Our First House!!!

Today, my sister told me she remembered the house but didn't remember anything about it. So I'm putting up pictures again. I think in my sadness and anger at Fannie Mae, I deleted the pictures from my computer, but I still had these on the blog, so I've cut and pasted and added a few things here and there.

We signed papers yesterday and are getting the keys today. We waited a little long to get everything turned on, so we'll see when it is all ready to move in.

We were walking into the title company yesterday to sign and still didn't really believe we were going to get the house. I think I was expecting her to walk out, say "sorry, but there was another mistake and you have to live in your tiny house until November! Better luck next time!" But she didn't! We've signed our lives away for a very long time. I'm so excited!! lol

We're homeowners! Weird!! :)

So here it is!! It's on Sweet Drive. Isn't that cute?!

You walk in and this is the living room.

This is the dining area. We're planning on taking out the blinds there and putting in curtains. Eventually.

To the left of the dining area is this beautiful kitchen.

See?

Dishwasher!

Cabinets!

Pantry!

Window over sink!

LIGHTING!!!

Oh, it's so pretty!!!

Then, to the right of the living room is the laundry room, the door leads to a 2 car garage...

This is the master bedroom. With a ceiling fan!! woot!

To the right is the entrance to the master bath...

And here's the master bath!! 2 sinks! big mirror! and if you turn right, there's a walk in closet....ahhhhhhh space!

This is bedroom 1

Bedroom 2-baby's room

Second bath. the ring in the mirror isn't really there. I think it's a glare.

The back of the house. There's a little covered patio right behind it, the diagonal window is the one over the sink. the window on the left of the house is our bedroom and the one on the right is bedroom 2.

The nice, big yard. See the dying grass on the left, far? I don't think it's dying now, but that's where we'd probably put a tree to cover up the really close neighbors in the light house with windows RIGHT there.

We're so excited!!!

3rd Grade Subbing

Awkwardly awesome experience today...I got to talk about sex to 9 year olds...

The 3rd graders I subbed for today got dictionaries. A lady came in and gave all of the kids in the 3rd grade brand new dictionaries to keep forever. They were thrilled. When they found out it was free, they actually cheered.

So I had a hard time steering them back to work throughout the day. I was always asking them to put their dictionaries away.

After lunch, I'm doing read-aloud in Fablehaven. I love that she reads this every year. I always get to read the good stuff!

I only got to read a page and a half. A girl came up to me while I was reading and brought her dictionary up with her.

She said, "That boy and that girl are showing everybody this word," she showed me the word sex, "and making everyone look at it and giggling about it. I'm really uncomfortable with it."

I told her I'd deal with it in a bit after I read, especially since talking to someone right after the person who told you just talked to you is really awkward for the teller.

So I kept on reading, planning to talk to them after read-aloud one on one.

Then, about 3 more girls come up and complain about the same thing. Showing me the word in the dictionary and saying they were uncomfortable with how the kids were talking about it and giggling about it. Kudos to them for talking to me about it, though!

I decided to finish the paragraph and handle it as a bigger class than just one on one, since apparently they were bugging a LOT of people.

I said a little prayer so that I'd say the right things and got their attention.

I said I needed them to be serious and listen to me for a minute. I told them to put the books down, turn and face me, and listen carefully. -they actually obeyed. I think I had them intrigued-

Then I said, "I've heard that a couple of you are turning to the word sex in the dictionary and making people feel awkward."

Every spine stiffened.

"I also know that in your dictionary it only talks about meaning gender, or male or female. Words can have more than one meaning. There's this word which is another word for gender and there's what you've all heard about which is a very sacred thing between a husband and wife."

A kid raised his hand and said, "Why couldn't they have just said gender?"

I said, "Because this word still means gender. It's just like curse words, for example. They have two very different meanings. And one of them is something we don't say and the other is a very normal thing."

A kid chimed in and said, "Like how the a-word means donkey!"

"Exactly. They mean things that are normal and every day and also something that we shouldn't talk about. Curse words came because someone once decided that they would use the word to be mean and call names. If I were to call Juan a monkey and decided that was the new swear word, we could change how we view the word monkey in years to come." the kids laughed and said monkey to themselves. "Sex means two different things. One is gender, and the other is something that we need to keep special and sacred for husbands and wives.

And those of you who are giggling about it and making people feel uncomfortable know who you are. You know it's making them uncomfortable, so please don't do that. Don't do things that make others uncomfortable."

Then a girl said, "Why did God make bad words and even sin?"

One of those questions where if it had been my kid, we would've had an awesome conversation.

Instead, I said, "That is a conversation I would love to have at another time and place."

She asked if she could stay after school and talk about it. I then said that it's not my place to teach religion in school."

So yeah, that was how my afternoon went. :)

It was crazy!!!

And hilarious.

I was very thankful for the spirit's guidance as I talked to these 9 year olds about respecting other people and their feelings.

It was an interesting conversation.

Guess what else?!

Look what I am!!! I'm prego!!!

I'm due the end of August and I'm 10 weeks along!

We got to see it yesterday and we're very very excited. It's so real now!!!

Yay!!!

Guess what?!

We got it again!!

Hahaha! Man, life is strange!

Remember THIS? We got this beautiful house, it was in the ward, it was just the right size, it had new carpet and paint, it was exactly what we wanted.

Well, we lost it, remember that?

They realized there was a problem with the foreclosure, so they had to take the house back to figure it out.

Last Tuesday, the listing agent called our realtor and told her the house listed again. It technically went on the market on Wednesday. In my opinion, I should've just gotten it automatically, but we didn't. We had to drive in the scary fresh snow to sign papers in order to put an offer on the house again.

On Saturday, our realtor called and told us we got it again!! How crazy is that?!

The Lord definitely works in mysterious ways. I doubt I'll ever understand His methods. I do think that we were meant to learn something from the entire experience. We were meant to understand just how wonderful this house is. How great it is that the roof is new, the carpet is new, there isn't mold, and the only fixer-upper is really just gutters all the way around.

Oh my goodness, I'm sooo excited!! 2012 is going to be great!!

Closing date is scheduled for February 18th. Hopefully we will make it to then with the house still "belonging" to us. We're definitely praying that we get to really get the house this time!

I'm already decorating the interior. Every day. Almost all day. :)

That's how it's supposed to be. Not sighing sadly whenever someone brought up the house. Not worrying about mold. Not being bothered by a busy street. Not trying to figure out where we'd buy new toilets, how we'd put in tile, how we'd update the kitchen.

I think the other houses we'd put offers on were great. They were houses that could have worked, but I'm glad this one is back.

When we told the Bishop on Sunday, he said, "See? The Lord listens to a Bishop's prayers!"

Christmas!!

My sister asked if I'm avoiding my blog. Nope. Mostly just laziness. I went to put pictures up and it took forever, so I put it off.

So here's a post about my Christmas vacation.

I got a brand new, beautiful camera from my in-laws. It's big, great quality, and has a lot of getting used to... :)

Here's my sweet niece, Lu. She's so beautiful.

J and I went to the temple we were married in with my parents. It was a wonderful experience to go again. I sure did miss that temple.

Pretty much the entire family went to Hot Springs to the Garvan Gardens. It's a botanical garden that they decorate every holiday season with LOTS of Christmas lights. It was beautiful!!!

My cute nephews

This one rotated back. It's supposed to show the lights that meet the water from the weeping willow. It was beautiful.

Lollipops!!

A choo choo train!

On Christmas Eve, the kids made cookies with MMae.

J and I did the Christmas Program with the family. They each had to act out the scene I had read. It was really funny.

They made personal pizzas and then went to rest upstairs.

Once the kids were upstairs, we got to have our crab legs and artichoke dinner.

For dessert, we had Creme Brulee. Soooo tasty!!

On Christmas day, we had a little time to open presents before church.

J got the kinect he had really wanted.

This is my wonderful parents with their Christmas presents. Mom is wearing her new BCD for scuba diving and Dad's wearing the scarf I gave him.

My parents got everyone in the family the ability to go to Disney World next Christmas!! We're all soooo excited!!

Sam is now an Eagle Scout! His court of honor was while we were there. It was a great celebration for a great kid.

Sam with his brothers.

Very proud parents

I'm so proud of him. He's a wonderful kid.

He's a wonderful uncle, too. Those kids sure do love him.

It was a wonderful two weeks. I had so much fun. We had a great time.