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Thursday, June 16, 2011

House!

… and by "we're pretty sure it's for real this time" I mean "we signed a contract, put down earnest money and will be putting down a construction deposit later this week (all of which will eventually go towards our down payment) and we picked out the color of our stucco and our rock.  And chose what structural upgrades we're going to do.  And we're setting up appointment to choose all of our inside stuff: cupboards, carpet, counters, etc.  And we've got the ball rolling on getting our financing approval."

So… uhh… yeah.  I'm pretty sure it's more than just "pretty sure" now.

Just cross your fingers that we can sell without lowering our price (we won't even break even right now) so we don't have to have two mortgage payments.  Cuz that'd stink.  :S

Seriously, do you know anyone that wants a fantastic condo in an even more fantastic ward?  I'm not kidding.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Moon River

Kessa loves to look at the moon out of the car window when we're driving.  When it moves out of sight (or rather, we turn so it's out of sight) she gets really mad.  So last night I was trying to think of songs that had "moon" in them and I was drawing a blank.  So this is what BJ came up with:

Twinkle, twinkle little moon
How I think you're not a spoon
Up above the world so high
Like a saucer in the sky

Twinkle, twinkle little moon
How I think you're not a spoon

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Housing update

Ok, I know you're all on pins and needles about our housing predicament.  [cough]  Hey, seriously.  Several of you have asked me!  So there!  :P

So we talked to Aspen again and got everything straightened out.  (Short story, there was a breech in communication and the floor plan we had on paper with a price was similar to, but not the same as the floor plan we walked through.  Which is why it came with a bigger price tag.)  But we still didn't know what to do.  We played with numbers and realized we could, in fact, afford the higher price tag if we wanted to, but if we were looking at building at that price, maybe we should look at houses for sale at that price first.  So we went back to looking at houses online.  BJ went to California for a week for WWDC (translation for non-nerds: a big nerdy conference for Apple developers), so I decided to take a week off from house hunting.

Except my agent had other plans.  Lori called at 8:30 Thursday morning to say, "I found another builder in Lehi, right by where we've been looking for lower prices and bigger square feet than anyone has offered you.  Do you want to go see them?"  Ummm… yes, please.  3 catches: 1) They're running a promotion to get such great prices, which means they're going fast, which means we have to decide fast. 2) They have lower standard features.  So we'll end up paying more than the base price in upgrades.  3) Smaller lots.  Where with Aspen we were looking at building on a .5 acre lot, these are on .2 acre lots.  Knowing that, I went with her to look through 3 model homes.  And fell in love.

I came home, called BJ and told him that even on .2 acres, if it were up to me, I'd still build this one right now.  So he came home and last night we went and toured them again.  And he agreed with me.  So tonight we're going to go put down our earnest money and start making decisions on stone and stucco colors.  (Yipes!  I'm so bad at decisions like this!)

So we're pretty sure this is for real this time.  It's this house:


And you can find floor plans, etc., here.  Plus some notes on the floorplan:
  • We'll turn the formal living room into a study.  
  • We'll do the extension in the family room, so those dotted lines up top?  Those will be the real lines for the family and dining rooms.  And those new lines will also affect the second story and basement.
  • We're upgrading to the Gourmet Kitchen which will include double ovens (convection and conventional), upgrade our dishwasher, add an island, and put a microwave above the gas range instead of a hood.
  • We're upgrading to the Deluxe Master Bath which will change it from one sink to two and change the tub/shower combo to a separate tub/shower.  (Because it makes the master bath bigger, it changes the walk-in closet in Bedroom 4 to a normal closet.  But I'm ok with kids not fighting about who gets the bedroom with the bigger closet.)
  • By changing the exterior to Elevation B (which is pictured above) it adds a front porch and also a cold storage in the basement.  It also makes my laundry room about 2-feet bigger.
And now that I'm getting into morning sickness I'm realizing that a smaller yard isn't as bad as I thought. Because over the next 10ish years I'm gonna spend a fair bit of time being sick, tired, nursing, etc. And not wanting to do a bunch of yard work.  So it'll be good to start with a smaller yard to get used to taking care of my own yard, then upgrading with our next house when kids are older.  And just focus more on the garden now instead of on garden and yard work.  Plus, we're getting a deeper lot, so we'll have less side yard, but more backyard.

And there are little grassy areas periodically with walking paths and playgrounds for kids, so we'll still have room to play croquet and such. And a clubhouse for parties and with exercise equipment.  (Yes, there's a $19 HOA fee.  But $19 isn't bad at all.)

Oh, and you can also watch a video tour.

So there it is!  We're excited!  And we should be ready to move in around October-ish.  Oh, and did I mention that they do our front and side landscaping for free?  Because they do.  And that's awesome.

The end.  For now.

Wednesday, June 1, 2011

A Memorial Day weekend to Remember

Well. This Memorial Day weekend was quite eventful.  Ready for details?  I thought so.  If you read this blog, you always have to be ready for details.  If you don't like details, scroll to the bottom and I'll do a quick summary.

Eventful Event #1
Remember how excited we were about finally having a house picked out?  Well Saturday morning Lori called to tell us that Aspen crunched numbers with their builders and it was going to cost $40k more than we expected, and oh, by the way, they had told us all along that this was a different house than the one in our price range and a bunch of other nonsense.  (Uh, really?  Despite the fact that the three of us that apparently knew this all along have no idea what you're talking about?  And despite the fact that the other house we were looking at that is clearly bigger and nicer costs about $20k less than the one you're quoting us now?  Ok, we now have two strikes against Aspen.  We're meeting with them again tomorrow to get some straight answers and one more strike and they're outta here!)

So there goes our hopes and dreams scattered over the playground.  Yup, we were out on the playground letting Kessa play while we figured out where we wanted all of our furniture to go on the floorplan we had.  And what fruit trees to plant.  And in the middle of it, we find out that it's just… gone.

[sigh]

Eventful Event #2
Since it was a long weekend and BJ would be home more often than normal, we decided it was a good time to take off Kessa's crib railing and turn it into a day bed.  Nap time went as expected.  She spent most of her time getting on and off the bed and running over and opening the door to come out.  BJ finally went in and told her that she could play in her room or read a book or sleep, but she had to stay in her room.  And she did!  But mostly played and only slept for a half an hour.  Which left her cranky for the rest of the day.  We went over to Trav's house for dinner and games and to keep Kessa awake until she was dead tired.  So when we came home, she happily went straight to bed.  She even crawled into bed herself! It was cute.

BJ and I dinked around a bit, then started playing a game of Dominion.  Kessa had been asleep for about 30-60 minutes at this point when we heard a thunk/crash/scream.  She'd fallen off her bed.  Well, we had expected that, after all.  But what made that crash?  We put pillows beside her crib.  She shouldn't have crashed into anything.  But I went to comfort her anyway.  Long story short, we think she was trying to step off her bed and fell off head first, or perhaps leapt off, and smacked her eye on her doll house several feet away.  Luckily urgent care is open until 10 pm.

That lovely gash in her eyelid only took 4 stitches to close up.  Poor girl.  :(  But she was the happiest she'd been all day while in the Urgent Care waiting room.  Even with blood slowly oozing from her eyelid.  She hated the actual stitching up part (as did I. I wanted to cry right next to her.) but before was great and after was great as soon as they gave her some bracelets and a sticker.  And in the several days since then she's been super happy.  I think I've only had to give her ibuprofen maybe 3 times.

Sorry these aren't great pics, but turns out, 
it's hard to take a picture of an eyelid on an almost-2-year old.

This is Saturday night, the night of the incident, before she got her stitches.

This is Sunday afternoon.  It's much better than Sunday morning where she could barely open her eye, but we were in a rush to go to church, so we didn't get a picture.

Every day her eye changes.  Monday she had amazing swelling and was turning blue.  Tuesday the blue spread down to the corner of her eye and her entire eyelid was a magnificent deep purple/blue, but the swelling went down a lot.  Today it's all starting to look better.  (We've got another picture of today, but it's on Trav's camera and he's in a meeting and thinks that's more important than sending me photos.  So you'll all have to wait.  And blame him for it.)

When we got home that night we turned the crib around so the open side faced the wall.  We didn't want her to fall off onto her new stitches.  In good news, Sunday after her nap, Kessa made BJ turn the crib back around.  "Open it!"  (Pronounced oh-PEN-it)  Minus Sunday night and Monday's nap when we were up in Riverton, she's slept in her daybed for every night and nap since.  Some have been harder than others (yesterday's nap consisted of 30 mins of crying by her door followed by 2 hours of sleeping on the floor in front of her door) but are consistently getting better.  No more falling out. (We hope she's developed a healthy fear of sleeping near the edge or stepping off her bed like it's a stair when it's too dark to see.)  She crawls in by herself and stays there for as long as she normally naps/sleeps.  Even if she plays before she falls asleep, she never comes out.  Even if she opens the door, she immediately shuts it.  Then when she's all done with her nap, she gets up and opens the door to come find us.  It's been AMAZING.  She really is our angel baby.


Eventful Event #3
I was done with the weekend being eventful.  I told even told BJ as much.  Let's just have an uneventful rest of the holiday weekend, k?  But of course not.

Sunday morning I woke up to find … that I'm pregnant!

This is very, very exciting for me.  Most of you probably don't know, but we've been trying to get pregnant for about 14 months now.  It's been really hard on me emotionally.  But I've also developed a much closer relationship to my Heavenly Father.  My prayers have become much more detailed and personal.  Much less vague and asking for general blessings.  I've learned patience and trust in God.  I've learned to be happy despite wanting to be sad.  (Well, not always.  But I'm doing better at it!)  And in good news, perhaps my sanity will stay a little longer with me if I have my kids further apart.   It's funny to me but typically when I think of letting God take charge of timing, I just expect that kids will come closer together.  It had never occurred to me that perhaps God's timing would put our kids further apart.

Anyway, we're super excited about this.  Excited enough that we decided not to make me suffer through three months of morning sickness without telling people.  So congrats you all!  You all get to know from the very beginning!  (Or rather, 4 days after we found out.  But you'll forgive us for that 4-day lap.  We had to be sure to tell all siblings, etc. first.)  And we're crossing our fingers that by me eating healthy and sleeping more and drinking more water and walking daily, I'll be able to get by with less nausea than I did with Kessa.  Especially since I have to keep up with Kessa at the same time.  Oh, and do all the house hunting stuff.  Funtimes!

I'm due the beginning of February.  Which means I get to buy all new maternity clothes to wear in the winter.  And it also means that Grandma and Papa Lovell will only miss the birth by 2 months.  And where they've never missed being there within hours of the birth for any of their 13 grandkids, and now they're missing 2 (Kim is due in August), hopefully having two adorable babies when they get home will help heal all sadness.  And thank goodness for video chat and blogs!


Quick Summary
For all of you too lazy to read my details:
1. Housing plans fell through.
2. Kessa fell off her bed and got 4 stitches.
3. I'm pregnant!