Father's Day miracle

We didn't have much on the calendar this week, but I felt like I spuddled the heck out of this week. (If you don't know the meaning of that word, you either have to look it up or join my book cover facebook group.) :)

The two things on the calendar were Emilia's writing camp and a dentist appointment for me.

The thing about the writing camp was that it was in Draper EVERY DAY from 8:30 to 12:30. Draper is 30 minutes from our house. So I was in the car for two hours--at least--every day this week. pfft

The thing with my dentist appointment was that I hadn't had my teeth cleaned in like 3 years. Since I was pregnant with Jules. With the moving and the PPD and the having another baby and more PPD, I just didn't get around to it. And then I was embarrassed to have anyone look at my teeth after that! But I finally bit the bullet, so to speak, and made an appointment. I'd never been to that office before, and I likely will never go again. But I totally would! They were amazing!

These pictures are from the previous week. Steve took pics of Mira and Ces at the carnival and I had to get pictures off his phone today, so here you go:

I did finish this wreath this week. I kinda love how it turned out.

I'm not sue why these got put in this order, but these are some more pictures from Steve's phone. This was Mira's gymnastics exhibition performance the last week of May.

Mira did have gymnastics as usual on Tuesday. And Wednesday something happened in the evening, but I can't remember what. Thursday, we went and visited my Mom at her house because her vehicle broke down after they arrived (silver lining!). Friday, Cassie came over again and hung out until Saturday afternoon. We also straightened the house, did grocery shopping, scrubbed paint out of carpets, vacuumed, and finished Sunday School and Primary singing time lessons on Saturday.

That night, Camber and I attended a concert that a friend of hers was singing in. It was at a cathedral in Salt Lake and both the building and the singing were amazing. I would have bought one of their CDs on the spot if they'd had one. It was gorgeous chorale music and they filled that place up with praise to God. I loved it.

Today was Father's Day and we had my parents, the Jaramillos and the the Frohlichs (most of my family) over for dinner. I think Steve had a pretty good day. He had to change a couple of poopy diapers and he lost a game of Lords of Waterdeep, but his singing time activity went off so well people were stopping me in the hall to compliment it, he got hamburgers and potato salad and baked beans and cucumber salad for dinner, he got to play quiplash with me and the kids, and got to talk to his parents for a while. Oh, and Emilia drew him a picture of a character from his current favorite computer game, Cec, Mira, and Jules made him cards, and I got him a personalized phone/tablet docking station with places for all his pocket junk.

Steve and I also fasted today about the move to Washington. I can't remember what all I've blogged about it, but we have both felt that God wants us to move there. We don't know the exact reason, but we feel like he's telling us that that's where our family needs to be right now. The move makes very little financial sense though. The housing in Washington isn't a TON more expensive than Utah, but we got into this house before the housing market went up, so our mortgage is relatively low compared to the worth of our home currently. Moving to this new house in Washington will more than double our mortgage payment, forcing us to cut back our 401k contributions to almost nothing in order to afford it.

We were so excited to finally get our contributions up to the full amount and to be funding the employee stock purchase program and to be saving for college for our kids and now we're going to be able to do none of that. We won't have extra money for vacations or eating out or anything above our basic day-to-day. So Steve, rightfully, is extremely worried about putting us in that financial situation. Neither of us understand why God would want us to set ourselves back like that.

So today we were fasting for peace about the move. For revelation about how we might afford this new house. For help understanding what needs to be done.

First, I felt prompted to look at the housing market here in Utah. When we were looking at selling last fall, the houses near us were selling for between $500k and $560k for similar specs. When I looked today, the cheapest house in our neighborhood was listed for $635k. That's almost $100k more than what I was expecting to get last fall. If we can get that much for ours, it will drop our mortgage payments by a big chunk.

Then at church, the speakers were asked to speak about the need for a church (as opposed to just living a righteous life without church-going). It was an older couple who was asked to speak. I think she said they'd been married for 50 years. She talked about how they'd moved from Utah, to Oregon, to Texas, to Japan, to Michigan, and back to Utah. They've been in Utah now for 20 years. Steve leaned over to me during her talk and said something to the effect that if they could do all that moving with 5 kids, we could probably do one measly move to Washington. :)

And finally, we were prepping for dinner with my family when Steve got a phone call. He thought it was his parents, but it was actually the mortgage broker for our home builder. She said she was calling in the hopes that we could get some paperwork to her soon because she had our house slated to be finished on September 15th.

What?

They'd told us October at the earliest and possibly even early next year. September 15th is WAY sooner than that. We filled out an application for an apartment this week that would let us live there for 5 months, which is the shortest amount of time we could find that was anywhere near affordable. It's available at the end of July. So we would have been renting until November. But if school starts on September 7 and we close on the 30th, we would only need to be renting for a month. Renting that apartment until November and having to pay our mortgage on the new house, too, would have killed us financially. It was so strange for that mortgage lady to call us on a Sunday afternoon. But God was watching out for us. And showing us that he's aware of us. It was totally a miracle in my book.

So.

I supposed this means that we still don't know exactly what we're doing. But we're getting closer. And we know we're on the right track. Happy Father's Day!

So overwhelmed with stuff to do

Gosh. Finding the time on Sundays to write these posts has gotten a lot harder now that I don't have Grandma and Grandpa Watts feeding us dinner every Sunday. :D

We do have a new family tradition that I'm loving. We have dinner, put the younger two to bed, then watch The Chosen together as a family while eating our Sunday ice cream.

So I think I have like 4 weeks of catching up to do.

This is a picture of our dead cherry tree. It died the year after we had it trimmed professionally. And I wasn't very impressed with their tree trimming. Anyhoo. I have a picture of it because I posted it on the online classifieds and someone came and cut it down and hauled it all away the next Saturday. Easiest tree felling I ever did!

Jules likes to help me cook every. single. time. Unless she's watching tv. Then she couldn't care less. Haha.

On April 27th, I flew up to Washington by myself. Steve took Thursday and Friday off to watch the kids while I went to the Richmond American Homes gallery to pick out finishes and upgrades for our house. On the airplane, the stewardess accidentally spilled coffee all down the side of me. You can't see my pants in the picture, but she got those, too. I got $50 to spend on our next Alaska Airlines flight out of it, so I guess it was fine?

So I was sort of excited to pick out finishes and sort of dreaded it. If I could have just picked out whatever I wanted, it would have been so incredibly fun. But the price of this house was already stretching us and they charge you an arm and a leg for everything. Don't want sheet laminate floors? Pay $x to upgrade to plank laminate or $X x 2 to upgrade to vinyl. But just remember, we can't legally put plank laminate in the bathrooms so you'll have to pay $2300 to upgrade to tile in the bathroom, or stick with the $X x 2 to do vinyl throughout. *sigh* We had to uprade the cabinets from light-stained oak to white and upgrade them again to get taller cabinets and upgrade again to get knobs and upgrade again to get the more modern-looking style. If we'd gotten everything we wanted, within reason, we would have spent $60k on upgrades! As it was, we narrowed it down to about $23k. The lady that was our guide through the process said the average was $40k, so I think we did pretty good. This picture is a lot of what we ended up picking out.

Emilia had been practicing for the school musical for months at that point, and it just so happened that the performances were the weekend I was going to be in Washington. Thankfully, they did a Monday performance, so I was able to go. Mira and Cecily and Camber, Cassie, and Andie came as well. They really did an amazing job. It was fun to watch.

 

We were driving on the interstate one day and Jules was making this face (except her eyes were looking up at the ceiling). I asked her why she was mad. She said, "I not mad!" Why are you making that face then? You look angry. Her reply: "This is the face for going too fast."

She asked me to make her a cave one day, so I threw a blanket over the back of a chair and the ottoman and I found her like this a bit later.

One of the best parts about spring is the bees coming out. I love watching them on the flowers.

Mira's best friends at school are both boys. Reed and Boston. They came over one day at the end of the school year and jumped on the trampoline for a while.

Everyone is into Phineas and Ferb right now. Most of the sisters were watching one day and Harrison was a bit sleepy, so he plopped down on some pillows and watched with them.

Cecily joined the school choir at one point and they had practices every Tuesday for months and months. They finally had their school and parent performances the first week of May, which was the same week as the Monday performance of Matilda. They also did a great job and looked like they were having a ton of fun as they sang. I love that Cecily is so willing to work hard at things she wants to get better at and that she's always willing to try a new experience.

This is Harrison standing on our step stool. Like three minutes prior, the step stool had been in the pantry (behind him). Which is super impressive, since the stool has 2 5lb bags of flour on it.

Mira decided to make herself a ginormous popsicle one day.

The next Sunday was Mother's Day. All the women who have callings in Primary or Young Womens had their spot covered by a male so they could attend Relief Society. That meant Steve was playing the piano in Primary and I got to have Harrison with me. I sat in the back of the room in the corner where I thought he would be hemmed in by chairs. Those chair were against the wall when I sat down, but Harrison insisted on pushing himself behind them in his quest to get out, got his head stuck, forcing all the women sitting in those chairs to stand up and pull their chairs forward. Then he wandered around to the next row where he made another woman stand up so he could go between her chair and the next to get back to me. *Repeat until I'm so embarrased by the disruptions he's causing that I leave and walk around with him outside. Sigh.

I did have a good Mother's Day overall though. I bought myself some flowers from Steve and got to arrange them. Mira decorated the table nicely so we could have a special dinner. I got to play some overcooked "with" Jules, we had a yummy meal, and we got to watch the Chosen together.

Harrison was watching Jules play with her "potions" the next day while she wore Mira's summer hat.

The next weekend, Steve took another day off of work so I could attend the Storymakers writing conference. All of the women from both of my writing groups were there, so it was so uplifting to be able to spend time reconnecting with them in person.

Lois Lowry, the writer of The Giver and Keeper of the Stars was the Keynote speaker. She was a great speaker and I loved her stories and insights into writing.

My hair even cooperated and looked great that weekend :)

We had the Frohlichs over for dinner the next Sunday. Owen and Harrison are 7 months apart, but about the same size. :)

I had to return something to Kohl's and both kids wanted to sit in the cart.

I also stopped one day to get my glasses adjusted. Jules LOVES putting on the glasses they have there.

That week Monday, Mira had a patriotic performance at the school at the same time that Emilia had her last choir concert of the year. I took all the younger kids to Mira's performance and Steve went to Emilia's. They both went until like 9pm, so the littles were exhausted by the time we got home. 

Mira got sick with a bug on Wednesday that both Jules and Harrison had had the week before. It was just a fever that knocked them out for 36 hours. Nobody got a runny nose or a cough or a stomach bug. It was just a fever. Mira tested negative for COVID.

Cecily was working on something on the computer and looking cute. :)

That Friday, Cassie and Camber and Andie and Chandee and her boyfriend all joined us for dinner. We had white chicken chili and played games.

The next week was the last week of school. The weather finally started warming up a little bit. I found Mira outside sipping a glass of lemon water and reading a book. She's my little fashionista.

Emilia picked out these clothes for her new summer clothes and was feeling pretty spiffy in them and her elf ears.

That Monday was Cecily's birthday and she also wanted her party on the day of her birthday. It had worked well for Mira to have it on a Monday, so I agreed. She was super vigilant about getting things ready for it. Saturday, she baked cupcakes, Sunday, she made sure we decorated. We figured out all the games beforehand and she double-checked like 3 times that I had gone shopping for the necessary stuff. It was an Amphibia-themed party. She thought of a few episodes from the show she liked and made up games to go with them. In one episode, the Plantars enter a cooking contest as a family and get judged by the mayor. So Cecily had her friends decorate cupcakes and she judged which ones were the best.

(Side note: Cecily has kept every birthday card her grandparents have sent her since she was 3.)

In another episode, Anne and Sprig fight off river monsters with pillows, so we made this headband to look like the river monsters and they chased the person wearing it around whacking them with pillows.

We went to DI that week to look for some summer clothes for Emilia. Harrison and Jules were already wearing some of the ones I bought for them and looking quite dapper, if I do say so myself.

Jules didn't actually make this mess, Harrison did. Nobody is surprised, I'm sure. This was like a pound of pony beads.

He ADORES water, so I bought him this water table to keep out on the deck. It's like the one time I've been grateful that the deck doesn't have stairs down from it. I can send him out there and not worry about him wandering off.

Another Harrison mess. I gave him a piece of bread for breakfast and he dunked it in the cat water and smooshed it on the floor.

Two Sundays ago, there was a gorgeous full rainbow out our back door.

At the beginning of June, I decided to buy some nail stamping plates with my personal budget money. This was my first manicure with the new plates and polish. I'm sort of in love with this. <3

Mira made the necklace she's holding in the picture when she was in kindergarten. It finally broke that night, so we had to commemorate something she's been wearing for 5 years.

I found Jules asleep like this one night when I went to check on the girls.

This was Jules' manicure last Sunday. She has a blue dress with oranges on it, so we did her manicure to match.

I was talking to my parents with Harrison in the room one weekday and he decided to crawl under the crib and tried to shove a hanger in between the side slats and the bottom for a good 10 minutes.

He was sick another day that week and was deep enough asleep for me to take a picture of him. I love his squishy lips.

I also love it when Emilia takes an interest in her younger siblings organically.

Last Saturday, me and Emilia and Camber, Cassie, and Andie went to the pride festival in Salt Lake. They were giving away SO MUCH stuff. We got reusable water bottles, stickers, flags, buttons, bracelets, reusable bags and more. It's always fun hanging out with the Childresses!

This last Monday, Mira, Emilia, Cecily, and I entered the Saratoga Springs city days novice chalk art competition. We did it because we thought it would be fun. I read up on the best practices and found that soft pastels actually work the best because they're like sidewalk chalk, but with way more pigment. So I went and grabbed two big things of it at Hobby Lobby and we went prepared with regular sidewalk chalk, the soft pastels, water, cups, sunscreen, rulers, sketches of our ideas, and a good attitude.

The theme was Oceans of Possibilities. Mira drew a purple mother dragon watching her babies play in the ocean in front of a sunset.

Cecily drew a baby dragon hatching out of a pearl inside of an open oyster shell. At the top, she wrote, "Show the world what you really are."

Emilia drew a human and a mermaid (one right side up and one upside down to show them floating in the water). She wrote, "There are plenty of fish in the sea."

This is mine. I wrote quotes about possibilities within a mural of ocean things. I ended up winning "Best interpretation of theme," which got us two passes to the carnival later that week.

Mira wanted her hair curly Tuesday, so she showered and put her hair up in socks.

I caught Emilia in the wild.

Thursday evening, Cassie and Andie came and stayed overnight. We made sparkly potion bottle necklaces and watched Gravity Falls and roasted marshmallows. Friday, we got the Adobe family pass to Thanksgiving Point and I took all the kids to the Museum of Natural Curiosity. We spent 3+ hours there and we were all tired, but happy at the end of our excursion.

That night, my parents came into town. They're staying at their house (that Alison and James are living in currently). Saturday, my mom met us at Thanksgiving Point and we went to the Butterfly Biosphere together. Jules adores the butterflies. And I always take a million pictures. I limited the ones here to ones with people in them. You're welcome.

Oh, except this one. This is a Glasswing butterfly. Isn't it cool?

Emilia has one in her hair and one on her knee. She named the one in her hair Walter and sat there with him for like 1/2 an hour until he slid off her hair and had to fly away to save himself.

We went home around lunch time and then I took Mira to a back walkover clinic at her gym, got the Mazda registered, and made a 3D render. After dinner, I took Harrison, Jules, Emilia, and her friend Alice to the Dinosaur Museum for an hour. Steve took Mira and Cecily to the city carnival for a couple hours.

We've also been cleaning and cleaning stuff out. We cleaned out the garage a couple weeks ago. We cleaned out the storage closet in Mira's room. We cleaned out Cecily's room and my room. We still need to clean out our laundry room, Emilia's room, and clean the windows. I think the house will be ready to list at that point, but we aren't sure whether to move to Washington now or when our new house is ready and if we move now, where to move. We've been praying about it for weeks and the way still isn't clear, so I guess we need more faith or more information. I'll keep you updated!