Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Somethings not right!

June is a catch me if you can kind of month as far as weather goes. If the weather is nice, you drop everything and go out and play, because the very next day you could be stuck inside because of cold weather. A few days ago there was a high of 57 and yesterday it got up to 91. Sunburns one day, sweaters and boots the next. You would think having a June birthday meant a for sure possibility of a pool party with warm weather. Not so much in Spokane. One of Tucker's little buddies had a birthday party a few weeks ago and while the sun actually made an appearance for a bit, it was still windy and became cloudy and overcast very quickly. As I was packing up the kids stuff for the party; their swimming suits and towels, I just kept thinking to myself that it isn't right that I also have to pack them hooded sweatshirts in June!
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But, as true Pacific Northwesterns, they insisted on putting their swimsuits on and getting in the water in the cold temperatures.
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Oh, did I mention that there were red vines at said party, and Kate did infact have a party with one! :)
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I love that little Kate bug! :)

Monday, June 25, 2012

Out with the old, in with the new...

While I've been trying to organize and decorate this house, the one area that is still left mostly bare is the front entry way. I just don't know what to do with the space, and I don't have the furniture yet. I love the space but it is just bare. I was thinking something along the lines of a little funky upholstered chair and I had been on the hunt. I didn't want to spend a fortune on something that was primarily just decorative (lets be honest, it's not going to get that much use) I looked and looked and finally found this cute little upholstered chair on clearance at TJMaxx. It's not as funky as I first envisioned, but as soon as I saw it (and the price) I fell in love. And it's not too loud or crazy to clash with the rest of our living room. I think it's the perfect addition, and now just need to find some sort of entry way bench or table to fill in that empty spot! And then on to the walls!
(oh, and don't mind the missing baseboards, we have yet to put those back up!) :) 
Also, it looks really small in the picture below for some reason, it really is proportionate to the rest of the living room! :)
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Love!
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Saturday, June 23, 2012

Daddy love...

We don't go all out for fathers day like some maybe do, but we sure know how to do it right; home made cards, afternoon naps and some good food are all at the top of our list! :)
Tucker creating his home made fathers day card. I tell ya, that kid is getting so creative and loves to write and draw little notes to surprise us every now and then it is so much fun to receive unexpected little notes from him. Taylor also made a home made card for her daddy. She loves her some daddy!
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We woke up daddy on fathers day by all jumping on him and tickling him. Now that we have to wake up at the crack of dawn for church, he was still asleep! She loves to tickle his head, and that is what she is doing in this picture. These two sure are cute together; there is nothing better than watching your husband interact with his (your) daughter. Precious!
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It just happened to be a beautiful day outside, so after some afternoon naps, a little family bike ride we came home and had some delish dinner. Ribs, garlic mashed potatoes and lemon butter and garlic sauteed green beans. Don't mind if I do! :)
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And this isn't his fathers day card, but this is a random card from a few months ago that Ben got on his pillow one day after work. He did this ALL on his own! It melted my heart (and it's not even for me!) :)
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"To Dad Frum Tucker"
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"I luv mi dad so mu(mu)ch too infinide (infinity) and bond (beyond)"
My kids are so lucky to have this daddy of theirs! 

Thursday, June 21, 2012

visiting family...

Of course, in the midst of all the moving and chaos we had a ton of family visitors. I'm afraid I wasn't a very fun aunt/host/entertainer while they were here. I was pretty exhausted and overwhelmed at that point. But we managed to sneak in a few good times here and there. :)
Angie and Nathan came up for her brothers wedding, and we were so excited to meet this guy for the first time:
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Little Chasey-Chase was blessed...
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Then all the kids jumped in the hot tub, and of course, I didn't bring my kids swim suits, but that didn't stop them!
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This little girl loves the water, and has no fear going under...
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My mom came up for a few days to see N&A (Lets be honest, we all know who she really came to see...Carter & Chase! She always just wants to play with the kiddies!) :) The first night she slept at hour new house, then the next two nights she got a hotel room. I guess she didn't like our new place-we were really offended! She says she got it so she could take the kids and go swimming and give us a few hours to ourselves to organize our house; but I don't know. :) Anyway, she took the kids and they went swimming, then we met up with them for some Applebees take out and when we arrived at her hotel room, this is how she answered the door, in a robe. 
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And the kids were like this on the bed. I had to laugh...yeah, it's a rough life for them!
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She got a suite just for the jet tub right in the room, which we took full advantage of!
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The next day N&A dropped off Carter to go swimming with us, and I had to get this shot of the two naked bums! :)
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Cute swimming cousins...
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I don't know what we were thinking when we took all 4 kids to Target after swimming. We were like a walking circus! We thought that with 2 adults, how much harder could 2 extra kids be? Let me tell you...A LOT! We had to do a lot of bribing and the kids ate a really healthy lunch of slushies, popcorn and a pretzel. 
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That night was Angie's brothers' wedding reception. Taylor was a dancing maniac, dancing with whoever would dance with her! :)
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Carter doing his 'knees' dance and Taylor following suit!
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Dancing with Uncle Nathan...
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Dancing with Angie...
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Dancing with daddy...
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This little guy konked out from all of the excitement of the day...
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After the reception the kids got to spend the night with grandma again. Lucky ducks! It was a nice little break without kids and Ben and I got a lot done in the few hours they were gone with grandma. Thanks so much Bma! :)
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Allen & Kelli and their kids also came up for a few days to see N&A. Tucker is always happy to have this guy around:
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And it's nice to be off diaper duty for a while when Grandma is here, the kids always only want her to change them! :) Lucky Grandma! :)
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The weather was semi-nice so we went out for a little walk. Unfortunately Carter is an escape artist and we only had one stroller, so we doubled them up! :)
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And we even got to go to the theater to see Madagascar 3. It was Taylor's first time to see a movie in the theater. She totally didn't appreciate it, she stopped paying attention to the movie about 15 minutes in, and just wanted to sing, and eat popcorn, and then started saying, 'go home, go home' :) But at least we got to spend some time with our Carter before he left and Tucker and I really liked the movie! :)
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Next, is our month long excursion to Alabama to visit our cousins down there, then Aunt Kayla & Uncle Jason and Kenzie May come to visit! Can't wait to see them! :)

Monday, June 18, 2012

Moving 101...

One thing I can say about the move is that I am glad it's over! I will never underestimate the work that goes into a move again. If any of my friends or family ever move, I will be there, to help pack up, throw things out, watch kids, and pick up where they get overwhelmed and exhausted! (Luckily for me, I did have friends who did just that, and a lot of just that, I am so blessed!) One truckload, five trailer loads and six van loads of crap later, we are all moved in! :)
I tell you what, I don't know how I managed to do it 11 times as a college student; between Rexburg, Provo, Hawaii and Spokane! And we've done it 6 times since we've been married, and they all have been a breeze compared to this one. Oh wait...yes I do know, I didn't have kids then! It's amazing how much stuff you accumulate with children!
I had prepared for weeks in advance for this move, hauling things up from the basement, organizing, throwing things out, just to be prepared for when the weekend finally came, and let me tell you, even with all the prep, it was still A LOT of work!
I was very proud of my work up to this point of our move:
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The day of the move itself went pretty smoothly, thanks to all the work ahead of time. Some friends from our ward came and loaded up Ben's flat bed truck Beverly Hillbilly style:
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I'm just glad everything made it in one piece, I was a little worried! :)
The kids watching (and praying) that all of our stuff made it the .5 miles to our new home on the back of that truck! :)
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We did run into a few snags along the way with some of the big things (like our bookshelf getting stuck in the hallway like this, pictured below) But the process of moving OUT was fairly easy and ran like clockwork! (Again, thanks to the help of our awesome friends and family who live close!)
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And luckily for me our neighbor, and friend (and bishops wife) also came over the day of the move to help entertain the kids while I helped with the loading, it was such a life saver not having to entertain T&T on top of everything else that was going on!
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Our last meal in our old home, PB&J and chicken nuggets on the living room floor!
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A bit of what the chaos looked like that day:
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Although it looks like complete chaos, I had three big piles of 'throw away', 'garage sale' and 'keep' that eventually started flowing together. But we worked it out and miraculously everything ended up where it belonged!
Luckily, that night we stayed at Papa's house. The kids were so excited to be there. They are usually the ones who have to go home and sleep in their own beds, so they were excited to sleep at Papa's house. I checked on them before I went to bed and found them like this:
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The next day we skipped out on church (shhhh...don't tell anyone) I had no desire to search for church clothes and was pretty exhausted from the day before, plus we still had a ton to do at the house, so we headed over in our pj's and got to work on the last of the stuff.
Tucker and Ben went to the new house to organize while Taylor and I went to the old house to clean and finish up. We did take a little milk and Oreo break:
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I swear I let her out for 5 seconds and she looks like this, I don't know how she does it:
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Taylor and I were going through a bag of clothes in the basement and I ran upstairs for just a few minutes to do something, and she konked out in those few minutes. Her schedule was kind of messed up throughout this moving process.
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Monday night my awesome friends came and helped me clean our EMPTY house! It was a little bittersweet. I should have had them come clean while I still lived there, it looked awesome! :)
(This is what I look like after a week of very few showers, hardly any clothes that I can find and very little sleep! Not good!) :)
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The plan was to only stay one night at Papa's, so I only got out one change of clothes for the kids and us. We ended up staying there 4 nights, so it was quite the adventure trying to find clean clothes for the kids. I would grab anything I could find out of a box or suitcase. In this case, I thought these were shorts Taylor could wear to bed, turns out it was a little diaper cover thing that goes with a dress, oops! :)
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I love boxes from Target! :) Luckily that day I received a box with some new summer pj's I had ordered for them, so the next night they were set.
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Getting a little game of 'go fish' in with Papa before bed...
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This was by far the hardest part of the move for me. We were so discombobulated. I had been working so hard to get out of our house, that I just hit a wall with the new one. Plus, we were living one day at a time, wearing clothes that were random and dirty most of the time. Luckily for me, Kathryn had done a load of our whites for us and had given them back to me in a big Pottery Barn bag. If it weren't for that Pottery Barn bag in my car that week, we wouldn't have had clean underwear. I would seriously go fishing in that bag everyday and just pull out any clean thing I could find for myself or the kids. Plus, I was exhausted, didn't know how we were going to ever feel organized or comfortable in our new home. I had reached my breaking point! I completely shut myself off from the world and got to work on the new house. I literally was a hermit for a good 2 weeks! And to top it all off, Ben (meaning well) bought us a big beautiful sectional couch off craigslist. We had been looking for one for a while and he found a great deal, bought it and surprised me, and I was SO excited, but it just meant one more thing to clean, (our house was covered in down feathers for the week) organize and figure out what to do with! :) Cleaning a couch is not an easy task, luckily Ben took that one on for me and now it's perfect! 
Anyway, this is what it looked like:
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{living room}
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{office}
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{Tucker's room}
And the rest of the house looked the same.
And our back deck started to look like this; and I didn't want to be 'those' neighbors with trash and old boxes everywhere! :) But that is in fact who we were that week!
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Luckily the kids did some of this:
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And a lot of this:
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I am so glad I got this shot of Taylor because this is what she does all the time! She takes the corner of her blanket and puts it in between her nose and her binky and just tickles her nose with it. It is her comfort thing.
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And finally, after a week of hard work, it was finally starting to come together. And I absolutely love it now! It was actually really fun organizing and putting things away. I really enjoyed figuring out where and how to put everything! I guess it's a grown ups version of playing house! :)
The kitchen:
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On a side note, about the kitchen table. Ben came home from work one day sometime throughout the course of the week and I was still in my pj's scrubbing the table. He asked me what I was doing and I told him that there was some sort of nasty film on our table that I was scraping off. I had gotten side tracked ALL day scraping this film off our table. It took me forever, and I became obsessed. :) I thought it was from so much spilled milk or something that had just built up. Ben took a closer look at it and was like, I think you are scraping the finish off the table. You can imagine what my crazy mad woman reaction was. I didn't want to believe it, but now every little scratch and scrape shows up! Ooops! :)
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Anyway, back to the house, our new sectional couch in the living room. The house is so light and airy. I love that the windows let so much light in and I love the layout!
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The office:
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And then the following week, I was finally able to get some personal touches back up that really make it finally feel like home:
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{can you spot the Ben doll? Taylor's new favorite toy!} :)
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And this is my view from the kitchen sink. We love the back yard. It is big and fenced, and I can watch the kids from the kitchen, which I couldn't do before, it's great!
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So, the house is now home, and we are loving it! I mean, it has is's quirks and a few negatives, but for the most part, we love it and can't wait to settle here for a while!
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The neighborhood is amazing! It is quiet and we can go outside and ride bikes and play without having to worry about crazy cars zooming by!
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We have some friends from our old ward that live just a few houses down with a little girl Tuckers age, so that should be fun. In fact, they will be in the same school next year, for Kindergarten together. Another bonus is the school Tucker will be going to, we've heard nothing but great things about it, so I am so excited!
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We have already been scoping out the neighborhood on a few walks. AND, the best part is, is that there is a great park just a 5 minute walk away, with a pool! We are going to be set this summer! We've already gone for lunch a few times at the park. 
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And life is back to normal, finally! Tucker had a little friend over just a last week and I realized, when his mom came to get him, that talking to her was the first time I had spoken to any of my friends for like 2 weeks! It felt good to get back to reality! :) I feel like I can finally breathe! Life is good! :)
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{Even our 'Nacho Sunday' tradition has returned, which is a big one in our home!} :)