Our new area...

My mother-in-law asked me the other day what I thought were the pros and cons of living here. It got me thinking about what I love about our new home and area, and what I would change or do without.

Pros:

-Being so in-tune with nature. I love that we see the wild turkeys and deer just about everyday. I love the view out our windows. I love driving up and down our bumpy, dusty dirt road and the white picket fences. 

-Thunderstorms. We live in the foothills of the Sierras and the storms come rolling down out of the mountains. Since moving here we have experienced more thunderstorms than in the 10 years we lived in the Bay Area.

-Friendlier people. On average, the people here are more personable and friendly. We have been invited to other families' churches and activities quite a bit. We have had so many treats brought to us.   We had three families invite us to go trick-or-treating with them.  People feel more settled here and there aren't 12 families moving out of the ward every summer, like in our previous wards.  So people have more of a drive to get to know you better. Our neighbor, Jim, across the street likes to give me advice like, "don't leave your baby outside alone to play, because there are coyotes in the area." :)

-The laundry shoot. This house surprised us with a laundry shoot that sits right between the kids'
bedrooms. It has been a dream! The kids have surprisingly asked only a few times if they can slide down it. The clothes fall into a giant cupboard in the laundry room and it is one of those, "just be careful how you open it" doors if I neglect the washing for more than a couple days.

-The brick fireplace. I always loved the brickwork in my parents' home. The have a wood stove, but they made the design of the bricks be a real feature in our family room. I always hoped to have something similar, so when I saw what they had done in this house, I was so excited! Hubs and his dad built the wooden mantel and added it on. I love how it turned out. The TV on the other hand...can you guess who's idea that was? ;)

(This is a wimpy picture of the fireplace. Sorry. I will post a better pic soon.)

-Living rural, but not so rural. I love that we have a lot of space and everything is more spread out here, but yet all the schools and church is within 10 minutes. All major shopping is within 20 minutes.

-Hubs working from home! The one I am most grateful for! It has been so wonderful in so many ways to have him around during the week.

Cons:

-Being more in-tune with nature. The spiders didn't seem bad at first. But over time they started coming around more and more. After seeing four spiders in the house within 30 minutes, I finally couldn't take it anymore. Hubby sprayed that weekend. The beetles here are giant! Last night it started to rain pretty hard and these huge beetles started flying at all the windows trying to get in. It was really bizarre. And then they decided to all die all over our porches and driveway. Lovely. I have never seen such large moths either. One got in the other night and started fluttering all spastically around the family room. It was really attracted to baby's head and kept trying to land on him. I ran around with my hands stretched out in a cupping shape trying to catch it, while the rest of the family 
looked on and laughed at me. (Update: We have also had a HUGE ant invasion, that we have been battling for weeks now.  We also had a large rat tear apart tons of stuff in our garage and eat through our fuel line in our mini-van)

-Being farther from family. We were spoiled being only an hour-and-a-half away from hub's parents all those years. The 3-hr drive has proven to not be as bad as I thought though.  It does put us a couple hours closer to Utah.

-Poison oak. We have all this land now, and it is covered in the stuff. I have heard it is a nightmare to get rid of and more so to keep it from coming back. We can't make progress on our goals for the property until we have it cleared, which won't be cheap. Not sure if we want to tackle that one ourselves though. Makes me itch just thinking about it.

Here is some progress pics of the house. This room is what you see when you walk in. These bookshelves will be fun to decorate. There is a large built-in bookcase in the family room that now houses all of our books, so I get to experiment with these ones. This room is the only one without overhead lighting and was really dim, so hubby installed these two wall lamps. I have a huge 30x60 photograph from my brother's photography business (jimmybreitenstein.com) that I am going to hang. I just need to find a frame big enough, at a reasonable price.

Well, that's all for now. :)

Counting down the days...

...until we move in!

Offer

After weeks of preparations and hold-ups, we finally listed our house last Wednesday. I'll tell ya, as exciting as it was, having to keep the house spotless and picked up with five kids was a challenge! Thankfully, by Saturday we had an offer!

Now we just need to find a new house...

Choices

Hub's opportunity to work from home came to us in an interesting way.  Four years ago, before we decided to purchase a home in CA, we looked into other areas to raise our family. Hubs contacted a head hunter to look for jobs for us in Utah and the surrounding states. At the time, there were not any opportunities in valuation and so we decided to move forward with our life in CA.

In August, this same head hunter contacted hubs and told him there was an opening in CO that may fit us well. After many months of discussion and interviews, as well as a trip out to Denver, we decided to take the job.  I was very excited about the new adventure for our family, but something just didn't sit right.

Hub's current firm was not happy about the news, to put it lightly.  They kept trying to persuade him to reconsider. Finally, his bosses told him that if he really wanted a change of scene, why not work from home? He would still get the promotion that was planned for this year as well. As soon as he told me about this offer, I new it was the right choice for many reasons.

So hubs rescinded his acceptance to the firm in Denver. Now we had to decide: 1) stay put, 2) move closer to hubby's parents, 3) move to Utah, or 4) choose another location that fits what we are looking for.

Utah seemed like such a fun idea! I would get to be close to all of my family and many friends. We would have snow in winter! But realistically it just didn't seem like the best idea. Hubs still needs to be close enough to the office to be able to get in when he needs to.  He would have had to schedule flights each month, which would get expensive.

It is a seller's market in our area right now and for many other reasons seemed like a good idea to sell. We will be listing our house the beginning of May.

I would love to be closer to hubby's folks, but prices are very high for what we are looking for.

So we are looking at other areas that are close enough to the city that hubs can drive in if needed, on occasion.  Areas which are still nice, but we will get much more bang for our buck. I never anticipated this kind of change for our family, although it is something I constantly dreamed about. I am sad to leave our first home that we have purchased and the area we have lived in since 2006, but so excited for a new adventure!

Changes

When I was a child, one of my favorite parts of the day was sitting down with my family and having dinner together. I remember waiting for my dad to come home and he would sit and read the paper for a few minutes while my mom finished preparing the food. Sometimes she would listen to music on the cassette player. I can still picture her standing at the kitchen stove, the stove light on overhead while the light in the rest of the house was slowly dimming with the passing of the day.

When my mom passed away, family dinner was a little less frequent and a little more chaotic. My two oldest siblings were attending college and my sister and I ran the show most days until my dad could get home from work. My dad worked hard to balance things as a single parent, but it just wasn't the same. If I never have to eat hot pockets or canned ravioli again, I won't complain. :)

When I married, one of the things I looked forward to the most was having dinner with my husband, and then involving the children when they came along. Both my husband and I were still going to BYU and working. I had an internship 2.5 hrs away on the weekends. Hubby's job was up in SLC.

When we graduated and moved away for hub's new job, I thought, "Finally!" I was so excited to have a sit-down meal each evening with my husband and growing family. What a fool I was. The first year, we tried so hard to make it work, but that meant not sitting down to eat until 8:30-9:00 at night. If we didn't have any children yet, eating that late wouldn't have been a problem. "Someday my husband's work schedule will ease up and he will be able to get home at an earlier hour," I thought. Family dinner may seem like a silly thing to fuss over for some, but not only was hubs not able to be home for dinner but he wasn't even able to get home until after the kids were in bed most nights. The busyness of his job has fluctuated and there have been weeks at a time when he can get home between 7-8 p.m and that has been so wonderful for me and the kids. But there have also been weeks at a time when he can't get home until midnight or later, just to turn around and go back to work at 6:00 a.m. If I thought it was difficult for me, I can't imagine the pressure he has felt. I am truly grateful that he doesn't work weekends too often and only travels a couple times a year.

Nine years and four more children later, hubs has been given the opportunity to work from home. This is a blessing I can't be grateful enough for!

To be continued...

Twists and turns

I was sure horrible at blogging last year. One post...pathetic. I was going to scrap the blog all together, but I always enjoy reading updates from family and friends, so I guess I will try to keep with it, especially with all the upcoming changes.

Here is a little update on the kids:

Child #1 is still full of energy and is loving school. It doesn't come easy for her but she works hard. She is our little tomboy and is super competitive, and not a gracious loser. Reminds me of myself as a child. My siblings didn't like me to join in when they were playing games because I would make a fuss when I lost. She is always entertaining us with new songs and dance routines she makes up and has her sibs participate in. She is a great little mama and loves to hold the baby for me and change him.

Taking a selfie, instead of pics of her science fair project, 

like she was supposed to be doing.

Child #2 likes to read one of our Little Golden books called, "Nurse Nancy", and has decided to take that role upon herself in our family. She has a little kit up in her room that she uses whenever someone in the family gets hurt.  When she initially set it up, she told me, "I hope someone gets hurt soon, so I can give them a band-aid." :)  She enjoys school but since she is so much of a perfectionist, homework can be a challenge at times.  She loves to go outside and wander around and eat a snack when she gets home, or play in her room alone for awhile. She definitely likes her alone time. She has a sensitive little heart and gets upset whenever someone else is feeling sad.

Child #3 is growing like a weed and learning a lot. He will definitely be ready for kindergarten next year. At least academically wise. He thinks it is fun to do math flash cards. Because he is left-handed, his writing is coming along a little more slowly. He likes to read "Dick and Jane" books to me and work on his preschool book.  He is still nervous in new situations and around new children.

Child #4 is very mischievous and undoes as fast as I can do. Trying to clean up with him around is very counterproductive.  He is the clown of the family and makes everyone laugh a lot! This morning everyone was wrestling on the bed with dad and dad had oldest child trapped under the pile of children. She cried out for #4 to rescue her, so he yelled, "Cannonball!" and jumped on the pile of bodies.

#5 Little one is three months old today. Can't believe it! He loves to smile and is starting to try to talk to us. At his two month check-up he was 15 lbs 3 oz. This expression below is pretty typical. He looks at the world with wide eyes! He is starting to be less fussy and can lay on his own for good stretches and look at the lights on the Christmas tree. Wait what? We still have our tree up? We'll take it down one of these days.

I was released as Primary President last Sunday. Bittersweet. I love working with the children in Primary, but it will be nice to take a step back and focus on some other things that need attention right now.

This post is getting long already, but I hinted at some changes coming our way. That will be saved for my next post. ;)

Family fun

Over the last few months our family has been able to be a part of a lot of fun adventures.

DISNEYLAND!

The kids still talk about it almost daily. Once child in particular (#3) is counting down the days (or years) until we get to go again. He already has planned out what he wants to do the next time. 

Ahh. Brings back childhood memories. I sure loved gymnastics when I was a girl, and this little gal below sure enjoys it too. Both girls are currently doing gymnastics, but we may take a break for the next few months, because of...

 ...Softball!

 Hubs decided to buy a huge bag of mussels at Costco and learned how to prepare and cook them. The kids were fascinated by the process and needless to say, there weren't any leftovers. Even littlest ate a bunch!

This little cutie lost her tooth a few weeks ago and she still hasn't lost her second top tooth.

Oldest turned 9! Wow! I feel old.

Over Christmas, the grandparents kindly took the kids for the day, while the three married couples, along with hub's younger single brother, went to the BYU football game in San Fran. We walked around the city for awhile, hubs showed off his office, and we ate pizza with toppings like broccoli and potatoes, which was amazingly good.  Love this family!!