We're Officially Adults

We closed on our house yesterday! Everything went really smoothly with our loan and we had no delays. So we closed a few days early and got to sign a mile-high stack of papers.. and even got to take a copy of all of them home!  We get the keys today and we couldn't be more anxious.  We feel like REAL adults now.  We are parents. We have a house that we will be paying a mortgage on. THIS IS CRAZY!!

We have TONS of work to do on this house before we can move in.  Let me include you on a little taste of our upcoming week:
-Rip out all carpet and nails and staples.
-Check for any urine stains (yep the joy of dogs...) and if any, cover in Kilz primer.
-Remove all baseboards on the main level (carefully as we plan on putting them back on)
-Remove the sub floor in the kitchen and front entry way.
-Paint as many walls as possible in the entire house.
-Install hard wood flooring in the entry way, hallway, living room, kitchen, pantry, dining area, garage hallway, half bath, and laundry room.
-Reinstall baseboards.
-Get carpets ordered, shipped and installed.
-Clean the entire house.
-Get the vents and air ducts cleaned out of remaining dog hair and dander.
-Pick up a new furniture set from RC Willey that we purchased a month and a half ago.
-Pick up stuff we have been storing at Cam and Kasey's house in Lehi.
-Move ALL of our stuff to the new house hopefully on Saturday February 4th.

Sound like fun to anyone?!


We have a lot of work to do... and if any of you are willing to help, we will take whatever you will offer. We will be at the house in Spanish Fork every night from 5 to 11.  I will also be there during the day some times. So any day or night that you are free- come on down! We will always have a job for you to do.

After this move, we will be tired, sore, and broke, but SOO happy to be in our own home!

A New (Home) Life on the 27th

We're one step closer to being homeowners. We received our approval letter from the bank. Now we have three weeks to close. WOW! That's quick. But we've been told it can and will be done. We couldn't be more excited!

Our home. (As long as the process runs smoothly.)

We've posted about this house previously but to brush up, it's a house in Spanish Fork in a little neighborhood near the highway called Spanish Fields. We've looked at a number of houses in this area of Spanish Fork. The neighborhood is a little cookie cutter and the houses a little boxy but the prices are amazing. We really love the home though. The layout is so logical; nothing strange going on and it has plenty of room to grow. Built in 2006 it's newer so there isn't a lot of big projects. Except one. All new floors throughout.

The day we saw the house we were greeted with what seemed like burying our faces in 6 feet of wet dog fur. Obviously this was a concern right away. As we walked through the house we didn't see any major issues except the carpet. It was as if it had been found in a dumpster behind an old skating rink. There is even a gaping burned hole where it looks like a fire was built to keeps the wolves at bay. However, we pushed forward. The rooms were spacious and the closets in correct proportion with the room sizes. The master is just the right layout to put our king bed on the appropriate wall; it didn't leave us wondering where we would put the bed as some homes do, even with a big master. A major plus is the master bath and closet. Finally, my wife can have room to move around and enough space to hang the jammed contents of her current closet. Ok, my closet is equally jammed.

Looking out from the kitchen over the dining and family rooms. Not much separation so we're carpeting the family room and putting hard floors in the dining room, kitchen, pantry, entry and living room.

A logically thought out floor plan puts 2,921 sq ft on two floors without a basement. Walk in the front door and you enter a good sized living room. It leads down a short entry into a great kitchen connected to which is a huge pantry (YES!). Looking out from the kitchen is a good sized dining room and a family room, all open and spacious. Off the dining room is a sliding door that leads into the backyard where, luckily and unfortunately, the dogs (at least two great danes) took care of business. Not huge but enough for playing and a small garden. Needs a little work but with some seeding and fence finishing it will be great. Off the family room is the entry from the garage. In the entry is what would usually be the laundry room and opposite that, a half bath; something we decided was a must-have.

Living room.

The garage, ah the garage. Oh how long have I yearned for your trusting embrace and available space. It's not huge by any means but it doesn't really matter. It's a place to hang my tools and upgrade my man card. I'm as excited about the garage as I am about anything else.

Off the short entry into the kitchen/dining are the stairs that take you up into a huge loft or upstairs family room. What a great place for kids and informality.

Pretty stoked about the kitchen.

From there you enter the master. And it is a great master. Opposite the master is a hallway with the remaining 2 rooms, closets and bathroom. The first is Jack's room. He's going to absolutely love it when he's old enough to care. It's big and has plenty of room to store all of his possessions that he cares about equally as little as having a room. Except for an empty water bottle and a plastic package with a nursing cover in it which together make up his favorite toys.

Next to Jack's room is the laundry closet. We could move it downstairs into the empty room that should be the laundry room but we love the idea of laundry right next to Jack's room and on the same floor as the master.

Then the guest bath. It's a guest bath. Sink, tub, toilet.

One of the two closets across from the bathroom is for linens etc. and the other houses the 50 gallon water heater, awesome, and one of the two furnaces. One for upstairs and one for downstairs. Awesome as well. Something we didn't know about until our inspection. Also there is an AC unit for both up and down too. Can't beat that.

So that's our house. We close on the 27th and order new carpet. Then we will paint everything and rip out the old carpet the next week. We'll put in the new carpet and hard floors when they get there and move in hopefully the first half of February. We can't wait!

Oh, about the dog smell. We were worried but the inspector showed up and comforted us by saying it wasn't even that bad relatively speaking. It's not urine so replacing the carpet will take care of it. That was a weight off of our shoulders.

We'll post pictures and updates about how it's all going.

All I want for Christmas... no seriously.

Not many people know this about me (Brandon). And why should they? It's not something that pops up in normal conversation very often. But I'm telling the world now. Well, at least the 5 of you reading this.

It started when I was 14 and my younger brother and I were playing a common, not seemingly dangerous game of throw the object at each others' faces. Haven't heard of it? Well it was a common occurrence in our shared basement family room turned bedroom, (lots of space for launching said objects). The object of choice for this particular round was our niece Alyssa's soft, furry Elmo doll. What could possibly go wrong? As Chris and I hurl Elmo back and forth I decide I'm going to dodge the next assault by diving between our bunk beds. As I take flight my head instinctively turns to see my nemesis fail and BAM! One of Elmo's rock solid eyes in the midst of all that plush finds my mouth and I'm left with half a front tooth and lots of self confidence missing.

I thought my life was finished. Come to find out, the tooth could be fixed with relative ease. So I went on with life, braces and all. Until two weeks before I left on my mission. Another fun-filled game this time with a friend from college. We were taking turns holding a half-sized punching bag for each other. Obviously in a girl filled apartment, because we were so extremely tough and very impressive by our own standards. With one uppercut from my colleague one of the two straps that support the bag when hanging bounced toward my face and the metal ring secured on the end of it found my mouth as quickly and covertly as Elmo's stealthy eyeball. I stood there as unimpressive as I could possibly be with the same half of the one tooth absent and the bottom fourth of the other deciding to follow suit. I snatched what I could find of my teeth from the ground thinking the shards must be worth saving and made myself absent.

I went the next two years without incident. I returned home and my dentist told me veneers were the way to go in fixing them for good. Not knowing any better I went with it. After grinding my poor teeth down to nubs the veneers were attached. And with almost nothing for the veneers to glue onto they eventually started breaking off if I bit down on something hard.

Today I have no choice but to avoid any contact between food and my two front teeth. And I mean food in general, not just the hard stuff. It's a terrible way to live your life; trying to bite everything with the side of your mouth. Jamming everything in the corner so you can get a good rip. Try it out, it's extremely unpleasant and borderline savage. In restaurants I'm 93% positive people are asking themselves, "Who's the caveman that can't bite his food like a civilized human being?"

My current dentist knows how poorly the veneers were done and suggested fixing them for good. However, our insurance wasn't going to cover any of it and fixing my teeth became a want instead of a need. I didn't give fixing them a second thought until this Christmas.

My loving, caring and amazing wife decided to surprise me a bit. My final gift this year was a little box, light in weight but heavy in compassion. As my wife played the song "All I want for Christmas..." on her iPod I opened the gift to find a ring box inside. I knew what it contained. My older brother Aaron's two wisdom teeth that we pass around my family as a gag. I laughed and thought, "My wife is funny." Then it started to hit me. There is more to this than I thought. Steph started to explain and my tears started to flow. She knew exactly what I really wanted and needed. A normal life! So within the next month I will be going through the process of getting my teeth back. What an amazing, sensitive and understanding gift! I love my wife and she's made it obvious that she loves me.

Aaron's wisdom teeth representing my new two front teeth.

Jack Says Mama!

Jack just started to say mama! I know he is just discovering different sounds and it is a normal developmental stage to say mama and dada without knowing what he is saying, but it is seriously the cutest thing and it melts my heart. Brandon was out of town in China when Jack started saying it, so I recorded it and emailed it to him while he was gone.  Now I will share it with all of you!

Our House Search Update

We've been asked a lot lately how the house hunting is coming. So I thought I would post about it and let everyone know!  It makes us happy when people ask how things are going.  We're very excited and anxious to be home owners... so we could talk your EARS off about the houses we have seen and the progress!

We have 3 offers in on houses currently.  They are all in Spanish Fork.  One of them we are the back-up offer, so we aren't thinking that one is going to turn out positively for us.  We are the first offer on the other two. They are both in the same neighborhood (Spanish Fields in Spanish Fork, Utah) and the exact same layout/style.  They have a lot of similarities and they also have a lot of differences which is nice.  We would be completely happy in either of these homes.

They are both short sales, which translates to "LONG SALE."

 House number one:

In short:
Has 2 mortgages, so the process is taking longer.

More details:
The first one is the one we posted about a bit ago here.  Great price, great house, lots of square-footage, needs a yard, needs a fence, needs paint, but has great new carpets. Unfortunately it has 2 mortgages currently, so we have to have our offer accepted by 2 different banks, which means the process will probably take twice as long.  We know the sellers accepted our offer, and the BPO was ordered (real estate appraisal.. not a real appraisal but they basically give their opinion on what the house is worth and then the bank will go off that opinion and decide whether our offer is acceptable of not) about 3 weeks ago and still hasn't been completed. So we are still waiting.

House number two:

In short:
Just put down the offer; so far so good.

More details:
The second one we put the offer down the day Brandon and I got back from out of town (so about a week ago). It has a great yard, only needs a fence in the very front, lots of square-footage, and needs all new carpet throughout the house.  So we priced out the carpet and flooring that needs to be done and submitted our offer based on the amount we will be spending once we get the house.  We know the sellers accepted our offer, the real estate agent has requested information from us, has submitted everything to the bank, and the bank requested more information. So it seems as though the bank is active at this point.  They also have a website they use to submit all information and to communicate with, which is supposed to expedite the process.  Let's hope! This house only has one mortgage currently so only one bank to work with.  We're hoping that when a BPO is ordered, they will consider the fact that ALL the carpets will need to be replaced and be nice on the price.

Anyways, wish us luck, say a prayer, and cross your fingers that one of these work out.  And they work out soon.  My goal is to be in a house for the holidays.  Wouldn't that be an amazing Christmas present to us?!

Thanks for all your support.  We love you all.

The Torture of Weening From Swaddling

Jack's an amazing sleeper and always has been. We've been pretty spoiled. He started sleeping 8 hours straight in the night when he was 7 weeks old.  Then he started sleeping 10-12 hours around 9 weeks. He takes 2 to 3 naps a day for 2 hours each nap. We don't have to put him to sleep, we don't have to rock him or anything.  But he does have to be swaddled with his bear pacifier.  With those two things, he sleeps perfectly!

 We use the Velcro swaddle blankets and they've been great since Jack likes to sleep with his feet straight out and his arms to his side. Well he grew out of the small size and there isn't a medium, so he has been in the large for a month now, but he is too skinny for it! It is on the edge of the Velcro and now it won't stick anymore. So he gets his arms out and can't calm himself down. So we end up going in there and re-swaddling him so he can fall back to sleep.

Well he's now over 5 months old and we keep being told from everyone (seriously it must be the question/advice we get most often) that we need to stop swaddling him. So this week I've decided to focus on getting Jack to sleep without being swaddled with his pacifier on his chest.

It's Monday. I just put Jack down for his first nap. OMG I don't know if I can handle this! I think I have tried everything...
1. I rocked him to sleep while holding him.  I put him in his crib on his tummy with his pacifier in his mouth. He stayed asleep but woke up by the time I made it back to the living room.
2. I then flipped him over on his back and put a blanket around his stomach with the pacifier in the blanket and in his mouth. He then cried and kicked and I saw on the video monitor that the blanket was completely covering his face.
3. I went in to remove the blanket and left him without a blanket. He was all smiles as he saw me and when I left, he started screaming.
4. I let him cry for 20 minutes straight! He never calmed down. He just kicked and moved his arms.
5. I went back in there and held him to try to calm him. I finally got him calm again. I slowly started to lower him back into the crib and he started screaming again.
6. So I put him in the swing. I didn't swaddle him. I buckled him in the swing with his pacifier (maybe we will try one of the 2 things at a time). I turned on some white noise and left the room.  He sat in the swing awake for about 5 minutes then fell asleep.
7. He was asleep for 12 minutes until he started sucking on the leg of the bear pacifier and kicking.  Right now he's getting fussy again.

So now I sit here an hour after putting him down and he slept for a total of 12 minutes. THIS IS TORTURE!!! I don't know if I can do this for 2 more naps today plus all night, oh and multiply that by 7 for the rest of the week!

Help me! What can I do differently?

Our Little Roly Poly

Ok Jack is a super skinny baby. He maybe has a total of 4 rolls on his entire body and they're more like skin rolls than fat rolls. So the title of this post isn't referring to him looking like a roly poly, but instead acting like one!

Jack learned how to roll over! He's been rolling from his tummy to his back for a couple of months now (but still not intentionally), but just started to roll from his back to his tummy! I think it's so funny. I'm so proud of our little man! I took some videos on my phone and thought I would share them with you.

He shares a little treat at the end of two of the videos, which I think is funny, and a normal occurrence around here, so enjoy!

P.S. Sorry the quality is awful!!

 

Jack at 5 months.

Truth or Photoshop.

You know those infomercials on TV for a workout video that GUARANTEES you will lose half your body weight or some insane amount like that? And they have before and after photos of people who have used the video and lost the weight?  Is it just me or does the after photo seem a little far fetched? I always wonder if they get a picture of a completely different person, or if they just used photoshop to make them look skinnier. Well despite all that, I am a sucker for those infomercials. I even own some of the videos.  And with life as hectic as it is these days, I decided that these videos might be my only resource to a workout.  I try to go to the gym, but it doesn't seem to happen.  I tried running, but my body just doesn't run.  So the videos are the answer.  And I am here to be your REAL life example and let you know if these videos actually work or not!


So here is the collection of videos I am using.

1. 10 Minute Trainer
2. 30 Day Shred (Jillian Michaels)
3. Hip Hop Abs
4. So You Think You Can Dance Get Fit "Cardio Funk" workout video
5. Paula Abdul's Get Up and Dance workout video (classic.  Love this one)
6. Crunch, Tae Boxing
7. Core Cardio
8. Cardio Dance Jam
9. Just Dance 2 on the Wii (if you are wondering why this is on my list, then you haven't tried it! This is so hard. Try doing this for 30 minutes straight without a break!)

Brandon and I have been talking about losing weight ever since Jack was born.  During pregnancy, I gained a few too many pounds... and Brandon might have as well:)  So about a month and a half ago, we finally set a goal to lose some weight by Thanksgiving.  And if we both hit our goal, we get to go on a cruise next year. YAY VACATION!!

Our Goals:
Brandon: Lose 17 pounds
Steph: Lose 20 pounds

And two weeks ago, we finally started trying to lose weight. Go us.

So two weeks down and the results are:
Steph: Total loss of 7 pounds
Brandon: Total loss of 8 pounds


I'm gonna try to keep record of our weight loss, and any tips or helpful things we have learned along the way here on our blog.  So keep checking back to see how we are doing.

Another Offer. Another Light of Hope.

The last house we put an offer on felt like the one.  We both got all tingly and giddy whenever we thought about our new life in that house.  We looked up the church we would be going to, we talked to a neighbor who was super nice, we drove around the neighborhood, looked at the area, the river, the sports complex right by it, the parks, the stores and restaurants, and we drove to our brother and sister in laws house, Chris and Julia, to see how far it was from their place. 

We were hooked. It was like love at first site. There were imperfections but we saw those as potential.  It was perfect for us.  So when we found out that they didn't accept our offer and took a different offer, we felt like our true love had denied us or something.  We never even got the chance to fight for it.  We still don't know how much the accepted offer was for.  I became distraught (even despite Brandon's post saying we weren't knocked down).   The house hunting slowed down. We were comparing all the houses we saw to the one we put an offer on. 

Until now.  Brandon went to Toronto this past week for work (such a big timer... I love it!) and I went and looked at a house while he was gone in the same neighborhood as the one we put an offer on.   And I put an offer on it! We faxed the paperwork to Brandon in Canada and $26 later, the offer was in.  The bad news is it's a short sale.  (At first we avoided short sales, but now it is impossible.  There are so many!)  There's also 2 mortgages on the house, so it has to be approved by 2 banks. Ergh.  But the good news is that the sellers approved the offer and it was submitted to the first bank last Wednesday.  So we're hoping for an exception in the short sale process and hoping we hear word soon.

Cross your fingers. Wish us luck.  This house is for us!

Jack Laughing

We are very biased parents.

We think our baby boy is the cutest person to ever be born.  But after watching this video, I think a few of you might think the same thing!  He melts our hearts.  Sometimes I get nothing done because I enjoy holding him and watching him laugh all day.  We are so blessed to be parents to this well-tempered, happy, sweet child. 

This video is just over 2 minutes long, but he laughs the whole time! Well worth it.