Panties!

James has been wearing panties for about an hour and a half. Excuse me. Apparently with boys, you're supposed to call them underwear. Anyway, the Lightning McQueen on his bum better get ready for a good soaking! I know it's coming . . . any moment now.

Love it!

My computer cycles through my photos and posts them as the wallpaper on my desktop. Today, this one popped up. I don't know why, but it completely cracked me up so I felt the need to share. I think Hans is looking pretty good and James looks like he is posing for a mug shot with sunglasses and a life jacket. LOVE IT!

Settled

We are finally settled in our new house and couldn't be happier. Here are just a few pictures of the house. We are loving our new ward and James LOVES nursery. The house is exactly what we need. It fits us perfectly. Give us a few years and we'll have it looking great.

This is our backyard with some new fruit trees we planted last week. They're so tiny. And yes, the lawn needs help. We're working on it.

Just a little side note. Noah is 7 months old and not only is he crawling all over the place, he is pulling himself up on everything. I guess I have 2 busybodies on my hands.

Arachnophobia!

I will be the first to admit, that in the last few years, I have developed a not so mild case of arachnophobia. I'm not psycho about it, but when I see a spider in my house, I tend to have a hard time. I can handle spiders outside where they belong, but they DO NOT belong in my house. Apparently several of them disagree as I have found many who seem to prefer the inside to the outside. I have a problem with that.

I have found several in the past few days, but just today I saw the biggest spider I have ever seen in my life (apart from zoos and museums). Noah woke up from his nap so I started to walk down the hall to go get him. I was suddenly stopped in my tracks when I saw a giant spider hanging out in the middle of the hallway. What nerve! I immediately knew what I had to do, but didn't want to face the truth. I called Hans for some moral support, but, of course, all he could do was laugh and make fun of me. I'm sure all the guys at work are having a good laugh about it as I type this. After getting off the phone, I grabbed a nearby Anatomy book and inched as close as I dared. By this point, I'm practically shaking and my heart is going a mile a minute. Noah is in the his room screaming his head off, wondering why I'm not there yet. So, I drop the book and, just my luck, the spider, giant as he is, happens to be fast. I have a hard enough time when it stays in one place, but when it moves, I kind of freak out. I don't really remember, but I think I might have screamed and I know I jumped.

Now the spider is up against a wall so I know I can't try the book trick again. I had an idea. I found some old glue traps that we had used for mice in our old house. I put it up against the wall about a foot away from the spider (that's as close I dared get my hand to it) and then I threw things at it until it went right into my trap. I watched it for a moment to be sure it was stuck. Feeling pretty good about myself, I went and got Noah up from his nap and when I came out, it was still there. I walked away for about a minute and came to back to find the spider gone!!! I kind of freaked and called Hans again. I should have known better. He sure got a kick out of that. I put on shoes and went on a hunt with a long stick. No luck!

So here I am, wearing thick-soled shoes and blogging on a computer far away from the original sighting. I spotted a fly a minute ago and jumped about 3 feet in the air. Noah is bugged with me because I won't put him down on the floor. James is still sleeping and you better believe that when he wakes up, we're going out for the rest of the day.

Quick Post

We currently don't have the internet at our house, so I'm putting up a quick post while at at my parents'. We are officially in our new house and loving it. It's so much work, but totally worth it. Thanks for all those who gave us a hand the other day. We're anxious to get our house in order so we can have you all over for some food and fun.

I must be an idiot!

I don't know what my problem is, but I'm having serious issues getting pictures uploaded onto my blog post. I've been trying to post for weeks, but since I'm apparently an idiot, I'll just post without pictures.

The last few weeks has been exciting. Events of the last little while have included a high seas rescue, an MIA home seller, a giant tonsil, and a 104 degree swimming pool. Don't worry, I won't elaborate on all the craziness.

We took a short weekend trip to Bear Lake with my family. It was tons of fun, we spent a windy day on the beach soaking up the sun. Hans thought he was pretty cool because when the boat broke down he got to go rescue them on the ranger boat. When the weather was bad the next day, we took the kids on a cave tour up in Idaho. It was very cool, but there were so many more stairs than I remember from when I was younger. Not an easy thing while carrying a whining 2-year-old.

This last week, we were expecting to move into our house, but come closing time, the seller was MIA. It's a long story, but apparently the seller was out of town and couldn't close. So here we are, still in my parent's basement.If everything goes according to plan, we should close no later than Tuesday. Hopefully!

House!! For real this time!

Remember how I posted forever ago about how we were buying a house. Well, now it's for real. But, here's the kicker. It's not even the same house. We waited and waited on that short sale and Hans decided that we needed to look around. I felt no need to look at any other houses because as far as I was concerned, I had found my house. I finally gave in just to make Hans happy. Our realtor sent us a bunch of listings and Hans picked out a few he wanted to see. On Tuesday night, we looked at one in Pleasant Grove and fell in love right away. It's on nearly half an acre and the house is huge with a partially unfinished basement. Perfect for us.

While we were looking around we found out that there were already three other offers and the owner would be signing one in half an hour. Our realtor is amazing! She immediately drove us to her house in Cedar Hills, we wrote up an offer and delivered it to the realtor back at the house. We actually waited out in front of the house while the realtor met with the owner inside. He came out about 15 minutes later and said Congratulations! It was absolutely crazy! It wasn't until the next morning that I actually felt like we made a good decision. It just happened so fast.

We are so excited to finally move on with our lives and get out of this strange limbo we've been in. We're crossing our fingers and hoping for the best.

Montana Pictures

I wanted to post a few pictures from our Montana vacation. We spent a rainy day driving through Glacier National Park and into Canada and a few days playing on the lake in the boat and we even celebrated James' 2nd birthday. What a blast! I had high hopes for that last picture, but James clearly was not in the mood for pictures.

Lessons Learned!

A few things I learned on our Montana vacation.

1 - Never give Augmentin to a child on a nearly empty stomach (especially if you're going to be in the car for a long time).

2 - If you don't follow the previous tip, never come between your husband and a package of wipes he's trying to open. It could be fatal.

3 - When it rains is Cardston, Alberta, it REALLY pours!

4 - If I ever strike it really rich, I'm going to buy my own island on Flathead Lake.

5 - Phil Jackson lives in the teeny tiny town of Lakeside, MT. Who knew?

6 - Flathead Lake is FREEZING!!

7 - Glacier National Park is still gorgeous even on a gloomy day!

8 - The border patrol people have absolutely no sense of humor. Seriously, don't even think about cracking any jokes.

9 - Much thanks to Colin for this lesson. Never approach the US-Canadian border on foot, especially with your hands in your pockets. And no, it does not matter how bad you have to use the restroom.

10 - My kids are amazing! We can survive over 12 hours in the car in one day. Whoa!

4th of July Weekend!

We had a great 4th of July weekend. That started with a family bbq. Everyone was in town so we were able to get a picture with all the boy cousins. As you can imagine, it's absolutely impossible to get a great picture with all these boys, so this is the best we've got. After dinner, we all had ice cream cones and the boys just loved it.

On Saturday, we decided against spending money to get into an overcrowded pool and had on own little pool party. For those of you who know James, you're probably pretty impressed with the fact that he's in the pool at all. Yep, we're making progress!

Pictures. . . YAY!!

I finally got the pictures from my camera onto the computer. It was a long process, but I can finally show you four months' worth of pictures. This post is kind of a jumble of some of my favorite pictures of the past little while. So you get to see Noah grow up to 4 months old (and James' crazy antics) in just one post. Lucky you!

The day we got home from the hospital. Try not to pay attention to me. I just had a baby two days before.

I love this picture! James gets a kick out of posing with Noah.

Just another one of the two brothers.

Apparently, James aspires to be a plumber. Hans can't leave tools around if he ever wants to see them again because James picks them up and puts them to work. If you look close you can see a wrench in his right hand.

Noah's blessing day. We never did get a great picture of him that day. So sad!

My three boys!

Easter egg hunt. James got into it a lot more than I thought he would. He picked up on the concept pretty quick and went crazy.

Showing off the spoils!

Just a great picture of Noah. In this picture, I think he really looks like Hans.

James apparently cannot be left alone with milk and Cheerios for any amount of time. Look close and you can see a drop of milk running down his forehead.

Just another cute one of my boys. Noah is about three months old in this picture. I can't believe how the time flies.

My little thumb sucker. I know it's not a great habit, but I think it's so darn cute!

This is one of the last pictures we took in our house. So sad! It's a rare moment to see James actually eating something, so enjoy it while you can.

This last weekend, we went to the Orem Summerfest. It's one of my favorite times of year and now that James is old enough to enjoy it, it's even better. He rode on this little roller coaster with his cousin, Brooklyn. This was at the start of the ride.

As the ride went on, he started acting funny. Each time he went around, he slumped down a little more and zoned out a little more. I couldn't decide if he was sick or falling asleep. Either way, he was just fine when he got off and eager to go on more rides.

The car ride was a huge hit. The carnival was a blast and we'll definitely have to make it a tradition.

Our House!

So sad! We're leaving it for good this weekend. I never anticipated forming such an emotional attachment to our house, but it almost makes me cry thinking about leaving it in the hands of someone else. As much as I complained about how it was so small, I'm going to miss it like crazy. We've lived here for over three years, almost as long as we've been married. We brought both our boys home to this house and we put a ton of work into to make it how we like it.

Someday we'll drive by and show our kids the first house we lived in. They'll wonder how we lived with two kids in something so small, Hans will complain about how the owners have the the lawn go and I might shed a few tears. We will miss this house, but it's time to move on.