Update

I have so many posts to do about our past week, but this one is easy and quick so I thought I'd do it first. In just 9 days, our house went from the one wall garage to a 2 story house ready for stucco! It has been so exciting watching the progress. Only 2 weeks to go!

Front of house
Back of house
(you can see our mountain view)

It's real!

We are building a house!! We are so excited and feel so blessed that our prayers were answered. We put our house on the market on April 1 when I was 7 months pregnant with #4. I figured that we might be out of our house before the baby was born. :) Little did I know it would take 4 months beyond that! We prayed and prayed about finding a buyer and a new home that would comfortably fit our bigger family. I thought I found the perfect home a couple times only to have them sell. As we neared the 6 month mark we lowered our price again and got 3 walk-throughs in 1 weekend. This resulted in 2 offers that we thought were low, but countered anyway. That same weekend a buyer called our agent and, after hearing that we had other offers, put an offer on our house sight unseen. It was our asking price and he didn't want any of our appliances like the other buyers did.

We were so grateful and decided to go to a local builder the next day and see what it would take to build a house. I told the builder about the model I liked and hoped to build, even though it had not yet been built in this subdivision. He told us that they had just finished the foundation/basement of this particular model because he thought it would look good in this neighborhood. It would be finished in +/- 5 weeks and we could still pick out the colors, options, etc. We fully expected to have to rent a small apartment for a couple months in between which would mean moving twice. Instead, we close on this house and then close on the new house within days! Now we are buying the house I love just a mile from this house so our kids will go to the same school and have the same friends. Not surprisingly, we will be in a different ward, but the same stake.

Here is the picture of our first wall! (the garage). To see the floorplan click on Salisbury Homes. Our floor plan is called "Hamilton".

Our Little "Punkin"

On Friday Kylie went on her first Kindergarten fieldtrip to the pumpkin patch. She was really excited to take her first bus ride and even more excited to wear her new pumpkin outfit. She was able to pick out a pumpkin and play in a sandbox filled with corn. We love our little "Punkin".

Big G's haircut

Grant was born with a full head of reddish hair, but as with our other kids, it started falling out and looked terrible. Dan used clippers with a 2 guard and he looks so much better! His head looks really small now, though!:) If he's anything like the other 3, his hair will grow in thicker and more even now.

Before

(Looking like a mad scientist)

After

Camping

The kids have really wanted to go camping, but with the arrival of Grant we haven't had a chance. Kristina was willing to chill with Grant and I took the older 3 kids. We packed up really quick after their soccer games and headed up Spanish Fork canyon. The kids were done packing and ready to go.
Bradley started a scary story, then Kylie and Ben had to add to it. It was pretty funny to see them hold their flashlights up while they spoke.

We had this crazy huge spider walk up while we were making smores. The thing was easily the size of a tarantula and the kids were freaking out.


Everyone helped clean up and take down camp. It was a fun Friday night.

Last but not least

Ben finally started Preschool today! The kids have been in school for a couple of weeks now and he has been itching to go. He woke up this morning and got all of this school clothes on, including his backpack. Unfortunately, he has afternoon preschool so he had quite a wait. He looked so handsome in his new clothes and he couldn't have been more excited! I walked him in to his classroom and when it was time for me to leave he stood up like he was coming with me, but I told him I'd be back and he seemed ok with that. I know he'll have a great time, I just hope he keeps his clothes on!!

What a grown up kid!
He loves his monster backpack

Miss Tiffany

(I've heard such great things about her!)

Surprise!

The other day the Elders Quorum President, Tyler, came over to the house to talk to Dan. We had sent the kids upstairs to get pajamas on. We saw Ben's pajamas and underwear fly down the stairs and he followed butt naked. He jumped on the landing spread eagle and yelled, "Surprise"! Poor Tyler was surprised and we were very embarrassed! There are no pictures of this for good reason. We all had a good laugh about it!