We Found A House!

We found this WAY faster than we thought we would (our lease doesn't expire until the middle of October). In fact, it was only the second house we'd been in, which made us hesitate. We did spend hours driving through various neighborhoods and looking at all the houses that were for sale, and not finding much that was a good fit for our dream home desires and our budget.

But when it came down to it, we fell in love with this:

The house is on almost 1/2 an acre of grass, flower gardens, and woods, and adjoins a 10 acre wooded parcel in the back, so it really feels like it is set in a forest--I never thought I'd find something similar to how I grew up, but this gives me the same feel of not living right in the middle of a city. It's beautiful and very private and the neighborhood seems great. We've already met several families who have all been incredibly friendly (in fact, the reason we first saw the house was because a family we go to church with invited us to their house for dinner the first week we came to church and they live just 4 houses down!)

We don't close until the end of August, so we've got awhile still to enjoy our Uptown living experience. Wish us luck that everything goes smoothly and this fall we'll have a place for anyone who wants to come visit us!

He's an Animal!

I finally caught Bugaboo's donkey impression on video.

Busy Morning

I am actually in the clear to do some daytime blogging because both kids are napping. (And yes, that toilet mess really did happen while I was blogging about their swim lessons--I just get too absorbed while I'm on the computer and forget to listen for the scary sound of absolute silence).

It's a good thing that they are both napping. Bean followed Bugaboo's example and has completely reverted to the early morning rising so we have two kiddos up by 6:30 every morning. It's mainly a bad thing because they aren't getting enough sleep and Bugsy is falling asleep in the car by 10 a.m. if we try to go anywhere.

So I decided to wear them out this morning in hopes that they'd sleep more for me--either naps or night, or if I'm really lucky, both!

After we went through the obnoxious routine of getting ready for the day (for some reason, getting dressed is a 30 minute project every time), we walked over to the local playground at 8 a.m. and spent an hour running around there. And they did a lot of running--we all did. Its nice to be out before the thermometer hits 90.

Then we came home and headed to the pool (after another 30 minute clothing change, of course).

And maybe this says something about why it takes so long to get out the door--we're not just getting 3 people ready, but also our life support system.

The kids had a lot of fun in the pool and I even got Bean to show me what she's learned in class--some great back floating and momentary submerssion!

Why I Should Only Blog at Night

That has to be at least 1/2 a roll of toilet paper. And no, the toilet wasn't flushed before he started. At least pee is sterile, right?

Little Swimmers

First day of swim class. Bean had lessons last year and really enjoyed them, although I was a little dissappointed at how casual they were--seemed more like we were paying a lot of money to have them play on their own with the teacher occassionally glancing their way. This class is much more structured and I was impressed with how far she's come from last summer. A lot of it was just maturing and becoming more confident in the water which we've seen when we've swum with her this last month, but this teacher is also asking her to do things and she just does it. She kicked on her back, blew bubbles and put her eyes in the water yesterday! Not bad for the first class.
This year, I signed Bugaboo up for the parent/tot class (doesn't he look grown up in that picture! And he did pretty well waiting for class to start--as patient as a toddler can ever be). Having taught lessons myself, I honestly don't think there is much need for lessons this young--its all about playing with them in the water which I could do on my own, but the idea of trying to keep him out of the pool for 1/2 an hour every day while Bean swam just wasn't very exciting to me. I'm sure anyone with a determined toddler knows exactly what I'm talking about. I'd rather spend the $60 so we can all enjoy swim lesson time.

To Our Bean On Her Birthday

First of all, how did this happen? It seems crazy that my baby is 4 now. Crazy that its been 4 years since I first saw her (and 4 years since I seriously thought I was going to die before that happened). I was going to make a photo montage of these first 4 years, but our desktop, where all the old pictures are stored, isn't set up yet, so I may just do that randomly some other time this summer.

But the birthday celebration continued. . . Bean got her much talked about bike (we seriously didn't know what she would do if we didn't get it. It hasn't even been a matter of "what I want for my birthday", but instead, "When I get my bike for my birthday. . ." or "I don't need that bike now because I'm getting one for my birthday.") But she wasn't dissappointed and seems to be picking up the riding part very quickly. She even made her first turn today. I'm just grateful for our very long, very smooth hallways in this apartment building--what a great place to learn to ride a bike!

She also got some fun presents from the grandparents which we forgot to get pictures of, so will have to add those in here tomorrow. We staggered the gift opening throughout the day so each gift ended up getting a lot of attention. And not just from Bean. This was Bugaboo's first sibling birthday that he actually understood a bit of what was going on and you could see the confusion, and maybe a little jealousy, on his face as she kept getting new toys.Lucky for Bugsy, his sister has been very generous with the sharing today. She took it to a new level when we were at the grocery store this afternoon and when she noticed the helium balloons, exclaimed, "We need to get one for Bug!" We had balloons at her party for each of the kids and of course the two one year olds ripped theirs off their wrists as soon as we gave them to them and Bugaboo was pretty distraught as his balloon flew away--he kept crying and calling out, "Fly! Fly!" I was touched that Bean was worried enough about him, so we brought him home a Harris Teeter balloon.
Finally, just had to share the excitement :) I think Bean loves birthdays. Actually, she just loves life and loves to get excited about things. Sometimes it seems a little forced because there doesn't seem to be much room for excitement in some of these instances. But that's our girl!

And here's a few facts about Bean at the new age of 4:

Favorite color: Pink. That's been the choice for a LONG time.
Favorite food: Corn. Tonight's answer anyway. So we had corn on the cob and bean tacos, in honor of the Bean (and because she only eats vegetarian tacos).
Favorite thing to do: "Ride my bike!"
Favorite book: "I don't know! I love all the books in the whole world!!!!"
Favorite song: "The princess one!" from Enchanted, which she's only seen once--but that song has stuck with her and she hums it all the time.

Really, she loves just about everything. Swimming, playing make-believe games, drawing and doing "projects", pretending she's a spy (that's a new one, but she had fun sneaking her way to the grocery store today), preparing elaborate meals with her play food, making her brother laugh, having her brother make her laugh, reading (and we've even just started her first chapter book--Ramona the Pest--which she is LOVING! "Let's read more about the Pest!"). And just a little brag, but she is the birthday girl, so I figure its excusable--she starting to sound out words right and left. She called out to Daddy-o yesterday, "Look, I spelled breakfast!" and sure enough, on the fridge, she'd arranged the magnetic letters, "B-R-F-S-T" (the K wasnt' even up there, or maybe she would have gotten that one in too). We were pretty impressed. And who needs the vowels? They can never make up their mind what sound they're going to say anyway.

We're just so grateful to have this little ball of excitement in our lives. Happy Birthday, Beanie!

Someone's Got a Birthday!

Yep, our little princess is turning 4 tomorrow!

We had a little pool/pizza party for her today with 2 other families who just moved out here from BYU and of course I had to make her a cake. So by her specifications, she got a pink castle.

I have to say that after this and the last cake I did, I'm thinking I need to go a little simpler so I don't have so many pull-my-hair-out moments. This one seemed straight forward enough when I found the idea online, but actually getting a coating on the ice cream cones that made up the turrents was complicated. The fondant kept tearing, the frosting didn't want to stick, and I just wanted to throw them out the window. And instead I had to keep my cool as a certain birthday girl kept informing me, "You missed a spot!" It's just too hard to make these cakes with kids underfoot.

Tag

Got tagged by Katie last week, so here goes:

The rules are; List 3 joys, 3 fears, 3 goals, 3 current obsessions and 3 random surprising facts about yourself. Tag 5 people at the end of your post by leaving their names..

3 Joys

1. Watching my kids hug each other.

2. Reading a good book (Just finished The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova--excellent read!)

3. A good massage (Thanks, Daddy-o, for the awesome mother's day present--which I just used today--a spa package).

3 Fears

1. We're not going to be able to find the right house/neighborhood for us.

2. Someone is going to come into our home and hurt me or my kids

3. Ants. And there seem to be a lot of them out here.

3 Goals

1. Lose the last of the baby weight. . . FINALLY.

2. Go to bed before 11:30--the east coast is ruining my chance to get 8 hours of sleep!

3. Make some new friends here :) Only 5 days left until Daddy-o will be gone all day and I won't have constant adult interaction.

3 Current Obsessions

1. Searching house listings and any info I can find on elementary schools

2. Cherries--I LOVE cherry season.

3. Hmmm. . .I can't think of a third, which is odd for me because I'm usually a pretty obsessive person. But for some reason, I've been remarkably balanced and calm lately--except for the whole house hunting thing. Maybe that's enough of an obsession to block out all others.

3 Random Facts about Me

1. I spent 5 months after graduating from college living in the semi-ghetto in North Long Beach.

2. I talk to people in my head while I run. I hope that doesn't make me totally nutters, but there are always so many conversations that I wish I'd had and just never get to out loud.

3. My high school volleyball team didn't win a single game my Jr. year. Only one of us had ever played before and it showed. But we had a LOT of fun.

And now, I tag (if you want to play along) Louise, Erin, Gina, Danna, and Julia. And anyone else who wants to share :)

Little Bit of Crafting

I haven't had much time lately to scrapbook, or do anything else particularly creative, beyond finding new ways to keep my kids happy and from hurting each other. But my turn came up in the scraplift I'd signed up for so I did pull my things out the other day and got this layout done. If you want to see the whole chain, the rest of them are here. Thanks, Lou, for putting that together!!!

Daddy-o

Just a little tribute to the Father in our home. I asked Bean about her daddy last night and she had a few fun facts to share:

"Daddy's favorite thing is for me to help him!"

"I love that Daddy tells me stories" (and he tells some good ones!)

and when I asked her what Daddy-o does all day, she said, "Try to make his kids be happy." So true. Daddy-o really does just want for his family to be happy and he's pretty good about going along with whatever it is that will achieve that--playing kitty, or reading book after book, or watching The Aristocats for the three thousandth time.

We love you! Happy Father's Day!

Story Time

We tried out one of the story times at the our new library, which is pretty amazing in itself. Both kids were entertained, which made it a huge success in my mind. I was a little worried about Bugaboo since we didn't go to the toddler one, but they still did lots of songs and even had "bubble time" at the end. It doesn't get much better than that.
(Kind of funny that I got no pictures of books!)

Quote of the Day

"There are thousands of ideas in my head waiting to come out!"

Newspapers

Just a random picture--we'd never seen so many of these little newspaper stands on one street. There's more on the other side, too.

Today we had our first thunderstorm--kind of crazy that we've been here 1.5 weeks and it hasn't rained at all. The kids were pretty interested in the lightening at first, and then there was a very close, very loud thundering and Bugaboo grabbed his ears and cried, "Owwww!!!!" He was done after that. But the rain was nice--actually felt cooler for a little bit this evening. We can only hope that it will rain more often.

Think We've Got an Addict?

Maybe this is a sign that we should be weaning the paci. Or maybe the fact that he's now nicknamed his paci--"baby". Because of his last couple illnesses, he'd gotten into the 24-hour-a-day paci habit. We've managed to get it down to a bed and church item (and he only asks to go into his bed a couple times away for "baby time") , but I'm a little scared to go for the whole thing.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

We're all settled in and getting to know our new home, so here's what we've figured out so far:

The Good:

Charlotte seems like and awesome city--fairly clean and small feeling. I feel really safe taking morning walks with Bugaboo (yeah--he's adjusted to the time zone, although he's waking at 7:10 instead of 5 or 6, so its still okay--just rough when his sister sleeps until 9 or 10.) and we're in very nice walking distance to lots of fun things for the kids (and me!)
The historic neighborhood near our place is beautiful! Century-old homes on shady tree-lined streets right in the downtown area!
Our apartment is very spacious--plenty of room for our furniture,
kitchen has a lot more counter space than our places the last few years, and looks a lot newer than our last two,
nice open feeling to the main area (I love open kitchens!)

lots of windows in the master bedroom so it gets a lot of natural light (although that does make it hotter, but that belongs in the next section),the bathrooms and closets are HUGE compared to our house in Provo--seriously, you could fit both our Provo bathrooms into one of these and still have room left over. And the kids are no longer sharing our bathroom--Bean is actually pretty excited about having "her own" with Bugaboo. And like the rest of the place, the kids bedroom is so roomy, which is good since we don't have a playroom here, so it needs to not only fit their beds, but all the toys and the rocking chair
and it does. The kids like it and like I mentioned, they are doing well sleeping--no one has woken for the past 2 nights and no one is waking with the sun (Thanks to blackout curtains!).

And finally, the balcony. It's not a real balcony--what you can see in the picture is as deep as it gets, but Bean thinks its great to take a snack out and watch the cars. . .

And now for The Bad:

If you didn't notice in the living room picture, we're missing something. We sold the big TV before we moved so this is what we're watching at the moment (our living room really does look empty without it--we've always had it so the room just seems bare.) But never fear--Daddy-o is getting a pretty sweet Father's Day present this year.And the spacious apartment is lacking in one area--there is not enough cupboard space and no pantry, so we've had to get creative with our food. But it looks kind of artistic, right?

Why is it that birds wake up at 4 a.m. for an hour of song, and then settle down for the day? I wouldn't mind all the chirping if it came at 7. Or even 6. But the sun isn't even up at 4!!! And with all the trees in Charlotte, I guess we should be expecting birds everywhere.
And last, it has been H.O.T. It feels like we went from the never-ending winter in Utah (it snowed just the week before we left) to full-blown hot, humid summer. Like record breaking high 90's. Luckily we do have a pool. And I'm sure future summers won't seem e quite so bad since we will have had a few months of gorgeous spring weather to lead up to them.


Finally, The Ugly

There really isn't much--my one complaint is not a visual ugly, although its not exactly beautiful, but our place is on a back street, so we miss the traffic from the city. Sounds good, right?

BUT, it faces a gravel parking lot and the train! We knew the train tracks were close--we were just hoping these places were really well insulated. Well, there have been a couple times at night that I was sure the Polar Express was coming to pick us up. And we don't know why some of the engineers feel the need to lay on the horn the whole way past our building, but it can be pretty startling at 2 a.m. Luckily most don't and we seem to be getting used to the noises. Daddy-o can already sleep through most of them.

The Big Move

It was one LONG day of travel with one big pile of stuff to cart around, but Saturday night, we landed in Charlotte, NC. We started out at 7 a.m. west coast time--first driving to the Bay Area, then taking a shuttle from the car shipping terminal to the airport--and things were not looking too good. After the first hour of whining and fussing and asking for snacks, I was getting very scared about the rest of our day. But luckily, things got much better from there.

Despite the amount of suitcases and kid items, the airport went pretty smoothly. I'm glad Daddy-o was there so I wasn't doing it alone like last summer. And our first flight went better than we ever could have imagined. This was what the kids did the entire 2 hours to Salt Lake City:

Our last leg wasn't quite so smooth--the kids were getting tired of traveling by then and the flight was longer--Bugaboo got pretty close to a meltdown the last 30 minutes--but we made it. After gathering all of our 6 carry-ons, 3 suitcases, 2 carseats, and the stroller, we took a taxi to uptown, hit a small midnight traffic jam a few blocks from our hotel, and finally got in and had the kids ready for bed around 12:30 a.m. Thank goodness for the time difference, so that was only 9:30 p.m. in the time zone we were used to. And our kids pulled out a miracle and slept in until 10:30 :) I'm liking this time change already!

More pics and stories coming. . .

Last Bits of Vacation Fun

I'm trying to get caught up on the blogging in the midst of unpacking, so this is going to be short, but just wanted to get a few more pictures of our last week of vacation up.

After the wedding, we spent the night in Pismo Beach and then went to the beach the next day.

Burying Uncle "Josie"

The rest of the week we spent in Fresno--

driving Grandpa's boat

a trip to Magic Mountain for Daddy-o,

playing with cousins (notice how happy Bugaboo is to be playing)

visiting with old friends/second cousins who we hadn't seen for almost 3 years,

visiting with Granny,

playing the Wii,
jumping and just going crazy:)