Well that happened fast...

Our cute little home sold in a week. Crazy. So it's currently under contract.

It's taken me a few days to let it settle in my mind. I knew our home would sell, but I didn't expect it to only take a week. Our house went up on the market the morning of Tuesday Feb 10. And the next day this older woman walked through it and then made an offer by Thursday. Over the course of the week we negotiated back and forth. And she finally accepted our last counteroffer. Which we didn't think she would.

March 17th is closing day. I think we have 48 hours to get out.

And in the meantime we are anxiously waiting to hear from the bank on our offer on our other home. I'm praying we can just move from this house to the new one. It wouldn't be the end of the world if we got an apartment in the mean time. But it would be very nice to only move once.

And in top of that, Jesse and I leave for Hawaii March 23. So I'm going to be packing up my house to move and packing a suitcase at the same time. Haha. Everything comes at once right? In the middle of the whirlwind it feels crazy and stressful. But once we come out of it, I know we'll think "it wasn't that bad" or "we did it".

"Practically Perfect In Every Way"

The past month or so we have had all of the Mary Popping songs sung throughout the house. Even Cy has started to pick up on the tunes. I can't help but smile when I hear the two of them singing "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, the medicine go down, medicine go down".

As busy and stressful as it has been to have Ryker in this play, it's been so much fun for him. Every time he had a performance he was so excited.

Chantel sent me these two pictures of him performing and I just love them.  

We had plans to go see it on the 13th when Ryker was performing in it. But I hadn't thought about the fact that Ryker would want to see it as well on a night that we wasn't performing. So I took the boys Thursday the 12th to go see it. They both just loved it.

The 13th was kind of our Valentine's Date night since Jesse had a shift on the 14th. We went to dinner(Mikado of course) with some friends before hand (Candice and Brent Bement) and then we all went to the school with our kiddos to watch the play. It was so fun to watch Ryker in it. He was so cute. And Chantel did awesome. She's in so many ensembles. I'm impressed she can remember all of those dances.

That night was actually Ryker's last night of performing. Tonight (the 16th) is closing night and then it'll all be over. Ryker is really sad that it is over for him. He's loved doing it and had a good time. I'm glad he was able to do it. And also really proud of him for being so brave. I think it would be scary to do that at his age.

House Update/ Ryker is 7?/ New Baby 2015



Before I start talking about Ryker I have to give an update about the house situation. And also explain why I haven't been very diligent on updating the blog.

Last time I posted we hadn't put our house up for sale yet. Jesse and I have been working on getting it ready to show for the last few weeks. Every spare moment we had we were working on it. It's stressful and very tiring. More than I ever thought. I have a whole new respect for people trying to sell their house.

Originally we really wanted to sell the house by owner because we wanted to get as much as we could out of it. But we decided that between the both of us and our work schedules it would be near impossible to ever show our house. So a week ago today we met with our realtor, Kristen and signed papers to get our house up on the MLS website. Where people would see it easier than for sale by owner.  And Kristen could take care of all that that stuff for us. Plus all the paperwork.

 

So officially it went up on the market Tuesdays, Feb 10. And everyday we have had someone schedule to walk through it. 2 of them canceled, but other than that we feel like we have had really good traffic going through there being it has been a week. Today we actually have 2 showings.

When there is a showing we have to be out of the house. Kristen will text us when an agent wants to walk a client through and then it's our job to make sure the house is in order, leave all the lights on and leave. I'm actually at Kangaroo Zoo at the moment because someone is currently walking through our house. I thought the boys would like to go do something to get their crazy out, and I could sit here working on the blog. It's perfect.

The day the For Sale sign went up in our yard I was taken back with an unforeseen wave of emotion. It finally set in that one day we would be leaving this house and that made me sad. We started our family in this cute little house. We put our hearts and souls into it remodeling and updating everything. It's hard to walk away from that. And we hope that the next tenants will love this little starter home as much as we have.

But it's a chapter in our lives that we can look back on with fond memories. And the exciting part is starting a new chapter.

Now, on to Ryker. I needed to keep things simple and cheap this year for his birthday. Last year was fun, but it was a lot of work. This year I didn't need the extra work. But I still wanted to do something fun for him. I took that Saturday off (Feb 7) and decided to let him invite 5 friends that could join him for some playtime fun at Kangaroo Zoo. I loved it because the kids could be all crazy, loud and wild. And I could sit back and relax. It was perfect.

I guess I should explain what Kangaroo Zoo is. Pretty much a big empty building with a bunch of blow up bounce houses and stuff for the kids to jump, slide and climb on.



These little munchkins played their hearts out. After they were all worn out from playing we went across the street to this local pizza place.  I ordered and XL pepperoni pizza thinking that would be plenty. Nope. These kiddo had worked up quite the appetite. I couldn't believe how  fast that pizza was eaten. And because it took 20 minutes to cook I didn't want to order another one. So I told their parents that they were still hungry when they came to pick them up. I felt bad that they all didn't get full. But hey, what can you do?

After his party he had to go get ready to perform in the Mary Poppins matinee at WX. My sister Chantel is a senior at WX this year and she is in the play. So hence the reason we were asked if Ryker could be in it when they needed little kids. So yet another reason why we have been so busy. Rehearsal were almost every night, then he had to be in the show. Luckily I could pick if he should be in every show or just half. And I chose to have him in half of them. A 7 year old doesn't need to stay up until 10:30 every night and get up to go to 8:00am school everyday. I couldn't handle that and he shouldn't have to.

This little man sure makes me proud. He really is such a good kid. He strives to be good at everything he does. He wants to please mom and dad, is an awesome big brother and a great student.
We recently had Parent Teacher Conferences at his charter school and I was blown away by how well he is doing. I knew he was doing well, but not this good. The teacher explained to me that they have these DIBBLE TESTS that the kids do at the beginning, middle and end of the year. So they just tested for the middle of the year. At the middle mark of the year they are expected to be reading 23 words/minute with 70% accuracy. By the end of the year it's expected to have 47 words/minute with a 90% accuracy. Well, Ryker tested half way through the year with 82 words/ minute and 95% accuracy. Smarty pants.

On Ryker's actual birthday (Feb 8) we had my family and Jesse's family over for cake, ice-cream and birthday gifts. This is another reason we have been feeling like we need to move. Our house is very small to have gatherings like this in the winter in the winter months.

Because of his excellent reading Jesse and I gave Ryker the next 6 series of Magic Tree House Books. He got the first series for Christmas a year ago. And now that he is reading so well he is just loving those chapter books. When he finished the 4th book he was eager to start reading the next one, but we didn't have it. So I surprised him and gave him them up to the 24th book. Look at his face in this picture .... he genuinely was excited about them. Which made me heart happy. I love that he's enjoying to read as much as he is because I never did when I was younger.

He's just a cutie.

Ok. So I have had this big surprised planned to announce that we are expecting baby #3 to Ryker, my family and Jesse's family at Ryker's party. I bought a T-shirt that said "Big Brother Again" and put an ultrasound picture inside the box. I really thought he would be so excited, but I got this reaction instead(see picture below). He really was so "meh" about it. Which surprises me because a few weeks ago, Andrew and Emily announced they were pregnant and Ryker was over the top excited. So when I saw his reaction to their announcement, I thought I would get the same excitement to tell him that I was pregnant too. Nope. Haha.

I had dreams almost every night leading up to that night about how it would go. None of them were even close to how he reacted. I think he was confused at first and then just wasn't really excited. Haha, I wish I could have read his thoughts to get where he was coming from.

The whole family took a good minute before they caught on to what was happening. But once they figured it out they were all so excited. Especially my mom because she had NO idea that we were even thinking about another one. Cy has been a challenge for me and I really thought that I wouldn't want another one after him. But here we are.

It's been about a week since the news has kicked in for Ryker and he says that he's excited now.

So baby #3 will be arriving around August 23. Here is yet another excuse why I have been a terrible blogger the first of this year. I have been EXTREMELY tired. So sitting down to type things up sent me into a coma. I swear after 9pm I'm dead to the world. I've even fallen asleep on the couch before I even put the boys in bed at 8pm. It's crazy. But now that I'm 13 weeks, I think my energy levels are picking back up. That or I have just had to ignore my tiredness and just push through it to get the house ready to sell.

This time around everyone wants it to be a girl. Especially Jesse. I don't know how much it matters to me. I really want a healthy and whole baby. That 20 week ultrasound to find out how things are looking just can't come soon enough. Oh and it'll be nice to know the gender so I can plan ahead.

This pregnancy so far hasn't been terrible. I do feel tired. But I have been able to exercise 6 days a week. Those days make me feel better. I do have to constantly be eating something though because if I don't then it makes me feel nauseous. My emotions seem to be up and down more than ever. I'm usually a pretty even kill person. But one moment I'm super sad then the next I'm mad, then sad for feeling so mad. Then the next day I could feel totally fine again. Then the add the stress of this house selling/business on top of all that, I feel like some of my days I might fall apart. I'm a mess. Ask Jesse. He'll tell you. Haha. He's hoping that since I have all these extra emotions that we are going to have a baby girl.   

One last thing that I think is really cool and funny. Emily's due date for her baby is Aug 24th! One day after mine. Can you believe that? You can't get cousins any closer than that. Haha. It'll be fun to be pregnant together and have these babies together.

Ok, back to Ryker's party. Every year the boys request a cake. Well this year Ryker requested  football cake. Heck ya. That's so easy. Way easier than I have done in the past. And I needed easy lately. I did go a step further and bake the cake from scratch. And it was the yummiest chocolate cake I have ever had. The left overs didn't last long the next day.

He blew all of his candles out in one quick blow. I love his face in this picture because he is very satisfied how the cake turned out.

Phew. That was quite a bit, wasn't it? What a year we are going to have. A new house and a new baby. 2 life changing events are coming are way. I have moments of "Ya, let's do this. It's going to be great" and other moments of "What on earth are we doing? This is stressful". But that could be the hormones talking too.

Our New Possible Home

As we were house hunting we came across this one. It quickly became Jesse's favorite because it was a good price for the amount of square footage and the size of the yard. I have reservations about it because the layout isn't ideal for us. But with Jesse's abilities in construction that can be fixed. But, again I just didn't have the desire to live in a house that needs to be remodeled again. We have done that the last 7 1/2 years in our current home. But the more we looked we decided to put an offer in on this house. It's still in Bountiful, which is something that I like. It's one of those situations where we have to weigh out the pros with the cons. And the pros started out weigh the cons.

The day(Wed, Feb 4) we decided to put in an offer we met with our realtor, Kristen Price (she's a family friend of the Smith Family). But that day we found out that this house went into Short Sale. Which is a good thing and a complicated thing. Thankfully we have Kristen to help us with all the paper work.

Since it went into short sale, that means we have to deal more with the bank. And we wouldn't know how long it would be before we found out if our offer would be accepted or not. And since te bank would be involved it would take longer,

Well, Friday night Jesse got a text message from Kristen telling us Congrats because our offer was accepted.

Now we are feeling frantic to get our house on the market. So we have spent several hours cleaning and touching things up to make it look really nice for showing and pictures.

So hopefully we'll get our house on the market soon, and get it sold. And it's our prayer we can make good money from it so we can put a good down payment on the new home.

If all goes well, we could be getting this new house. Kind of an exciting change for our family.

Starting off 2015 Easy-ish.

Here it is February already and I'm making my first post of the year. Not a very good way to start out. But I have my reasons. Things have felt really busy, but not at the same time. Nothing epic really has happened. It's just been an easy January. Which has been very welcomed after such a hectic December. 

 

I loved this picture of the boys. They each got their own little carts for Christmas from Grandma Heidi, but I loved that they were riding on it together. I wish I could record on their laughter on paper as they were zooming around the house. The moments that they play well together always swarm my heart.

Actually I guess I could say that something epic-wish has happened. Jesse has had the itch to move for about a year now. And the last few weeks he's been looking at houses online and talking to mortgage people to get us prequalified for a new home.

As he was doing this, he was thinking that if we really went down this road we should do some things to our house to get it looking nicer to sell. And the downstairs bathroom needed that. So after a trip to Lowe's and IKEA we found a new vanity for the bathroom from IKEA. What a transformation! Those old basket drawers were just terrible. Most of them were warped and falling apart. Plus now we have 2 sinks and more drawer space.



Well, after fixing up the bathroom our house hunting became more serious. So it was time to start cleaning out and boxing up some of our own house to get it ready to sell. It really is time consuming going through each room and decluttering. It's refreshing to have things feel so clean.

Something totally out of character for this time of year has been the weather. This week has been in the 60s. No joke. Well with the warm weather, I started to notice my daffodils popping up already. I took this picture last week and this week they are about 4-5 inches out of the ground. I would bet by next week they'll be blooming. It's just crazy. Early Feb and we already have Spring flowers. 

Last week the Smith Family went up to Soldier Hollow to go tubing. Heidi had a Groupon that she wanted us to all use. Soldier Hollow has these hills of snow that they have made. Some of the lanes are more bumpy than others, so you can pick your thrill level. The other cool thing was the pully system them have set up to drag your tube and yourself to the top of the hill. The boys thought it was the coolest thing ever. And Cy was just giggling the whole way down the hill. Made me smile.  

That's that in a quick nutshell.