The Land of the Free

Happy Independence Day!


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The House - for real this time

Well, here is the house that we have put an offer on.

This is a site with a few pictures.

Hopefully we'll hear in a few months about the property. Ha ha, I say months because it is a short sale, and there is a lowball offer in the bank right now, so we have to wait for the bank to say no to that offer, and then say yes to our offer. Which is actually perfect for us, because we don't want to close on a house until at the earliest mid-September. We'll probably end up closing at the end of September or the beginning of October. Which is great, since that's when we'll be able to move in anyway. The home is perfectly move-in ready. The yard needs some work since it's been vacant for a while, but that's going to be more fun than work! As you my know from my garden blog, I love to dig in the dirt, and plant stuff. The whole house has new paint and new carpet. The only appliance we'll have to buy is a fridge (KSL, here we come!).

Just in case, we put a few offers on other short sales as well, but we won't even consider those homes until this house gets sold to someone else.

My friend, Trisha, told me that I would just know it when I found "the house" - but after walking into house after house after house (probably 50+ homes in 4 days), and really liking some of them, I kept thinking to myself, "Maybe that's how it works for her, but maybe I won't ever have that feeling."

Then I walked into this house in West Jordan and I just got that feeling - "This house." That was it. Before I even saw anything in the house. Then I started walking around, and I kept feeling it! "This house. Yes, this house." In fact, after I saw this house, we still had three or four homes on our list, and I had absolutely no desire to see any of them. And when we walked in to each of the other homes, we simply walked back out, because my feeling about this house was still so strong!

So, either we're supposed to live in this house, or we're supposed to learn a really hard lesson by not living in this house...

I'm hoping it's the former.

lost and found

Look what we found in Arizona!






Ps Vince has been telling me lately that "I lost Papai" and last night at Denny's he told Papai all about it:

"Papai, I lost you and so I had to turn into a dragon and fly to find you."

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An Observation

Today on the plane we put on a Disney movie, and as usual at the beginning, Tinkerbell waves her little sparkles all over the Disney castle.

Vincente's observation: "Tinkerbell has milks!"

For those of you who are unfamiliar with 'Vincente-speak' milk is his chosen euphemism for 'breasts.'

My response: "Why yes, yes she does." and he went back to his movie.


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Puppy Love

Tomorrow we (me and the kids) are going up to Vilonia, AR to meet our little puppies! We are getting a brother and sister – black labs. We haven’t decided on names, but I figure we have until August (when they are ready to come home) to decide that kind of stuff.

These are the females from the litter – we’ll pick one maybe tomorrow, but maybe not until we get back from AZ – I’d like them to be a little older before we pick one. We’re not actually bring the puppies home tomorrow, since they are only two weeks old! But we will be bringing them home in August. Then begins the training. Without Russ. We’ll see how this goes. Thankfully my mom won’t be teaching lessons in the mornings in August, so hopefully she’ll be able to watch my kiddos, so that I can watch the new kiddos… we’ll see how that goes! It will definitely keep me occupied for the rest of the summer!!!

  The brothers! They come from a litter of 8 puppies, six females (3 brown, 3 black) and these two males. Ours is the one on the right. He looks a little shrimpy, but that’s okay. Hmm, maybe we’ll call him Shrimp. Just kidding!! I think he looks precious, and who knows, maybe he’ll outgrow his brother! (we’ll probably never know, but my goodness, don’t they look ADORABLE!)

We’re getting the puppies from here. Purebred, AKC registered little bundles of joy. Don’t worry – we’re not going to be breeding dogs. Especially not siblings. Ew.

wipe-out

My mom got Joseline from her bed this afternoon when she woke up from her nap. Apparently she woke up "happy as can be" (my mother's words...)

Come to find out, this is why...



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Olive

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In Which I Won a Water Bottle

… and a plush dinosaur toy that roars when you squeeze it. And Vincente ran his first 1K.

Results were posted here.

You can see more photos of the event here.

You can see my pictures here

(if you’re my FB friend – if not, friend me!)

Body Job

My van got some work done and now looks beautiful! Thanks to Javier. If you're in the LR area and need some body work done on your car for a reasonable price, call Javier. He was by far the absolute BEST price I found, and he did a GREAT job!



Laminacion y Pintura
Body & Paint
Javier Peral
3713-A MacArthur
N Little Rock, AR 72118
Cell 501-960-5864

You actually turn left down the road next to Bob's Pawn shop. Javier is under the pawn shop in the back.

Support small businesses! :)

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Stability

I just wanted to check in so people know that things are stable (ish) right now.

Things will be okay for the next few days, and the hope is that they start getting better.

I got to Skype with my brother yesterday.

It was a sweetmoment for me in a sea of bitter days.

I will write a post about the houses we put offers on, at the very least. I may even post about the wedding reception and all the blessings my (Werner) family has been receiving (but I may just say that we have been receiving them). We have such great family and friends – all of you are really appreciated. I hope you know how much your love means to us.

I will also be posting a book review on my healthy living blog – A Word of Wisdom. I’ve been reading the book In Defense of Food and it has been fabulous, so I’m itching to write a review. I’ll try to get that done before we leave for Arizona next week!

Drooping Heart

Things are a little rough for our family right now. We need prayers and faith right now - and lots of it.

I may not be posting for a little while. If you know me well, you know where to find me if you need me.

My heart is breaking right now.


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My Goofy Girl

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Childlike Faith

Vincente prayed this morning at breakfast. It went something like this:

Thank you for this food
Please bless the food
Put it in our tummies so they will be big and strong
Please let us go to the swimming pool today (this is a request in his prayers pretty much every day....)

My heart just melts when I listen to Vincente pray.



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Sweet Lovin's

My sweet girl giving kisses to her precious baby cousin, Rosalyn.


Baby I need your lovin - got to have all your lovin!

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The House

So, we think we've decided on a house.

Well, you know... maybe. We'll see. We're going to let it simmer over the weekend, and in the meantime we're going to meet with a mortgage officer at our bank, and just - you know - take it easy and think about it a lot.

This is the house.

Here is a picture of the front:

They even left the Christmas lights for us. Ha ha.

It's an older home (1969), but it's HUGE (2460ish sq ft) and our realtor says there's probably some room for negotiating in the price. It need a lot of updating (bathroom and kitchen, mostly) and the basement isn't finished (but there are two finished bedrooms - in severe need of carpet... ). So, I figure we'll probably end up putting about $20k of work into it before it's completely like we want it. Only about $10k (or less) of that work will need to be done before we move in). It has 5 bedrooms, and 3 bathrooms, with the potential for a 6th bedroom in the partially finished basement. It's on nearly a 1/4 of an acre (HUGE lot! Especially for the tiny lots for homes these days...) It's in a pretty good neighborhood (so my realtor says - we may need to do some more research on the neighborhood), and it's down the street from an elementary school (like, walk down the street past 2 other houses, then cross the not-busy-at-all street, and you're at the school. Great for home value). Most of the homes in the area are valued at around $200k (and that's right now, when the housing market has kind of crashed). The Zillow estimate for the home back at the height of the housing bubble was $250k! Whoa. Anyway, right now the Zillow estimate is around $200k.

We figure if we update the house, add the 6th bedroom, and take care of it, it will have great resale value, and we'll at least make back what we put into the house (which is really all we would be concerned about - this isn't an investment property - it will be 1st and foremost, our home!)

So, like I said, we're not 100% decided, and there is still a lot to think about and be done. Then on to appraisals, inspections, negotiations, etc etc etc... yikes! Good thing we have a great realtor.

Good House Hunting

I think this picture basically says it all...


I spent pretty much the entire day house hunting. We found a lot that I liked, but the battery died on the video camera, so I wasn't able to take video for Russ. My realtor said the we can go back through the houses tomorrow and do the videos. He also said that if my camera keeps having problems he can bring his for backup.

My #1 favorite house is in Lehi (just by Thanksgivin point) - mostly because of the location (and because it is in GREAT shape and has an awesome floor plan. But then the price is a little higher than we want to spend.

My second favorite home is in Kearns - it has a great yard, a great floorplan, and a pretty good price.

My third favorite is the steal we're looking for - 2400+ sq ft, for about $134k. It needs a LOT of work, but structurally it is fine. It has just never been updated probably since it was built in 1980. It is on a HUGE lot with fruit trees, too. The only deterrent is the amount of work we need to do to make it how we want it. But we'll see what Russ says. I'm up for the challenge.

So, that is day 1 of house hunting. We have about 10,000 more houses to see tomorrow, including one of my favorites - the renters were being conveniently absent when we came by. It looks like a nice house in great shape. I can see why they might not want the house to sell.

We're going to try to look at it tomorrow (along with the other bazillion houses we need to see).

Wish us house hunting luck!


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Avião

We've been up since the crack of dawn, and in aiports/on airplanes since 7am.


We is me, mom, Julia, and five children underthe age of 5 - including a five week old baby.


My kids are WAY overtired because, smart mom that I am, I put them down late last night. In my defense, Russ skyped us, and I did have to pack, and since we all three share a room I couldn't pack while they were sleeping.


Despite the lack of sleep and large number of small children, our travels haven't been TOO stressful. We all still like each other - that's a good thing, right?


The kids got a kick out of the moving walkways...


They liked to jump off at the end - like stunt men, I guess.


Then we had a race. KayLynn with her crazy long legs (for a 4 year old) was definitely the fastest. No wonder she likes racing so much!


While we ate lunch at the little Bar & Grill (where I had a crab Louie salad - which left much to be desired after being in Monterey for so long enjoying such fresh seafood) I looked up a playground in the airport (thank heavens for free wi-fi and iPhones!). So we mosied over there.

On the way, a nice airport man gave the kids little rubber airplanes.


The playground was a little dissapointing, but it was in a large, open, empty, mostly secluded area, so it's working for the time being.


It has definitely been an adventure so far, flying with so many kids, but thankfully we're still alive (if tired!) - but I shouldn't jinx our luck, since we have one more flight and a 45 minute car ride to go!

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Food Safety

I wrote a little blurb over on my healthy living blog about food safety. Sparked by the yucky Capri Sun mold issue on Facebook. Yuck mold.

How Do I Breathe

I finally talked to my sweet heart today.

After three.stinking.days.

I have no idea how I made it through basic training without him.

Well, he made me promise to email him every day.

Having an iPhone will have never been so handy!

Riverfest 2010

The balloon glow on the north side of the river, seen from the south side of the river. That morning these balloons launched in Maumelle (fourth picture) and flew down the river, landing by the river. After dark, the pilots and teams do what is called a “glow” – they fire their balloons in sequence, so that the balloons light up like Christmas lights! It’s fun to watch, and was a nice way to end a great day at Riverfest.

At the International Village stage – the Kenyan Safari Acrobats. They did some cool jumping over fire stuff, too (see picture below). And please excuse the young lady to the right… she and her mom decided to stand in front of us pretty much the entire time. Try as I might, I couldn’t manage to get a good shot without getting their back sides in the picture. Finally I politely asked them to move, and five minutes later the show ended. *duh*

I See My Mother Kneeling

Tonight I was pondering the significance of prayer, and how I love to pray and pour out my soul to my Father in Heaven.

It isn’t enough, though, for me to pray and pour out my soul. I need to teach my children to pray. I often feel drawn to my knees in prayer, but it seems like I haven’t taught my children to have the same love of our Father in Heaven.

I need to gather my children with me in prayer more often, instead of simply praying by myself. It isn’t enough to pray myself. I have a sacred duty as a mother to teach my children about prayer and about the gospel.

In a book I read called Preparing Him for the Other Woman (see my scripture blog), the author suggests teaching your sons (and daughters) to talk to Heavenly Father when they are sad or hurt, and also teach them to share their joys and excitements with Heavenly Father.

Gathering my children with me in prayer seems like it should come naturally with the territory of motherhood. But for some reason I have not developed the habit of praying with my children – even though I have developed a pattern of prayer in my own life.

I think it will be really neat to watch the changes in my relationship with my children, and mine and their relationships with Heavenly Father, as we gather together often to pray. I’m not just talking about family prayer here. I’m talking about drawing my children near to teach them to talk to Heavenly Father. It should be an every-day, multiple-times-a-day occurrence.

How have you taught your children about prayer? Was it easy for you to get into the habit of praying with your children so that they will learn to have a pattern of prayer in their lives? Do you gather them to you in prayer?

Photo Display

Just because all three of the previous posts have no pictures – and that’s just sad. So here are a few of my favorite from Riverfest this year. We went Friday and Saturday (and Grandma and Grandpa took Vincente to the fireworks on Sunday night with his cousins!)

Patterns

The Pursuit of Excellence pamphlet, published by the Church, says members of the Church “should so closely pattern [their lives] to the sacred and enduring example of the Savior, Jesus Christ, that the basic principles of gospel living will be incorporated into [their lives] for eternity.”

I want to immerse myself in gospel learning. I often overlook study of a particular basic topic (like prayer, or prophets, etc) by a misguided impression that I know the “basics” and I should focus my study on more “complicated” or “deep” doctrines.

The thing is – the gospel is basically simple. In fact, it is very simple. There are really no “deep” doctrines. There are implications of basic principles – but if I think about the things that I’ve learned in the temple, or the things that I have learned simply by reading some other books by apostles of the Lord (such as Jesus the Christ) there is nothing “deep” or significantly different in that information than the basic principles of the gospel. There are perhaps broader, more far reaching applications of the basic gospel principles – but I believe that is something that I will learn with time and experience. And I will only learn it if I am immersing myself in basic gospel principles.

We learn line upon line, precept on precept – but that doesn’t mean that once we learn the first line we can forget that line when we move to the next one. I think that we need to be continually reinforcing the first line, the first precept. And each on that we add – needs to be reinforced.

That’s probably how I got so far off track. I was “checking off” gospel principles, instead of immersing myself in the principles. Gospel learning is not like climbing a ladder – we don’t climb up the rungs. “Prayer, got it. Next! Faith. Got it! Up we go… baptism, got it!” It’s more like cooking – we add more and more ingredients until we have the finished product (which we won’t have until we become perfect in Christ).

You don’t take ingredients out of a recipe. You are usually just adding more and more ingredients until you have them all.

So in our gospel learning, we should not check off our knowledge of a gospel principles. We should add it to our “gospel knowledge soup” and keep going!

Brigham Young University (my alma mater), one of the expected outcomes of an education at the university is that our time there will lead to “lifelong learning and service.”

So – here’s to lifelong learning!

Thankfully I haven’t forgotten everything I knew, so it will just be a matter of refreshing my memory. In fact, a lot of things are coming back already. I just need to keep working at it.

My Favorite Family That Isn’t Mine

How’s that for a title!

Okay, so here is a little post dedicated to my favorite family in the world that has no relation to me! Ha ha :) The Piersons! Seriously, if I could have third family (beyond my immediate family and my in-laws) it would be this family. I want to adopt the whole family!

Pretty much every one of the Piersons have touched my life at some point. Especially during my “formative” years.

They have been Young Women’s leaders, Sunday School teachers, swim teachers, seminary teachers, choir directors, stake Presidents, prom dates, YSA friends, yoga teachers, you name it. Seriously, I just can’t tell you how much I love this family. There are eight children, and of the eight, I can only name two that haven’t had some kind of profound influence on my life.

Today I was able to spend some time with a lot of them, and I got to chat with Sister Pierson (the matriarch of the whole clan) for a while. Her gentle Spirit and sensitivity to spiritual matters has always touched me. She was my seminary teacher for three years, and I think those three years are the most memorable of my entire high school career.

Lindsey, the oldest, is a sure friend, too. She was my YW President for several years, too. I baby sat her kids, held her new born babies, and learned a LOT from her. She may not know it, but I want to be just like her. Her example as a mother has been really influential for me.

The great thing about these people is that I am still learning from them. Their influence is so far reaching, and their spirits so strong that you can’t help but love them and want to be part of them!

Anyway, I just really had a great time today with their family. They have really been just amazing examples to me. How I love them so much.

That said… I miss my real family – Russ, and his sweetness. I can’t wait for him to be by my side again. I love the relationship we have, and I love that we love each other. I pray every day for strength to make it through this summer!

Good, Better, Best

I read this here:

Rebecca Renfroe, from Idaho, USA, used to blog and read others’ blogs almost daily. Her mind was always in “compose” mode—mentally writing a blog about what she did with her children instead of just doing things with them. She realized there had to be a balance.

She says, “The Spirit helped me to recognize that having a blog was not the problem—devoting too much of my time and energy to it was. I had literally been giving portions of my life away: trading away quality time with my children and my husband, trading away time for serious, in-depth study of the scriptures, and even trading away hours of sleep that affected my ability to serve others, to be sensitive to the Spirit, and to maintain a healthy lifestyle.”

Sister Renfroe learned not to let good things get in the way of better things, as Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles counseled: “Just because something is good is not a sufficient reason for doing it. … Of course it is good to view wholesome entertainment or to obtain interesting information. But not everything of that sort is worth the portion of our life we give to obtain it. Some things are better, and others are best.”1

I’ve been thinking about this type of thing lately. Especially the Dallin H. Oaks quote… once again, just for good measure:

“Just because something is good is not a sufficient reason for doing it. … Of course it is good to view wholesome entertainment or to obtain interesting information. But not everything of that sort is worth the portion of our life we give to obtain it. Some things are better, and others are best.”

What are some ways you want to give up “good” for “better,” and “better” for “BEST”?

Singing in the Rain

It rained on Thursday.

A delightful, warm summer shower.

And of course we went outside to enjoy it.

After several years in places that don’t know what “warm rain” is, we were grateful to enjoy playing in the rain. Vincente and Joseline thought it was the most fun they’d ever had! Joseline just couldn’t resist stomping in the puddles (hooray that she walks now!) and how could I deny her the pleasure and sensational party of playing in the rain in her clothes!

 

 

  Vincente loved the rain, too. That picture at the top is Vincente “being a bird” or maybe it was a dragon… either way, flying through the rain was much cooler than just dancing!

And then, of course, he wiped out running into the garage with his croc-clad feet. Just for future reference (as if I didn’t know this already! shame on me) garage floors are usually very smooth concrete… and when wet get very slippery. He got some love from Grandma so I could keep snapping pics of Joseline’s cuteness (and Vincente’s sadness).

 

 

(the biggest puddle they could find. Of course it was right next to an oak tree, so Joseline proceeded to munch on acorn tops. Yummy treat… yeeah) (washing off after the rain – my little bath babies!)