Behind the Scenes

Here's our official family portrait.  Don't we look so happy?  We are, but the truth is that we had to hide marshmallows behind our backs so that Lily would stay with us AND stop crying for EVERY SINGLE picture.  Also, it's strange to think that it was on this very day that we found our house.  I know it sounds weird but I'm glad I have lots of pictures of that day to help me remember that feeling we felt.

*We close on our house on October 29th.  Ben and my dad will be flying out to Utah on November 4th to pull our stuff out of storage from Idaho, and then we will be moving into our house around November 10th.  And although it is so thrilling to be starting a whole new adventure (I feel like ever since I left for college every year brings a whole new adventure), it has been soooo stressful.  Finding cheap home insurance, doing paperwork, budgeting, more paperwork, walk-throughs, and of course more paperwork.  Since my body is infamous for behaving badly when I'm stressed out this experience has been no exception.  My eyelids started swelling up (seriously????) and on top of that we've had a few rashes going around our house.  Honestly I just read that again and I have to laugh at how weird we are.  Let me rephrase that.  I have to laugh at how weird I am.  Sigh.

*I wish I could say that by now Lily is making huge improvements in her speech.  In a way she is improving because she says many more words and is able to explain more clearly what she needs.  However she usually just says one word at a time like, "snack," "water," "monster" (Sesame Street), or "walk."  The hardest part about Lily's speech is the fact that she says everything backwards.  Since we've been working so hard on getting her to put words together it has overwhelmed her and she has to work her memory backwards like this:
          Me:  "Say 'green block.'"
          Lily:  "Block..... green."
That is how EVERYTHING goes.  Her therapist has told us to keep working and eventually she'll grow out of it.  About a week ago she actually said "Help please" instead of "Please help" and I seriously almost burst into tears.  It was such a sweet experience.

*Skyler is my comedy relief right now (when he's not waking me up at 5AM).  His new phrase is "Oh boy!  Oh boy!!!"  He usually says it when he sees a very cool toy.  So funny.  He's also such a fast mover!  He doesn't run yet but boy does he hobble!  It looks like he's going to fall over any second but he just keeps going and going.  So much fun to watch!

*Ben loves his job.  To be completely honest, I think this may be an even bigger blessing than the house.  Perhaps it's the fact that we went through 10 months of unemployment aka constant freaking out/frustrations/feelings of worthlessness/etc.  I know of a few couples who are fighting the same battle that we once did and my heart breaks.  What a terrible thing to go through.  I can't say how grateful I am for Ben's job.  It really is a dream come true.

So there's a rough synopsis of our lives right now.  Yeah, we know we're weird.  :o)

Mum and Dad's Visit

Ben's Mum and Dad came all the way over to NC from St. George, Utah to visit us!  We had a lot of fun playing at parks, touring our new house, and enjoying the babies.

As you can see Lily was in Heaven.

 Skyler had fun too.  Just not on the swings.  :)

 Lily gave Pop Pop thumbsucking lessons.

 Skyler's always snuggling on his blankie.

And he gave out LOTS of kisses.

It was a fun trip and we're so glad that they were able to come out and see us, but we're especially glad that they were able to get to know the babies better.  Skyler took a little while to warm up to them (as usual), but Lily was in their laps and playing right away.  I think the highlight of the trip for me, personally, was watching Lily run around all day Sunday yelling "HAPPY DAY!!!!!!" over and over and over again (I'll post a movie of that soon).   She was so thrilled to have so many people around loving her.  She even sat in Grandmum's lap for a couple of hours playing with a felt board Noah's Ark.  CRAZY!  Thanks, y'all, for coming out!!!!

Skyler's Quote of the Day

Skyler trying to be Mr. Potato Head.

Seriously go ahead and just roll your eyes before I even tell you this.... but I'm just SUPER DUPER EXCITED to be Mrs. Claus this year.  I know it's barely October but I've been waiting for this my WHOLE LIFE!!!!  So, of course, I just started trying to get Lily and Skyler excited about Christmas (because it'll probably take a while for it to sink in) and so tonight at dinner this is what happened:

Me: "Do you know who's coming to visit in a few months?!?!?!"

Then at the same time Skyler and I said:

Me:  "Santa!!!!!"

Skyler:  "Jesus?"

And then it hit me.... the Little Handsome is way more into the spirit of Christmas than I am.  I burst out laughing which of course turned into tears because that was seriously humbling.  I'm grateful that I had this experience early on so that I can remember the true meaning of Christmas.  And yes, you really are reading about Christmas in October.

Anyhoo, my papala works for IBM and they had their "Family Day" today and we went to enjoy a day full of free food and rides.  Here are some pics of the day:

One of my favorite parts of the day was when Lily called her hamburger patty a "cookie" and was very surprised when she took her first bite.


In the meantime I continue to be amazed at all the wonderful things that are happening to us with our house.  It really didn't make much financial sense for me and Ben to go ahead and buy a house now but the spirit just kept prompting us toward this one house.  I'd get excited and then I'd realize something else and start to worry.  But miracles just keep happening:

Miracle #4: the builder installed the wrong doors in the Play Room (except they were actually the doors we REALLY wanted in the first place) and so they apologized and charged us for no doors which took an extra $700 off of the house price (we'll take anything we can get!)

Miracle #5:  Ben found a diamond ring buried a few feet underground 3 years ago when he worked for Rexburg's water department.  After failing to find the owner (which was close to impossible considering how deep it was buried and the fact that it was at a public park) we were left with this diamond ring which Ben had completely forgotten about.  Then this week Lily got into some of our stuff and pulled that out of nowhere!  So we will be selling it to put that towards the house as well.

I cannot believe how miraculous my life is right now.  This house is PERFECT and I'm so excited to move in. I think it's safe to say that the Lord knows us better than we know ourselves.

Our First House!!!!!!!

Ben and I are completely out of our minds.  We are homeowners.  Well, we officially close on our house on October 29th.  Holy cow.  

So here's our story:  we have been planning on buying a house next Spring.  Then we had our family pictures taken and our photographer suggested that we go to a park called Anderson Point.  I grew up in Raleigh and yet I had no clue where that place was.  So as we drove over there we noticed a few neighborhoods in the area had home-buying specials and model homes.  We decided to look into it for the "future."  RIGHT.  So we walked through a couple of homes and fell in love with one called "The Lavender."  I got this jittery feeling and it felt soooo homey.  We instantly fell in love.  So we got a packet with blue prints/info on neighborhood/ et.  That was last Saturday.

So we couldn't stop talking about this one house but we had a few questions.  So I call this woman in my ward named Jane Draper (who seriously just happens to be the best real estate agent in the entire universe).  We asked her a few questions about real estate (not planning on moving forward with this process very soon) and she suggested that we go ahead and look at homes.  So that's what we did.  We looked at homes all week and it was such a bizarre experience.  After the first day I came home soooo sick.  I just felt nervous and nauseous and nothing about that day felt right.  I did love one house but I felt completely uneasy about it (and I used to mock those people on HGTV's Property Virgins who could tell which house was right by a feeling that they got.... now I get it).  The feelings stayed about the same throughout the week and none of the houses compared to the Lavender.  One problem.  It was over our budget.  But we knew we'd regret it forever if we didn't try to get their price down.  

So Sister Draper (I think Superwoman is probably her second identity) warned us that builders don't usually negotiate on price.  They might budge $2K but that's all we can expect.  We still wouldn't have been able to afford it if they only came down that low, but we still tried.  And here's where all the miracles happened: 

#1 - They came down an extra $7K ($14K in total since they've been having a hard time selling it over the summer).

#2 - They've given us everything we asked for (lower earnest money, lower interest rate, lower mortgage insurance rate, and ALL of the stainless steel appliances in the kitchen).

#3 - Jane even declined a large bonus they offered her and told them to put it towards our asking price.  

I seriously feel like bursting into tears because of how amazing our lives are right now.  We are seriously so blessed, and here's why: tithing.  It's a beautiful thing.

So after reading this HUGE blogpost about our house how about some pictures of the cutest house in the entire world?!?!  (P.S. I couldn't upload any pics of the upstairs, but that's OK.  It's pretty boring.... empty room after empty room.)

Us with Jane

The cutest house in the history of houses

Entrance (to the left is going to be a small toy room and to the right is the stairway)

Toy room

Living Room (facing the front door.  We are standing in the kitchen)

My 100% perfect kitchen and 100% perfect man

Where the fridge will go and our HUGE pantry (it's about 8 or 9 feet deep... can you say food storage?)

Powder Room (to the left is the laundry room and the right is the garage)

Picture taken from our property line.... good sized back yard!!!

We are just a LITTLE bit over the top excited about our future house-poorness.  It was built to be completely energy efficient and we got a great deal.  Life can't get any better right now.  :)

Why do they grow so fast?

As I have said before, the Little Woman is obsessed with shoes.  My mom went Christmas shopping this past week (since who knows when my sister's going to pop with her twins) and I asked for these ridiculously hot boots.  As soon as I tried them on for size Lily quickly told me to get out of them so she could try them on.  And the teenage years begin.

She prefers to build her own stadium seating for Sesame Street.

This is how excited she is to see Daddy after a long day of dealing with her wicked mother.  I just love how Ben is her Prince Charming.  :)

I can't begin to say how much I love these party animals. 

Personal Confession: I am addicted to their blankies.  When they're not sitting next to me or using their blankies I steal them and just smell them.  Call me crazy.... I don't care.  Lily and Skyler smells are the BEST!!!!

Skyler can be a huge crybaby but he also has an immense amount of patience with Lily.  He is more than happy to play "dolly" for Lily.  Wow he is getting so big...... 

New Broken Record: Lily and Skyler sat together in this seat for an hour.  And I just got to sit by and enjoy the cool (80 degrees when you consider we're in NC) weather.

Unless you have endless time on your hands only watch the last 10 seconds.  That little man is a my cherub.

Our Walking Skyler

We are so proud of Little Handsome.  He has improved tremendously just in the past few days!!!  Now let's see if he'll start catching up to Lily.

I saw something strange from the kitchen window... I actually thought it was a bunch of mice because I could only see a bunch of black things moving.  I was pleasantly surprised to find all of these black monarch butterflies.  I know it's slightly gross to see the decaying watermelon from our compost pile but I thought it was still worth a picture.  I dragged Ben, Lily, and Skyler out and I even managed to get one to stay on my finger.  

On Saturday night we went to a Latin America festival since my dad, mom, and Ben all served Spanish speaking missions (Mexico, Spain, and Venezuela in that order).  It actually was pretty lame but we all got to eat authentic Venezuelan food for the first time (besides when Ben cooks it) and Ben was in heaven.

These past few weeks have been so rough on the kids.  It was either 3 or 4 weeks ago that Lily and Skyler first got sick.  These of course turned into a sinus infection and ear infection for Skyler and just an ear infection for Lily.  They have just finished their antibiotics and Skyler still has all the cold symptoms.  Why?  Oh because he has 4 molars coming in at the same time.  This of course means limited sleeping for him and for us and a lot of grumpiness on top of that.  I'm trying to remain calm in telling myself that he's suffering more than I am.  I've been sincerely praying for more patience as a mother and it's been interesting that as Skyler has been nonstop crying (he's a pretty big crybaby on top of the fact that he's teething) I feel like I'm getting a small glimpse of what I must look like to Heavenly Father.  Always pouring my heart out and trying to understand when I really don't and whining all the time.  This teething experience has been humbling to say the least.  

Serious kudos to all you moms out there.  I personally would love to have an award show (only moms invited) where we share all of our war stories and give out Toblerones (the big ones) as awards.  I would find that extremely enjoyable.  Until then I'll just enjoy reading y'all's blogs.  

Labor Day

1/2 C. water + 1 Oreo + 1 Toddler = Super Awesome Finger Paint to try to get off the table, floor, child, and dog.  The funny part was that when I saw it Lily acted as if it was new to her and yelled, "OH MY!"  And  she's been saying it ever since.

For Labor Day we were invited to a pool party (thank you Bartletts!)  And Lily was actually willing to get in the pool.  We brought her swimsuit just in case but I was so sure she wouldn't get in that I didn't even bring mine.  This resulted in me having to hold Skyler (aka Aqua Man) who kept trying to get into the water.  Therefore, I ended up getting in the water with my clothes on.  I looked ridiculous.

This is how real men eat steak.

Then we went golfing.  And it looks like she's crying but she's actually "smiling" for the camera.  You look beautiful, Lily.  

Lily was much more interested in exploring these mini towns instead of trying to get a hole in one.  It was so cute because she actually tried climbing up those stairs.

These two crack me up.  You know Skyler was a surprise baby but I'm so glad I had him when I did.  These two are tight.  One of the things that they do daily is sit on opposite ends of the house where they can't see each other.  Then one of them will yell, "UUUHHH!!!!" and the other responds the same way.  Then they both crack up in laughter and run (or in Skyler's case, crawl) to each other as fast as they can.  You know they really are cute when they're not getting into vaseline and oreo water.