Home Sweet Home

We painted a few rooms before we moved in to help it feel more like home, I'm just sharing pictures of the rooms that are already painted and I'll add more as different spaces get done.  I'm so excited to keep poking my way through and gradually make this a bright, beautiful, colorful home!

 Family Room

Kitchen

 Den/Playroom

 Kayda's Room (she got to choose her color)

Dillon's Room (he also got to choose his color)

So far we are LOVING our new home!  Kayda has been to school three times.  She is a little hesitant and misses her old school but she is a trooper and is still putting herself out there to make new friends.  We've been to our new ward once, I hung out in nursery the whole time with Carson since it was his first time ever. There were several ladies in there, all of which were really nice.  We definitely moved into a family area.  I guess a good portion of the people in our ward come from our neighborhood and probably about 30 kids get on Kayda's bus at her bus stop (just K-2!!!).  We've taken a little break from moving, though Papa seems determined to keep it moving (thanks Dad and Mom).  We're just waiting to bug the uncles to see if they can help us move the swing set.  Other than that pretty much everything is here.  We like to walk to the neighborhood park, sometimes ride our bikes and today we had the whole family ride bikes down the trail to Kayda's school so she could show us how she can go across the rings on the play ground.  Kayda did great on the ride, what a champ!  The ride was 3 miles round trip, Dillon hung out in the bike trailer with Carson which worked out quite nice for keeping Carson happy!  It's wonderful that it's a nice FLAT ride so we CAN ride our bikes to the store (which would also be 3 miles round trip) or to school, or to the library.  I love it.  We are excited to find the river access which the maps show coming from our neighborhood (unfortunately they aren't close enough to show exactly WHERE).  I'm hoping there will be some access in our town where we can wade in a slow part of the river.  It would be a great way to spend a summer afternoon.  Daddy is riding the train in to work more often than not and seems to enjoy the chance to wind down on the way home, he's working on shifting his hours forward an hour so he actually gets home earlier than he used to.  Life is good.  We're happy and this house has turned out to be everything we needed it to be.  

We are Blessed

Warning this isn't my average post.  I felt the need to write it like this so that's what I'm doing.

This year has been a really rough year.  Daddy and I have been scrambling to try to keep our family together, sometimes the jury is still out... but we are both doing the best we can in some terrible circumstances.  We have been very blessed to be in my parents' home while we work it out, it turned out that this is exactly where we needed to be.  There have been a lot of trials this year, deeply personal, highly emotional, seemingly impossible trials.  Some that wouldn't have been so difficult if not for the fact that they occurred at the same time.  But we are blessed.

We are blessed to have our sweet Kayda.  She has such a strong spirit that she was able to pull us all, willingly or not, back to church.  We are blessed to have two sweet boys who love with all of themselves and spread joy wherever they are.  We are blessed to have so many supportive people in our lives in and out of our blood relatives.  There have been too many blessings to count, many too personal to share online, those I will have to write up and put somewhere special for my children to read in the future.  We are blessed that Daddy has a job where so many people care about him and his family.  We are blessed to have had the opportunity to come back to church in my parents' ward, full of people I grew up knowing, and new young families, all ready and willing to reach out to the people around them.  We are blessed to be getting this new home, in a new city, with new schools, new people, new streets and a new ward.

Now we have the keys to this house.  One obstacle after another was placed before us but each was overcome.  We were led to believe that we could be in the house two weeks early.  Then we had to go to the underwriter six times, each time they seemed to ask for something that was harder to do.  Then the mortgage insurance company changed their rate so we had to switch mortgage insurance companies.  Then the closing cost credit wasn't being properly applied.  Even today, the day of funding and closing the lender decided to object to refunding us for the appraisal fees, even after approving them last week.  But now, finally, over a week after we were supposed to have our new home... it is ours.  This process started December 11th, it finished February 5th...  it was longer than it should have been and it was incredibly painful to endure.

This house represents a lot for our family.  Mostly it represents a fresh start, hope for a better future and the chance to make of our lives what we will.

We want this house to be a lot of things.  We want it to be a safe, secure, peaceful, happy and spiritual place for our children to grow up.  We want it to be somewhere that old hurts can be overcome and new, wonderful memories can be made.

We have an opportunity to change our lives from the very bottom up.  We have been tested and tried and we have been blessed.  We have been so blessed.  Our lives have been finely tuned by God.  He has been directing events in our lives for years so that we would come to this point, so that we would have this opportunity.  We are blessed.