because it was just too hard on the earliest and latest wards.  So this year, one of the wards is renting an elementary school to meet in on Sundays.  I'm sure this happens a lot, maybe in other countries, where the LDS population is small.  It was a little surprising to hear about this kind of thing right here where there are stakes and temples all over the place.  But I guess the school charges quite a lot to let them rent it on Sundays.  Because of the high cost, they don't rent enough rooms for everyone to have a classroom, so some of the classes are held in the hallways.  (This is an unconfirmed rumor... I should ask someone in that ward if it is true...)  But I do know for sure that people in that ward do not like it.  And I can imagine.  That would be... different.  The hope right now if for the new stake center to be finished around November.  I sure hope so for that other ward's sake.  I feel so bad that they have gotten kicked out of the building!

I think that is it for my church updates!

Um, we just bought a....

House.  Yes, a house.  Yes, another one.

My story starts about a week ago when I had absolutely no intention of buying anything more expensive than groceries.  Our house is small.  About 1100 sq ft small and there are five of us in it.  It's not horrible, but we are getting a little cramped.  Nate and I have just assumed that qualifying for a second house on top of law school loans was just not possible.  But about a week ago I started wondering, what if?  It doesn't hurt anything to just speak with a lender and see if there is any possibility.

So I did.  I knew that regardless of what they said, we could afford both houses.  Especially because we will find a renter for the house we are living in now.  I just didn't know how they would factor in our large student loans.  Anyway, right off it looked like we were in good shape to qualify for an FHA loan.  So I started looking at the local MLS site.  That was somewhat discouraging because there wasn't really anything that matched what I was wanting.

But then, last Friday morning something new popped up.  It is in our neighborhood, just three streets over from us.  It is the largest model of house in our development, and seemed perfect.  So I called a friend, got the name of her realtor, and was looking at the house a few hours later.  I loved it. 

Saturday, I took Nate and the kids over to see it.  They loved it too.  I guess to say that the kids loved it is a huge understatement, though.  This house is double the size of ours so they enjoying being able to actually run around.

Saturday night we decided to try to get the house.  Our realtors told us that a house that size, in such good condition, and at such a good price was not going to last long.  It was hard to wait out Sunday knowing that we couldn't do anything about our descision until Monday. 

Monday morning came.  We had to switch our lender because the first one I contacted was in no particular hurry to get us a preapproval, which was required to be submitted with the offer.  The lender our realtor sent us to was awesome and got things done so quickly.  So Monday morning at about 10:00 I met with the realtor to submit an offer.  Unfortunately, the seller had already gotten one bid on the house, so we knew we were going to have to submit a better offer than we might have started with.  Thanks to email and scanners, we were able to sign everything; me at the office and Nate at work miles away.  The offer was submitted by 11:30.

Mid afternoon, I get a call from my realtor.  The seller had received a 3rd offer!  Good grief, what happened to this being a buyer's market?  We were now in the middle of a seller's market for sure.  We were told that everyone was to submit their absolute best offer and they would take the best one.  Our original offer was actually for $2,000 more than the asking price but we had asked for the seller to pay our closing costs.  We didn't want to go any higher on the price, and we were also afraid that if we did, the appraisal might come in too low and mess everything up.  So we kept our bid at the same number but dropped the closing costs and said we would pay them.

We then got to sit and wait.  This morning, Nate and I were both pretty convinced that we didn't get the house.  But then the realtor called mid afternoon to tell us that the seller accepted our offer!

Here are the details of our house:  Two stories, 2300 sq ft, 4 bedrooms (1 downstairs, master and 2 more upstairs), 3 full baths, great room downstairs, loft upstairs, newly painted (a color that I love), brand new oven, microwave, dishwasher and lighting fixtures, $132,000 (it was listed at 129,900).  Our current small house has a higher mortgage balance by more than a few thousand dollars.  (But it would only sell for about $70,000, which is why we will rent it out.)  Our monthly payments will be almost identical  (the new house has to have mortgage insurance, or the payment would be less).  Now we just need to find a renter!  We should be in our new house in about a month!

Here are a few pictures.  Pictures of the bedrooms are boring, so I didn't include those.  But the master has a large bathroom with a big walk in closet.  Oh, and I will have a laundry room now.  Currently, my washer and dryer are in the garage.


View from in front of the entryway.




Upstairs loft.


Pictures, obviously, don't do it justice.  We are EXCITED!!!

Kelton is 4!

Today is Kelton's fourth birthday!  We started off our birthday festivites this past weekend because we had family in town for my neice Emily's baptism.  My parents were here and also Rob's whole family.  So after the baptism on Saturday, we had a family dinner and then we all sang happy birthday to Kelton (which he thoroughly did not enjoy) and ate cake.  This year his request was a Spiderman cake.

He also got to open his present from Grandma and Grandpa Burgess--a Nerf gun and darts.  He absolutely loves it.  (So does his daddy.)

This morning, Kelton got to open the rest of his presents.  The only thing he had asked for was a "Star Wars guy."  He was excited about all his presents and had fun playing with them today.

Oh, and since today was MLK day, we had everyone home today, Nate included.  So this afternoon we went into town and went to the zoo.  (We have to get as much use as possible out of our membership.)  The kids had a lot of fun, just like always.  I love how you can see everything important in an hour.

After the zoo, we took the kids to the mall so they could play in the play area.  For some reason, they think that is just about the funnest thing in the world.  Then we picked up a couple of Cinnabuns (compliments of a groupon I had) and headed out to eat dinner at Taco Bell--Kelton's choice.  When we got home, we opened up one of the Cinnabuns and stuck in some candles and sang happy birthday to Kelton.  I think he was still traumatized by everyone singing the other night and that's why he put his fingers in his ears.

Here are a few things about Kelton:

He is a very sweet boy and loves to just sit with his daddy when he is home.

The first words out of his mouth every morning are "Can you get me breakfast?"  These are usually uttered while half asleep.

I think he loves his sister Natalie more than anything in the world.  He wants to be wherever she is and do whatever she is doing.

In a large group setting, he does not like to be the center of attention.  This is why he did not like being sung happy birthday to.  You could tell he was trying to be small and disappear the whole time we were singing.

He still takes a nap and will even ask for it from time to time if I don't get around to it soon enough.

He loves to watch movies.  He has recently discovered Thomas the Train, but really, he will watch anything.

For lunch he often requests "peanut butter and honey on my sandwich."  If I say, "a peanut butter and honey sandwich?" he says no, and corrects me.  Right now, this is his most requested lunch.

He loves juice (apple or V Fusion).  And raw vegetables like broccoli and cucumbers and carrots.  And I have finally realized after this birthday that he does not really like frosting.

Sometimes when I go to check on the kids before I go to bed, Kelton will stir.  He will keep his eyes closed, but he always smiles at me and whispers "I love you."

Encore, anyone?

THIS, I was not involved in at all.  This was all the big sister.  About an hour later when I tried to get Kelton to take the dress off, he adamantly told me "no."  When I took the dress off Damon, he started crying, but that was only because he had to put down the crown in his hand (so I could get the sleeves off) and he thought I wasn't going to give it back.  I repeatedly had to tell Kelton to stop twirling.  (Because if a boy is going to wear a dress, he should at least be manly about it.)  He wouldn't listen.

I feel pretty, oh so pretty

And so I won't be in trouble with the attorney (aka, father) of these two cute little girls boys...

*Disclaimer:  This was not my doing.  This resulted as a fight over the "diamond" tiara, which Kelton picked up off the floor and Damon had previously claimed as his own.  In an attempt to keep said tiara, Kelton did some quick thinking and lead his brother to a place where another tiara could be found.  Both boys were happy as could be.  I will plead guilty to aiding the parties involved, since they lack the manual dexterity to properly place the tiaras on their heads.  My failure to do so would have resulted in a riot.  I plead innocent to all other charges that may be brought against me.

Hello? Hello?

This was cracking me up this morning.  You would think he has a mom who multitasks or something.

I think all kids around this age find phones and pretend like they are talking on them.  However, I have never had a child who cradles the phone.  What made it even funnier was that if he wasn't doing something (like climbing up the chair in the last picture) he had to have his arm up in the air in order to make the phone stay.

What a silly little boy he is!  He got a much needed haircut yesterday.  After I finished, he couldn't stop smiling at himself in the mirror.  Such a handsome little thing.

Church stuff

I finally got around to doing a few posts.  I've been too lazy busy before now to do it.  But I have some time today, due to a new church schedule.  I know I probably won't remember this forever, so I thought I would document it, because it is a bit unusual.  We were made a stake over a year ago and we have just continued to grow.  When we moved here six years ago, there were only two wards.  We now have five, and from what I hear, we actually need six.  The holdup?  We only have one building and we just can't fit six wards in it each Sunday.  So yes, that means we have five wards in one, somewhat small, building.  I am in charge of all the RS Meetings (activities during the week) and I won't even go into detail about what problems this causes when it comes to trying to schedule the building.  But five wards in one building makes for some great church times.  We got lucky--in my opinion.  We go at 8:00 a.m.  It is early, especially since I play the organ and have to be there even earlier, but it's nice with kids as far as meals and naptimes.  Then the other wards start in two hour increments after us:  10:00, 12:00.... ending up with the last ward starting at 4:00 p.m.  I got home from church at 11:20 this morning.  We've had the whole day to ourselves.  I just glanced at my clock and realized that it is 3:47.  I'm seeing dinner and bedtime on the horizon.  The last ward hasn't even started yet.  Yuck.  Some of them won't arrive back at their homes until my children are in bed.  So, are you enjoying your new church time this year?  If not... just keep in mind that you could be going from 4:00-7:00 p.m.!

Oh, and by the way, in case you were wondering... we do have two more church buildings that are planned or very newly underway.  But it will still be a while.