We Bought a House!

As I've mentioned earlier, we started looking at houses at the beginning of January.  It took us just over a month of looking, and several non-winning offers, before we found our new house.  Honestly though, it was worth it.  This house is exactly what we said we wanted.  It's just over our original budget (we raised our budget once we started looking), has 3 bedrooms/2 bathrooms, the 2nd biggest kitchen out of the houses we saw, and is need of some cosmetic updates (but structurally we're good).  As a bonus, it's right next to a park, our chapel, a grocery store, and our good friends the Calls.  We couldn't have asked for a more perfect spot!

And now, because you're all dying to see pictures, here's our house!  Andy took most of the pictures when he was up at the house getting quotes for some work.  Be prepared for pink overload.  The previous owner (or possibly the original owner since the previous owner was a 90 year old man) really liked pink!

The entry way while standing in the entrance to the living room.  The front door is on the right, the hall to the boys' bedrooms is straight ahead and the family room/rest of the house is to the left.

The living room.  We're in love with the ceiling!

Fireplace in the living room and a slightly better shot of the ceiling.

The family room (our awesome realtor Bina is on the left with her super cute little boy!)  This room has one of the 3 skylights in the house.  We'll be expanding the doorway she's standing in so we have a more open kitchen/family room.  The door at the far side of the room leads to the laundry room and master bedroom.

The dining room part of the kitchen and the door to the back yard.

The kitchen (and Charlie...who is currently getting rid of all the popcorn ceilings!)  Do you see all those cabinets and all that counter space?  I went to bed dreaming about cooking in there more than one night.  Also, you can see our "vintage" appliances and our trash compactor (the dishwasher is next to the sink).  We're planning on moving the microwave and wall oven to where the trash compactor is and making that corner a little pantry.

Down the hall from the family room is our laundry room that leads to the garage.  We're pretty excited to have a real laundry room with space for an extra freezer!  It even has a closet for my craft stuff and it's own sink!

The master bedroom.  I told you they liked pink!

Master bath (you can see our closet is behind Andy). There's another skylight above the tub.

Master toilet (complete with hand rail for when I'm 9 months pregnant and need some help getting up).

This will be Adam's room.  I'd rather put Isaac in here, but since it's slightly closer to our bedroom, we're putting Adam in here.

The view of the 2nd bathroom from Isaac's room.  It's a jack-n-jill bath between the back bedroom and the hall.  The final skylight is above the shower.  

The back bedroom (which will be Isaac's).  It has it's own door to the back of the house...which is going to get replaced
 with a window this fall.

We're pretty excited about this house of ours!  Not pictured are the awesome closet in the hall next to the boys's rooms (yay for extra storage), the garage (yay for covered parking and no more stairs), and our teeny-tiny backyard.  We hired someone to remove all the popcorn ceiling before we moved in.  I would have left it, but it was starting to look gross in some areas and in the skylights it allowed a lot of dust to collect which just looked nasty!  As soon as we move in, my mom and sister Sarah are coming down for Spring Break to help us unpack and tile the bathrooms (they're currently carpet).  We are so excited to move in this Saturday and start making this house our own!

Adam at 5 Months

Lately the song "Don't Blink" has been running through my head, because seriously this little boy is growing up so fast!  It's going 10x faster than it did with Isaac!

In this last month Adam:

• Learned to roll over
• Has started sitting fairly well as long as he has a little support (like if he's sitting in between my legs or on my lap)
• Has gotten so social!  He's started grabbing at everything!  Mouths and my water bottle are the favorites.  I love having him reach out to play with my face.

This face cracks me up

He finally started actually playing with the toys on this instead of just laying there looking at them.

When we were all sick there were a few times where he would only sleep if he was being held.  It was nice to have Andy home so I could just sit and hold my baby without Isaac being ignored.  One of my favorite parts of being a mom is cuddling with a sleeping baby.

Starting to sit (I swear I've spent all month trying to get a good picture of him).  As a side note, look at how cute his chubby thighs are!

He's figured out how to get his foot in his mouth and pull on his socks!

He finally rolled over on the last day of February!  He still doesn't roll over much, so I think he just rolled over to tell me he could so I'd quit worrying.

Sometimes when Isaac is sleeping we like to take selfies.

This is the smile he flashes just about everyone we meet.

We've all been involved in the new house.  Even Adam was recruited to help pick out paint colors (which I have yet to even start picking out)!

I got them matching sunglasses!  This is one of my favorite purchases ever!

He can't pull himself up, but he can stay standing for a minute or two if he's standing up next to something.  Have I mentioned that he's growing up too fast?

The other highlight of the last month or so is the fact that his eyes are turning brown!  I'm 90% sure that's what's happening at least.  I am so excited to have a brown-eyed boy to go with my blue-eyed boy!

We sure love this sweet boy!  Even though he's only 5 months old, I can't imagine our family without him!

Life Lately: February 2014

Yet another month has come and gone.  I can't believe how quickly February went!  The major events of the month were:

• Finally finding our house!  More on that later.
• Every single one of us coming down with the same cold the week after we got the house (we were so grateful that we had a house and didn't need to go out looking while we were sick).
• Valentine's Day
• A playdate with some of Isaac's friends once we got better
• Going to the zoo.

We got Isaac this Noah's Ark set for his 1st birthday and he just recently started playing with it a TON!  He loves the animals and Noah is "bampa".

One day after house hunting Andy worked from home for the afternoon.  Isaac was really excited to get my laptop and "work" right next to Dad.

The weather has been a little crazy here this month!  We've gone from 70+ degrees to the 30s overnight more than once!

One cold, rainy day Isaac decided to entertain himself by cleaning our tub.  I'm not complaining!

When it finally warmed up a little we went to play outside.  Isaac picked up almost every stick we saw.  At one point he had 7 or 8 in his hand.

We loved watching the Olympics!  Getting an antenna so we could actually watch was a great investment!  Isaac loved watching the "pincesses" ice skating.  He would get so excited whenever we got to watch them!

Back in October Isaac got a green straw cowboy hat at a party put on by Andy's work.  It finally fell apart to the point where it was shedding EVERYWHERE!  We finally got him a new, black hat.  He's happy to have a new hat and we're happy to not have green straw all over the apartment!

One morning I told Isaac it was library day and he immediately grabbed one of our cloth bags and started putting books into it (not necessarily just library books).  He's a big fan of library day.

On Valentine's Day, one of the girls in our ward put on a party for all the nursery kids.  It was absolutely gorgeous weather so we walked down to the party.  I don't have any pictures of Isaac playing, but he had enough fun that he was heartbroken to leave!  Seriously, tears the whole way home!

Just a fraction of the people who were at the party.  We didn't think to take a picture until almost everyone had left!

That afternoon Isaac woke up from his nap with the cold that we then passed around the whole house.  Not even Andy escaped it!  We spent the next week curled up in blankets watching movies.  One day Andy even stayed home from work to help me with the boys because they were both sick and I was sick enough that I couldn't do it all by myself.

We had found our house by the point, so Andy spent a lot of the week watching videos for how to do the projects we have upcoming: laying tile, laying wood laminate flooring, painting, fixing a ceiling fan, etc.  Isaac was sick enough that he just wanted to curl up next to Dad and watch the videos with him.

Luckily the weather was gorgeous the whole week, so we were able to get some fresh air and go on lots of walks.  Adam LOVED the time outside!

Poor sick Isaac...

I knew Isaac was feeling better the day our apartment looked like this before noon.

Once we were feeling better we were so excited to have new friends come play!

Silence during a play date is usually a bad thing... especially when there's 3 toddler boys together!  I looked over and saw Isaac sharing his favorite books with Gray.  He kept going "yoohoo" and waving for Nash to come join them.

The first meeting of the Friday Night Movie Club.  Dumbo and popcorn.  It doesn't get much better.

That Sunday we were all just sick enough that I didn't want to go and risk getting everyone sick, so we headed out to White Rock Lake to enjoy some time in nature.

This view was just what my soul needed.  The sound of waves and seagulls took me right back to my childhood in Seattle.

Isaac has gotten way into dressing up lately!  His super hero capes, hooded towels, and every hat in the house have gotten some major use lately!  I think I'm going to need to get more boy dress-ups!

Trying on mom's boots.  He actually came over and made me take them off so he could put them on.

I told you the weather's been crazy this month!

Isaac got out all the plastic bags one afternoon and when I told him he'd need to put them back he looked at me, shook his finger, and said "No, no, no. Try again." Talk about sass!  I tried not to laugh too hard, but it seriously cracked me up!

The last day of February was absolutely gorgeous, so we went to the zoo with some friends to take advantage of $5 admission before it ended!  We're definitely going to need to get a pass this year, because Isaac loved it!  It was actually pretty fun because while we were watching the lions and tiger they started roaring.  All the boys thought that was pretty darn cool.

This is what pure joy looks like!  I love my smiley little boy! 

Caleb fell dead asleep when Aarika put him in the Ergo.

4 of the 9 boys there (these 4, their younger brothers, and one dad).  The majority of our ward's "double boys" club (5 or 6 of us all had our second boy this year).

Isaac with Blake and Bryant.

Adam must have had a goal to roll over in February, because he decided to roll over at about 8:30 p.m. on the 28th right as we were getting him ready for bed.

All in all, February was a pretty fun month!