Summer Fun

In the midst of house showings and paperwork, we have been able to have a little fun around here.

First, a little anniversary celebration.  Forrest and I went up to Deer Valley to hear our very favorite four-times-married singer/songwriter.  (Note: As much as I love Ben, and as much as I love "The Luckiest," a bit of the shine wore off when I heard he left his third wife, for whom he wrote "The Luckiest," for his yoga instructor.  Sigh.)

ANYWAY, Ben Folds might be a musical genius, but Forrest and I are way better at staying married, as our 18 years of marital togetherness attests.  Here we are, smiling in the cheap seats on the grass, waiting for Ben and the symphony orchestra to get started:

Here's a shot of the amphitheater:

It was a gorgeous night.  Gorgeous! And other than the drunk guy behind us who kept shouting in a voice of unearthly volume, "Play 'Mess,' Ben!  Play 'Mess!'"--and seriously, this guy wasn't deterred by ANYTHING, not the people around him yelling for him to shut up, not the notion that the Utah Symphony Orchestra probably wasn't prepared to play requests--it was a wonderful concert.  We've never been to a concert at Deer Valley before, but I highly recommend it.  Bring a picnic.  Take in the amazing scenery.  Ignore the drunk people.  It's a good time.

We also just returned home from our fun-filled trip to Pineview with the extended family.  Andrew and Andrea are in town (hooray! so glad we got to see them again before we leave!), so everybody but Amy and Dave spent three days in condos by the lake.  The one and only bad thing about the trip was missing Amy and Dave and their kids, but I can understand that a two-week old baby makes family vacations of this sort pretty difficult.  Do they make life jackets for 2 week old babies?  Hopefully we'll be able to do something like this again soon, with everybody included.

The weather was great, despite dire prognostications the weekend before we left.  We had a few sprinkles, and some storms that came through at night after we were all snuggled tight in our beds, but during the day the sky was blue and the water was warm and the lake was surprisingly calm. 

I wish I'd taken more close-up pictures, but I kept forgetting my camera.  Or remembering my camera but not wanting to get up and actually unzip it from its case.  But I did get a few.  Here's a taste:

Forrest.  Sweet jump.  Green mountains in the background.  Face lit by the sun.  One of my better pictures of the trip, if I do say so.

Wyatt, bobbing with his cousins out in the lake.  Wyatt would have bobbed out there all day long if we let him.  He loved every minute of it.  Oh, and not to interrupt the narrative flow, but if you click to enlarge the picture you'll notice that Wyatt's haircut is looking a little funky.  About an hour before we left, we found him under the kitchen table with a pair of safety scissors doing this:

Never had a child take a pair of scissors to his own head before, but I suppose it's a parenting moment that all of us should have a turn enjoying.  I'm just glad he's not a girl.  And that I'm old enough now (tired enough?) that having a kid with a weird haircut doesn't phase me.  Much.  But back to the trip!

Each of the kids had a lot of fun out on the boat. 

 Ethan showed a lot of skill and is becoming quite adept.  He jumped the wake and did a switch move.  He even had a wicked wipe out, which is what all real wake boarders must endure.

 Jonas took some time away from creating an amazing hideout in the sand with his cousin Brandon and did a little knee boarding. 

 Elise got up on skis AND on the wake board.  She's really improving, too, and has the best attitude about trying and trying again if she doesn't get up right away.  By the end of the trip, though, she was popping right up on the wake board, and even crossed the wake.

And as evidence that I actually engage in water sports myself, a shot of me in all my skirted-swimsuit glory, skiing away.  And yes, I'm the only remaining child (or in-law!!) of Barbara and Dennis to have NOT gotten up on a wake board, since Drew managed to pull his 6 ft. 6 inch self out of the water and have a sweet run.  But I am not ashamed.  I like my skis.  And I'm almost 40.  Wake boarding is no longer de rigeur.  And I also say things like "de rigeur," and how many people do you know who say things like that and even SKI?  Exactly.

I wish I had more pictures of the rest of the family.  I'll have to steal some from Cindy and/or Andi and/or my mom, who did a better job than I did documenting things.  But we had a ball.  Such a fun break in the middle of a stressful summer.  Thanks mom and dad!

And Now, the Move

First, the good news.  Here's the house that we're buying.

Lo, the very one.  Obviously not move-in ready, but will be (we hope) by the end of Sept.  Here's a pic of a model home across town that's the same style.  Ours will have different colors in the exterior--darker tans and browns with a reddish-brown accent color in the triangles of cedar shakes on the roof peaks.

The two best things about the house are, first, the layout.

Don't mind my scribbles.  (The notations about room size have to do w/ the sizes of the rooms we have in our house right now so I could compare.)  The layout of this house is almost exactly like the house we left behind in MN, just a bit bigger.  I love the upstairs: there's a loft (hooray!), and this house has the "jack and jill" bathroom layout, so the boys will be able to share a full bath, and Elise will get a 3/4 bath with her room.  Needless to say, she's very excited about this.  (And so am I.  Maybe now the kids will stop using our shower!)  And I'm glad we have the loft, because for now our basement won't be finished.  The kids need somewhere they can watch iCarly that's far enough out of Mom's earshot that it doesn't drive her to drink.  I also like that the kitchen's a little bigger than the house we have now.  We don't have a dining room anymore . . . but that's probably okay.  We hardly use the one we have in this house anyway, and we needed to ditch the completely thrashed dining room table we've been eating on for the last 8 years.  Now we'll start using the nice dining room table and can thrash it.

The other thing I like about this house is the neighborhood.  It's an HOA like the one we're in now, so there are a couple of swimming pools and tennis courts.  But it's also in Minnesota, which means the surroundings are exceptionally green and lovely.  Here's a picture of the homes that are across the street from ours (the spendy ones with walkout basements--ours is a not nearly as spendy a house, with one measly window in the basement).  There are a few ponds like these and beautiful stands of trees and gardens, all connected by walking/biking paths:

When Forrest and I were looking at the neighborhood, as we walked along the path a couple of snowy egrets landed in the pond, a little bunny hopped across the trail, a hawk circled overhead, etc. etc.  It made me feel like saying "Alright, already!  We get it!  Minnesota is a natural wonderland!"  It really is, though.  Wouldn't have been surprised if a deer had poked her head out from behind a stand of pine trees.

The kids will all be attending excellent schools.  Ethan's high school is brand new and gorgeous.  A few pics I took with my phone, to help get him excited:

The football stadium, ringed in Minnesota green and farmland.

The lunch room, with its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the aforementioned Minnesota green and farmland.

The ward is surprisingly big (extended out into the overflow, two nurseries, a good number of youth).  In fact, we found out that an LDS family with a boy in 9th grade, a girl in 7th grade, and a boy in 3rd grade--almost the same as ours!--live in our very neighborhood, just one street over.  We had to drive for almost 10 minutes to reach the nearest LDS family in our old ward, so that's pretty cool.

So . . . even though we swore we wouldn't be buying another new house, this seems to be the best house for us.  Great schools, good ward, lovely neighborhood, and a nice new house to enjoy.  With the basement unfinished, it's not quite as big or functional as the house we have now, and I really really hoped we could find a house with the same size and functionality as the house we're already in that was 1. in our price range and 2. looked nice inside, but such a house was nowhere to be found.  At least during the five days we were looking.  But this house is a great option.  I just have the tiniest stomach ache over the thought of putting in a yard and finishing the basement (AGAIN!!!!!) when I'd hoped our extra money could go to other things.  The truth is, though, even if we'd bought a previously owned home, we would have been putting money into it anyway to upgrade or remodel.

So there you have it.  Moving is expensive, even when you have a great relo package.  And I am excited about our house for lots of reasons.  I'll just miss the one we're leaving.

Which is a great segue into part two of this post.  The bad news part.  Which is that moving kind of sucks.   And I'm not even talking about all the sad goodbyes and anxiety-producing unknowns.  The paperwork alone is killing me!   I feel like I have a flock of ducks I'm trying to keep in a row.  And not cute little yellow baby ducks.  Obnoxious midsized honking teenaged ducks, complete with a mouthful of those menacing-looking tiny duck teeth.  These ducks are:

-The people who apparently want to give us loans for our new house, but also want us to locate, fill out, then fax 916 pages worth of information.  IMMEDIATELY, please.

-The people who apparently want to buy our house, and even give us offers for our house, but then realize that (doh!) the military wants them to live on base, so they actually can't buy our house, so never mind that offer thingie.  But they would like to buy our house. Just can't.  (So maybe in this scenario it's actually the military who gets to be one of the angry teenage ducks.)

-The other people who apparently want to maybe buy our house and call 30 minutes before they want to see our house, necessitating much scrambling and scrubbing and short-tempered Mom remarks ("Seriously, you call this a MADE bed?") and then spend 60 seconds in the house and never return our agent's phone calls.  I do realize that this is the reality of life when one is selling one's house, yet it remains annoying nevertheless.

-The people who apparently want to build our house, but who also need us to fill out and then FedEx an additional 916 pages worth of information.  Oh, and they would like $10,000, too.  And our firstborn child. If it's not too much trouble.

-The people who run the high schools and junior highs and elementary schools and preschools who also require paperwork and immunization records and birth certificates.  And the choosing of classes.  And the taking of placement tests.  All this is understandable.  I mean, you can't just pull up the first day of school and kick your kids through the front door.  But still--lists and appointments and copies of copies.  Hoops for jumping.  Etc.  Plus, who in her right mind has a kid in high school, a kid in junior high, a kid in elementary school, and a kid in preschool?  Exactly.

-Finding temporary housing for the month of Sept.  (I'm ruining the parallelism by not beginning this paragraph with "The people who," but that's because Forrest and I are "the people who" in this scenario.  "The people who" can't seem to buy existing homes.)  Anyway, temporary housing during the month of Sept., then hope hope hoping our house will be done on time.  Driving the kids to each of their schools every day then picking them up.  I remember it being a pain when we moved here, and all the kids went to the SAME SCHOOL!

And did I mention I'm supposed to be keeping the house spotlessly clean?

And did I mention that my exercise regimen has gone completely out the window?  (Be that as it may.) 

So, while I'm grateful that things are going as smoothly as I can expect them to go (and they really are), and while I know that we're exceedingly lucky to be able to get help with this move and have a lovely new house (leaving aside the fact that we already HAVE a lovely new house--and yes, I'm leaving that aside! I am!), I'm kinda in free floating anxiety land right now.  If you didn't notice.

But it will all work out.  It will be for our good.  Of this I'm (strangely) certain.  It's this calm certainty that reassures me and gets me through the days where I'm madly faxing pages of bank statements and trying to figure out how to transfer Elise's orthodontia and cleaning up cat vomit on the carpet just minutes before a showing.

I know He never said "I never said it would be easy," Mormon needlecraft asserting otherwise notwithstanding.  I get the sentiment, though.  It isn't easy.  But I do have faith that it'll be worth it.

Real Life Stuff

Forrest and I just got back from our house hunting trip and we found a house we think will work for us.  But before I get to that, there are a few more things to catch up on.  Too many things!  So I'll be brief.  Or at least try.

First we have Jonas's Pinewood Derby.  Jonas and Dad worked on the car and made a really cool patriotic model, weighted with a silver dollar and a quarter.  Here's our cool track (well, not our track, but the track of the guy who goes around and does these things all over the SL Valley for a living):

And here's Jonas with his friends, celebrating at the end of the race.

And here they are posing the way their moms wanted them to pose:

Jonas's car was a solidly average performer, but he was a great sport and had a lot of fun.  That's what Pinewood Derbies are about, right?  (That and watching 38-year-old engineers get this glazed competitive look in their eyes, wandering around with a tubes of graphite clutched in their sweaty palms.)

The middle kids (you know, Jonas and Elise?) had their last few days of school to celebrate.  Here are some pictures of the revelry at field day:

More shots of Jonas and his buddies.  He's going to miss these guys!

Jonas leaping small styrofoam obstacles in a single bound!

Elise and her friend Ashlyn.

Cooling off!

Which brings us to the actual last day of school.  I make all the kids gather on the front porch for a "just off the bus" shot, much to Ethan's 8th grade mortification.  Hey, it's a tradition!!

Makes me a little sad that this will be our last last-day-of-school shot on this particular porch.  Sniff.  Both Elise and Jonas came home with good report cards and smiles on their faces.  And Elise looks particularly fetching because we crimped her hair in preparation for the 6th grade dance.  No boys and girls actually danced with each other of course, but isn't that the point of 6th grade dances?  To bop around in a sweaty clump of girlfriends and wonder what it will be like when you actually DO dance with a real boy?

We kicked off our real summer by having Tony and Cindy's kids with us for a few days over the 4th of July weekend.  Here they all are in the family room, kickin back:

We went swimming, went to a neighborhood 4th of July bash, lit fireworks (sorry, forgot to take pictures!), went to church, and hung out at Grandma and Grandpa Sweat's empty house, eating pizza and making incredible messes with Grandma's stash of glitter and stickers and glue sticks and poster paint.  (Grandma and Grandpa were at Amy's house in celebrating the advent of Carly June--more on that later).  The cousins had a great time together.  It was particularly fun since they don't have much more time to hang out in a casual cousinly way (sniff, again!).  

And then, Carly June was born!  Here she is, in all her cuteness.  I haven't met her yet (of course) and probably won't meet her for a while (I'll refrain from sniffing again, but you get the point), but here she is.  Nieces are the best.

Good job, Amy!  You keep making gorgeous kids.

And I just got a call from my real estate agent & we have a showing from 9-10 tomorrow, so I'd better get tidying.  I have lots more news on the move and the house we think we're buying, etc etc  . . .  but you're gonna have to wait.  I know; you're on pins and needles.  You hang on every word I write, yes?  And by "you," I mean my mom. :-)

Over and out, at least for today.