Hanging Out At Grandma's

Such beautiful weather, we have to soak it up while we can stand to be outside!

The kids put their feet in the pool (Mason got his pants wet, he doesn't normally run around with no pants on...). The water was freezing. I don't know how they could sit there as long as they did, but soon they were begging to jump in and go swimming. No way!

Stomping the water off.

Hanging out on a blanket, I was reading (attempting to read) while Mason told me about his cars. And you can see the giant desert tortoise behind me. I think he wanted to chomp off my toes. He kept coming around.

Mason was attempting to scare and attack me.

Sawyer, upper left, playing with his sister, Belle- upper right, and his brother Jack, bottom. They were ganging up on Melvin. Or is it Marvin? I can never remember the turtle's name.

Pizza night! We made three different kinds of pizza. The kids helped with the pepperoni pizza.

Brighton was probably begging to eat another pepperoni.

Mason made sure his dinosaur had some bites too.

And he had to taste test the cheese.

Little Miss B slurping up mozzarella.

My Birthday

Dale was out of town, new job training, and missed my birthday! So my gift to myself was hitting the road and visiting my family for a few days. Here are the highlights of the BIG NIGHT!

My mom decorates the little shelf behind us for every different holiday and birthday. This one is my own personal, turning 28 shelf. : ) And the traditional mom+me+cake shot.

B and M helped me blow out the candles. Lucky for me it was just the two candles. Twenty-eight little candles may have been too much for me!

The cake! Brighton specifically requested that we go to Grandma's and Grandma needed to get a cake. She told me not to make my own. : )

The kiddos eating cake.

B was really REALLY excited to have cake. She'd been asking for cake for a few weeks actually.

Us and our cake.

Present time! Modeling a necklace my mom gave me. I made her one almost just like this one for Christmas. Too funny! Kassie gave me a relaxing package- bath bombs, candle and a robe- along with a full body, hour long massage. She just graduated from massage therapy school. She's amazing! If you're ever in Phoenix, call me and we'll schedule you a massage. She's so worth every penny! Kaylee gave me a cute basket, fridge magnets that are farm animal heads (cute, sound weird, but cute), a way cute appliqued kitchen towel, and a book about making things out of books.

Mason- happy about the birthday cake! (He just came in, sat in my lap and says, "Me! Eating birthday cake. Eating your birthday cake, mom." Crazy to me that he remembered it was my birthday.)

Funny thing about it being my birthday: I got Brighton up in the morning and the first thing she says, "happy birthday mom." She wanted to wear her birthday shirt from her superhero party, so she did. Mason saw her wearing her shirt, so he wanted to wear his superman shirt. It was just so cute.

The Backyard

The kids have been loving playing outside. They literally spend all day out in the sun. They brought their chairs out to enjoy the good weather.

I took a few shots around so you can see that there is really just rocks back here. I guess there are a few plants too. And some AZ trees.

From the corner of the yard.

One side of the yard has all these rocks and then this little retaining wall. The kiddos love climbing on these rocks and walking across the little wall.

Little Mason rockin' the flip flops. He's very excited to wear his sandals.

Brighton asked me to take her picture and she posed just like this.

The houses behind us both have dogs so Sawyer was going to the fence to try and see his new friends.

Just in case you Washingtonians didn't know what this is: this is called the sun- I took a picture of it for you. It's warm and bright and lights up my whole house when I open the blinds.

A Week of Progress

Welcome to our home! Here's the progress from the last week:

Mason at the front door. I'll get some plants for my metal pots eventually. But my valentine's sign is up, so that's a success.

Come through the front door and turn right and that's where Mason is. There's a little hallway to the right. But I found a place for my little half circle table that had no home in our old house. I have two pictures like this gold framed one, and I'm still thinking about it, but I think they'll both go up on the wall right here. Now down the hall to the kids' rooms!

Here's B's room at the end of the hall. I haven't put up any decorations yet because I'm still waiting on a dresser to put in here. My mom has an old one that she's going to give me that will go right to the left of B's bed.

Coming back up the hall there's the 2nd bathroom, and that's not decorated at all, and then Mason's room. I have to find the rest of his decorations to hang up, but it's mostly done. My mom is going to give me my brother's old twin bed frame. Makes the cheapo in me grateful I never bothered to buy one for him : )

He's excited that he has room for his train table in here. These rooms are huge!

Heading out the hall again, you can catch a glimpse of my living room, but we'll go around the corner to my kitchen so you can see that.

I still have stuff on the counter that needs a home! I've boxed up things that I know won't go anywhere and they'll camp in the garage for now, or I'll just get rid of them, but there are certain things that I LOVE so they have to be in the house.

There's a little wall here that my hutch fits on perfectly.

I've hung my old living room curtains in the dining area because the window in the living room is WAY too big for them. I'm planning on hanging all my valances from the old house in here above each window. There are 5 more windows in this room!

Standing by my dining table, here's the view of the living room.

I've hung my big mirror on this wall- the laundry room is to the left and the master room to the right.

My master bathroom! Really big.

And there aren't any decorations in here because I never even got around to decorating my room at our old house. And there really isn't any other furniture in here besides some chairs, the couch and our bed. Oh, and Dale's big fat desk and my treadmill. I don't know if I'll even bother... : )

And that's it! Now I'm organizing the boxes in the garage and trying to find the few house things that I know are missing. But the house is livable and there are no more boxes in any of the rooms.

Burried Treasure

My Grandma sent up my Great-Grandma's china a few years ago and we just left it all in the boxes and Dale packed it up behind a whole bunch of his crap in the garage. Well, now with the move, I could get to the boxes and unpack all of it. I wasted time yesterday,not unpacking, but hand washing and drying all this stuff. It's actually really pretty and I could see myself using it. It's hard to tell, but the edge design is red and yellow, and the flowers are red, yellow, green and blue. They match my decor quite nicely.

There are 9 full place settings, but if I had a few more teacups and bowls then I'd have the full 12. I tried searching online (another hour, wasted) and it was really tough to find matching designs and see where this actually came from. I found a website that I can actually send them a picture of the design and the back of the plates and they can tell me what it is. The back just says the company!

I found one that looks almost identical (heck, it might even be except it's hard to see real coloring on the computer) and it was made somewhere around 1940 and was part of the company's new method of merchandising china by displaying them in the store in a few different sets. Maybe you fancy china people know this, but it's something I've never ever looked into. It's called Add+A+Place and I think my Great-Grandma bought each of the different groupings, because she has all the different serving dishes, and bought each place setting at $1.00 each. I'll have to do some more research. I think it would be really cool to find the missing pieces and have a full china set again.

Umbrellas Have Another Use

The kids have been enjoying 70 degree weather in our rock filled back yard, spending the entire day outside digging and climbing and throwing the rocks. And we've found a new use for our umbrellas! They make perfect little shades.

Our New Home

For those of you who I didn't get a chance to tell because it's been in the works for a YEAR! We kept it on the DL, huh?

Dale got a new job which moved us to Bullhead City, AZ! This week is my first official week here and I just wanted you to see that my house isn't always clean! And I kinda went in a random order, so the layout may not make any sense whatsoever.

Here's the kitchen and dining area. My table looks ridiculously small now which is fine because I've been on the hunt for over a year now for a new one...

More kitchen. See? I haven't even put away my groceries!

The living room- and that's our glass front door.

Living room.

Dining area.

As seen from the street.

I don't know if I've ever wanted a glass door so I'll be able to test it out and see how I like it. I'm not sure... I can't peek at people coming to the door and refuse to answer now...

Brighton's room. I've always wanted a lot of windows and this house has a lot of windows! But that leaves barely any wall space. I've collected stuff over the years to fill my walls so it'll be tough to see where I can put stuff.

The Kids'/Guest bathroom. My laundry room doesn't have a rack to dry clothes. I literally line dry almost everything in my closet so it looks like this will also serve as a 2nd laundry room.

The living room again, from the opposite side. That is an entire wall of windows, covered in blinds because the sun is too bright... I've spent 10 years away from it- it hurts my eyes!

The laundry room. Smaller than my last one. The rest of the rooms seem bigger than in our old house, but going from 5 rooms to 3 is still a big change.

Stuff in the garage. There is a lot of stuff with no home!!!

But I have made some progress! That one box says Kim's Clothes. These are not all mine. I actually had to unpack all of Dale's clothes first since he was out of town last week, all this next week, and then for two weeks after that... A lot of my clothes and shoes are still in the boxes.

Ok, our garage is huge! I'm not sure if you can see way back there- apparently it's a three car garage that is "boat deep." We need to get a boat. After we find a place for all these dang boxes.

Master bedroom. Dale's office has to be in our room now. Blah. This is not the look I was going for. But again, more windows, which is nice. Lots of sunshine once my eyes adjust ; )

My bathroom. Good size. The cabinets in this house are misleading. It seems like I have more cabinet space but once you get stuff inside, they're a lot shallower that our old ones. I'm going to have to get creative with my organizing so everything can go in it's proper place.

My closet. It looks full and finished in this picture but it's not. And I've only hung up my dresses and some of my shirts. I have like four more boxes to try and squeeze in here. Dale's clothes take up the whole thing!

Well, that's that. We're all adjusting. B is sleeping fine, but little Mason got up 14 times the other night to have me tuck him in again. Really, 14, I counted. Because I didn't sleep the entire night! It's worse than a new born! Sawyer thinks he can sleep in my bed (he's not allowed on furniture) and keeps jumping on the bed and scaring me in the middle of the night. And he's been really clingy, following me around a lot. All I want to do is clean, but there's so much stuff lying around in the way. Mountains of laundry (not piles, mountains... I didn't take pictures of those...), boxes, and just stuff that doesn't have a place yet. I'm getting overexposure to mess and my OCD-ness is just going to have to get over it I guess : )

Mason asked to go to Tommy's house the other day. He was sad when I told him he couldn't go and play there for a while. Brighton says she likes her old house and wants to go back. In her prayers, we've asked that she can make a lot of new friends. She always adds that she misses her friends she already had. We're not even going to mention my feelings : ) I'm getting teary eyed just typing. Thank you to all my friends who have been like family to me. I miss you so much. Thanks to those who sent their husbands over to help us move- we had everything out of our house and in the trucks in 2 hours! And thanks for coming over and helping me clean. You gals are awesome and everyone here will be held to that standard.

On that note- here's to 2012 where I'll try to be a better blogger and FB stalker, carry my camera everywhere and post everything we're up to. It's a new year, new house, new job, new ward, new life! And I'm learning to knit- new talents!