We Got a House! (Lots of pictures!)

So, there are some you that have read on my Facebook that we bought a house the other day. We got an awesome deal on it. It's an older house and it definitely needs some cleaning and fixing, but we're not scared. Immediately it needs new carpet and paint, but hopefully, thanks to our President's stimuls package, we should be able to get the $8,000 tax credit, making it possible for these projects. We should hopefully be able to close mid-March. I'm so excited to be in a house and can't wait to get started!!! We took some pictures of what it looks like and just remember that it is going to be a work in progress. (Sorry, there's actually ALOT more pictures than I originally thought.) Here's the whole guided tour, minus two of the bedrooms, they all kind of looked alike so I skipped them.


The front of the house, we sit on a corner lot.


You walk in the front door and this is the living room. And yes, the carpet is gross.


Here is another angle of the living room and there one of the entrances into the kitchen and dining room.


Dining room and pation door.


The kitchen from the dining room and the entrance to the half bathroom and the laundry room.

The half bath and laundry room.

The hallway from the living room.

The first bedroom from the hallway.

The gorgeous bathroom.

This is the side yard and there's actually a door from the master bedroom. That is where I'm standing for this pic. It has a pretty big side yard.

This part of the back yard from the patio door.

Part of the patio. This is a covered section of it.

The other half of the back yard. This part needs some work but totally perfect all in all for the boys.

Also, we decided last week that we wanted to something fun with the boys but not spend any money. So we pushed all of the furniture out of the way and set up a little tent in the living room and put the air mattress in it and watched a movie. Logan thought it was just the coolest thing. It was so much that I want to start a weekly tradition of doing something like that. Here are a few pictures of the boys hanging out in the tent.

These are just a couple of snap shots I've taken of the boys in the last week. Our weather has been so nice and we've spent alot of time outside!

I Love My Family

This is going to be super cheesy and I apologize, but something that I just want to write down.

I was watching a TV show that really made me stop and think about my family and how much they mean to me. I know that's pretty cliche, but it's true. I can't imagine my life without my sons and husband. Each of them contribute something that cannot be replaced. If you don't mind, I would like to share a little bit about each of them.

Ray - He the love of my life. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. I love this man with all of my heart. We have such a good relationship, not a perfect one, but a wonderful one that works for us. We have so fun with each other. He can make me laugh like no one else can. I love how he is to rational and down to earth and we can have such intimate, deep conversations. I love how he tries to be the best husband and father that he can be. I love him.

Logan - He is what I look forward to everyday. There is not one single day that is the same with him around. He loves to play and have fun and he is starting to realize there is world around him and wants to know, "What happened?" with everything. I love it when he says, "Lud (love) you!" and then pulls your head in towards his to give you a kiss. I love his endless supply of energy. He truly is someone special.

Chase - Eventhough he has only been part of this world for a few months, he has made a very speical spot in my heart. He has such bright, clear eyes that I love to look at and wonder what he is thinking. He has the cutest fuzz for hair on the top of his head that I love to play with. I love how his plump cheeks raise up when he smiles. And lately he has started doing this squeal when he laughs that makes me stop whatever I'm doing and go smile at him. He is the perfect addition to our little family.

Again, sorry this is extremely cheesy and probably kind of meaningless to anyone who reads it, but I just wanted to share some of the special details of my family and how what the mean to me. I hope and pray that I will always be blessed on this earth to have my family with my always. I also hope that Heavenly Father sees fit to continually bless me more intimate moments with my family. I will try to do my part to keep these blessings also. Thank you Father in heaven and Jesus Christ for the opportunity to be here and to be part of this Plan.

Oh Logan.

Logan. He is quite the kid. It seems like he is always doing something to keep us on our toes. For instance, on Sunday night we though Logan was back in his room playing with so after a little while I went back to check on him. As I started walking down the hallway, he came running out of my room and was really excited. He ran up to me, pulled up his pants leg and said, "Mommy, I did it!" I look down and see his toenail his painted, and then realized that his pants were painted too! I inwardly groaned, well, maybe outloud too, and went back in my bathroom to assess the rest of the damage. He had somehow found my nail polish, somehow managed to open it, and painted his big toe, his pants, the door, and the carpet. The really bad part about the carpet, besides it not being ours, is that it is a very light color, and the nail polish was bright pink! I've never had experience in trying to remove polish from carpet so my first instinct was to use polish remover. So I started dabbing at it trying to get it up, but all that I did was make it alot worse, it just bled and became twice the size it was. Luckily, we have an awesome hometeacher who does carpet cleaning for a living and came the next day and was able to successfully remove the spot!

And now back to Logan. Anyways, it was hard to not lose my cool, and for Ray, and to try to explain to him that this was not a good thing. He felt pretty bad and went and put himself in time out because he had made a mess. After he left the room I actually started to kind of laugh, which Ray didn't appreciate much, but I couldn't help it because Logan had actually done kind of a good job painting his toe! Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to encourage this behavior from him at all, we really tried to emphasize that this is for girls, not boys, and he is a boy. The strange part to all of this is that we don't know how he knew what to do. I have made it a point to never paint my toes infront of Logan for this particular reason. Where he got it from? Who knows, it's Logan. But man oh man, I love that kid with all my heart!

And now for a quick update on Chase. (Sorry, my posts are always really long.) I started Chase on vegetables yesterday and he loved them! I decided to start with sweet potatoes because they're supposed to help his little digestive system, and then I figured it was probable the most promising when compared to peas or something like that. He was funny with it though. As soon as I put the spoon in his mouth, he was begging for more. I was giving it to him as fast as I could, but he wanted more so bad that he was sucking his lips in to his mouth, trying to get as much as he could. He is a good kid, now if only we could fix his pacifier problem. He seems to think that after 5 a.m. I have to constantly put it in his mouth. Needless to say, today we are starting the eaning process. I hope it improves the early morning routine.

Logan's new favorite thing is hot chocolate.

Logan has a Valentine's Day party to go to so we made a Valentine's box. You can't really tell, but he painted everywhere on it. It was a fun project to do with him.

Chase is finally starting to make progress on trying to rollover! He's actually trying to move around, just a little.

I think he is just a cute kid.

O.k., so I think both of my kids are super cute! I don't care if people think otherwise.

Surprise!!!

So Ray has conferences in Salt Lake and Provo all week and so Iwas kind of bummed to be all by myself with the boys for four days. Well, when Ray went to leave on Tuesday we decided as he was walking out the door that me and the boys should go with him! So we quickly threw together a bag for the boys and me. What the fun part of all of this was that since Ray would be busy all day on Wednesday and Thursday, I would go up to Idaho for a quick trip. But now the even better part! I didn't tell my parents what was going on so I could totally surprise them. It worked so perfect!

I got into Firth Wednesday morning and went to my mom's school where she works and just walked into her room. It took her a second to register that it was and the boys, but when she did, her mouth dropped open and she was all but crying! It was so fun!!! After we visited for a little while, we then went to my dad's school and did the same thing to him. It was also great!!! But like I said, I was only staying for a day, so it was a really fast trip but it was worth it. I also got to see my super cute neice, Chloee, Grandma Gene, and Grandma and Grandpa Jolley. There were lots of other people that I wish I could have visited, but there just wasn't enough time. So sorry everybody! But now I am in Provo with Ray and we are staying with Ray's sister, Nicole and her husband Darren. I don't really know what I'm going to do with the boys for two days, especially in Provo, but it's ok because I'm here with my husband I get to see him more than if I would have stayed in St. George. And yes, I know it sounds pathetic that I can't stand to be away from Ray, but I still feel like I can never get enough time being with him. I guess that's good thing considering that we're sealed for time and all eternity!!!

This is Logan and Chloee getting ready to go out in the snow and be pulled in the sled behind the four-wheeler. Poor Logan, my Mom didn't have a snow outfit that fit Logan so we had to make do with snowpants that were like a size 12 months. But hey, he didn't care and it kept him warmer than without.

No House

Just for a quick follow up from my last post. We found out yesterday that we did not get the house. I was disappointed at first, but now am okay with it. It's kind of a relief to not have to worry about finding all the kitchen appliances and a kitchen sink. We are kind of thinking that maybe we want to wait a few months and get some financing figured out. We still want to keep a general eye out for htings, just in case something amazing comes up, but it would be nice to have things line up a little better. Hopefully next time we do this process I will have Ray there to help and give support so I won't make myself so sick through it. Thanks to you all for all your advice and support, it does help. THANK YOU!!!

Stressed to the Max!!!

The last couple of days have been quite crazy and let me explain why. We've been regular emails from our real estate agent so we could keep an eye on the market. Well, yesterday Ray had to go to Salt Lake for meetings and so of course that was the day that our agent calls me and says that she just emailed me a listing that just came back open for something in our price range and wants me to come look at. I look at the email and am extremely interested but, Ray is out of town. So she told me to just come look at it and see if we're really intersted because when it previously was on the market, it went under contract in one day so we need to act quickly. So I called Ray and he said to go ahead and look at. And of course I liked the house alot. Not to say it doesn't need any work, but it just needs cosmetic touch ups with the minor exception of one thing. There are no kitchen appliances, even the kitchen sink is gone. But I called Ray and told him I like the house, so we agree for me to go put on offer in on it. Talk about nerve racking. In our marriage we don't make decisions like these without the other one to help with opinions. And then like most of you know, I'm the erratic, emotional one while Ray is the calm, stable rock. I NEEDED my ROCK!!! Anyways, I was able to pull myself together and went and put in an offer.

We made an appointment for Ray and I to go look at the house today. When we met up with the agent she told us that the bank (oh yeah, this house is a foreclosure) looked at all four offers and said for all of us to come back with counter offers. I just have to add, I hate this type of stuff. I get way too stressed out and emotional. Anyways, we already put our first offer in at the maximum amount we could, so we just resubmitted it and now we're sitting and waiting and getting more gray hairs by the minute. I can't afford more gray hairs, I too young! Anyways, we're supposed to hear back either today or tomorrow. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that somehow we'll pull it off. I really like this house. It needs some touchups and wouldn't look the greatest when we moved in, but over time it would look so nice!!! I want this house!!!

Sad......I Think

So yesterday we thought we were on our way to actually buy a house! Can you believe it?! Here is the story. There was this house that we had kind of been keeping our eyes on for a while, but it was a little out of our price range. The other night Ray was casually looking through the real estate websites and he came across that house but it was now being foreclosed for EXTREMELY CHEAP!!! So the next day we went and talked to a mortgage guy and everthing looked great, we would actually end up paying less than what we are now, but for our own house. So the mortgage guy had a real estate agent call us and she had to give us bad news. The house was already under contract and now here is the gross part. It is infested with German cochroaches (sorry if spelling is wrong) and they are so bad they are even falling from the ceiling. I HATE cochroaches! So, at least I didn't have to worry about the little beggers because it is already taken. We were disappointed at first, not just because we thought it was going to be a great house for us (or so we thought), but we realized it was because it was something we could actually afford. Houses in our price range don't come up very often in our price range, but we just need to be patient. It will happen when it is supposed to and for right now we are in an excellent duplex in a good neighborhood.

Just me and boys hanging out, being lazy!

Chase has fallen asleep in his exersaucer. What a hard life!

Logan loves to "play" Guitar Hero and Chase is following in his brother's footsteps.

What a better way to spend the afternoon, taking a snooze with the boys.