I uploaded these photos a few weeks ago but never added the explanations and I just noticed that.
On the 4th of July Emma saw my corn on the cob and asked for it. I handed it to her and she took several bites. Next time we do corn on the cob she gets her own (half) cob. She was in heaven!
I found this Rapunzel nightgown a couple months ago at a big sale and picked it up to see if Emma would like nightgowns. Even though she's never seen Tangled (although I tried...) Emma LOVES her "punzel jammies" and asks for them all the time. This was the first time she wore them
We started going to story time at a different library and the library we go to always has some sort of painting/gluing craft. Emma LOVES paint brushes now. She doesn't care if she's using it for glue or using it to paint, she just loves it. She is pretty serious while she paints!
I don't remember which trip to Sea World this was. It was either when we went with my in-laws while they were here back in May, or it could have been in June when we went a few times. But my in-laws bought one of the Sea World cups that has $1 refills and she loved trying different drinks. I think this was us watching the Sea Lion Show. We love those silly sea lions!
We have been super busy this summer! Rather than separate posts on everything, here is one of my long random list things.
1. A few months ago I got a phone call from a member of the High Council asking if he could meet with me the next morning at church. He said he wanted to issue me a calling. I told him sure. So after we dropped Emma off at nursery Chris and I set off to meet up with Micah.
For the past 5 or 6 years our stake has hosted a production of Handel's Messiah. It is a "multi-faith community choir and orchestra" event.
My new calling (in addition to my calling in my ward) is to be on the advertising committee for this years production. Since I have zero graphic design skills and don't own the software needed to even learn, my tasks for this involve making hundreds (maybe it'll be closer to thousands by the end) of copies, cutting those copies (lots of them are flyers with 4-8 flyers to a page, so lots of cutting!) and getting them separated out into different groups so they can be distributed to the different wards/organizations. I also get to make posters that will go up in all the church buildings.
My first task has been calling a million different print shops to find where the most cost efficient place will be this year to do our printing. Some of our black/white copies will be made at the church, but there are plenty of color copies needed as well.
Emma and I have been really busy going to different stores and pricing other supplies that we will need to assemble everything. Now we're just waiting for the flyers to be made (or approved... hopefully they have been made already) so we can get them printed and give me time to start cutting.
2. I've been subbing for the primary pianist in our ward for all of August (but not this coming Sunday since I have to teach RS). The kids learned a BEAUTIFUL song that is not in the Primary Songbook and I am so excited to have learned it. Listen to Gethsemane below.
3. We've been to the gym a ton lately. Emma loves being there when they do singing time. We sing lots at home, but before the gym I mostly sang primary songs to her, so it's been fun to add a whole new list of songs to our repertoire. Some of these I had taught her, but she always says they're from the gym: Itsy Bitsy Spider, Twinkle Twinkle, Wheels on the Bus, Bringing Home a Baby Bumble Bee are her favorites.
4. Emma loves to swim. We have a pool in our neighborhood and in the month of July we went there about a million times! It will be nice for the rest of August and September that the "big kids" will be back in school so there will be less people there.
5. We go to the library at least once a week. We have a few libraries we go to, so when I say we are going to the library I always have to specify which one. We go to Keri's library, Sandy's library, and "the mean library" which is just the library with the meanest staff. It's super convenient when we go run certain errands, but I try to only use it to return books so we can just use the drive thru. We love Sandy's library (the library right next to our old place) and if they didn't limit you to only 10 times out at a time it would probably be the only library we go to. Instead we always have 10 items from them, and 30-40 from Keri's library. Keri's library is where we go to storytime now and Emma LOVES it.
6. We accidentally killed some of our trees. The ones that got planted only a few days before we closed on our house. Chris thinks one of them may come back to life with a lot of watering, but I'm not so sure... Can't wait til the HOA sends us a letter telling us to take it out and replace it with another tree. We'll probably choose new trees that Chris isn't allergic to-if only we could've told them what trees we wanted in the first place!
7. About a month and a half ago we were at Sandy's library and I asked Sandy what a good way to pick books was. I was looking for some sort of list, or website or something. She went straight to her office, printed off some list from a librarian website she's a part of, and then told me about the Texas 2x2. It's a list of books recommended (by a committee of librarians) for kids 2yrs-2nd grade. I think it's about 20 books long, and all are books published the previous year. It's updated each year, this was exactly what I wanted! She also asked if Emma had ever listened to an audiobook. She hadn't, and Sandy showed us where their kids audiobooks are. We checked a few out and Emma LOVES them. We listen to a book every time we get in my car. Skippyjon Jones is one of her favorites.
8. We have cows in our neighborhood. Emma loves to see the cows. The other day they were super close to the fence and she was SO EXCITED! Emma has a few books that have cows in them and they are her favorites right now (Click Clack Moo, Dooby Dooby Moo, and Cindy Moo... for you book nerds)
9. I need to paint my toenails. It's been on my "to-do list" for weeks but I never find time to do it. Maybe tomorrow during nap time I won't write a blog post, and I"ll paint my nails instead.
10. Yesterday I had our sister missionaries come over to help me with a project. A few weeks ago the ward mission leader posted on our ward facebook page that the sisters were looking for service opportunities to get their service hours in each week, to build relationships with the ward members, and to get a break from riding their bikes in 100+ degree weather. They came by yesterday to help me hang pictures up on our walls. I figured living here 3 months with empty walls was long enough. We put our Seattle Temple picture up, as well as the canvases that hang above Emma's crib. I also put a picture of Christ up in Emma's room.
11. This morning when Emma woke up she was standing in her crib pointing at the canvases and singing "I Love to See The Temple" (one of the canvases has the outline of the SLC Temple). CUTE.
12. Emma started saying prayers all by herself. We had to help her remember to say "dear" at the beginning for a while, but now she's got meal prayers down! It's cute to hear all the things that she says thank you for.
13. A few weeks ago a friend posted on FB that she was heading to ikea (it's in Austin) and asked if anyone needed anything. I asked her to get the Latt table and chairs for me. It's a kids table that comes with 2 chairs and is like $20. I'd had my eye on it for a while but couldn't make a trip up to Austin work with our schedule. On Monday after naptime was over Emma helped me build it. She helped me take all the pieces out of the box, she looked at the instructions with me, and tried to hand me the pieces I needed as I needed them. She also helped turn the little wrench thing to tighten the screws. She was SO excited to have her own table and chairs. This morning she didn't even ask to watch TV after breakfast. She wanted to go upstairs and play at her table. She pulled out a notebook and some foam alphabet stickers and went to town doing stickers. She probably did that for over an hour. She LOVES her table, wish I had gotten it sooner!
14. In an attempt to help me relax more and relieve some stress I started coloring. Sandy (from the library) started hosting "adult coloring nights" once a month and although I wasn't able to attend them (they start too early for me to make it because of Chris's work schedule and the commute) it got me interested in the idea. I found some adult coloring pages online for free (thank you, Pinterest) and have started coloring! I've even found some fun looking coloring books for adults on Amazon and hope to order a few soon! I also spent a whole naptime one day looking at different coloring tools, researching different brands of colored pencils and pens and such. The set of pencils I'm looking at right now cost like $55 which is more than I really want to spend on colored pencils, but all the reviews say they are the best. I told Chris about them and decided I'd keep using my awesome Crayola set (thank you back to school time for letting Crayola colored pencils be on sale!) for a few months and if I still am interested in coloring and enjoy doing it then maybe I would invest in a nice set of colored pencils. I've also got to see if any of my local craft stores sell them in store because then I may be able to find a 40-50% off coupon which would make it a little better.
15. I thought i had more to say, but Chris just came home from work sick and Emma is starting to wake up from her nap. I should do posts like this more often to do a nice braindump.
I'll try to get some pictures up soon that go along with some of these things.
For the last two years we have had season passes to Sea World. I can't even tell you how many times we've been over the last two years, but last week we had the visit of a lifetime. Our passes expired on July 3rd, so on the 2nd Chris and I left Emma at home with Stephanie (oh, have I mentioned that Chris's little sister lives with us right now?) so we could go ride some rides and not have to worry about making it home for naps.
After we parked we were heading to the gates to enter the park when these two ladies in super bright costumes walked up to us and shouted "SURPRISE!" We were so confused. Then they explained that this year Sea World is celebrating their 50th year and that they are part of a Surprise Team that randomly picks park guests to surprise. They handed us a card that said what our surprise was. We were assuming it would be something like a free stuffed animal, or a meal or something like that. We were SHOCKED when it said "Penguin Interaction Tour". Chris and I got to enter the penguin exhibit and actually go interact with penguins!
We had been planning on spending the whole day in water-at the water park and doing the rides that get you wet in the main park, so we didn't have a camera or our cell phones with us. When we got to the meeting place for the interaction we met the three other people who were doing the interaction with us. One was a mom with her son on his 7th birthday (you have to be 7 to do the interaction) and the other was a girl probably about 20 who was doing this as a birthday gift to herself. Since they all knew they were doing the interaction before they got to the park they brought their phones with them to take a ton of pictures. The following pictures were ones that I got Jamie (the 20 year old) to text to me. We also ended up getting the pictures that a photographer took (oh yeah, a photographer was in there with us too) but don't have those yet.
First we spent about 15-20 minutes learning about the different species of penguins that Sea World has. Then we got changed and headed into the habitat. We got to spend about 30 minutes with the penguins. It was AMAZING.
They took photos of everyone sitting on this rock holding a penguin. Hopefully we'll have better pictures of this once we get the pro pictures back.
Cute penguins LOVED the interaction. They would come up to you and start whining if you didn't pet them. Some of them were super cuddly.
I'm holding Oswald and Chris was holding Jenny. So amazing.
This Chinstrap Penguin was just adorable! These guys were all so cute.
This is the youngest penguin chick they have. When penguins are born they have these down feathers for about a year. This one hadn't started shedding his baby feathers yet. He was probably the most cuddly penguin out there. He can't swim yet so he's in a little pen with the two other baby penguins who aren't water-ready yet. We got to go in the pen with him and as soon as we didn't he cam up to us and just stood there for us to snuggle.
After our time with the penguins was up we headed to the water park and went down a ton of water slides and tube rides. It was a blast to do all these things that we can't do with Emma until she's older/taller. This was definitely our most memorable trip to the park and we can't wait to head back there once we renew our passes in November.
Wow! It's been forever. We're all alive and loving our new house. Someday I'll post pictures or a video tour or something of the house, but for now, words will have to do because I know if I start trying to add photos I will get all distracted.
Emma updates:
-officially pacifier free since the week we moved into our house. She lost her last remaining pacifier a few days after we moved and I refused to buy any more. While she was sleeping we looked frantically for it so we could just throw it away but didn't find it for about a week--Emma had put it in Grandma's jacket pocket while they were on a walk and Grandma just didn't wear her jacket. Eventually it was discovered (by Grandma) and disposed of at the grocery store trash can (so Emma would find it in the trash). She used to ask for it ALL the time, but now she really only mentions it at bedtime in her prayers "help me sleep no paci, paci all gone"
-has broadened her movie repertoire. She used to only watch Frozen, but now we've added Toy Story, Toy Story 2 and Cars to her acceptable list. We're hoping to add more Pixar movies soon. She's also willing to watch more than just Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood!!! Somewhere she was introduced to Mickey Mouse so she loves Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and then discovered Octonauts and Doc Mcstuffens. She only watches those three shows on the Disney Jr App on our Apple TV, so she only gets about 3-5 episode options a week and several of the shows are super old (like, 2008) so I'm not even sure if those shows still are airing... but she loves them.
-Emma LOVES to be a helper. She gets upset if we do things that she knows to do-like setting the table. She loves to put the plates and forks on the table and is always upset if we do that job. She is GREAT at cleaning up and sings "clean up, clean up, everybody everywhere, clean up, clean up everybody everywhere" over and over again!
-she's FINALLY doing well in nursery again! She had a really hard time adjusting to our new ward. After being there a few weeks they *finally* split it into two nurseries which made things SO much better. There had been upwards of 20 kids in nursery and it was so chaotic. Now there are less than 10 kids in her class each week and it is so nice. We've also discovered it is great if Chris drops her off!
-similarly, she is doing great when I drop her off at the childcare at the gym. The week of the move I dropped her off at so many friends houses that she got really really clingy and had a hard time being left anywhere. She had a rough time the first few weeks back to the gym, but she is doing great now and gets excited and happy to see her friends and teachers there.
Other updates:
I got a calling at church this past week- I teach Relief Society once a month. Right now I'm on the schedule to teach 4th Sunday which is the "Teaching for our Time" lesson aka, a General Conference talk. They are also short a 3rd Sunday teacher, so I could be switched to that lesson depending on what the other teacher they end up calling is more comfortable with. Doesn't really matter to me much.
We LOVE our house! We're pretty much settled but my craft room is still an empty room (with lots of craft stuff in the closet). I think I finally picked out what craft table I want, so now I just have to decide if it really is what I want, and then order it!
We're getting settled into our new routines. We found a new library to go to for story time, and the few times we've been now we have LOVED. Emma got a certificate and free book for completing the San Antonio Public Library Summer Reading Challenge! She was one of the first kids to turn her reading log in so we got to pick a great book! We're also LOVING the new grocery store we go to-it's bigger and has a great selection of stuff
We are homeowners! It's been a wild week-at one point or another we had closing appointments scheduled on three different days, although we probably had about 7 appointments scheduled total. We were supposed to close on Monday but when we went for our final walk through it was obvious that several of the things we had noted on our walk through had not been fixed yet. Things missing, extra things sitting around, cleaning not done, major paint touch ups needed still. It was kind of a mess. So it got bumped to Thursday. We went back Wednesday night for what was supposed to be our "final walk through" and still the paint touch ups and cleaning hadn't been done. So closing Thursday wasn't looking too promising-but Thursday was the last day of the month and the builder REALLY wanted to close on the last day of April.
Thursday morning the superintendent called us and asked when we could get out to the house. So we dropped Emma off with a friend with a "we have no clue if this is going to be all day or just a couple hours" type thing and headed off to the house. We were met there by the superintendent and started pointing everything out to him that was obviously wrong still. A few minutes later the paint guy came and we got to walk around the house with him and point to everything that needed to be fixed. Then the cleaner came and we showed them everywhere that there was grout/paint/caulking. Then it was finally ready. We signed off that the house was complete and the superintendent told us that we had a closing appointment scheduled for 3:00. At that point it was about 12:20 or so.
We went to Lowes to pick up a few things, then headed to the bank to get our check. Then we went to Firehouse Subs for a quick lunch and headed straight to the title company. Then we went to the HOA office to pick up our pool key, and finally we got to go to the sales office to pick up our keys. Then we went to the house. Our house! We put toilet paper, soap and a towel in the bathroom downstairs and brought in a few more things-like door mats and trash cans.
It's been a crazy week, but it was such a relief to be done with closing! Now the next adventure is packing up our whole duplex and moving to the house! Next week will be wild too!
We went out to the house on Saturday and we're excited to see that it really looks like a house now! If all is well we close by the end of THIS MONTH!!! It's so crazy. I'm not sure we'll close on time, but they say they probably can do the repairs and finish the rest of the house in time.
This was the first time we'd seen the brick, the garage door (which you don't see in the picture), light fixtures (not all are up yet) and the cabinets! When we went the week before the cabinets were installed but covered because painters had just been there!
We did find an issue with the house where they framed something wrong and now they get to take the time to fix it. Next week we find out if that mistake will delay our closing date or not.
Emma says "go house. Stairs" whenever we get in the car. It makes her sad when we aren't going to the house, until she starts asking if we can go to the library. I think she will be so happy when we move in and she always has stairs she can go up and down!
I tried posting the floor plan for our house a few days ago but it wasn't working, so incase you can't get these photos bigger, here is a link to the floor plan. That isn't our address or even our housing development, I just googled the name of our floor plan and that was the first link that I got. Don't want to be giving you guys too much personal info on a public blog!
So here is the first floor. It's pretty self explanatory-dining room, kitchen, family room (for now at least that is where our tv will go), master suite, powder room laundry.
The second floor. For now the gameroom will be a big playroom for Emma. Overtime we anticipate that we'll move the tv up there, or atleast put a tv up there. It's large enough that in the future we could put air hockey/ping pong/foosball or something like that up there too. We'll see what we want to do with that area as Emma gets older. For now I'm thinking it will have a little table for Emma to sit at, a play kitchen (I'm hoping to get her one for her birthday!) all her other toys, an easel (when she's a little older probably) and stuff like that. My piano will also go up there, probably along the wall between Bedroom 4 and the Gameroom.
For the time being this is our plan for the rest of the upstairs: Bedroom 2 = guest bedroom. Chris's little sister is going to come stay with us for a while and help us move/get settled so that will be her room at first. Bedroom 3 will be Chris's office (and if room 2 & 4 aren't enough for guests we can probably fit an air mattress in there too). Bedroom 4 is my craft room and if we have multiple guests at a time it will have room for an air mattress. Bedroom 5 is Emma's room.
Then you've got the two bathrooms upstairs plus the linen closet.
This is the exterior color package for the house:
And the interior color package:
The tile goes in the entryway/laundry area, the kitchen and the bathrooms. Carpet goes everywhere else. I hope that in the not too distant future we'll rip the carpet out of the dining room and put tile in there. I hate the idea of a carpeted dining room with kids. I know how much pasta/rice/whatever I sweep and mop off our dining room floor right now and can't imagine how bad it will be to be picking it all up and then vacuuming that room. Yikes.
Once I upload them to my computer I'll post some photos from the model home that show what the house looks like on the inside.
We were just at our house a few days ago and the drywall was all up inside and the walls had been texturized. There is a front door and a backdoor (although they lack doorknobs right now)! I didn't take a single picture while we were there because this time we took Emma with us and I was watching her the whole time to make sure she didn't try to climb up the stairs and get a million splinters and that she didn't find any random nails on the ground. It was the first time we took Emma to the house and she loved walking around and seeing what each room was like. She was a little concerned by how "messy" the tubs were... they had been full of crap from rain before the roof had been put on and she hates messes.
We've chatted with the superintendent that is over our house and he says that the house is still on schedule and that from their end it will be ready for us to close on April 27th. That's only 40 days away! We're ordering a few new appliances that are supposed to be delivered to the house May 2nd, and are looking to move in sometime the week of May 3-9. It's getting way close and there is so much to be done. We're trying to get rid of stuff that we don't use/need and so far have been able to sell a few things on Craigslist, give things away to people in our ward, and donate a bunch!
My blog was a little quiet during the last half of February. Don't let that silence and lack of posts fool you into thinking that nothing was going on, there was plenty happening, we just weren't publicly talking about it all. Now that it's March we've decided to be a little more open about what has been going on. We're buying a house! We have told our families and one friend who helped us out a ton by watching Emma as we went to fill out paperwork. This month when our Home Teachers come visit us we'll tell them and we assume they'll mention it in their home teaching report. If they don't, I at least know the Relief Society Presidency will hear about it since one of our home teachers is married to one of the RS presidency counselors. We figure we'll tell them first and then let word start getting around that we're leaving the ward. I couldn't wait until they come home teach us to share on my blog. Most of my blog followers (that I know of) aren't local and I have to tell someone our exciting news!
We were planning on buying a house next spring. That was the goal we were working towards. In January we started doing research on different areas of town to see where the better schools were and where there were newer (our current place was built in the 50s and we wanted something with a little more energy efficiency) homes and what neighborhoods met other needs of ours. Chris looked up the addresses of some of his friends from work and we decided to go drive around their neighborhoods because they lived in the part of town where we found better schools. This was just supposed to be a "let's get a feel for what the neighborhoods are like and see if there are obvious reasons to avoid these neighborhoods" drive.
We didn't expect the promptings we would receive that this was the right neighborhood for us and that we were supposed to move much sooner than we were initially planning. But long story short, we're buying a house! The builder has a new line of homes where they pick everything out and the buyer cannot customize at all. Because there is no customization and because they can then purchase supplies in bulk it can be built more quickly and it costs less than a similar sized home. We found a floor plan we liked, found out that it was one of the first homes they are building, and found a community about 30 minutes away that has a model home of it. We've been to that model home 3 times I think, first to just check it out and then the 2nd and 3rd times we've gone with specific things to measure/figure out.The first time we saw what could be our lot it looked like the first picture. A foundation with some framing supplies.
The second time we saw it (4 days later when we went to sign paperwork to get in contract) it had some framing done:
And exactly one week after the first picture it looks like this (this was just this past Saturday):
It is crazy how it went from a concrete slab to really looking like a house in just one week! I can't wait to share more pictures eventually. I've got a ton of pictures from the model home and at some point I'll find my pdf of the floor plan so you can see what our house will be like!
Emma loves to dance before bedtime. Sometimes we turn real music on, sometimes we're just ghetto and make our own music. Ignore Chris in the background. We try not to dance too much because we want to see what moves Emma will come up with. Her arm at the very beginning is one of her favorite dance moves. Any time I say "lets dance!" she starts moving her arm like that.
A few days ago Emma and I were playing in her room and I asked her if she could bring me a blanket because I was cold. Lots of her blankets are stored in the bottom drawer of her dresser and she loves to pull them out, so I knew she could figure it out. I laid down and closed my eyes and she came and put this little ducky blanket over my face. Apparently she thought my face was cold! Such a sweetie!
