All Moved In

Well our house took much longer for us to get into than we expected but we are finally moved in and getting settled.

I will have much catching up to do on my blog because while I was without my computer we celebrated Jessica's birthday, John's birthday and Mother's Day ( picture to come later).

For now I just wanted to say we are in our new house and doing well.

The adventure has been fun, but I am glad we are DONE!

Just Because!!

Just because it has been a long time since my last post! Too long as a matter of fact and I feel bad about not keeping up. In my defense life has been very crazy, so bare with me as I catch up, this will be a long post.
January was a normal month and we enjoyed bringing in the New Year with two of our kids actually making it until midnight. I did not even stay up until midnight this year! January was also filled with a lot of cold weather and snow. It has been unusually cold here and the amount of snow that we had has reminded many of how it use to be, at least that is what they claim. Matt even said it is more like when he was a kid. So besides being cold and snowy January went well.
February on the other hand was not normal at all. Matt and I had been wondering for several months whether it would be smart for him to go back to school seeing as that I am in school right now myself. We had also been wondering if we should sell our house. We knew that if we sold our house we would not make much of a profit on it with the economy the way it is right now. But we also knew that if he went back to school it would mean that I could not work because I would go to school during the day and he would go at night. So after months of pondering what to do and praying we were still confused as to what the right answer was. We decided to fast and pray about what we were to do. After our fast we both felt impressed that it was the right time for Matt to go back to school and that we needed to sell our house.
So on February 10th we put our house on the market and put our faith in Heavenly Father, Matt got the paper work rolling so that he could go back to school for his Masters, and we waited. The only thing is we did not have to wait long. Our house sold in 10 days! We sold it for just $1500 below our asking price and were asked if we could be out in one month. When Matt and I put the house for sell we thought we would have at least 5 months before our house would sell being that all the other houses that were for sell on our street had been on the market at least that long. Matt and I were now in a race to find a place for us to live before we had to be out on the 19th of March. We had not been seriously looking as we thought we had plenty of time to find a suitable house for us.
We finally found the house that we want and were so happy, until we ran into a snag. Matt and I had asked my mom if we could put a manufactured home on some land of theirs and they agreed. We did not think there would be a problem as there use to be a home there for over 30 years. But when we went to get our building permit they said no and that we have to get a variance if we want to put a house there. Okay fine, we will do it just let us know what we have to do. Little did we know that the process would take over a month. We do not have a month to sit and wait we have to be out of our house now, so what did we do, we moved in with mom. Thank goodness my mom and Ron were kind enough to let us bunk with them for a while. We thought it might only be two weeks at most. Here comes the other snag, after we were already out of our house we find out that there is another meeting we have to attend before we can get permission. Now it looks like we might be with mom and Ron for more than a month before we get into our house.
Despite all of this Matt and I feel very blessed that our house sold so quickly and that we were able to make a profit on the sale. We did not get what we wanted and were not able to move directly into our new house, but we still feel blessed. Our stuff is all in storage right now and we should find out on the 7th of April when we can move forward with our new home. Once we are all settled into our place I will post some pictures and then I am sure I will be able to look back and laugh. Right now though I don't find it all funny. County rules can be very annoying at times!!

Note: I reread this post and realized that the date of publication and the post do not make sense. That is because I started this post and could not finish it. By the time I finished it and actually posted it it was more than a month later. Other note, it is now April 17th and we officially got our house yesterday. We will not be able to move in for about another two weeks, but at least we know there is an end in sight and we will be back in a house of our own soon!

Christmas Fun!!

Our Christmas season was filled with family and friends and I feel so blessed to be able to say that. I know that not everyone gets to spend Christmas with loved ones and there have been times when I have been in that vote. Just two years ago we were without Matt for Chirstmas for the second year in a row because he was deployed. So again I feel blessed to have been surrounded by those that I love over this Christmas season.

Our Christmas season started with Christmas concerts and parties that were just the ticket to get us all in the mood. The concerts were all wonderful and I was so pround of all the kids and how well they did. Jess even had a solo in her Christmas concert and did very well. She still shocks me at how much she has grown up since moving here three years ago. When we first moved here she was extremely shy and I would have never imagined that she would get up in front of her whole school and sing a solo, but she did. She also sang at our ward Christmas party while John played the piano (to see a video you can see my facebook page). Speaking of our ward Christmas party, it was great. We had a lot of fun with our friends that night and the entire program was great.

Once the kids were out for break we had fun playing in the snow, baking, and playing games. We were very lucky to have a white Christmas and to have a perfect sledding spot for kids. My mom's drive way is the perfect size for most of the kids and when they get cold they can just go in and warm up. We spent Christmas Eve at mom's sledding and then also the following Wednesday. The kids also had fun building snow forts in the drifts. This is a favorite due to the fact that we often get blizzards and once they are over we have drifts that are 4 to 6 feet tall, sometimes more. Mom's are even better though as her's will reach up to 8 feet. Needless to say they were in fort heaven for several days.

Christmas day we had a day planned full of fun, but due to our blizzard we were snowed in for two days and spent a quite day with just the five of us. It was nice though to be able to relax and just have fun with new toys and playing games.

I guess I better rap this up before I ramble on too much. I did not put a lot of pictures on here because I posted them on my facebook page and most of you that follow this blog are also my friends on facebook. So if anyone wants to see more pictures of our Christmas fun see my facebook page.