Living up to her name

Filled with excitement on Halloween eve Megan yanked out her two front teeth and declared herself a real-live jack-o-lantern. This afternoon, two more gaps appeared and she is truly living up to her jack-o-lantern status. She claims Tyler knocked one out while jumping with her on the trampoline and the second one she twisted and pulled on until it wriggled out. ( The blood doesn't bother her one bit. She told me I'd better stay out of the bathroom until she got the blood cleaned up. LOL!) There are more gaps than teeth now!

The best stocking stuffer . . .

I know what I'm going to fill the kids stockings with this year- Costco cups! With the leftover Thanksgiving cups the kids have had hours and days of fun building forts, walls, and castles and then knocking them over to have them make a terrific crashing sound.
Who needs toys????

SOLD!

An unofficial tour of our home-to-be in December. It will be wonderful

to be home for the holidays.

The entrance view from the front door. The dining room is on the left, the office is on the right and the stairs go up at an angle. The living room and kitchen dining area are straight ahead. The entire house will have blinds when we move-in and a different carpet- which we ordered today.

Greg's office- I'm jealous he gets the bookshelves!
The stairs going up on the right-hand side with nooks in the wall.

The dining room that we'll use as a music room. We aren't formal diners.

The downstairs living room that looks out to the backyard and is open to the upstairs with a two story fireplace.

The kitchen- where I spend most of the day! The doorway you see leading off the kitchen area leads to the spare bedroom and bathroom downstairs. The door next the the cabinets is a lovely full-size pantry. To the left of this picture there is an extrance from the garage, a mud room and an exercise room.

A bird's eye view from upstairs.

Another bird's eye view.

The railing from which the bird's eye view is taken. A desk is directly behind this picture. The game room and movie room are off to one side and the bedrooms are on the other.

One of the girl's bedroom with a jack-and-jill bathroom.

Jack and Jill bathroom.

The theater room with Megan and Trent playing ! The theater room has double doors that open off the game room which we'll use as a craft room and family library. We'd like to put some seating and love sacs in the theater room.

The laundry room- the other place I spend most of my time! It has washer/ dryer hook ups and room for a spare fridge and cabinets as well.

The spare bedroom/ guest room/ Grandmas' space downstairs. There is a bathroom off this room and an exercise room down the hall. I didn't have a chance to take pictures of the other kids room or our master bedroom and bath. The kids rooms are upstairs our master suite is downstairs.

A view of the lot from the side.

This concludes our tour. We hope you enjoy it! We likely won't post again until after the move . . .

Decision time . . .

We've been offered a finished home that fell out of escrow and the builders want off their inventory. They've dropped the price, though its still more than our original price on our lot, and offered a 4.5% fixed interest rate on the loan. The lot is bigger in the backyard, very close to a half acre, and there are no neighbors behind this lot. However, it has horrible carpet, a pukey green brown color, that they won't replace. The granite and tile throughout isn't the style I would have picked, though it isn't offensive by any means. On the positive side, it has very nice upgraded wood floors throughout the main downstairs, living, office, and walkway areas. We would lose a month's rent on the rental house because we prepaid and we would have to move again- SOON! However, we would be in our new home for Christmas and we wouldn't have to commute everyday to school and back and the store and back which would save a great deal of time. So we are deciding . . . we'll let you know. We could be closing the end of November.

Comfort and joy!

I woke up with a horrible flu-bug or cold or sinus infection or something yucky on Saturday which progressively got worse Sunday until Monday I was really feeling low. After church a friend let me borrow her Pioneer Woman cookbook and browsing through the pictures stirred up a deep longing for warm, soothing, comfort food. Unfortunatly, all of my Moms are far away as are my friends and family, so if I wanted comfort food, I was going to have to make it myself. Waffling about whether or not I could summon the energy, I found this recipe for cinnamon rolls and I could nearly taste the gooey, cinnamoney, sugary, roll melting in my mouth. Well, that decided it. A few hours later, with the help of my lovely children, our house smelled divine and the fruit of or labor tasted even better. This new recipe is quite easy, loaded with butter and the perfect match of gooey and sweet with not too much bread- and no raisins!!!

We took some to our neighbors to thank them for their kindness. Anyone who is my neighbor will receive these on a regular basis - hint hint: move to TEXAS!

With some to share, and some to freeze, and some to savor now, there was plenty for everyone.

To my duty . . .

Akela, pack, badge, two-finger hand signal and handshake, pledge: I now know what all of these mean, including what the Scout pledge says!

Tyler's excitement and enthusiasm to be a scout shocked me, though I find it so wonderful. I would have had no idea he would count down the days every week until Scouts and would be excited to get decked out in the Scouts uniform. For a boy who doesn't like a lot of layers, and tucking in his shirt, being excited to wear the Scout uniform is nothing short of a miracle. He is so very excited and loves his pack meetings and the impromptu football games before and after. I must never underestimate the need we all have to belong to something and feel like a part of a community, which is exactly what the scouting program offers.

We have read the handbook together and memorized the pledge as a family. The other night we even practiced the frog stand, where you balance all your weight on your arms and lift your legs like a frog. I gained a little too much momentum and I pushed off to lift my legs, rolled over in a somersault and crushed Tyler who was attempting to frog beside me. Scouts are exciting I tell you! Scouts is a bleessing to our family and provides the learning, structure and interaction young boys like Tyler need and crave.

The Buzz

Projects= Mom's homework!

Each student in Kaylee's class had to pick a state and dress up to represent that state with a posterboard of information on the front and back. With the choice of Utah as her state, Kaylee wanted to dress like a bee and unfortunately bee costumes only come in toddler sizes. After a trip to the craft store we decided to sew yellow felt in stripes across a black shirt. We wanted to do wings but it was difficult with the posterboards she had to wear. We transformed an old headband into some attennae by recovering it with black and white ribbon on top with some yellow ric rac for interest and lined with it yellow felt on the inside. Two pipe cleaners with some fuzzies attached to the end became her attennae. We used the same ribbon to hang the posterboard and to decorate we turned little golden glitter bugs into bees. We enjoyed creating together.

The Buzzing Kaylee-bee!