Fairies and Football

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

House Tour

Alright, here's the post you've been waiting for.

Pictures of our new house.

We've had the craziest weather since we moved in, it's hailed several times, it's rained for days straight, there has been lightening and thunder and crazy wind.

I have loved seeing snow on the mountains. I love our views.

This is what our front room looked like when we first moved in. Empty.

The guys from our new ward who helped us move in put this furniture in there.

I put some pictures on them to make it look a little more homey.

It made a great ballroom while it was empty.

And here's our living room now. We got a bunch of furniture from Sean's Grandma.

I'd like to cover the loveseats and then get an area rug and paint the furniture

and put some pictures up on the wall and I think this room will look really good.

It will take a while and be a lot of work.

Now let's go upstairs.

Upstairs in our loft is our computer. Our desk is in the garage. I want to paint it before we bring it up.

And then I want to put some picture ledges up on the wall behind it and put a collage of pictures.

The doors from left to right are our medicine/towel closet, Ruby's room, Eli's room and the bathroom.

Hurray for storage!

Next is Ruby's room.

Since I took this picture, Sean put up curtains in Ruby's and Eli's bedrooms.

Since we don't have blinds yet, we had to put paper up in all the bedroom windows.

One of the joys of a new house!

The cutest thing in Ruby's room is Ruby.

Next is Eli's room. Sean has bought Eli lots of sports décor while we still need to put up on the walls.

Pretty much all of the rooms in our house are really boring right now.

Here's the kids' bathroom.

And here's the master bedroom.

I love, love, love our bedroom! It's so nice that it's just a bedroom.

In our apartment it was our bedroom, Ruby's room and Sean's office.

I love having all these books in our room.

Sean and I both enjoying reading in bed at night after the kids are in bed.

And our closet.

Our master bath. It isn't huge but it's perfect for us and we love it.

Next to our bedroom is Lexi and Avery's.

I'm thinking about putting picture ledges above their dresser and do another collage of pictures.

I'm kind of obsessed with those.

I love the look and I love not putting a ton of wholes in our brand new walls.

There is one thing hung up in the girls' room.

Next to the girls' room is the laundry room.

It isn't exciting but it's awesome.

And now we'll go back downstairs.

Here's the coat closet in the front room.

After the coat closet is the bathroom.

It's a small bathroom. It has just the essentials.

Continuing along that wall, after the bathroom is another closet.

This where I store games, art supplies and toys.

In this next picture you can see the bathroom door and the toy closet door.

Across from the bathroom door is the down to the basement.

Now we'll go into the great room.

All the rugs, except for the one under the table, are from Sean's Grandma's house.

We plan to put them in our unfinished basement. But for now they're on our main floor.

We need some more seating and big area rug.

Where the recliner is my piano will eventually go.

It's still at my parents' house in Washington.

If you look out our window you'll see something very exciting,

one of our neighbors is putting a fence up!

We literally had no fences around our yard when we moved in

so we're excited to now have at least one.

I love the way this gallery wall turned out. Now I just need to update the pictures.

See why I'm now obsessed with these picture ledges.

Our dinning room chairs are in the garage getting sanded. We're redoing our table too.

We got the folding chairs from Sean's Grandma's house and I love them!

The color matches the gray, white, navy, teal, aqua and yellow color scheme I'm going for.

I love my kitchen! It's a dream come true!

It's probably close to the size of all my previous kitchens combined!

Since I took these pictures, we've returned this fridge

and got a new counter depth one that doesn't block the pantry door.

See what I mean about blocking the pantry door?

This is our first time ever having a pantry!

Plus, we have these extra cabinets for food storage.

And here's our new fridge.

It fits so much better.

Now, let's go down to the basement.

The stairs are really dusty.

At the right of the stairs is bedroom.

And the other side of the basement is our future family room, another bathroom and bedroom.

But for now, our basement is a giant storage unit.

And it's Sean's office. Do you see his computer desk in the corner by the window.

And last but not least, the garage.

Someday we'll be able to park two cars in our three car garage.

And that's our house. We feel so lucky to live here.

We closed on April 14th (Our anniversary).
The 15th we were supposed to get our keys.
I got a phone call from our builder's agent just hours before we thought we'd get the keys.
She told me that the city was asking our builder to change the water pipes
from 3/4 inch to an inch wide.
Apparently when our subdivision was formed 10 years ago that was the standard
but now they are changing it.
This would require our builder to tear up the street in front of our house.
Of course we didn't want that to happen.
And there was no way that our builder wouldn't do that.
...
So I was emailed a paper that Sean and I needed to sign in front of a notary.
Our printer was packed up at this point
and we needed to get Avery to her last dance class in 30 minutes.
I went to a friends' house in our complex and printed the paper.
Then we hurried to our credit union got the paper signed.
And then we had the Notary email the paper to the agent and myself.
On the way back to our apartment the agent called me and said she didn't get it.
So I went back to my friend's apartment and re-emailed the paper.
...
The agent called me again and told me that there was actually no way we'd get the keys that night if we didn't get the original paper to our builder's corporate office in Draper before they closed at 5 pm.
So I immediately headed to draper.
Sean took Avery to dance and picked her up and picked up Lexi from school.
After all that we all caravan out to the house to get the keys.
...
My van was full to the brim with random things that we unpacked that night.
Sean's car was full of kids.
We planned on setting up the kids' beds that night
but we had no water at the house so we couldn't stay long.
...
That night there was a horrible wind storm that knocked over several semi's
on the highway out by our new house.
We were so lucky that we weren't moving that day.
...
Thursday, April 16th, we got the moving truck in the morning.
Sean and his brother-in-law made a lot of progress loading the truck that day.
The girls had a play date with their cousin.
And I took the two little ones with another van load of things to the house.
I also, went to city hall to get our water turned on.
And I went and bought a fridge.
...
Our moving truck was filled and ready to go a little after 5 pm.
I followed Sean in our van.
It was the same view I had when we moved to Albuquerque.
It brought back a lot of horrible memories.
...
That night several men from our new ward showed up
and we had the truck unloaded in less than 45 minutes.
Then we set up the kids beds and crashed with exhaustion.
...
The next day, Friday, the 17th, we went back to our apartment to clean.
Eli was so upset. He kept begging me to go to the new house.
Saturday, the 18th, Sean went back to the apartment to finish cleaning and turn in the keys.
...
And now a few pictures from my phone...
The day we closed there was huge storm. It snowed like crazy...

The keys to our new house!

Here's Miss Ruby hanging out in our kitchen where the fridge goes

while we unpack a few things the night we got the keys.

Finally it was Moving Day!
Eli was so excited about our moving truck.

We're so lucky that the stormy weather stopped finally when it was moving day.

Eli was not excited to be back in our apartment while I cleaned.

And there you have it. The story of our move.
Now I can share pictures of the house!

8 Years of Marriage

On April 14th, Sean and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary.

To celebrate we closed on our first house.

Sean bought me a house! That is the best anniversary present ever!

I don't know how he'll ever top that gift!

It took us about 45 minutes to sign all the papers and then we went out to eat lunch at Applebee's.

After that we went back to our apartment and worked on packing.

It wasn't the most romantic anniversary but it probably is the most memorable.
Here's a picture of us at the title company right after we finished signing all the papers.

...

It's been an eventful eight years.
We've lived in four state; Washington, Idaho, New Mexico and now Utah.
We've lived in a basement, five different apartments and now our home.
That's a total of seven different places.
...
And now we have four incredible and adorable children.
I was pregnant with Lexi for 266 days, 289 days with Avery,
281 days with Eli and 278 days with Ruby.
That's a total of 1114 days of being pregnant.
That equals 3 years, two weeks and 4 days of being pregnant.
...
Lexi has gone to two different preschools and three different elementary schools.
Avery has gone to two different preschools as well.
...
We've had many different callings.
We've severed in the nursery together right after we got married.
And we taught the 15 and 16 year old Sunday school class when Eli was a baby.
I was on the Relief Society Activities Committee, the Relief Society Compassionate Service Assistant and Leader, the Relief Society 1st counselor and the Relief Society President. I was a Beehive advisor, a Primary Activity Days Leader, I taught the Sunbeams and CTR 4's and was the Relief Society Activity Chair Person.
Sean has been a Membership Clerk, a Priest Quorum advisor, a Ward Mission Leader, Elder's Quorum Presidency 2nd Counselor, 2nd Counselor in the Branch Presidency and Assistant Branch Mission Leader. And I feel like I might be forgetting another one.
...
Through it all Sean has remained my best friend.
I love him so much. He puts up with me through all my mood swings,
exhaustion, impatience and my crazy ideas.
He makes me laugh everyday.
He's full of fun ideas.
He's an amazing dad. Our kids adore him. They love cuddling with him.
And they love it when he reads them their bedtime stories each night.