Thankful!

Oh, we had such a great time with my mom and dad over Thanksgiving break.  I'm so glad they came to hang out with us--I don't do well without extended family at Thanksgiving.  Turkey and yams and stuffing and little bowls of olives aren't the same without a few extra faces around the table, you know?

And what lovely extra faces (and regular everyday faces, too) they were:

Here's the table, set and stocked with foodie goodness by all sorts of helpers:

The gelatenous mound of shimmery cranberries from can?  That's for Grandpa. :-)

Besides Thanksgiving goodness, we had a fabulous time going to the Mall of America; attending Grandparents' Day at Wyatt's preschool (good timing, no?); indulging in a little Black Friday shopping (thanks, Mom, for coming along with your crazy, cold-braving daughter to snag some great deals); seeing Tangled (really good! Great music, and I even wiped away a tear . . . now, granted, it doesn't take much to warrant tear wiping when you're me, but still); watching The Sound of Music on Blu-Ray (the hills are SO alive on Blu-Ray), and hanging around the house playing games and watching random shows on our newly obtained streaming Netflix account.

All the kids + Grandma, watching The Secret of Kells on Netflix. A gorgeous, strange little movie.

One of our small sources of fun was rearranging the little cubes on the window sill that were supposed to spell "Merry Christmas" into amusing phrases.  One of Ethan's offerings:

Yes, Grandma.  It is, and will always be, your Camry.

Thanks so much, Grandma and Grandpa, for flying yourselves to the frozen North and spending some quality time with all of us.  We love you!  We miss you!

To round out the post, how about some general updates on the Hallstrom Fam?  Let's start with the my good looking husband, why don't we?

We took this picture right before church on Sunday.  Forrest needed a photo for some career-related profiles, and I thought he looked handsome and (amazingly) I had five minutes to spare before we rushed out the door to church.  As far as a general Forrest update goes: he's been a little sick with a cold the last week, which I think was something of a surprise to him.  He doesn't get sick very often and kinda takes it as a personal affront.  He's feeling better now, though, and he still managed to cook a very juicy turkey on Thanksgiving despite being a couple notches below top form.  It's been frikkin freezing here (ah, Minnesota) but he still wants to get out there and try to kill one more deer before the season wraps up.  He likes his new job.  He likes his calling with the young men.  He's good.

Ethan has hit the accelerated state of adolescence and seems to be literally growing before my very eyes.  He had a great time doing the musical, is a stellar early morning seminary attendee, and his grades are still looking strong.

After much wavering back and forth over whether he wanted to be on the wrestling team or the speech team, Ethan has decided to go with speech.  For a while it looked like it was going to be wrestling, and while I was more than willing to be a supportive mom, he came home from one early practice worried about making another kid's lip bleed (the same practice where all the athletes had to take a cognitive test they'd use as a baseline whenever they suspected a kid had a concussion) and I thought, 1. do I want my child to be involved in a sport where bloody lips and concussions are, you know, commonplace? and 2. is wrestling really the right thing for him if giving somebody a bloody lip fills him with angst rather than self-congratulation?

It would have been a big challenge for him, and Ethan really does want to be involved in some kind of sport during high school . . . but I kind of breathed a sigh of relief when he decided not to wrestle (they had two weeks after practice started to decide--it's a new program and anybody can come and see if it's for them).  He's thinking he'll try track and field in the spring.  I was also THRILLED to find out that he'd be able to take part in the speech team after all.  The two conflicted, so he needed to pick one or the other, but we just heard back from the speech coach that he did an excellent job in his auditions and they're excited to have him on the team.  Hooray!  Not only is speech something Ethan's really good at, but I'm sure he'll make some great friends.  And no bleeding!

Yes, this is my beautiful daughter.  She's also on the accelerated grow-up plan.  Doesn't she look nice? She's all gussied up for her 7th grade choir concert.  She volunteered (!!) to read/recite an introduction for one of the songs and was told she could either read it or memorize it.  Come to find out Elise was set to introduce the very first song!  So in an auditorium full of parents and pretty much the entire 7th grade, she marched up to the microphone and recited her intro from memory.  (She skipped a tiny little part, but nobody but me and the choir teacher probably noticed.)  She was a little nervous, but did great.  And then, wouldn't you know it, every single other kid READ their introductions!  How's that for going the extra mile?  She was also one of the prettiest girls on stage.  Yes, I'm prejudiced, but I'm telling the truth.  And I know we're not supposed to tell our daughters they're pretty because it warps their sense of what's important and and all that jazz, but, as her mother, I must speak the truth. :-)

Elise has been working hard as her first trimester in middle school wraps up and she's doing very well.  She and her new friend Preeta teamed up (just today, in fact) to do a project for science where one is supposed to make a model that represents the parts of a cell (e.g., they chose to do a farm: the fence is the cell wall, the farmer is the nucleus, a basket full of eggs are golgi bodies--you know, golgi bodies!).  It was so cute I had to take a picture:

Elise, Preeta, and the Farm-representing-a-cell.  Aren't their little clay guys cute?  And yes, the farm is stolen from our Christmas village.  They have promised to take very good care of it.

Jonas Leo is also very good looking, but informed me today that he "really needs a haircut."  Um, I agree.  He's holding the little clip on his bag that he received for being his class student of the month.  Teachers have always loved Jonas from preschool on up.  He's the perfect combination of smart but not smart alecky.  And he'd nice.  And he loves to read.  Elementary school teachers are always taken in by book-loving boys.

Speaking of being a book-loving boy, Jonas is participating in a team event called Battle of the Books with some friends at school.  They read 12 titles, then compete in a quiz-bowl like event in February.  It's a cute group of kids---they decided to name their team the "Nerd Herd" (irony! in 4th grade!) and get together every two weeks to talk about the books.  Tomorrow Jonas is leading the discussion.

 And what about Wyatt Dean, you ask?  He's spending a lot of time dressing up like an "Inja" (for some reason, he insists on dropping the N.)

Dark stocking hat? Check. Skeleton gloves? Check. Cammo pants? Check. Pistol in the pocket? Check.  And last but not least, ninja sword down the back?  Definitely, check. He's ready to rumble.

He loves preschool.  He loves anything that has to do with playing, really, which is why I signed up for a babysitting co-op with some women in our ward.  Once every two weeks I host a co-op time, and whomever needs a babysitter for that time slot pays me with "tickets" I can then use to have Wyatt attend the co-op at their house.  It's a slick set up (laminated tickets and everything!).  But unlike when I had three little kids at home, I don't really need the time to myself as much as I think Wyatt enjoys the time with other kids.  Today was my first day to host and two darling little girls signed up to come over to our house.  I brought the "girl toys" upstairs from the basement, and after playing with the Barbies and the Little People Doll House for a while, Wyatt exclaimed, "Hey!  I like playing with girl toys!"  Then he promptly went upstairs and put on his cowboy clothes.  (Perhaps he thought the Inja clothes would be a little TOO aggressive for the ladies.)

Wyatt and two darling little ladies.  One of them caught me drinking a Diet Coke and said, "You have soda at your house?"  "Yes," I replied.  "But don't you know that soda's not good for your body?"  Ah, the honesty of children. :-)

And last (and least--really, I'm the least interesting member of this family, and I say this without a shred of self pity), the main thing I'm doing besides puttering around, feeding/grooming/coraling the children, and buying modeling clay and styrofoam boards at Wal-Mart for science projects, is getting my final issue of Irreantum out the door.  It's going to be a great issue.  I know I say that every time, but it really is.  I'm glad to be going out on an issue I can be proud of.  Here's the cool cover:

The other thing I do well is write loooooooong blog posts.  In case you haven't noticed!

Anyway, lots to be thankful for right now in my life.  And I am.

best.calling.ever*

So a few hours after pressing "publish" on my kinda whiny post last Saturday, I got a call from a member of the bishopric asking me to come in before church and talk to the bishop about a new calling.

Buh, buh, buuuuuuuuuuuhhhhm!

The last time I received a calling right before church I was a little blindsided by being released from the RS Presidency and called as a Webelos leader.  (BTW, overall the Webelos calling was definitely a challenge, but it wasn't as hard as I'd though it would be and--not to spout a cliche or anything--I did learn a lot.)

But this time?  This time I walked out of the bishop's office with a smile on my face and a spring in my step, because I got pretty much the best calling of all:  Relief Society teacher.  Sunday calling, ONCE A MONTH, teaching, spending time studying gospel topics, getting to know other women in RS, etc. etc.  Perfecto, insecto.  I've only been an official RS teacher once before in my life, and it's been a long time since I've had a teaching calling, so I'm pretty durn happy about it.

*But I did put an asterisk on the title of this post, did I not?  The reason is because today was supposed to be my first time teaching, so I spent a little extra effort getting ready for this particular lesson.  First impressions and whatnot.  The lesson was on a great topic: gifts of the spirit. Had a song (not a sung song, but a play-on-the-ipod song, a lovely classical piano piece by The 5 Browns), had my reading assignments all printed out, found a very cool story that would illustrate the idea of developing the spiritual gift of charity.  I even pre-made little strips of cardstock to magnet-stick to the chalkboard (and I usually don't do that--I usually just write stuff--but I wanted Marvin J. Ashton's list of spiritual gifts to be on the board and I knew I couldn't write that fast).  But then we woke up to freezing rain and slippery, icy roads, and then the phone calls started.  Church: canceled!  Ah, well.  I learned a lot about gifts of the spirit this week (really, I did).  I doubt I'll get a chance to teach this particular lesson, since most RS teaching schedules are pretty locked in, but we'll see.  Missing teaching a lesson really isn't that big of a deal, especially when I consider that our Young Women in Excellence was supposed to happen right after church (poor YW Presidency!  Those things take a lot of time to plan).  And the woman I visit teach, who's a relatively new convert, was supposed to speak in sacrament meeting and had been stressing about it all week.  The bishop told her she'd probably speak sometime in December now--so, as she told me when I called her, she has a few more weeks to worry about it.

So instead, all of you get to have my Relief Society lesson.  Go read the great Mormon Women Project interview and Marvin J. Ashton's talk I linked to above, if you'd like.  (I also used an Ashton quote in my sacrament meeting talk.  I'm liking Marvin J. lately.  He was just a little bit before my time, but whenever I read his stuff it really resonates for me.  He's like the Uchtdorf of the 80s.)  And it has been nice to hang out at home with the family and relax.  We're almost done getting the Christmas decorations up.  I know!  Totally on the ball of me, yes?  Mainly it's because I wanted to get it all done before my Mom and Dad come on Tuesday for Thanksgiving.  TUESDAY!  It's going to be great to have them here.  I already have every day planned, with a trip to the Mall of America, Black Friday shopping, a movie, and (c'mon guys, you know you love it!), a PARADE!  (Yes.  A parade.  Outside.  In November in Minnesota.  It's the Target Holidazzle and since I no longer get to go see the lights at temple square, I'll do my best to make this its frigid, colorfully-lit replacement.  Bundle up, baby!) And I have made time for naps, Mom.  I promise.

Can't wait.

I Guess it's Winter in Minnesota

Although we've been having beautiful September-like weather over the last few weeks, resulting in many gorgeous nights like this . . .

A view from the front porch

. . . this morning I woke up to let the cat out, and she and I were both surprised to find a winter wonderland.  It's been coming down ever since.  Wyatt was excited to get outside and help his dad shovel the driveway.  He even donned some goggles:

All tricked out . . . in a coat Jonas wore when he was seven.

Ready for the white stuff

Wyatt and the cute cute girl who lives next door (whose name I can't EVER remember)

Before all this snow descended, we spent the week in pretty low-key fashion.  Well, at least I spent it that way.  The house is about 90% put together, which means I've shifted from frantic-frenzied-purposeful to puttery-wandery-loose endy.  (Yes, loose endy is not a word, but it's the best antonym of purposeful I could come up with and I'm shooting for parallel sentence structure.)  This loose endiness is a good thing most of the time--I have these long structureless days with which I can do pretty much whatever.  Of course, I have plenty to keep me busy--taking care of the kids and the house is always enough, especially if you do it right--but it's been so long since I've had at least half a dozen looming deadlines or pressing responsibilities that it's kind of weird to not have them pinning down the beginning and ending of my day.

And, yes, I'm enjoying it in lots of ways.  But I also feel a little bit disconnected, which is to be expected when you move away from family and friends and quit your job and don't have a calling.  I'm not completely without distractions--I'm working on my final issue of Irreantum (I'll be stepping down as editor after the end of this year)--but it's almost done.  And, of course, I'm writing too.  But all these things are completely within my own purview.  I can do them for however long I want to, whenever I want to.  Don't have to go to any meetings, don't have to grade any papers, don't have to plan any activities for 10 year old boys, etc. etc. etc.  So I'm enjoying it.  Mostly.  I'm also remembering that this "new normal" won't be the new normal for long, and that even though I would like to have a little more purpose and structure to my days, I'm going to do my best not to overload my plate.  And underloaded plate is always easier to balance than an overloaded one, yes?

Other members of the family have been pretty busy, though.  Mostly Ethan.  He's been on tech crew for the high school production of Beauty and the Beast, which opened to wild acclaim last night.  He's been at the high school every day until late at night over this last week, and I've been feeling his absence.  But it was really fun to go see the play last night and the fruits of all his hard work.  He does wish that he'd actually tried out for the production--he was a little leery of the singing and dancing--but he learned a lot working the lights and now knows for sure that he'll try out for the musical next time.   It brought back so many memories to go to the high school and see the show last night; I so loved being in plays when I was younger.  One of those things I'm so glad I did then, because most of us don't get the opportunity to do it ever again (unless you're Grandpa Hiatt, then you can do it for most of your adult life).  It's so much fun to see Ethan interested in it too.

The other kids have been busy with school--all three older kids did great in their parent teacher conferences.  And Forrest has been having a great time sitting in his tree, shooting videos of the girl deer, fork bucks, and fawns that continue to taunt him.   And Forrest and I sneaked out this afternoon to go see a movie--the new Denzel Washington "Oh My Heck It's a Derailed Train!" movie.  It was actually quite entertaining.  We also have a great deal here in Woodbury; a guy in our ward owns a first-run movie theater where all tickets before 6 p.m. (even on weekends) are only four dollars.  So a first run movie for 8 bucks?  Pretty sweet, even if we don't have stadium seating.

And now I'd better sign off again.  Thanks to all of you who popped in and said hello last blog post after I mentioned that my post-before-that was a little (ahem) lacking in comments.  Seriously, though--no blog commenting pressure.  Blog commenting pressure is the last thing ANY of us need, right?  I know you love me.

And read EVERY WORD of my long winded blog. :-)

Other Newsworthy Items

So in the rush of moving in & getting the blog updated on Major Life Events, there are a few other things I've neglected to mention.  So here goes:

1.  I'm in the middle of my second cold of the last six weeks.  It is No Fun.  Not terrible, but just ugh enough to make me just a tiny bit miserable.

2.  I'm probably getting sick because I'm not exercising.  I read somewhere that if you exercise regularly then you reduce your risk of  getting a virus by about 40%.  So not only have I gained back the five pounds I lost in the throes of what I like to call Anxiety September, but I get a nice cough and head cold on the side.  What needs to happen is we've got to join the YMCA, because the two times I've tried to go ride my bike the cold air really really made my ears hurt and I turned around and came home.

3.  Had Wyatt's parent teacher conferences.  His teacher loves him and he is a joy.  He can almost write his name (just gets the letters in the wrong order), is impressive with the counting and color identification, listens extraordinarily well during Jesus Time (he can retell those Old Testament stories with hilarious panache), and, according to the teacher, is the "only kid" who hasn't yet gotten in trouble for poking or touching or getting up and running around during circle time.  He just folds his legs in "criss cross applesauce" and sits there like a good boy.  Good boy, Wyatt!  Really, he is a dang good kid.

One hilarious Wyatt-ism:  Friday night we went to go see Megamind.  (Pretty good!)  Wyatt had to go potty and (ahem) so did I, so he was in the stall next to me.  After a minute I hear, "Nice shoes you  got there, Mom!"

Maybe you had to be there.  It was funny.

4.  Got all interested in the elections on Tuesday.  Voted.  Don't know why voting makes me so happy--especially when I'm not super charged-up about any one particular candidate--but it does.  It IS nice to have the dang ads off the television, though.  The congressional race in our district was AWFUL.  Apparently it was the most expensive congressional race in the country: Tea Party incumbent Michelle Bachman vs. a state senator named Terryl Clark.  Both of them behaved like spoiled children having tantrums or, conversely, mean bullies kicking sand in the other kid's eye.  Bachman won reelection (incumbent, plus we're in a traditionally Republican district), but I think Clark might have had a chance if she hadn't gotten so nasty herself.  Anyway, glad that one's over.

But, in case any of you were wondering, I'm still an Obama fan.  Whenever I listen to him WITHOUT any spin (spin from the right or the left) I wind up feeling like he's still the smart, thoughtful man I voted for, and that (overall) he's doing a good job in incredibly trying circumstances.  I thought he rocked the press conference on Wednesday.  And I'll leave it at that.

5.  This happened a few weeks ago, but I still keep forgetting to mention it.  They caught the guy who stole my purse back in May.  I found out because we received a letter from the federal government stating that we'd been the victims of "mail fraud," which understandably freaked me out a touch.  Finally, after calling the toll-free number and getting transferred six times, I found out what had happened.  Apparently my purse-snatcher is a big time identity thief and he got caught.  When they went to his house they discovered dozens of driver's licenses and a bunch of forged checks and old credit cards.  Mine was among them.  I guess a lot of the stuff had been obtained by stealing people's mail, so mine was lumped in with those.  Luckily all our accounts were shut down and changed and we have credit monitoring services on both of us now, so it looks like we're as safe as we can be.  Still, kind of scary.  And glad the guy's going to jail.

6.  I'm doing NaNoWriMo again.  But not really.  Let me explain: I was planning to do a traditional NaNo this month (writing 50,000 words).  But.  The YA novel I'm working on is almost all mapped out and I have a few chapters under my belt already. I'm not so much in the "exploratory writing" mode with this one.  The first few days I kept wanting to take my time with the sentences, really plan out the plot, all that stuff.  So instead of requiring 50,000 words of myself, I'm simply dedicating myself to writing at least an hour a day.  (Except when my parents come for Thanksgiving.  That was another reason I wasn't so keen on the 50k word requirement: when my mom and dad are here I don't want to be locked in my office, typing all day.)  Anyway, I feel good about it, and excited about the novel.  Well, mostly excited about it.  Then sometimes I wonder if it sucks.  Isn't that how it's supposed to go?

7.  Forrest killed a big deer with his bow and arrow.  A girl.  We now have deer sausage and deer meat for deer chili and deer stew.  He promised me he wouldn't kill any more girl deer, or if he did we would donate it to the food shelf, so instead he is spending his time up in a tree waiting for a nice big boy deer.

Bow hunting is one of those things that I totally do not understand . . . but boy, does Forrest love it. Gives him a little spring in his step and a sparkle in his eye.  He comes home and draws me color coded diagrams of all the deer he sees walking around.  (He sees lots of deer walking around while he's up in his tree and has only shot at one--the aforementioned big ol' girl deer--so it's not like the whole hunting thing is all about killing Bambi's mom.  He only OCCASIONALLY kills Bambi's mom, then waits for Bambi's dad to come close enough so he can kill him and take his horns and NOT put them up in our house.)

Hunting.  Huh.  But I am glad to see Forrest so happy about something.  Yes, I'm a good wife.  Mostly. :-)

8.  Is it just me or is TV kinda blah this season?  I'm not very excited about any particular show, although I do really like Modern Family.  Oh, and I really enjoy The Good Wife. Everything else seems old and tired, and I'm not at all interested in any of the new stuff. Probably just as well: gives me more time to be productive.

9.  I love having my laundry room upstairs!

10.  I miss seeing my family.

And there you have it!  It is now 8:13 and I've been up, on a Sunday with 11:00 church, since about 6:15 a.m. (dang daylight savings, making your kid wake up at the crack of dawn).  Now I kinda want to go back to bed but it's too late.  And it's fast Sunday!  So much time to be hungry.  I'll try not to think about it.

And congrats to you if you read this whole thing.  Based on the two measly comments from my last long post, chances are few of you have. And that one even had pictures!

I am not whining. :-)

Lookie Here!

Howdy pardners!  Looks like a new blog template has wandered into these here parts.  Y'all as excited as I am?  Yee haw!

Okay, enough cowboy talk.  But:
1. Isn't that picture of Wyatt just about the greatest?  And . . .
2. It was about time for a blog redesign, yes?

So, okay, it's 11:15 at night and I'm just getting around to actually writing the post, but sometimes a cowgirl's gotta do what a cowgirl's gotta do.  Now, onward.

First, some Halloween goodness:

Cowboy Wyatt doing a version of the limbo at his preschool Halloween party.  He was super excited to wear his vest and bandanna and holster--"but no gun, Mom, no guns at preschool!"--to his class party on Friday.

Friday evening the kids got costumed-up for the ward Halloween bash.

Elise as a jeans-wearing cat.  Tale of the cat costume: we bought a size 14/16 "kids" size costume and neglected to try it on until a couple of hours before the party.  It was a little, um, short and tight.  Luckily Elise was as uncomfortable with the costume as I was, so she agreed to wear jeans over the bottom.  I think it ended up looking pretty darn cute anyway.  It's hard for Elise to NOT look cute.  Especially when she's wearing perky pink ears.

Jonas as a bottle of ketchup.  When he found this costume at the Halloween store he was immediately taken with it.  I, too, was taken with it, since it cost $14.99, didn't require any accessories, and wasn't associated with violence, death, or mixed martial arts.

And I'm sorry, but this is just about the cutest cowboy I've ever seen.  The costume came with a duster jacket, but he refused to wear it because it made him trip.  And see the smile on his face?  It's because I let him take his pistol with him to the church party.  Hey, there are people there dressed like serial killers and flesh eating zombies.  A little bitty cowboy pistol--a pistol that is the ultimate accessory to the perfect Wyatt costume--can't be too bad.  Can it?

Ethan, as a Jamaican vampire.  He's wearing a pretty nifty set of vampire teeth, more expensive than your usual plastic variety.  They mold to your teeth and pop in and out.  He did a lot of mulch hauling and trench digging to earn those teeth.  I think he enjoyed them.

And all together now!:

Here are some more Halloween pictures, taken at the ward party:

Wyatt, showing off his face painting.

 A little ring toss action.

 Ethan working the fishing pond.

Elise working the bowling game.  (She'd originally signed up to do the cake walk and was somewhat disappointed that she had to do bowling because setting up all those pins over and over is kinda a pain. I  empathized.  But then she girded up her loins--or, in other words, pulled up her Cat Jeans--and went to work.  Good girl. Although in this picture the other girl is setting up the pins.  They took turns.  You get the idea.)

 Wyatt and Dad watching the pie eating contest.  See?  Told you we had a big ward.

Jonas working the other side of the fish pond.

Halloween was actually kind of fun this year.  I say "actually" because Halloween often stresses me out.  The costumes, the decorating, the coming-up-with-kids'-games, the candy wrappers all over the house, the creepy-gory decorations in the grocery store or in a person's yard that fill my 3-year-old with terror and make him scared to go to bed at night.  But this year, Halloween was a little less stressful than I remember it, and actually, kinda fun.  It's probably because I wasn't required to come up with any kid games or crafts NOR was I asked to attend an adult Halloween party where costumes are required.  Oh, the angst of planning adult Halloween costumes!  The only bad thing, really, that happened was the sugar cookies I made for the cake walk--sugar cookies I'd meticulously decorated--got all smooshed on the way over to the church on Friday night.  That threw me for ten minutes or so, but I recovered.

Beyond Halloween, we've also got some pics of the upstairs to share.  Wanna see?

The upstairs loft, two views:

Desk courtesy of Ikea.  It's really nice to have the computer on one side and a desk for homework on the other.  The kids like it.

Love Sac courtesy of a guy who lives all the way across town who was selling it on Craig's List.  We've always loved Grandma and Grandpa Sweat's Love Sac, and I thought one would fit nicely in this spot.  So I perused Craig's List until I found a good deal--pretty cheap, and owned by a nonsmoking single guy with no pets who'd used it "like 4 times."  Granted, I drove 45 minutes across the Twin Cities in the dark in the rain to go find it, then when I walked up to his dark-ish house at the end of the street I wondered if the whole scenario would someday be replayed in a 48 Hours True Crime Re-Creation, but I was pleased to see that the seller had a roommate there, was on the smallish side, and seemed rather meek.  Well, except when it came to negotiating the price.  Then he wasn't meek.  I handed him $10 less than his asking price (which was kind of lame and embarrassing, really, I shouldn't have even tried to negotiate), then the guy, his roommate, and I heaved and squished and pushed that Love Sac badboy into the back of the Tahoe.  It was quite a scene.

But I survived.  And the kids are liking it.  It's cozy.

I'm also throwing in this picture so you can see what our entertainment center is up to.  It's still not all the way put together and I'm not sure what to put in the shelves, besides the Wii and Wii-related paraphernalia, but it'll do for now.

And now, the kids' rooms:

 Not super-exciting, and we could use some more decor.  But at least the room's big enough for some of his toys, since we don't have a basement to play in.

 The boys' room.  Not much has changed from their previous room, but it is a little bigger, which is nice.  They can actually use the desk that came with the bunk bed.

But the real design accomplishment is Elise's room!

Isn't it cute?  The wall color turned out really nice (well, nice if you're 12), and her new bedspread is extraordinarily cozy.  It's the cat's new favorite place to hang.  And, any of you planning to visit us, this will be our guest room.  Elise won't mind being kicked out for a few days in order to accommodate visitors.  Will you Lou?  (She really won't.)

And last but not least, the laundry room.  It's a little on the small side, but it's UPSTAIRS, hallelujah, and I'm really really liking that.  I'm also enjoying the new washer and dryer.  So efficient!  And they play a happy little jingle whenever I turn them on or open the lid, which makes the arduous task of laundering the clothing of a family of six a little more bearable.

And no, no pictures of our bedroom.  Still working on it.  And plus, it's just a bedroom.  Not all that interesting. Although we do have enough room on either side of the bed now for BOTH of us to have a nightstand.  Heaven.

Okay, friends, it's now after midnight.  I'm going to get in trouble for this (Forrest).  Good night!  And I promise I won't complain I'm tired in the morning. :-)

Photos

So the downstairs is in good enough shape to take some pictures, and now that we have grass and some shrubbery (Monty Python flashback), we thought we'd show you an outside shot too.  We've had glorious blue skies for over a week, but today is kinda grey (but not lonely! Annie flashback).  Still, you can see the green green grass and the new front doors and the purplishness--about which I'm still not quite sure--of the shake shingles.

It is hard to know just by looking how much work went into laying the sprinkler pipe over which this green green grass was laid, but the work?  There was a lot of it.  None of it done by me.  Thanks hon.  And we have a few bushes and some grasses and bought a "Showy Mountain Ash" tree to go along with the two maples in the front yard.  Here's a picture of what the tree WILL look like.  When it's not fall, and when it's not little. So, let's say, early summer of 2015:

And now, the main floor!:

This is my favorite view, looking into the kitchen from the mudroom.  And I'm so glad that our dining room table matches everything so well--exact same colors as the house.  It's like it had been sitting in the formal dining room in our old house for five years, unused, just waiting for its chance!  And you can't tell from this picture, but the fridge in this house is exactly the same as the one in our old house.  This amuses me.  And one of our new purchases were the barstools you see to your left.  They could be a tad shorter, but I like them so much better than the honey oak barstools we bought back in 1999 for $15 at Target that have been slowly shellacked with thousands of childhood lunches since then.

Another view of the kitchen, this time from the family room.  The day I chose the vertical blinds at Home Depot was a very stressful day--height of the moving-induced-anxiety-carnival--and I kinda felt like the blind lady talked me into them.  (And who's going to trust a blind lady when it comes to picking out vertical window coverings?  Well, this one was quite adept at her job despite her disability.  Mark.) So when the blind installer (who was also quite adept at his profession despite his disability) came over and pulled them out of the package I got a touch stressed out because they looked a little 1987 to me.  But you know what? I like them just fine.  I might make a new valance one of these days, but they work.

Speaking of window coverings, we decided to go with curtains instead of blinds in the family room, and I'm so glad!  We toiled over these bad boys yesterday and finally got them up.  Forrest had to figure out an ingenious way to turn three curtain rods into one in order to have one that extended the length of the windows, but he figured it out.  The solution involved dowels.  I never would have thought of it.  Hooray for handiness!  I picked out the curtains at Ikea, and Ethan wasn't sure about the motif (birds, Mom?) but once he saw them hanging up he decided that they were, in fact, nice looking.  I agree.  And yes, it's dark outside.  These pictures were taken last night at about 10 p.m.  But I wanted you all to see the curtains hanging separately, cause it's cuter like that.

The mud room, walking in from the garage (the kitchen is to the right).  I'm going to try and enforce the "backpacks on one set of hooks, jackets on the other" rule.  We'll see how long that lasts.  The half bath is to the left, then a big main closet is straight ahead.

The new front doors.  I like them so much better than the wrong ones.  Not only do they have the pretty cherry wood finish, but the windows aren't quite as far down.  The other doors were half glass and it made me feel like everyone was watching me watch TV, a sensation that makes me feel both nervous and lazy.

 Living room, to the left as soon as you walk in the front door.  The furniture fits well.  My only hesitation is putting the mirror above the love seat.  I think it's too small.  Hmmm.

My office!  This time the office is blue instead of green, and I really like it.  Tony's boat picture looks nice, don't you think?  It was hard to get a good shot of the office as a whole, and I'm not done putting books away or hanging the curtains. (Mom, I'm going to use those sheer green panels you gave me before we found out about this whole moving thing!)  But I really like the feel of the office and that I can look outside to the front yard when I'm at my computer.

And that, folks, is where we're at.  Now we've got to work on the upstairs.  I was proud of myself because I put together a 29-step bathroom wall unit for Elise bathroom, using power tools and everything.  (Her bathroom is nice, but it just has this tiny vanity with no drawer or anything, so a wall cabinet was a MUST. )  Poor Wyatt's room has been a shambles pretty much since we moved in, and many of our toiletries are still on top of the dresser in my bedroom where I put them a week ago after determining that I would put them away immediately.  Oops.  Hopefully by next Sunday that space will be picture-ready too.

I have a bit of a cold--stuffy nose, kinda achy--and I think that I'm in the same place I hit about a week and a half after having a baby: the adrenaline has worn off and I find myself looking around and thinking, "Oh wow.  What have I gotten myself into again?"  But I've had four babies and moved into, now, five houses, so at least I can try and tell myself that this too shall pass and normalcy will once again be restored.  I love normalcy.  Except when it's boring.  Which is the paradox of all of this, right?  The cure for boredom is doing stuff, but doing stuff is a lot of work.

Maybe I should get somebody to make that last sentence into a vinyl wall decal and I can put it over the door in the kitchen?  It's either than or "Return With Honor!"  (I always want the "Return With Honor" decals to have this tacked on to the end: " . . . Or Else!"

Kay, better go now.   I'm getting rambly and just a hair too snarky.  Two reliable signs that I've blogged too long.  G'night!

In Sum

(Photo taken after upacking kitchen boxes.  Taken with my cell phone camera because the regular camera had yet to be located.)

So the kitchen looks lots better now, but I'm going to wait until the blinds are up before I take some real "after" shots.  And the blind installer guy comes tomorrow, hallelujah!

But we've been busy over at Casa de Hallstrom, that's for darn sure.  In the last week and a couple of days we've:

-Painted the garage and put a nice speckly epoxy on the garage floor
-Painted Elise's room and my office
-Moved in
-Moved out (I don't know if I've been as bone tired in a while as I was last Wednesday night at midnight when I finally decided it was time to stop cleaning and packing up the apartment and get some sleep).
-Installed a sprinkling system (Forrest did this all by himself, trenching and everything).
-Selected and planted bushes and shrubs
-Selected a new washer and dryer (hooray!), waited around for the delivery people, then installed the gas line (okay, yeah, Forrest is doing a lot of this).
-Waited around for the cable guy.  Had the phone go out the next day so waited for him again.  Then the day after that, had a nice discussion with the shovel-wielding cable burying guy who'd cut the main sprinkler line Forrest had installed the day before.
-Waited around for the door installer guy.  LOVE the front doors.  The originally-installed doors were incorrect, and I'm so much happier w/ the new ones.  Pics to come soon.
-Waited around for the tub installer guys.  Our old tub was also incorrect.  New tub arrived two days ago and--surprise surprise--it has a "chromatherapy" feature, which basically means that there are a series of LED lights in the bottom of the tub that turn the water a delightful array of calmness-inducing colors.  It's hilarious.  And also cool.
-Waited around for the sod installer guys.  At least the sod came with the house!  And they had this really cool sod-rolling machine that laid the sod down on the dirt like toilet paper off a roll.  I left to go to the grocery store and they were almost done by the time I came home.
-Bought a bunch of stuff: hooks for the mudroom, bathroom shelves, mats, desks for the kids' loft, rug for the kitchen, bar stools, wireless router, wireless router receiver, laundry sorter for upstairs laundry room, etc. etc. Even when you don't have to buy a lot of furniture or anything, moving into a new house is so terribly expensive.
-Hooked up a bunch of stuff: TVs, computers, printers.  Cords, cords, cords.  Oh, the masses of cords.
-Hung up a bunch of stuff: pictures, temporary blinds, clothes in closets, decorative items, shelves.
-Hauled a bunch of stuff up and down stairs, from the garage to the basement, from the bedroom to the office.
-Opened, unpacked, then broke down about a bazillion boxes, and stuffed mass quantities of packing paper into the garbage.  Having other people pack your stuff is nice in so many ways, but man, they use more boxes and more paper than they need to.
-Made about a bazillion tiny decisions: where should I put the cutting board? (Lazy Susan.)  What should I do when there's nowhere handy to hang a dish towel by the sink? (Buy one of those 3M removable hooks and stick it on the cabinet by the sink--but then I bought a silver hook and I think it clashes.) Should I throw away this vanilla scented lotion that I haven't used since 2003? (yes.)

On top of all that, four of the six of us gave talks in church on Sunday--only Jonas and Wyatt were exempt.   Then there was the regular stuff: homework, swimming lessons, Ethan being shuttled back and forth from the school as he helps out on stage crew for the upcoming musical.  Parent teacher conferences. Laundry.  Food preparation.  Sleeping.

Forrest keeps saying with a real wistfulness in his voice that we need to go to a movie.  I so agree.

So as soon as I get things in picture-taking shape, I'll take some pictures.  But all is well here.  Busy, exhausting, but good.  And getting better.

Exhale. (Almost.)

So I haven't blogged in a couple of weeks because I've been engaging in one of my least favorite of extracurricular activities: taking a nice scenic trip on the anxiety train!  Ah, the good times.  Queasiness, irritability, a general sense of doom-and-gloominess that's hard to shake.  I'm sure I've been a joy to live with.

But.  BUT!  Things are looking up.  The house is set to close on Monday (in fact, Wells Fargo wired the money to the title company on Friday, or so I'm told) and every thing's gonna be all right.  One nice thing about situational anxiety is that, well, it's situational.  I've also found that, even though I still can't seem to help the cascade of physical symptoms that come when my anxiety gets triggered, the older I get the better I am at stepping outside myself and realizing that most of what I'm feeling is originating in my blasted BRAIN and isn't an indication that the world is, in fact, going to end.  So although I hate being in the middle of it, I don't necessarily interpret the feelings as a prompting that I've got to be frantically fixing things or warding off disaster.  Instead, I prefer to think of it like a really bad migraine headache that will (hopefully) pass.

One good thing about anxiety, though.  The ONLY good thing.  Lost five pounds!

So what was causing all this anxiety, you ask?  Well, I'm not going to go into all the details because they are 1. boring and 2. complicated, but the main gist of the situation had to do with obtaining our mortgage even though it had been placed in the hands in one of the most incompetent supposed "professionals" I've ever had to work with in my life.  Every day this guy would lose something, or mis-communicate something, or ask for something that in the end he didn't actually need, or forget something (I mean, after WEEKS of working with this guy, some days with two or three phone calls a day, when he talked to me on Thursday night he'd forgotten, after DOZENS of reminders, that we were closing on Monday.  Not Tuesday, Stephen.  MONDAY.)  At any rate, usually our mortgages have been approved a few weeks before closing, but we didn't get final approval on this bad boy until this Thursday afternoon.  We have great credit and have been long time Wells Fargo customers without ever making a late payment, but after this experience it's no wonder to me that the housing market in the US has ground to a halt.  Yes, four years ago they were way too lax in their mortgage qualification standards, but the way that the qualification process has ratcheted up to almost ridiculous proportions (I won't bore you with all the crazy information we were asked to supply) coupled with all of this information being entrusted to a truly incompetent Wells Fargo employee made this whole mortgage approval process pretty excruciating.

But now we're good.  We close tomorrow.  And we received some very real blessings that have helped smooth the path, even in the midst of all the difficulties of the last two weeks, that have strengthened my faith and helped me to realize that God will help us.  Even on things as seemingly-mundane as the mortgage approval process.

And the house is beautiful!  I can't wait to move in.  Can. Not. Wait.  Here are some pics of the (almost) finished product.  (They put on the wrong front door and installed the wrong tub, both of which will be fixed after we close.)

 The master bath, wrong tub included.

 The family room, looking to the office on the left and the front doors (wrong doors included)

 The kitty's chin.  I love love love the kitchen. Nice and big, and I love the mahogany floors.  They're "scraped" (or something) so that the texture is slightly bumpy, and the finish is a lot less glossy than our floors in UT.  Those glossy maple floors in UT drove me NUTS--almost impossible to keep clean and streak free.  These floors will be nice.

 I also love the island.  All four kids will be able to fit around it great.

 The Children!  And we're going to do drapes instead of blinds in the family room.  We found some at Ikea and I really like them: birds and leaves, purdy colors.  Can't wait to show you once they go up.

 The exterior now that the dirt has been graded and our two maple trees put in.  Forrest (bless him) will be installing the sprinkling system early this week.  We only have a week or so after final grading to get the sod in (some kind of rule or law), and most people have the builders do the sprinkling system.  But it's pricey, and Forrest can do it.  This will be sprinkling system #4 after all.  He's a hard working dog, my husband.  ("Hard working dog" is in reference to an old Sesame Street song, so "dog" is meant in the admirable sense. Of course!)

 And lo, the back yard.

And lo, the back yard again.  We have a nice line of evergreens along the back, offering a little privacy.  And can I just say that I can't quite believe we're putting in another yard?  Did I say that already?

 Wyatt in the loft.

Elise showing off her VERY OWN bathroom.  Lucky girl.  Lucky girl who gets to be in charge of keeping it clean. :-)

So we close on Monday morning, we'll do some painting and sprinkling system installation and landscaping on Monday and Tuesday, then the moving trucks come on Wednesday and we'll (finally!) get to go home!

I'm so glad.