we LOVE visitors

Shane's Aunt Carolee, Uncle Ron, sister Melody with her son Carter, came to visit us this last weekend. We enjoyed having them here so much.


Ron is quite the handy man and completed more projects around the house while they were here than I even know about. I also had a good time taking Carolee and Melody shopping to decorate this empty house. We made some great purchases made some headway too.
Shane keeps bragging that we have now had two visits from his family to our new house and only one from mine (thanks Spencer and Kristol!). My family really needs to step it up a notch. Maybe getting people to come and visit won't be such a tough sell once the weather is cold up north and perfect down here. Start making your reservations now!

House Pics

I am finally going to post some pics of the new house. I am not including a picture of the outside for safety purposes. I tried to just walk through the house and take pictures of most of the rooms. We still have a lot of upacking and arranging to do, so I am a little embarrassed of some of the rooms. I took these pictures almost 2 weeks ago, and already a lot has changed, but this will give you an idea...

We're having a...

GIRL

It looks like #4 will be a girl. We are all pretty excited about this, especially Cailey who really wanted a little sister.
Now we can start thinking of a name. This is always so hard for us, so we are open to any and all suggestions.

Home Sweet Home

Well...where to start? The three months since my last post were filled with a lot more waiting, uncertainty and frustration about getting into a house. The brief version is that the house that we were waiting for in short sale went into foreclosure on June 1. So we were basically back to square one. At that time we changed realtors, and started looking again. The same house came back on the market a few weeks later as a foreclosure and listed at a lower price than what we had offered before when it was a short sale. We made another offer and it was accepted by the bank. Even after that there were so many crazy things that happened. For example, the title company lost our file for a few weeks, the title didn't get recorded properly when the bank took possesion, so we had to wait for the bank's legal department to straighten it out, I could go on...but we did finally close on August 10th. That week Shane's dad, and sisters Janette and Jessalynn, came to Tucson to help us paint. We got a lot done in 3 days and are very grateful for their help! Carpet was laid on the next Monday/Tuesday, and Wednesday 5 ladies from my ward came and helped me clean. Friday we received everything that had been in long term storage for 4 years (why did I keep some of this stuff?) and Saturday, August 22, we brought all of those boxes from Japan that were in the rental house to the new house. That night we started living here among all of the chaos. Since then I have been trying to tackle projects each day, but it is still pretty overwhelming and chaotic here. Besides all of that, we love being in the house. I love how the paint and carpet look and I feel very blessed. It makes you forget that you ever thought this was a trial. I wish I could post pictures of the progress on the house, but I just found the camera last night. (I am lucky to find anything these days!) Pictures will be soon to come.
Besides everything dealing with the house, we also found out that I am expecting again. Baby #4 is due on Valentine's Day Feb. 14. We are very excited about the addition, but I must say that feeling puky has not made the move easier. I am feeling pretty good now though. We will find out the sex of the baby in about 3 weeks.

SLOW boat arrival...

After living out of 4 suitcases for the past 5 months, our things from Japan finally arrived last Tuesday...all 49 boxes! Although we were ecstatic to finally have our stuff, we aren't quite sure where to put everything. We are still in a small rental home and hope to be moving soon, so for now we just have boxes stacked everywhere. This was right after the movers left. Bryant soon found a box of toys and within minutes we had toys scattered all over the house.
Over the last few days I have been going through boxes, stacking them in every closet and corner that I can find and have cleared out the living room except for a stack of boxes along one of the walls. It sure was a lot easier to keep the house clean when we only had 4 suitcases of stuff!

Also this week, we went to see Cailey perform in the Kindergarten Luau. The last month or so they have been learning songs for the luau and a lot about Hawaii. Yesterday Cailey asked me if we could go to Hawaii.
This is Cailey's teacher Ms. Boreson. She has been a great teacher.
I just thought I'd throw in one more picture of the kids in their new pj's and sunglasses.

Happy Mother's Day!!

Make a Smilebox greeting

A piece of advice...

NEVER try to buy a home on short sale (unless you feel that patience is one of your better qualities). For the past couple of months we have had an offer in on a home that is in short sale. Yes, we were warned that these can take a long time, but I guess we didn't realize how hard this waiting was going to be. Of course, we have looked at other options and gone house hunting more times than we would like, but we always go back to this house and decide we will keep waiting. Supposedly we are at the end of the process. We have learned that we have the highest bid and are in first position on the home. Because the people who owned it were not only in upside down, but had two mortgages on the house, two different banks have to approve it. It is now in the hands of the second bank (and has been for quite some time). We have this rental house until the end of May, which seemed like a long time back in February, but now we are getting worried that we aren't going to have a house by then. Everything will work out, right??? That is what we have to believe to keep ourselves from getting too stressed about it.
Besides the all consuming house stress, life is pretty good for us here. Cailey has really loved being in school. She loves her teacher and has improved greatly in her reading and writing skills in the short time she has been here. I am really glad that she got to experience Kindergarten in the US. The rest of us are doing well too. Shane and I just got callings (YW secretary and gospel doctrine teacher) in the ward we are hoping to move into, which makes us even more anxious to actually live in the ward boundaries. See...the house thing IS all consuming...everything always goes back to getting a house. We welcome any advice or techniques in distraction so that we don't sit here waiting our lives away to find out. Help. anyone?