I told Wilda today that I didn't do blog posts much anymore because I didn't have my lovely mother-in-law cooking food for me on Sundays. My time is taken up with making the food. But I'm at her house. And she's cooking dinner. So she said she expected a blog post today. Walked into that one, I guess. Haha. :)
Because my kids were moving, their friends wanted to spend as much time with them as possible. Mira's best friend Belle (Anabelle) came over a few times the last few weeks. One of the times, they painted dragons on each other faces.
Later that week, I flew to Colorado to attend Elijah's graduation and my mom's surprise 70th birthday party for my dad. I couldn't say that on the last blog post because it was a surprise and it hadn't happened yet. Alison flew out and Ben's family drove out as well.
I made Raven drive to pick me up at 2am and Alex drive to drop me off at 4am. Those were not good nights sleep for anyone. I was very very stressed out, so that didn't help.
Friday, all of the adults went to an escape room together. We beat it even though the helper guy said only 14% of all groups completed it. And we only used an average number of hints. Go us!
Saturday morning, the graduation was at 9am. It graduation went well. We attempted to be the loudest family yelling for a graduate (because it would've embarrassed reserved Elijah), but we forgot to bring cowbells and air horns, so we didn't win that competition. It wouldn't have mattered anyway because Elijah says he was too wrapped up in completing the class prank (which was having every single graduate hand the principal a tiny plastic rubber ducky as they shook his hand) to realize we were yelling for him.
Afterward, several church members who had graduates had a joint graduation party that we all went to. So much yummy food. This was the display for Elijah.
Saturday night we just hung out. Then Sunday, we had Dad's party. We made him a golf cupcake cake. He read about things that happened the year he was born. Then we played party games. So many games. They were fun and funny and totally silly. Then we heated up the yummiest dinner. My mom had someone pick up catered BBQ from a local restaurant Saturday night and we just heated it in the oven. We also made baked beans, mac-n-cheese, and pasta salad.
While I was there, we did a walkthrough with our realtor (she had to go through twice since we were in two different non-Utah places). It was in Mapleton. We liked it, but we didn't LOVE it. There was another house in Springville that was only about a mile away from the Mapleton one that we also liked but didn't love and the whole time I was in Colorado, we were debating which house to put an offer on. We finally decided to put on offer on the Mapleton one. We got outbid by someone offering more and all cash. So we then offered on the Springville one. I flew home Monday morning, which was Memorial Day, the same day we put in the offer. We finally found out late Tuesday night that the couple had been out of town. They let us know Wednesday that they decided to pull their house off the market. *sigh*
Finally, Wednesday, we did another walkthrough of a house just 3 houses down from the Springville one we'd just offered on. We thought it was great, though maybe a little small, and put an offer in on it. They accepted and we had a move in date of July 1. I was so relieved that I no longer had to make time to look through listings and talk them through with Steve and send them to the realtor and be available to do a walkthrough on facetime. I could just focus on packing!
Jules wanted a baby dragon in a nest painted on her face one day.
Harrison is always adorable when he's asleep.
I love it when my kids play together.
Two days before we were supposed to put all of our stuff in PODS, Jules' preschool class had a belated field trip to a rock pool beach called Salt Water State Park. I couldn't deny her being able to go to it, so she and Harrison and I spent a morning at the beach and it was SO COOL.
We saw red rock crabs,
a live octopus,
moon snails (look at the size of them)!
a gunnel fish (not related to, but looks very much like an eel),
lots of starfish (Jules has one in her hand),
hermit and baby spider crabs,
plus birds, a dead lionsmane jellyfish, and lots of mussels, oysters, clams, and one live sand dollar.
And then, suddenly, it was moving day. We hired a moving company to help us load our pods on Friday. They did all the heavy lifting and we finished up after they'd gone. We could have had them do all of it, but to save money we just had them do as much as they could in 4 hours. Then Saturday, we had sisters from the ward come over and help us clean. We got done with that MUCH faster than I expected. People started showing up at 9:30 and by 11, we were almost finished. So we decided to get some lunch and then pack up and start driving.
We didn't have a table or a couch for 2 days, so Mira decided to eat outside her bedroom window and Em sat on the floor.
We got a hotel room in Pendleton, OR that night and then drove the rest of the way to my parents' house on Monday. There was a rainbow that was so gorgous on the horizon, but it was really hard to see in the photos. We stayed at my parents' house Sunday and Monday night because we were supposed to do the inspection walkthrough on our new house Monday evening at 5pm.
Steve and I went first and then my parents came with the kids so they could see their new house. Sadly, after doing the walkthrough and hearing all the things wrong during the inspection, we didn't feel like we could buy the house. There were A LOT of medium-bad things wrong with the house (like a basement doorway not being reinforced so the foundation was starting to crack, windows too broken to open anymore, a leak in the roof, piping done incorrectly so sinks didn't work properly, the primary bathroom shower handle being broken off, etc. That's not even all of it.) But the worst part was that it looked SO MUCH SMALLER in person. The bedrooms were all tiny, even the primary bedroom. Four kids would have had to share rooms, but there were not two rooms big enough to share unless we put two of them in the primary bedroom, which is weird.
So we backed out of the contract. Which meant we had to look at more houses. We stayed most of the day Tuesday so we could look at houses in person with our realtor. We weren't impressed with any of our choices.
Wednesday, we drove down to St. George. We planned to stay with Nick and Wilda until June 25th at which point, we'd go back up to Springville to share an airbnb with Megan's family until our July 1st move in date. But since we'd backed out of our contract, it was up in the air if we'd have to go into ANOTHER place to stay. I was worried about moving my kids around that much.
When we arrived in St George, we had a small misunderstanding with Em's cat, Mystery and Nick. So I drove Em and Mystery back up to my parents' house Friday morning. We arrived around 1:15 and I met the realtor at 1:45 in Saratoga Springs. We looked at 7 more houses that day. The last one we looked at was about 2 blocks from the house we backed out of the contract on. It was bigger and more expensive by about $80k. I didn't want to consider it, but Steve did, so we looked at it.
The next day was my Dad's birthday. When he took a nap that afternoon, my mom and I went with the realtor to look at 2 more houses. One of them my mom and the realtor thought should be condemned. I thought it seemed like a fun fixer-upper project. But Steve hates fixer-uppers, so that one was nixed. The next one had enough bedrooms, but felt so so cramped at 2400 sq ft.
So we ended up offering on the expensive Springville house. I was mad about it actually. I didn't want that much debt or that high of a mortgage payment. But then the sellers were willing to close quickly even though they were still fully living in the house. We gave them until July 5th to close, which would have been a little under 3 weeks. They countered and asked to actually close on the 1st. The same closing date from our original contracted house. It couldn't be a coincidence. I've come to feel like we are supposed to be in that neighborhood. I hope that's the case.
We've enjoyed our stay with Grandma and Grandpa. Swimming in the pool a lot, getting rashes from too much chlorine exposure and skin being unused to the dry weather and salt water, playing at the splash pad, hiking Cedar Breaks, going to the dinosaur dig museum, playing with new toys, etc. I got my hair done.
Harrison also managed to break a Corell bowl. Because he's got destructive superpowers.
Cecily and Mira attended a musical workshop with Sebastian and Florence in Cedar City where they learned 5 songs from different musicals and then performed a little Broadway something or other. They stayed at Joe and Cindy's for two nights for that so I didn't have to drive up to Cedar City and back with Jules and Harrison 4 times.
We had a dinner, suggested by Mira, where we only ate things that ended in the sound O. Jello, potatoes, buffalo chicken burritos with avocados and tomatoes. We were also going to have mangos, but they didn't ripen fast enough.
On Tuesday, we move up to the airbnb with the Staleys, so our time with Grandma and Grandpa is coming to an end. Only one week until we move into our new house!
