2015 Pinewood Derby

Shortyly after we moved into the new ward we had a pinewood derby for the boys! Their first. We didn't have a ton of time to make the cars, especially since we were so busy with moving things, so right until the moment we left the house the cars were being put together. 

Here they are in the car modeling their derby cars. Morgan's is clearly the bullet from mario kart. William said his was the bat mobile, but he gave it lots of colors too, rather than just black. 

 To give Morgans car the right weight David super glued some big washers to the back of it. Pretty clever. At home it on our kitchen scale it fit in the weight requirements. When we got to the derby though it was too heavy! They had to pry the weights off, but too many came, so we ended up taping some coins to the top of it. That was disappointing. And the weight distribution was all messed up so his car almost always came in last place. Poor Morgan. He took it like a champ though.

 I guess I failed to get a good close up of William's car. His did really well though.

The boys are sitting waiting for their turns.

 Here are all the racers. William got third place! Woot!

They also got indiviual awards for their cars and a fun plaque to hold them on. Morgan's award was for Best Workmanship. 

 William got Best Use of Color. David and I got a chuckle out of that because it was supposed to be the bat mobile, which should be all black. Haha. 

They had fun and it was a well done derby.
During the race Allison fell backwards off one of the folding chairs. She fell through the hole that is at an adults lower back. She hit her head and did the whole pass out thing. Ugh! But, I think that may have been the last time she's ever passed out from crying or hitting her head! Yay! I'm happy to see that habit laid to rest.

Moving Day

The morning of September 1, 2015 we went and picked up the rented Uhaul. Then we proceeded to load it, mostly by ourselves. I'd had most of the house packed at this point, but left a few things for David that I knew he'd want to be in charge of. (Computer stuff, music stuff, lots and lots of miscellaneous cords, etc.) And I left the garage to David for the most part, too. You see, he had this strange idea that it's absurd to pack anything BEFORE moving day. Like, he thought, maybe a day or two before you can start, but certainly not the month in advance like I did. Because it doesn't take that long and you just throw things haphazardly in boxes and voila! You're done! Here is where we all agree that David is a little, well, CRAZY! Packing for a family of 7 takes a lot of time and planning. We have so much stuff, and we mostly use it all. Not a lot of extra. And because David was naive to the time it takes to pack boxes, we had to go back for a couple weeks just to clean out the crammed garage. And to do the deep cleaning of the house. 

Anyway! We got the moving van, which was exciting for the kids. 

We even let them ride their bikes up and down the ramp. Ah, bikes. I remember when the kids could ride them. Now they are all flat because of the one time that they tried to ride them at this house. Stinking goat heads!

Removing the mattresses from the house was another fun moment for children.

 We had people help us load some of the truck that day, and several helped unload it at the new house. We even kept the uhaul a second day to go back and pack up most of the garage. We had almost as much stuff, (well, David did) in the garage as was in the entire house. Our food storage was out there too. Now it's in the cellar, which we've gone into one time since we finished moving. It was nice to have my family and some friends and ward members help us move.

After two exhausting days of moving, (packing and unpacking, loading and unloading the uhaul) we were worn out. The second night after getting the kids in bed, (which were just mattresses across the floor) David and I just wanted to shower and go to bed ourselves. We hadn't used the shower in the new house yet and were dismayed to find that the drain was very slow. It meant our shower had a time limit if we didn't want water spilling out onto the bathroom floor. And it was a quick timer. Sad.

So we crawled into bed, finally clean and rested our aching bones and muscles, but only for a brief moment. I thought I heard something strange that sounding like crackling. David and I got up to investigate. We went downstairs into the dark dining room. The sound was coming from the kitchen area, so I headed over there but before I got to the kitchen I stepped in a puddle of water, and it was kinda zappy. We located a light switch (which is harder than you might think in this house!) and saw water all over the kitchen floor, and that it was coming from a light fixture! Ugh!

This is why the shower took so long to drain! So we turned off the breaker to the lights in that part of the house and found the box with the towels and set to mopping up the floor. Luckily we found it before it had a chance to warp the wood of the kitchen floors. We left a bucket under the light switch surrounded by towels and went to bed.
And that was only the start of all the things we'd have to fix on this house. We had to buy a new well pump and a new water heater within the first few months, though we were told they were brand new. The shower drain had so many many problems. We are very lucky David has a strong background in construction and knows how to fix these things. We've put so much money into repairs that it's kind of funny. I can't even remember them all.
But we love the house anyway and don't regret the purchase. We do wish the contractors who remodeled it were more honest, but you can't change other people. They tried to get away with so many short cuts. Many of them they did, but some of them David caught before we signed the papers.
And that's our story of moving.

Party!

Since we got the keys to the house on David's birthday, we decided to have a nice house warming party/David's 30th birthday party/Lydia's 5th birthday party. So we did! Lydia's birthday is only two days after David's, so since we would be in the thick of moving we wanted to celebrate it before hand. 

Lydia opened her presents. She got the rainbow puppy seen below from my parents and really liked it, but soon after getting it her brothers fought over it and ripped a leg off almost. Her birthday is in a couple of days and she asked for another one. Apparently she really liked it. 

 David also was celebrated.

 We went to look at the house several times before buying it and never once saw a spider, except for in the cellar. When we were there for the party there were SEVERAL huge spiders in the house. HUGE. Not to mention the orb web spider in the orb web outside. Icky. For several weeks after moving in I killed at least one large house/wolf/hobo spider in the house every day.

Home Owners!

On August 31, 2015, we officially became homeowners! Getting the keys to the house was a very exciting thing. One thing that makes it even more special is that we got the house on David's 30th birthday! How cool is that?  Here are the pictures we took of us using our new keys in our new house for the very first time!

New House!

For a few years now we've been working on credit so we could have enough to get a home loan. We were finally approved in July of last year. It was really exciting so we started looking for houses immediately. I spent lots of time online browsing for homes for sale and making lists of the ones that met our criteria. It was an exciting time. 

Once when I was looking online I came to a house, that, upon seeing the first pictures, I was already daydreaming. Morgan was with me and together we oohed and ahhed at each picture of the home. I LOVED it. I wanted it. However, it was more money than we wanted to spend, and might not even get approved for that much. But...I really loved it. So we made an appointment to see it anyway. 

I found the pictures online that were used to sell it. See how lovely?

 It had a lovely shop, which is the thing David cared most about. 

 It had a nice spot for a garden. 

 It had nearly TWO ACRES!

 Usually if the outside was what we wanted and loved, especially with a shop, then the house itself was too small, or most often, a manufactured home. So imagine my delight when THIS was what was inside!

 That kitchen, though...

 Lovely dining room. 

 Laundry room.

 Downstairs bathroom.

Master bedroom. I love the built in cabinets. 

 This is what we use as the TV room. 

 This is the girls room. 

The pictures online didn't even have pictures of two of the rooms. This sun room, which is our school room, is one of my favorite rooms in the house. I took the remainder of the pictures when we were looking at it one time. 

 And this is the boys' bedroom. 

 Upon entering the home for the first time both David and I commented on how nice it was and felt; just from the entryway! We really liked it, but the price was still higher than we liked. So we looked at a few more houses and all of them lacked in many areas. Nothing was as nice as this house. We decided just to put an offer in, something well under the asking price. Our offer was rejected at first, and they said they wouldn't accept anything less than a certain amount. We countered saying it was the best we could offer, but it was a no go. We weren't even approved for what they wanted, so we said, "oh well, guess it wasn't meant to be." But before the day was over, they called back and accepted our counter offer that they originally rejected. YAY!!!
The month of August was spent getting papers in order, signing things, getting inspections, and appraisals and waiting for the minor repairs. Oh, and packing. I spent a lot of time packing.

Alli thought a lot of the packing was pretty fun.

Silly Selfies

Lydia put this hat on my head, backwards, and then asked for some pictures together. So we have some silly pictures of us girls.

August 2015

We've made it to August in both 2016 and in my blogging of 2015! So here are some random things from August.


This lovely sight is something we saw many a time for a long period of time. Allison LOVES filling the toilet with toilet paper.

 Sometimes when the child screams at nap time it's actually because she needs you. Poor Alli.

Our trampoline was much used by our kids and the neighbors. There was a small hole in it which suddenly became a huge rip. (Note: After this rip was in it we no longer let the kids jump on the trampoline for obvious reasons. We moved a couple of weeks later but left this in the backyard for another couple of weeks. When we went back to get it the rip went from one end to the other. We have no doubt that the neighbor kids who helped create the rip broke into our backyard and finished the job. Not gonna lie, I wasn't sad to leave the neighborhood kids behind.)

Here Owen is holding the kitten Teemo. (He disappeared before we moved, so we didn't take him with us.) This is picture worthy because we basically forced him to sit and hold the kitten. Normally he would run the other way when this or our other cat was around, because, you know, little kittens are terrifying. So look at him facing his fears! (You think I'm being sarcastic, but I'm not.)