We're Moving!!

We bought a new house a few miles away! Here is the link to it. We're super excited to move! (Except for the actual moving part!) There are a lot of things that we were looking for in this house that it has!

• A bigger garage for two cars
• A master suite with a master bathroom
• More usable square footage
• Two floors that can actually be used
• Air Conditioning

Anyway, those are the things that we wanted in a house, and, when it all came down to it, with the equity from our house now, we were able to keep our mortgage pretty close to what our mortgage is now, which is awesome! We thought we had a house that was really close to my parents, and our offer was accepted. But then the seller decided that they didn't want to sell to us. So, we were on the market again! There are so many things that we will miss from our neighborhood, though!

• Great friends!
• Fabulous memories, such as:
• Having it be the first home that we have owned together
• Watching Davis play as a little baby in the home
• Bringing Reagan to this home when she was born 
• Watching her grow up here
• Starting a garden from scratch. We are super bummed to not be able to harvest this year!
• Our fall-out shelter. We admit, this is pretty cool. Even though we have a storage room in the new place, we will miss it!

In our new home, we will have:

• More room
• The ability to entertain lots of family and friends at the same time
• Everything that we wanted from our list
• Even closer proximity to my parents--we are in the same stake!
  
  
  
   
  See! Both homes sold! Yippee!
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  This is mostly after getting everything packed. I assure you that the process was not all that much fun!
  
  
  

Spring break 2019

We had a fabulous Spring Break, despite the fact that we just stayed home! It was wonderful! We stayed home because:

• It was Chris and Davis's Spring Break, but not Tina's. We were going to go to Island Park, but . . . 
• This story made us think that it was maybe not a good idea.
• So we stayed home. And it was glorious.

On MONDAY--
We went to the Lego Movie 2. At first, I wasn't the biggest fan, just like with the first LEGO movie. However, by the end, I decided that it was pretty good! And Davis and Reagan loved it! We also had adventures with our car, which we found out later needed some help!

on TUESDAY--
We went to the Public Library, because they were having a LEGO party. I promise the rest of our week didn't have to do with LEGOs! It was pretty fun though!

On WEDNESDAY--
We celebrated the first day of spring by going to get free ice cream at Dairy Queen:

Reagan enjoyed it.
Then we went to the Museum of Idaho. They had an exhibit about Archimedes, which was super cool. But, as always, the kids play place was the favorite!

On THURSDAY--
We got the teeter-totter set up by Dad, which was awesome. The swing for our tree is soon to come!

The kids also played Candy Land in the morning, which they loved. I'm not sure what rules they played with, but they sure had fun!

Oh, and also, Davis lost a tooth!

The tooth fairy forgot to leave him money on Thursday night, which he was very upset about. He left a note for her, and she gave twice what she normally does, so all was forgiven!

On FRIDAY--
We played at the Artitorium, which was great fun! The kids had a lot of fun playing with their toys there! We also went to dinner at Chick Fil-A, and Chris saw some long-time family friends there, so that was fun.

On SATURDAY--
Daddy wasn't feeling good, so instead of going to the Museum of Clean, we just hung out at home, and took a quick trip to the mall. We will do the Museum later!

Also, to note, we are now OUT OF CREDIT CARD DEBT! This is a really big deal, and we are really grateful to not have to pay for it any more. And, we got some major blessings with being able to pay for the fixing of our car too, without going into more debt! Hallelujah! Feel free to contribute to our gofundme page, though. Just kidding!

It's been a great week, with lots of blessings! And now, starting this week, I'M ON SPRING BREAK! Yay!!

A garden story

We moved to Orem in 2011. In our rental, there was a beautiful garden! Everything was all ready to go, so we took advantage of it!

It was so much fun! And we got lots out of it!

These pictures are from our first harvest. During our 2nd year living there, we decided to plant turnips, just to see if they would grow. They, in fact, did grow. We were so happy with our turnips! Then Chris tried to make turnip soup. It was awful. After the first bite, we both decided that turnips were definitely not something we would try ever again.
So, in our minds, this gardening thing was no big deal! If you just plant things and water them, they grow, and then you harvest and eat and it's fabulous!
Then we moved to Idaho Falls, and were very sad to find that our yard had a lot of shade during the day, making it difficult to plant a garden. I tried doing a window sill garden for my herbs. It didn't work that well. But then, the city of Idaho Falls came to our door and said that we needed to have our apple trees trimmed in order to make way for the power line. I asked them to trim really far, because I hated that apple tree. I'm not sure if it was one apple tree or two, but at any rate, it had two trunks and looked terrible. They asked if they should remove it. So, low and behold, part of our yard now gets sun!!

Chris took a day off of school to make us a garden.

And Chris and his helpers made this:

And then we started planting! We thought that it would be fabulous like our last garden in Orem. However, we had a water problem last year. This happened basically because we have no experience in actually making a garden, and my parents were on their mission in Cincinnati, so they couldn't help. Thus, we were on our own!

However, the "expert" has helped (A TON!!) and, after I worked for about 7 hours this past weekend, along with some boys down the street (because of this) and now our garden now looks like this:

I never thought I would be so excited about dirt! Yay! So my dad will come help with our finishing touches next week, and we will plant! Davis is very excited and really really wants to plant cherry tomatoes, because he thinks it's so fun to eat them off the vine! I can't disagree with that!
Anyway, I have learned that, although gardening is hard an tiring, it is a lot of fun, especially when you have kids to do it with you. I also think it's a wonderful thing to teach kids how to do! We're excited for our harvest!

Shoulders

Chris called me from school one day, right after noon. This wasn't a strange occurrence; he does that every now and then. But this phone call was, well, special.
Chris: Hi, babe. How are you.
Me: I'm fine. How are you?
Chris: Actually, I'm in a lot of pain. I'm pretty sure I just dislocated my shoulder, and I'm going to the hospital.
Me: So . . . would you like me to be there?
Chris: Yes please
So, I called my parents' house. My dad said that dislocated shoulders are very very painful, which I can imagine.  I got ahold of my mom, and she came to get my kids and take them to her house while I went to the hospital. (It's so nice to live by them!!!)
At the hospital, he was in a lot of pain. It took a lot to X-ray his shoulder. They concluded that it was, in fact, dislocated and needed to be put back together. They gave him some medicine to knock him out, and three doctors put his shoulder back together. Hearing the POP was gut-wrenching!
We went to the doctor, who I actually know from Junior High, a week later. We were under the impression that he would say that everything was fine, and nothing more would need to happen. After an X-ray, MRI, and CT scan, we found out that surgery was necessary. The day before surgery was actually our anniversary, so we grabbed a babysitter and went to dinner and a movie.

The next day was Chris's surgery, which was a pretty long day:

We've learned that you actually use your shoulder a lot! (Not that it was new information to us)
There's a lot you can't do when you don't have full use of both arms. For example:

• Shave your face
• Do the dishes
• Empty the trash
• Help in the garden
• Clean the house
• There's a myriad of other things that just don't work . . . but he's getting a lot better! Once again, physical therapy is fabulous and intriguing to see the help they give his shoulder!

Bedroom remodel

I decided that with some of my birthday and Christmas money, I was going to redo our bedroom! It's been a fun project.

Before:

After:

I (meaning we) got new curtains, painted an accent wall blue, and moved the desk upstairs that was in the basement. It was a fun project! We really love our new bedroom!

Christmas 2017

We decided to spend Christmas this year with my parents, who are serving a mission in Cincinnati, OH. They are having a wonderful time, and you can read about their experience here. We decided this summer to spend Christmas there, because we thought it would work best with Chris's work schedule. It turns out that we were right, even though his work changed in between planning it and going. We had SO MUCH FUN!!
We got in late, so Minnie took a nap on our way. It's good that she has such a good mommy to take care of her. :)

Kids running to see Grandma and Grandpa

 Davis thought it was cool to wear Grandpa's tag at church

 Eating lunch at the coffee table at Grandma and Grandpa's apartment.

 Our family with the mission president at church. They are fabulous people, and it was fun to get to know them.

 We had quite the dinner at a pretty small apartment, but it was fun to get to know all the missionaries!

 Kids in their Christmas jammies back at the hotel on Christmas Eve

Christmas morning at Grandma and Grandpa's apartment:

Christmas night, we went to a Chinese place for dinner. It was fabulous! Fa-Ra-Ra-Ra-Ra!

The day after Christmas, we went to a Children's Museum to see the train (Davis asked me a few weeks ago if I knew that he really likes trains. I did recall that). They also had Lego's as well. We also went to a Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Museum, which we have no pictures of, but it was awesome.

That night, we visited the zoo to see the lights. It was the shortest visit to the zoo ever, I think, because it was SO DANG COLD!

On Christmas, some other missionaries in the same complex as my parents had to go to Canada, and so they offered us to stay at their apartment for the week. It was so nice to have a home base close to my parents, and we appreciated it so much.
So, we were able to put the kids to bed on Grandma and Grandpa's bed, then take them to the other apartment after we played a little.

We also went to Jungle Jim's, because that is a tradition, if you visit my parents:

We went to the Air Force Museum, and met my aunt and uncle who live in Ohio there. It was fun to see them too, and I totally geeked out! They had the plane that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki! And the Air Force One plane that transported JFK's body after his assassination, and that Lyndon Johnson took the oath of office in!

We got some good cuddle time with kids:

We were also delayed on the way back, but we made it home just in time for the New Year's Eve party at my grandparents' house!

It was a fabulous trip!