Knocking one out.

I have so much to do, but sat down at the computer for a few necessary tasks, and am drawn to hurry up and post a few important things that may get lost in all the shuffle around here.

So I'm knocking one out today.

Please excuse any typos and grammatical errors.

Mar attended her first prom.
I say first with the assumption that she will attend others, but I've also learned in my many years of mothering that there is the possibility this could be her only. For now I'll say it's her first.

Mar is pretty low-maintenance. Once she had been asked to prom, she came home and tried on a couple prom dresses that were hanging in Shi's closet. She ended up wearing Lex's (throwback here and here), and didn't once have the expectation of shopping for her own. This was a tender mercy for me, because we are crazy people with how much we have going on.
Ain't nobody got time to shop for prom dresses.

I told Mar we DID experience a prom shoe miracle...

She needed a pair of flats since her date was on the shorter side, so we literally found them in 10 minutes. That was a miracle. (Also a line from The Fiddler on the Roof.) I had to hem the dress a bit, however, which I had estimated would take me 30 minutes, but ended up taking 2 hours. I won't bore you with the details, just let it be known that the stress about did me in. Things I've learned: DON'T WAIT UNTIL THE DAY OF, 30 MINUTES BEFORE THE DRESS IS NEEDED, TO DO ALTERATIONS OF ANY KIND.

Love her. I'm so glad she had a great time.


The following night Mar was performing at the Rockies game with her choir.
Another stress-filled day, as Bill and I went car shopping for her while she worked until 4pm.
We cut our timing close (as always) and realized that we needed to print the tickets before we picked Mar up at work on our way to drive to the game, but we could not figure out how to print the darn things. I may have melted down... again. Billy-my-hero calmed me down (without saying "calm down," which would have be disastrous), and we were only slightly late to the field. Fortunately, Mar was not nearly as stressed as her mama.

Here's the performance:

It had actually been snowing like crazy that morning, but it had warmed up a bit by game time.

It was, however, on the chillier side, especially once the sun started setting. Mar was still tempted by the snow cone haha.

I just snapped this picture to remember what our evening ritual is like... these days will be gone too fast. Mar usually comes in and chills on our bed and looks at her phone for a while before we read scriptures and pray. I love those moments.

Sunday was the day we've been anticipating (some one of us for over 5 years haha).
Bill was released as the Bishop of our ward.
We met as a family for a few minutes before sacrament meeting in his office.

Gosh. Bittersweet for Bill, definitely all sweet for me.
Mar said she can hardly remember what life was like "before."
I'm hoping she'll get the best of both of us for the next couple years before she's gone, baby, gone.

After the meeting block that day, our dear neighbor had planned a Linger Longer for the ward.

I really do love these people and will miss them so much!
I'm grateful for social media, though. Such a great way to keep up with friends we don't get to see regularly.

While all that was going on, Shi was here:

We like to keep things exciting at all times.
Earlier in the week Shi had a reaction to a medication she was taking, so she had gone to an InstaCare for medication to counteract the severe allergies she was experiencing. Just when she thought things were improving, late Saturday night (aka early Sunday morning) she was stung by a wasp TWICE. She again had a major allergic reaction and started feeling her throat tighten, so just as we were leaving to church, she was heading to the ER. The good news is: things are improving. At least I haven't heard otherwise (feeling like a bad mom right now, as I neglected to check in on her yesterday).


On Monday, Mar got her car. Can I hear a hallelujah??

Bill and I had shopped and shopped on Saturday, and brought many Carfax reports and pictures to Mar. I told her I would take her out of school Monday morning to test drive a couple of the cars she liked the best. She picked this little baby.

It was the car Bill and I were leaning towards, too, so we're all happy campers.
Mar is paying for half, so our deal is that once it's paid for, it's all hers.
I don't know if our older kids will feel gypped (they shouldn't... we paid for the cars they drove, so they didn't get to keep them once they were married), but I feel good about it. Not to mention I am ecstatic about Mar being able to get herself around. It's been crazy trying to pack up one home, work endlessly on another, and be on a strict time schedule in order to get Mar where she needs to be. It's been especially crazy because her ride up to this point, Mace, is a senior, and it's that time of year where seniors have very different schedules than everyone else, requiring Mar's mama to be doing the school run most days. Not any more.

The only stress now is parking.
Mar does not have a permit to park in the school lots (only juniors and seniors can have a permit), so she has to arrive early enough to get a spot across the street at the park. There are about 50 spots available (they can't use the front row of parking or they'll get ticketed), and they are in high demand.

We attended Mar's guitar show last night...
I will post the video as soon as I can. She did an excellent job.

We are gearing up to head to Utah for Tay's BYU graduation and Evie's baby blessing.
It should be a wonderful weekend!

Maximizing minimalism.

This post is for my mama and children, who are anxious to see progress on our new old place.

Here is a picture of our new old house:

Isn't it cute?

Before you get worried that this move will be {HARD} for me (going from nearly 5000 square feet + ample storage in the crawl space - which isn't included in that large square footage amount - to 2200 square feet finished and 1100 square feet of potential in the basement), rest assured I am fully prepared to dejunk, declutter, donate, and sell a myriad of items that I have collected over the past 29 years of married + family-rearing life. My little inner voice (aka the Holy Ghost) has been whispering to me about the need for such a change, especially now that my family living with me has decreased in numbers, with a high likelihood of an empty nest in 2 years. There are other key factors as well, but I don't have a lot o' time for 'splaining right now... maybe another day. Maybe not.

I am excited about it.

My mom told me she watched the documentary "Minimalism: A Documentary About the Important Things" on Netflix the other day, and that it made her want to dejunk a bit. Me too. (My favorite line, "Love people, use things," sounds very similar to a quote by President Spencer W. Kimball: "Love people, not things; use things, not people.")  

Anyway... that's just a bit of the conversation I've been having with myself lately. I don't think it will be hard. You know what's hard?? All the dang work it's taking just to make this new old place livable. Yesterday I spent a whopping 12.5 hours there, working and sweating away, 7 hours today... and there's still a ton to do. But every day there is progress, which is also part of the conversation I've been having with myself haha.

Here's a quick pictorial:

 Our first day in the house...

 The handles on the drawers were placed in a position by the previous owner that my visually-inclined self could not live with, so it was determined that I would once again paint my kitchen cabinets.
I would NOT want to do it for a living, that's for darn sure.

*Carpet removed from the family room for FHE... a reason to celebrate.*

We don't jump anymore. We've come to the realization that there's so so much still to do. Jumping will have to wait until we are done. Moved in. Swinging on the glider bench on the front porch while we sip lemonade. Then we'll jump hahahahahaha.

Yep, that was behind the refrigerator, which, by the way, we are trying to sell for the low low price of $200. If we can't sell it, we'll have Home Depot haul it away for $18. Either way, it's a win for us {cheesy smile}.

This small little kitchen sure has a whole lot o' cabinets and drawers.

Just as a visual for the dirty state of affairs we were left to deal with... this is what all the blinds looked like:

Yes, that is probably 20% regular dust, 80% pet hair and dander.

Progress... a little every day.
How do you eat an elephant???
One bite at a time.

And this is what happens when you stop by Sonic late at night on your way home from working at your new old house and you get really excited to eat SOMETHING, so you grab your shake from the cup holder a little too fast.

Luckily there was still a little shake to enjoy, even if you had to drive like this for a good 30 minutes.

The past week we have been focusing on painting the walls in the main areas around the wood floor because our floor guy is coming on Thursday to refinish them. I haven't been diligent at taking pictures because, really, who wants to see paint on the wall? Not to mention I DON'T HAVE TIME TO TAKE PICTURES. Tomorrow I will be back at it (while also selling a set of interior French doors). My goal: finish the remaining cabinet doors, paint the ceiling in the powder bath, hall closet, and small hallway, and paint the walls in the powder bath. I have a very specific timeframe because I have to be back home to get Mauri to work after school. She really really needs a car... but we don't have time to shop for one.


Here are a few other random pictures from the past few weeks NOT involving our new old house:

Mar sang a duet in her choir concert.

As I mentioned a few posts back, Shilo came to visit for a few days to spend her last night or two in her old room.

Then we sold her bedroom set.

We participated in an attempt to break a world record.

It was so possible, however it was not successful. Boo.

It was more an exercise in frustration, thanks to poor leadership.

Not my circus, not my monkey.

It still bugged Bill and me that we spent over half a precious day in the attempt, and, had we been in charge (we weren't, just trying to support others) and had formulated a plan of efficient execution, it could have easily been done. Perhaps we will suggest it as a fundraiser at Mar's new school, since we know what NOT to do.

A few of our tulips actually survived the deer feast, and bloomed.

I think we're going to take these bulbs with us to our new old place.

Mar got a prom-posal...

She won't be wearing heels {wink}.

We painted eggs at 11:40pm the evening before Easter.

I may or may not have shed a tear or two over the fact that we are living in a chaotic limbo-ish state and Easter wasn't quite the lovely holiday I would have liked it to be.

It was, however, Bill's last full Sunday as the bishop of our ward.

I think he shed a tear or two, too.

It was a beautiful day... I'm going to miss this view from my old backyard.

I always always love getting snaps and pics of my favorite granddaughters... I love them so much.

More updates to come... I just don't know when. Until then, we'll just keep on keeping on.
That's how we roll.

Give me strength.

We've FINALLY been able to get into our new-to-us-but-used-and-dirty house.

And we've been itching and sneezing like crazy people.

UGH! Cleaning up after 4 dogs and 3 cats -- all long-haired -- is DISGUSTING.

I don't think the previous owner ever cleaned.

I have pictures on my point-and-shoot that are worse (think long pet hair dangling from the ceiling fans), but for now, these two meager pics from my phone will have to paint the picture.

This was the scene in EVERY CABINET in the kitchen. Yes, friends, that is a pile of pet hair.

This is what I found upon removing the drawer under the oven. Believe it or not, there were 4 doggie bone snacks hidden in all that... {gag}...hair and dander. Under the refrigerator was worse.

We have been pulling up dog-peed carpet and cat-dander-filled carpet pad while we sneeze and sniffle (I'll admit I've even let my nose just drip -- gross -- cause ain't nobody got time to grab a tissue every other minute. Shh, don't tell).

I will have to share the complete story of our fixer upper once it's... fixed up haha.

I'm wondering WHY we thought we could do this {little} project after we had spent months fixing up our old place. I'm really REALLY tired of fixing stuff up.

And sweeping and vacuuming and cleaning up nasty pet hair and dander.

Pray for me.

Sold.

The last time we said goodbye to a house was in 2002.

Which was also the last time we said hello to a house... until now.

It's so crazy to look back on these pictures and remember moving on to Bent Oaks St.

My children were so young (so was I, haha).

Have you ever wondered dumb things like "How many times have I been up and down these stairs?" I've had those kinds of thoughts a lot the past few months. "How many times have I driven up and down Canterberry Trail?" "How many times have I waited at the stoplight at Parker and Main?" I would seriously love to know the actual numbers.

Our first company came in June of that year.

We still talk about THIS SPECIFIC DAY - Taylor's 13th birthday.

 It was a Sunday. He got up that morning and said he didn't want to go to church. I remember thinking "This teenager stuff is actually real." After church we celebrated with everyone, and just as we were ready to blow out candles and give Tay his birthday present - a bike - he needed to go to the bathroom. So we waited. And waited. And waited. 45 minutes later he finally joined us {wink}.

We didn't have air conditioning yet (our realtor had told us most people in CO didn't have it, since it cooled off so much in the evenings... NOT trustworthy advice, we learned), and it was a scorching hot summer that year, so we ate in the cool of the cement walls and floor of the basement.

The kids made immediate friends with the Billat family across the street.

Ahhhhh... such babies!

The first day of school at Frontier Valley - the first year the school opened.

And I can't leave out my saxophone-playing-footballing-middle-schooler, Tay.

Such good memories.

So, yes, our house is sold.

It's really a miracle - similar to the miracle of us moving here 15 years ago.

We put the house on the market Saturday afternoon. I had felt an urgency to get it listed. Bill had suggested we take it slower and not feel so rushed to get everything done, but I kept pushing. After it was listed, we waited. I didn't know what to expect... immediate showings? I thought maybe by Sunday someone would want to see it, but we didn't hear a thing. (However, after thinking about it, our realtor had put that we'd prefer not to have Sunday showings.)

Shilo was home for the weekend visiting (and cleaning her little heart out... thanks, Lo!!), so once we were seated in church that Sunday, she asked if I knew the family sitting on our same row. I didn't know them, and figured they were visiting or new when Bill came down and chatted with them prior to the meeting. Because I teach in Primary immediately following sacrament meeting, I didn't get a chance to introduce myself.

Bill gave a talk that day. Since our home was listed and had a sign in the yard, and his topic was sustaining our leaders (in preparation for General Conference), he mentioned that our house was for sale, and that soon the ward would be sustaining a new Bishop (he's officially served over 5 years,  btw... the longest 5 years of my life haha). When Bill got home that evening, we talked about the visiting family - one of the sons was in Mar's Sunday School class; they were from Florida; they would be moving into the ward in June; they had an offer on a house backing the middle school.

On Monday morning I got a text to schedule a showing. Mar, Shi, and I painstakingly fine-tuned the house, Shi headed back to Provo, and Mar and I loaded up the dogs in the car and drove around for an hour and a half. Not long after arriving home, I received another text to schedule a showing within the next hour. Again, I loaded up the dogs in the car and sat at a nearby park. 40 minutes in, I received a cancellation text. AAAAUUUUGGGGHHH. It's a little late for that, I thought. I headed back home, soon receiving another text for a showing an hour later. Once again I went through the same process. Fine-tuning (the dogs bring in dead grass every time they go out), loading up, heading out... to sit and wait an hour or so. It was a crazy non-productive day in my mind and I wondered how long I could keep it up.

Tuesday morning Bill received a phone message. It was from the family that had visited our ward on Sunday. They didn't want to get our hopes up, but had seen what they believed to be our house online, and wanted to come take a look. Yes, they already had a contract on another home which they had signed a month earlier. They didn't want to alarm their realtor, so just wanted to stop by and take a look. We asked them if they wanted us to leave or to stay, and they said they'd like us to stay. Once they arrived, somehow the dogs came up (Bill had them kenneled in the car), and they said they had a dachshund, too, and wanted to meet Jack and Ava. They had a son in the marching band and had just returned from speaking with the band director at LHS (the same band director Tay had at Chap). We took them through our house, and shared all the things we love about it. We told them about our awesome neighbors, too. We weren't being salesmen, we were being deeply sincere. I honestly didn't care if they fell in love with my house - I knew it would sell either way (although I didn't relish the thought of the showing process going on for very long). When they were leaving, they mentioned that they were going to talk to their realtor. A few hours later they called and said we could expect an offer that day. 

It came. We countered. They accepted.

Bill and I shed a few tears as we talked about the perfect timing, and how we have been so so blessed. I believe this home is special. We have been blessed to live here for 15 years. I'm excited to have members of the church moving into it... our ward needs them (although they were moving into our ward either way), and I'm grateful to know they will be good neighbors to our dear old and new friends. Our closing isn't until May, so my fingers are crossed that everything will continue to go smoothly for them and for us until then.

Feeling grateful.