Maui Day 4

We woke up yesterday morning to a rainy day. Right outside our condo we could see a large rainbow right over the ocean. Even though it was a cloudy and rainy morning it's still beautiful here. 

With it being a rainy day we weren't sure what we should do today. We hung out until 9:00ish when we decided to go check out the Maui Ocean Center. It's an Aquarium that is in Ma'alea. I had a client tell me that this Aquarium was the best one she had ever been to. So we thought we'd go check it out. That way we had something to do besides hang out in our condo all day.

 The aquarium was a little disappointing. I think we felt that way only because we had to pay $26/person to get in. For what was there, it didn't seem worth $26. But maybe because we didn't any kiddo with us. There were some things that we saw that we kept saying "Oh Ryker would love that."

I guess a lot of the fish, turtles and coral that are on display eventually get put back in the ocean. So I liked that part about it.

 After we left the aquarium we wanted to go check out the Nakalele Blow Hole. On the way there I got a little sleepy and fell asleep. I woke up to the rain on the car coming down really hard. Ahh poop. I wasn't feeling in the mood to hike in the wind and rain.

We ate our packed lunch in the car and then we headed down the hill to see the blow hole. We walked down to this over look of it and it was super windy and rainy. I came unprepared with no jacket, so I was not feeling like I wanted to be out there much longer. As Jesse headed further down the hill to get a closer look I went back to the car. I know, wimpy.

I sat in the car finishing the rest of my lunch and reading through our Maui Guidebook thinking he would be back any minute. As I sat there waiting for him the rain stopped and the clouds seemed to dissipate a little bit. The longer I sat there I was coming to the reality of my wimpy-ness. So I figured I better get my butt out there and be with Jesse. No fun for him to be checking it out on his own while I sat in this car.

I grabbed one of our beach towels and wrapped that around myself as I walked down the hill. That did the trick. It helped me not feel so freezing.

About half way down I saw Jesse coming back up the hill. He met me and took me back down the hill with him to show me the blow hole. I was feeling grateful that I had him there to push me out of my comfort zone and see it up close. I really didn't think it would be that much cooler up close, but it was. Plus the scenery was way better as well.  

As we got closer to the blow hole I didn't dare take my camera out of it's case because it was really misty. So thankfully Jesse had his GoPro Camera and we took some video/pictures from that. It was hard to get a good picture of the blow hole shooting up when we had our backs to it. But you get the idea.

Another cool feature that was down there was this heart shaped hole. I'm curious if it was made by nature, or if it was carved by man. Maybe both? Either way, I really like it.

Again, I feel blessed to have Jesse as a husband. If it wasn't for him I would have just chilled in the car the entire time. And the thing is he didn't even get mad or anything when I told him I was going to go back to the car. But know him he would have loved to have me down there. So without even knowing it he helped me grow today. And that's one of the great things about having him as my companion. He'll always help me become a better person. I'm grateful for his adventure like attitude in life. It's taught me a lot. Here's to 10 years of marriage (almost....a few more weeks and it'll be officially 10 years)!!!!!!

 After the blow hole we wanted to go find some tide pools that were close, but we somehow missed the start of the trail, so we just kept driving. It was fun to see the scenery anyway. The further we drove we thought it would be fun to just make our way the entire small part of the island. So we just kept going. The road eventually turned into a one lane road. It was pretty tight in most spots, but there were still areas that you could pull off to the side to let on-coming cars pass by.

Everything was so lush and green. I loved that about the drive.

What I love about him driving is I always feel safe. Not only does he make me feel that way when he's driving, he makes me feel that way in life. He's got that calm demeanor that is very reassuring.

 I found a map online and drew on it where we were today. So we are staying in Ka'anapali (left of the green circle) and we drove down to Ma'alaea to the Maui Ocean Center (circled in red). Then we drove back towards our condo up to the Nakalele Blow Hole, then finished off the rest of the circle bank to where we started this morning. A lot of driving, but that's ok. How else are we suppose to see what's on the island? On Saturday we plan on doing the Road to Hana and around. So then we'll get to drive the entire way around the big circle of the island.

On our way back to the condo we had to stop for dinner. Jesse remembered a Kitchen and Pie shop that we had passed on the first day we came. It was in Lahaina just off the highway. I looked it up on Yelp and it had fantastic reviews, so we thought we would check it out.

Jesse has been on a burger kick this whole time we have been here, so he has ordered a burger every night (but one) since we have been here. Haha. I was feeling like a salad tonight. And when it came out I just had to take a picture of it. It was almost too pretty to eat. But that didn't stop me. And it was just as yummy as it looked.

 

I love that we didn't really have any major plans today, but we were able to make it a fun and memorable day.

Maui Day 3 (Whale Watching/Snorkeling)

Yesterday morning we got to be lazy. We did go to the Farmer's Market up the road (which was fantastic). The produce was amazing and things were much cheaper than at that fruit stand we went to the day before. So we will definitely be back there to get more produce throughout the week.

 

Pretty much after that we were able to just hang out at the condo until noon when we needed to leave for our Snorkeling and Whale Watching Tour. I was actually happy to get a chance to be lazy, especially since my tummy was still recovery from dinner the night before and I had a headache come on. I was able to get a short half hour nap in before we had to leave. Once I woke up I was feeling much better.

 

We made our way to the Maalaea Harbor to check into the Pride of Maui Tour company. Once everyone checked in we were able to board the yacht and get all settled. I thought that the tour I paid for was going to take us to the Molokini Crater, but when we got on board and they were going over some safety items and such, they mentioned that they weren't. What a bummer, we were looking forward to that part of the trip. I guess I misread what the tour provided. The Molokini tours were in the morning and I had picked the afternoon tour.  

 

They took us to "Turtle Town" or they also called it the Cleaning Station. I guess turtles go to this area where the fish will clean off their shells. And throughout the duration of the 3 hour tour we were whale watching. It's mating and breeding season and there are tons of whales, so it didn't take long before we saw some.  

When we arrived at Turtle Town we anchored could just jump into the water to start snorkeling.  Jesse went first and recorded me jumping in (I had no idea he was doing that). So we got this snap shot of me jumping in (It's a good shot of that baby bump).

 Snorkel Selfie. Haha. The snorkeling in this area was rather disappointing. Truly there weren't very many fish to see. But that's ok. Getting to play in the ocean is just as fun.

But we did get to see 3 or 4 different turtles. So that was cool. I liked getting to see them swimming along with all the fish munching on the turtle's shells. They were a lot more shy than the one we saw on the first day. They hung out at the bottom usually and when they needed to come up for air they would only take one breath and go back down. But I think it has a lot to do with the fact that there were 10 people in a circle watching him, I think it makes them nervous to come up with that many people around them. We were told by the captain and the crew that we were suppose to keep our distance from them so that they could come up for air.

I love this picture of Jesse. He's so good at diving down really deep. Me on the other hand I'm not so good. It just kills my ears. I try to equalize them, but I struggle. I just need to practice some more.

 

After snorkeling for an hour we all got back on the yacht and they had lunch prepared for us. Burgers, Hot dogs and Chicken. It was actually really good. I feel like snorkeling makes me super hungry. So I probably would have enjoyed anything they served us. Haha.

So while we were waiting in the food line they spotted yet another whale. It was really hard to get a good picture. Most of my pictures were too late and all that I captured was the after splash. But I didn't happen to get this calf breaching. We saw so many calves breaching and you could also see their mama's right by them. The calves were so playful. I loved it.

K, then things got really cool. They spotted this whale slapping it's tale over and over again on the surface of the water. I captured this picture and then decided to record it. I got a 3 1/2 minute video of this whale doing this. Granted the video is a little shaky because then boat was trying to get closer to it. I struggled trying to counteract the  bouncing of the boat to keep the camera steady. But it's ok. I got it and that's all that matters.

When you go whale watching you live for that one small moment of breaching. But on this day we saw whale after whale. I can't even count how many we saw. And then to end on that amazing moment of that whale slapping it's tale on the water over and over.... SO COOL! I could watch that video over and over again.

Maui Day 2

We had the best day yesterday. I wanted to post last night, but I was so tired by the time we climbed in bed for the night that I just didn't have the energy to keep my eyes open. That and I had a stomach ache from dinner. So I just needed to go to sleep.

Well yesterday morning I woke up at 5:00am Maui time. Couldn't sleep. Jesse was sound asleep so I just decided to get up and hide in the bathroom and watch a show on Hulu. My internal clock is so regulated it's hard for me to adjust to new time zones. Maui is 4 hours behind home time. So my body was thinking it was 9:00am and was ready to wake up. Anyway, so I grabbed a yogurt from the fridge and sat on the bathroom floor watching my show until Jesse woke up. I think he's good at sleeping whenever because of his job. He adjusts pretty well because he has to.

Around 7:00 is when he woke up and I was able to go in the bedroom and hang out with him. We talked about our plans that day and then made protein pancakes for breakfast.

We decided that we wanted to go find a local fruit stand to buy some Mangos, Pineapples and Papaya. Then we wanted to go hang out on the beach and go to the Black Rock area where we saw that turtle the night before. Maybe we could see some more?

We found a fruit stand and were surprise how much the fruit was. I know Hawaii is expensive but we just figured that the fruit would be cheaper since they were grown here. This one stand charged  $12 for a large pineapple and $10 for two mangos. Eek. Well we heard the fruit was so good here that we just bought them, They were really amazing. But I think we might try and find another stand that could be cheaper. We heard from a couple that we met with on the beach that there is a outdoor Farmer's Market up the street on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays. I think we might go check them out and see if things are cheaper.

After all our running around we were eager to just go play in the ocean and hang out on the beach. We made it back to the condo, packed ourselves a little lunch and headed out there with all our gear.

We got all settled and first thing we got in the water. That first initial time getting in is shockingly cold you can't just ease in, you just gotta go for it.

Jesse asked me if I could hear the whales singing under the water. I told him I couldn't, but it was because I could only hear my breathing through the snorkel. But when I held my breath and listened I could hear the whales as if they were right next to me. It's the coolest thing.

As we slowly made our way around to "Black Rock" we saw a decent amount of fish. Black rock had tons, but that wasn't the cool part. On our way over there we are swimming along with nothing much to see when Jesse all of a sudden points down to the bottom of the ocean where there was this dome shaped metal piece of a ship or something. He had seen some movement and sure enough out comes this sea turtle and it's coming to the surface. RIGHT in front of us. It was almost like he wanted to come say hi.

He came up and just hung out on the surface for a few minutes taking breaths every once and a while. We were able to be right by him and he didn't even care. I was able to get right next to him and look into his eyes and feel his shell and flippers. I had seen a couple of sea turtles in Barbados last year, but they just swam away when you tried to get close to them. But this guys was so friendly and happy to let us check him out. I'm not going to lie, it started to make me emotional. It was just amazing.

Thanks to Jesse and his GoPro camera we were able to record the whole thing and later take these snap shots from the video. I took the camera from him for a moment so I could get him in it with the turtle. Then the turtle took it's last breath and headed back down to the ocean floor. What an unforgettable experience this was.

I really like this picture. Jesse had swam down below me and the turtle to get a look at us from below. It's so cool with the sun above us.

After that we made it to the "Black Rock" area. It was packed with fish and packed with tons of snorkelers. Quite the popular area. People were also jumping off the Black Rock into the ocean. We stuck around for a bit then started to head back to our beach. Mostly because we were hungry (and when I say "we", I really mean "I"). I get hungry instantly so I was on a mission to just get there. All I could think about was my turkey sandwich. I may have left Jesse in my wake just determined to make it.

We ate lunch and then just hung out on the beach for a bit. The sun felt good at first but then it was feeling so hot that we wanted to find some shade. And that's where we met that couple that told us about the Outdoor Farmer's Market. We talked with them for a good while and then headed back to our condo.

We stayed there for an hour or more watching our turtle footage and figuring out how to get the pictures from the video. We were amazed when we started watching the footage that you could hear the whales in the footage. I love it. So now you won't think we are crazy but that we actually heard the whales singing. Once that was done we just grabbed our towels and books and just went out on the beach to read.

About an hour or so of reading (napping) and watching whales from the beach breaching and making lots of splashes on the surface,  we walked down the Beach Walk to find a place to eat. We came across the Cliff Dive Café that had tables right by the ocean. The timing was perfect because we were able to eat dinner as we watched the sun go down.

I guess every night at sunset at this Café, a man runs up the Black Rock and lights the Tiki torches and then dives off. Apparently it's a big deal, but we just happened to be there so we got to watch it. From the picture it's kinda hard to tell that it's a man and not just a cross at the top of the rock. But right before he dove in head first he spread his arms like that.

After a satisfying and very filling dinner (I feel like I can't waist any food we buy because it's pricey) we walked down the beach walk some more and found our way to the Whaler's Village Mall and just browsed around some stores.

We walked past this one store that had some kids clothes. Jesse stopped and grabbed a little Hawaiian girls dress and just mentioned that he really hopes we are having a little girl. I thought it was so sweet. Granted I know and God knows that if we have a 3rd boy we will be just as happy.

As it got later and later we needed to head back to our condo which was about a mile away. I didn't mind because it's good to get a little exercising in.

When we made it back to the condo we showered and just crashed in bed by 9:00pm. But what a day. I loved that we just were able to fly by the seat of our pants today and have such a good time. So far Maui has not disappointed us. I mean how could you complain? It's practically paradise here.

Short Sale Home Interjection

After we landed in Maui, Jesse checked his phone and he had a text from Kristen that the bank had approved everything for the new house. So that's Great News! I can totally see the Lord's hand in all of this. How could you not? All in one weekend we get under contract with both the houses. The Lord truly is blessing us.

It's been a good day!

Anniversary Trip Day 1

Well today was the day we have been looking forward to since January. It's hard to believe we are officially in Maui. It's been quite the day. I don't say that in a negative way. It's just a weird feeling when your destination is 4 hours earlier than your home time. It felt like yesterday that we were waking up to get to the airport. But it was all in one day.

 

Our first flight was from Salt Lake City to LAX. Our hour layover gave me just enough time to update about the house selling. Then we were off to Maui. 

The flight to Maui was about 6 hours long. I have to admit it felt much longer than that. But it's ok. We napped a little here and there, read our books, talked to each other or our neighboring passengers and then it was time to land. Thank goodness.

After we picked up our luggage at Baggage Claim (so grateful everything arrived) we headed to the rental car place to pick up our rental car.

By this point we were dying for a meal. We had been munching on beef jerky, apples, trail mix and protein bars for the last 9 hours. So we were ready for a real meal. Thanks to our awesome technology smart phones we were able to find a Café that had really good ratings and great food. Both of us downed our burgers like we hadn't eaten in days.

Our next stop... Costco. We needed groceries so we picked up what we could from there without too much bulk and then headed towards our condo. Along the way we stopped at Safeway to get the rest of the groceries on our list. Then we were able to go check into our condo which is in Ka'anapali.

Even though we were feeling exhausted we decided we should go for a walk on the beach. It was only 5:00ish in Maui, but for us it's 9:00pm. But we couldn't go to bed yet. So a nice walk on the beach to watch the sun go down was perfect. Jesse had brought out his mask to get in the ocean, I wasn't feeling like getting in tonight.

Anyway, Jesse said when he had his head under the water he swore he could hear whales. He came out to tell me this when out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of a whale's blow. We both looked out towards where it came from and then a whale BREACHED! Never before had we seen a whale breach when standing on the beach. Pretty cool.

As we walked down the beach some more and got closer to some of the rocks there was a guy that was saying there was a Sea Turtle swimming around there. So Jesse got in and was watching this turtle swim around. Pretty neat! Here we were just going for a night stole and we get to see a whale and a turtle.

I was able to get some video and pictures of Jesse in the water with the turtle. We plan on going back tomorrow and bringing the GoPro to get some underwater pictures. I guess these rocks are known for sea turtles being around them, so wish us luck tomorrow that we see some more.

Now, I no longer belong to the "I've-Never-Been-To-Hawaii" Club. And I'm ok with that. Aloha and Mahalo. 

Showings after showings..... and then..

This month of March hasn't been super exciting. We have had so many people come look at our house, which is fantastic. It makes us anxious because we hold on to the hope that someone will make an offer. Also we have been counting down to the day that Jesse and I left for Maui. Which is today. I am currently sitting in the LAX airport typing this. I figured I better give an update before I need to give a report on our Anniversary trip.

Friday night we were suppose to have someone come look at our house between 5:00-6:00pm. I was working till 6:30 that night so it was up to Jesse to get the house all ready and leave. Around 6:00 Jesse called me to tell me he didn't think that anyone had even gone to look at the house. I guess he drove by 3 or 4 times throughout that hour and never saw anyone in front of the house. I guess after he got off the phone with me he got a phone call from our realtor (Kristen) to tell us that the couple had been there to look at it, but the lock box wasn't working to allow them to get the house key.

So when I got home from work around 6:30 Jesse was prepping dinner and he filled me in about the conversation he had with Kristen. I guess they wanted to come back and look at it even though we were there. Haha, kinda weird.  But hey if they don't mind our dinner out on the counter then by all means, come on over.

We just hung out in the back yard while they looked through the house.

Fast forward 24 hours when we got a text from Kristen asking us to call her when we could. Jesse was at work and I couldn't get him to answer, so I just called her and she told me we had an offer. And it was from that couple that was there the night before. Haha. Crazy.

Their offer wasn't horrible, they had offered $500 above our asking price, but wanted us to pay their $5500 in closing costs. We decided that we would counter $2000 more than what they offered and still pay the closing costs.

All that paper work was sent to their agent yesterday before we left for family dinner at the Smith's house at 5:00.

No joke, on our drive there we get a call from Kristen that the couple had accepted our counter offer. WOW! Talk about a fast response from them. They are serious about it.

So it's kind of a relief that we have our house under contract before we left on our vacation.

As for the new house, we are still waiting to hear back from the bank's approval on everything. Technically they had 45 days to respond and today is the 45th day. Kristen said she would be surprised if they responded today. Which is guess is ok, especially since we have our house under contract.

Now we are just hoping the timing will work out so we can move out of our old house and into our new house all at the same time. It wouldn't be the end of the world if we had to stay at an extended stay hotel or something, but it would be a pain. But we will just do what we have to do, when the time comes.

Anyway, that is a quick little update. Our plane is starting to board so we better go. Next time I post, I will be posting in Maui. Ahhhh.

"Four" real?



Cy's birthday really snuck up on me this year. I don't know if it was because of the house situation, or just February flying by too fast. My mom had called me sometime last week asking me when we were celebrating Cy's birthday. I told her "Oh probably the Sunday before his birthday." She then said to me "Um, that would be this coming Sunday.".... Oh ok. I guess I should let everyone know that. Haha. Thankfully everybody, but Tyson and Jessica were able to make it to our last minute party. Even Manda surprised us with a visit. I guess it's a good thing Cy is young enough to not realize my flakiness. Or even know when his real birthday is. So I was safe this year.

 

 

I was going through some old pictures of Cy to put on a poster board for his Preschool class this morning. And I couldn't help but feel kinda sad to see how grown up he really has become. He really was the prettiest baby. Biggest brown eyes you ever did see. I look at these pictures and wonder who this little boy is? I have forgotten him. So sad how quickly we forget. Seeing this newborn picture of him did make me really excited for baby #3 to come. I feel excited to have a new baby in our family again. 

Oh he's such a handsome little boy. But don't be fooled by those angelic eyes of his. Behind them is the makings of a mischievous and troublesome boy. Oh don't get me wrong, he most certainly has his sweet moments that melt my heart. But when he isn't being sweet, he's causing trouble.

Sunday March 1, was hiss birthday celebration. He was beyond thrilled to have everyone at our house and of course he was excited to open presents. I was laughing because we had all these little boys (Ryker, Cy, Sterling, Max and Arie) there together, and they were all dying to play with Cy's new toys he was opening. It was almost painful for them to sit back and just watch.

I love these 2 pictures of Cy. He was so into us singing him Happy Birthday. Then when he attempted to blow out his candles, he had to blow about 4 times to get all 4 candles out.

I was told by Heidi that Cy wanted a dinosaur cake. Huh. He never informed me of this desire. So thank goodness for Amazon Prime because I was able to find these cute Dino cupcake kits that came in time for the party. They were a hit. Everyone liked them, especially Cy.

One of the sweetest things on Sunday was Ryker realizing he didn't have anything to give Cy. So he wrote him a little message on a sticky note... Folded it up and wrapped it.

Just in case you have a hard time reading Ryker's handwriting his note reads:
Dear Cyrus
I hope you have a good birthday and I love being a big brother.
Love Ryker

Ryker will be a good example to Cyrus on how to be a big brother.

Today Jesse and I went to the last 30 minutes of his preschool class to present our little poster of things that Cy likes to do and some of his favorite things. Then they each got a Dino cupcake.

Another crazy thing today is that winter finally started to come. It was snowing like crazy this morning. We got about 5 or 6 inches of snow within an hour or more. It's kind of a bummer because we have really enjoyed the warm 60 degree weather. But we really need the water for this summer.

Anyway, I'm still in awe that 4 years have come and gone. I think in my mind I haven't let Cy grow up. Like he's still 2 years old in my mind. But no.....he's 4. Crazy!

Happy Birthday Cy Guy! We love you to pieces. Our family would be really dull without you in it.

Back to square one

The house inspection was done on Wednesday this week.  It made me very anxious to find out if anything would be wrong with our cute little home. Thankfully everything came back clean. But Thursday night we received a phone call from Kristen that our buyer was backing out. And the worst part was she was able to keep her Ernest money. Lame.

We were feeling frustrated that she put us through this whole process and we took our house off the market..... Then backs out. Not cool.

On the flip side I do see the silver lining in all this. It gives us a little more time as we wait on our other home. Which we are anxiously waiting for the back to approve everything.

Yesterday morning I woke up early do I could clean up the house again to get it "show ready" again. After it went off the market we got relaxed again about having it super clean. But, now it's all really clean again.

We had two showings yesterday. So that's great for it only bring back on the market for a day.

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.