First day of kindergarten

This is Bethany's first day of kindergarten. She's so excited. Her school had a sort of back to school night about a week ago, where she got to go meet her teacher and see her classroom. Her teacher's name is Mrs. Ray. Lots of older kids were stopping by just to say hello and give her hugs, which I think is a very good sign. I think Bethany will get along well there.

She's also really excited to get to ride the bus again. The bus doesn't run in the middle of the day, so I have to pick her up from school, which did not make her happy, but at least she gets to ride it in the morning.

She also thinks it's cool that she gets to have her own snack bag (the purple bag she's holding). I was annoyed when I found out that I was supposed to send a snack every day. That's mostly because I was thinking about preschool, and the incredible amount of time wasted every day when all the little kids filed down to wash hands, then line up at the table, then wait while the snack was distributed, etc, etc. Mrs. Ray does it much more efficiently. She told us that she has the kids wash their hands, then they go to their bags and get their own snacks, and sit down and have story time while they eat. I love that the time isn't being wasted.

Good luck to Bethany, and here's hoping for a good school year.

Gone fishin'

Bethany has been bugging me for probably a couple of years to take her fishing. Well, I finally caved in and took her and Meagan this morning.

I didn't have any gear at all anymore, so I pretty much had to start from scratch. I made up a list and had Dad look it over and then went and got everything. We got poles and pole rests and hooks, bubbles, spinners, powerbait and powerbait hooks. I thought I was all set. But it turns out I wasn't as prepared as I thought.

We got there and I got the girls' poles set up and cast out. Meagan's pole was a half-size child's pole. I tried it out at home before we went, but when we got there, it just didn't really work well at all. I couldn't get it to cast further than about eight feet. Then, I didn't have any sinkers, and the wind was blowing so strongly, that the bubbles were just blowing back to shore. We sat there while the people all around us were reeling in the fish, and we had no luck at all. The people next to us took pity on me and gave me two sinkers, so I redid the girls' poles and set them out again. Still no luck, but at least they weren't blowing all over anymore.

At one point we watched a large bird swoop down and pluck a fish out of the water. I'm not sure what it was--it was huge and brown with a lighter underbelly and head. The sad thing is that is was a better fisherman than us. But the girls had a lot of fun watching it carry off the fish. They decided its babies must be hungry for fish.

The people next to us caught their limit and were getting ready to leave. He asked me what bait I was using--Meagan had red and orange powerbait, and Bethany had a worm. He gave me some of what they were using--lime green powerbait balls. So I reset Bethany's pole and recast. Meagan's broke. It quit reeling in at all. I had to pull the line in by hand. So I used the sinker from her line and set up my pole. We still didn't have any luck. I thought I had something on mine, but the line snagged on something on the way in and broke. So I was down to one sinker. I asked some other people--who were reeling in tons of fish--what they were using. They had the same green balls, but had soaked them in this liquid fish attractant. A few minutes later he brought me some and I tried it out on Bethany's pole. Within 30 seconds we had a fish. Bethany was so exicted. We'd been there about an hour at that point, and she had been getting really anxious. She kept saying, "Oh, we're never going to get a fish!" Over, and over and over. It got really old. Then Meagan kept asking to go home.

When we finally got a fish, though, Bethany was happy. It had swallowed the hook, so there was some blood. For some reason, the girls seemed surprised at the blood. It had never occured to them that fish had blood.

A few minutes after we caught that fish, Bethany's line snagged in the same place mine had, and broke. So, we were down two sinkers and had no more cool bait, and so we left. We were only out for about an hour and a half, but the girls had fun. Bethany just had to call Nate on the way home and tell him all about her fish.



I cleaned the fish when we got home while the girls were in the tub--they'd gotten pretty dirty playing in the mud and stuff at the lake. Meagan thought we were bringing the fish home to put in Daddy's fishtank. Bethany asked to see her fish, and when she saw it in the fridge, all cut up, she started to cry. She got angry with me because I "broke" her fish. It pretty much took all afternoon to calm her down. But then she did a 180, and started asking to go fishing again, so we could get more for dinner. We had a few errands to run in the afternoon, so I got some of the liquid attractant and some sinkers, and returned Meagan's pole.

After dinner, I took just Bethany back to the lake. We caught two more fish pretty quickly. I like that attractant. Then I had problems with my pole. The line kept tangling, and winding up in the wrong place. It was weird. I'm deciding if I want to return it or not. I really like Bethany's. It's a push-button kind, but it casts really well.

But anyway, the fishing expedition was a success for the day. We got three rainbow trout, and Bethany was happy. She started asking when we were going fishing again, and didn't want to take "I don't know" for an answer. She started demanding that I show her on the calendar what day we'd go. Maybe I'll have to take her in the evening again sometime this week.

So where's the tooth fairy?

Bethany lost her first tooth yesterday. It's been loose for quite a while, but she's been a little protective of it, and wouldn't let me wiggle it much. I've settled for wiggling it as much as I can when I floss her teeth at night, and last night it finally came out. She was little freaked out by the blood, until I told her that it was okay, and teeth always bled a little when they came out.

We talked a lot about the tooth fairy, telling her that she'd come in the night to take her tooth away and bring her some money. At first she thought the tooth fairy was going to take the new, adult tooth away. We put her tooth in an envelope and told her to go to sleep.

In the morning, I found her sitting on the couch, rather forlornly holding the envelope that the "tooth fairy" brought during the night. It had a short note and two dollars inside. She hadn't opened it yet. I asked her what was wrong, and she started to cry. She thought she was going to get to see the tooth fairy, and was crying that she didn't get to talk to her. It took most of the morning to calm her down. I even considered asking Brenda or someone to call and talk to her, pretending to be the tooth fairy, but I decided to not promote the fantasy any more than it needed to be.

She was also sad when she saw how much money she got. She said two was not much money. But she wanted to leave right away and go buy a "swushie" (slushie) with her money. She was excited to be able to give her dollars to the "swushie man".

First loose tooth

I was helping Bethany brush her teeth tonight when I noticed something white behind one of her bottom front teeth. At first I thought she had some kind of infection, so I poked at it with the floss pick. That's when I realized that her adult tooth was coming in. So I started to wiggle the front tooth, and sure enough, it was pretty loose. I tried to show Bethany and get her to wiggle it some more, so it would come out faster. I even told her about the tooth fairy and that the fairy would leave her money when the tooth came out, but I don't think she was really listening to me (big surprise there!). Maybe tomorrow I'll check the local library for a book about the tooth fairy and see if that spurs some more interest.

New haircuts...of sorts

I think I butchered Bethany's hair.

We were trying on her new bike helmet this morning, trying to get the straps all adjusted right. I had to keep putting in on and off, to make little fixes. It was time to trim her bangs, anyway, but the rest of her hair was so long and beautiful. She didn't like it, though, especially under the helmet. She asked me to cut it all off. She's made a few other comments before that it was too long and hot, so I decided to oblige her.

My mistake.

She wouldn't hold still, so it was really hard to cut. When I would try to fix my crooked cuts, she's move again. It kept getting shorter and shorter. I finally just gave up. It looks okay, I guess, but it's still not straight, and in places is even a bit jagged. I just don't like it. It was so pretty. Sigh. I guess it will all grow back eventually, and I can't wait.

She likes it, though. When I asked if she liked it, she said, "I certainly do". So at least she's happy. But for whatever odd reason, she's decided that she's not Bethany anymore. With her short hair, she's just Nee-Nee. When it gets long again, then she'll be Bethany again. Silly girl.

When Meagan saw her new haircut, she started begging me to cut her hair, too. I didn't want to, because I was still out of sorts about Bethany's hair, but she kept begging, so I went ahead and cut hers, too. Hers is easier, because she's got a bit of a wave to it, so it hides mistakes, and naturally curls under a bit. I've cut hers several times now, and it's not so bad. She's got a new name with her haircut, too. She informed me that she's now Meagan-cup. Okay, whatever makes you happy, kid. :)

Who needs a driver's license anyway?

So I get this letter in the mail from the DMV today. It read, "Our records indicate that your driver's license has expired..."

What??

I didn't believe it, so I opened up my purse, and sure enough, it expired at the end of April. Oops. Of all the times to have to renew...it's so irritating, because I may have to get a new one as soon as we get to Colorado anyway, to get the cars registered. So I'll have this license for maybe a month or so. But I didn't want to risk driving across country with an expired license, so I just bit the bullet and went down to get it renewed.

Luckily for me, it wasn't so expired that I had to take any extra tests or anything. Um, I have had to do that before. When my Oklahoma license expired after we moved to Ohio, I never noticed, and I didn't get any kind of courtesy letter that time. By the time I finally did realize it, the license had been expired for nearly eight months. I had to go in and take both the written and driving tests again. They weren't a big deal, just annoying. The examiner didn't like the way I stopped at stop signs. Whatever.

I haven't really changed the way I drive because of it. But you'd think the whole experience would make me pay more attention to my license. Nope. I forgot again. Fortunately, I was able to go the same day after Nate got home, but the bad news was that the late fee was almost as much as the renewal fee.

I just hope that I can get out getting a new license soon.

Today's funny sayings

So Bethany wakes up this morning, and this is the conversation we had:
B: Is it Monday? (She's really excited to go to school)
Me: No, it's Sunday.
B: Is it Monday.
M: No, it's Sunday. (Yes, getting repetitve here).
B: Let's just skip Sunday.

If only it worked that way...

*****

Meagan's Sunbeam teacher wasn't there today, so they had a sub. Since it's kind of an active class, they like to have a second person as well, which I got to be. It was nice, I didn't have to teach a lesson or anything. The lesson today was on being thankful for our eyes. The teacher had the class look out the window and say what they saw. There were things from trees, leaves, cars and toys. I said I saw blue sky and a butterfly. Meagan pipes up, "A butterfly? That's disgusting!"

"I am the greatest winner!"

After the lights are turned out and the girls are in bed, they often ask Nate to take a nap with them. A long time ago, this meant that he'd lie down next to them for a few minutes, but now it's kind of evolved into him just spending a few minutes one-on-one with each of them. Usually they count or sing a song. Tonight it was my turn to stay with them, and Nate put Sean to bed. Bethany wanted to sing the "Letters Song". I don't know the real name or even the tune, but it goes throught the whole alphabet like this: A is for apple, ah ah ah. B is for bounce, buh, buh, buh....you get the idea. She loves that song. While I was singing it with her, Meagan was singing the ABC's to herself, and then I got to sing it with her again when it was her turn. When we were done, she said, "I am the greatest winner!" I'm glad she's so confident in herself.

*****

I swear Meagan's hit the terrible two's a couple years late. She's been awfully cranky lately. The other day, I threatened her with a spanking for some misbehavior or other, and when she didn't stop, I yelled, "Do you like spanks?!" She looked at me totally seriously and said, "No, I like horsies and elephants and helicopters."

*****

Meagan heard me referred to as Mrs. Terry the other day. She objected to that. She informed me that my name was Mommy Dawn Terry.

*****

Meagan is so excited to go to school. A few weeks ago, as Bethany's school bus pulled up, she decided she was going to school with her. She ran up the stairs--barefoot--and grabbed a jacket, ready to head out the door with Bethany. When I wouldn't let her go, she was so sad, and cried and cried. I explained to her that she needed to be a little bit older before she went to school. So now she runs around saying that when she gets a little bit older, she will go to school. Well, she put a twist on that one for me. Today she said, "I will get a little bit bigger and go to school and ride the bus and get a time out!" Nice to know she's planning to misbehave already!

"Your arm is big!"

Bethany: walks up to me, pulls up my shirt sleeve, then says: Your arm is big.

Me: Is that bad?

Bethany: No-yes!

Me: pauses

Bethany: Your leg is big, too. That's not good either.



What exactly do you say to that?

*****

So Bethany walks up to me today, peers in my face and says, "You're so big and strong!" I said, "I am?" Then she qualifies her previous statement, "You're so big!" Nice to know I'm loved.

My doubting Thomas

For some reason, Meagan is arguing with almost everything I tell her these days. For example, we were driving home from the store this evening, and I saw the moon. It was full and huge, since it was near the horizon. I said, "Look, Meagan, it's the moon!" She said, "No it's not, it's the sun." So typical. She argues about everything from which shoe goes on which foot to what color her clothes are. She's always wrong, but nothing can convince her of that. Mostly I just let it pass. She'll figure things out eventually. Today, though, I had one really funny conversation with her. We were in the car again, when she noticed the cup holder from the booster seat she was in had popped off the seat and was on the floor--something I accidentally did the other day when I was moving it.

Meagan: Look, Mommy, Bethany broke the cup holder.
Me: Um, actually, I think it was me.
Meagan: No, Bethany broke it.
Me: No, Meagan. I broke it.
Meagan: Bethany broke it!
Me: (losing my patience) Meagan, can you just believe me for once? I BROKE THE CUP HOLDER!
Meagan: Mom, just trust me on this.
Me: *speechless and trying not to laugh, which didn't escape Meagan*
Meagan: Trust me on this!

Hahaha...I have no idea where she even learned that...well, maybe I do have an idea. It's probably from Backyardigans. She picks up a lot of funny phrases from that show, most of which she doesn't really comprehend, but it's still funny to hear her use them.

Bethany can spell?

I was totally blown away today to find out that Bethany can read/spell more that just her own name. She was sitting at the kitchen table coloring with Meagan, when she suddenly wrote r-e-d next the red spot she colored. Then she moved on to green. Then blue, black, orange, yellow, brown, purple, pink and gray, each word spelled in it's own color. She needed help with three or four of them, but I didn't need to spell a whole word for her, except gray. I had absolutely no idea that she could do that. It was pretty cool. I guess she's learning a lot more in preschool than I thought.

2-for-1

Yesterday I got a phone call setting up a showing of our house today from 4-5:00. It wasn't too bad of a time, I figured I'd throw something in a crockpot and set the bread machine, then when we got home at five, I'd have dinner all ready.

I did a little cleaning yesterday, but pretty much spent the whole day today doing nothing but clean. In the middle of my scouring frenzy, I got another phone call, setting up a showing for tonight from 6:30-7:30. It was a bit on the late side, but I thought, Hey! I might as well get two showings out of my efforts. So that kind of scrapped the crock pot/bread machine idea.

I made Meagan take a nap when Sean went down today (about 1:30) because she's been a monster lately, and it got both of them out of my hair for a bit, too. Ha ha. They didn't sleep as long as I wanted them to, though, and when they got up, Sean was making messes faster than I was cleaning. So I picked him up and carried him around while I straightened up his messes, then we went outside and sat in the front yard until Bethany's bus got home. I didn't even let her go in the house. We just piled in the van and drove off. This was about 3:45.

I had a lot of time to kill with the kids, and I didn't even have any errands to run. We ended up going to the mall. There's a dog store there that we visited. In the front of the store was a small cage with two chihuahuas in it. One was black and white and the other was brown and white. Bethany fell in love with those dogs. She'd run around the cage, and they'd follow, barking the whole time. We left to go look at the other dogs, but Bethany didn't want to look at them, she just wanted to go back to the chihuahuas. Meagan asked me what their names were, and I told her that they didn't have names--they were waiting for someone to take them home and give them names. I don't know if Bethany realized that they were for sale before that, but she asked me if we could take the black and white one home. I've been expecting Bethany to ask for a dog for a long time now. She's always seemed to prefer them to cats. The puppies were cute and all, but just thinking about having to toilet train a dog, and letting it outside to poop on the lawn and it chewing up everything in the house--no thanks. I can barely tolerate the cats' messes at times, and when they die, that's it--no more house pets for me, thank you very much.

Anyway, after we left the pet store, they played on the indoor playground for a bit, but Sean kept leaving it and trying to run away, so I got bored with it pretty fast. Then Meagan didn't like some boys who wanted to play chase with her, and just sat by me instead of playing, and then Bethany fell and hurt herself. Yeah, it was kind of a dud. Oh, well. We met up with Nate at a restaurant, had dinner, and still had almost an hour before we could go home. We went to Michaels where I found some crown shaped candles that will be perfect for Meagan's birthday cake--she wants a princess castle. I also got some edible pink glitter for it, too. After that we went to Petsmart. It was dog training night, so there were TONS of dogs there. The girls had a blast going around asking if they could pet various dogs. They got licked a lot, and thought that was just great. Finally, after that, it was time to go home.

Now it's evening, the kids are all in bed, and the house is relatively quiet.

Haha...just as I typed that, Sean started crying. He's got a molar coming in, and I'm hoping that's what his problem is. I gave him some Tylenol, and Nate is putting him back to bed right now. Let's hope he goes down okay.

Other than that, my whole night is free, and guilt-free. The upside of all the cleaning today is that there are no chores waiting for me tonight--not even laundry to fold or dinner to clean up. It's kind of nice. I don't get many evenings like this. I'll often take a break anyway, but in the back of my mind, I'm thinking that I really should be doing XYZ. So I'm just going to kick back and enjoy it.

A lesson gone flat...or not?

I remember a Thanksgiving a long time ago when I was a little girl, when my dad loaded a turkey and a bunch of groceries in a box for a family in need. I don't remember how many of us went with him, but I remember him parking the van several houses away, putting the box of groceries on the porch, ringing the doorbell and running back to the van where we were waiting. I just always remember that, and that it was a good thing to help others in need. There were probably other times in my childhood that reinforced that, but that's the one I remember.

With that in mind, when I was asked to bring dinner today to a family in need, I decided to bring one of the girls with me. I was hoping to create the same kinds of memories for them, to show by example and not just Family Home Evening lessons that we should be kind to others. I asked Meagan to come with me, and at the last second, Bethany asked to come, too, so I had them both with me. We were bringing dinner to an elderly couple who were both sick. On the way there, I told them that we were bringing food to people who were sick and couldn't make their own food. Meagan at first thought I was bringing them our dinner and that we were going to eat with them. Then Bethany and Meagan both kept saying they were sick and needed food. Haha. When we got there, a nearby apartment had a dog out front, and Bethany was focused on that, and Meagan was focused on all the dandelions around that she wanted to pick. I was starting to think that the whole point of the exercise was going over their heads, but now that I think about it, maybe not. I don't know if they'll remember this or not, but they did realize we were taking food to someone who was sick. Maybe that will be good enough.

It's Official--House Hunting Day #6

This morning didn't start off so great. Neither of us were really ready to get up this morning when Sean woke up. Then we had to decided how to spend the day, in a way that wasn't too expensive, and would keep Sean happy. We finally decided to go to a natural history museum in the morning, bring Sean back for a nap, then run a few errands in the afternoon and pack up for our flight out tomorrow. That was the plan, anyway. The museum was a little farther away than I expected, and by the time we got there, Sean wanted to get out of his car seat. He's been in there way too much lately. Unfortunately, after we drove all the way out to it, we found it was closed. Bummer. So we started driving back, trying to figure out what else to do. At this point it was almost 11:00am. We decided to see a movie, so we found the closest theater on the GPS and headed there. There wasn't really anything we wanted to see, and we found out that we'd have to buy Sean a ticket. It didn't seem worth it to pick a random movie just to have something to do. We just decided to go get lunch instead and call the morning a wash.



After lunch, though, we got a very good phone call. Our offer had only been sent to the bank this morning, but we got an answer by 12:30 today. We got the house! Woohoo! The day wasn't so bad after all. It turned out that the other offer was really close to ours. We both offered the asking price, but we didn't ask for closing costs, and the other people did. It's strange that the bank didn't ask for any counter offers, since they were so close, but I'm not complaining. That would've just made it more expensive for us, most likely.

This afternoon we ran a few errands, then went to see The Lightening Thief. It wasn't much like the book, but the movie was okay. The cool thing was that we were the only people in the entire theater. That was great, because Sean was able to run up and down the aisles without bothering anyone. He was really tired, but wouldn't sleep. Silly boy. He wanted to play the pick-me-up-then-immediately-put-me-down game. I hate that game. It's so tiring.

I'm glad the day is done now, though. I'm looking forward to seeing Bethany and Meagan tomorrow, and getting home soon after that.

The Hunt Is Over--House Hunting Day #5

Today was kind of a slow day, which was good considering it was Sunday, Conference and Easter. I have to admit that it didn't really feel like Easter to me, even if the "Easter Bunny" left me a few goodies, and even a few chocolates for Sean. It didn't even feel like Sunday, even though we caught a bit of Conference.

Sean let us sleep in until 8:40 this morning. I was shocked. I think he's just trying to catch up on his sleep, he's gotten so little while we've dragged him all over the place the past couple of days. We sat around in our pajamas and watched The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe on TV, which finished just in time for Conference to start. It was hard to get much out of Conference with Sean around. Between feeding him and playing enough with him to make him happy, I think I missed the majority of it. I finally put him down for a nap at about 11:15, and he cried for 10 minutes or so until he fell asleep. Just after he fell asleep, Terri called to set up a meeting with us to sign our offer on the foreclosure house. We ended up meeting at the new house just listed yesterday that's so close to the house we offered on. I had thought we would go see it on Monday. I felt bad taking Terri away from her family on Easter--she had some come into town for it--so I'd suggested seeing it Monday morning, but she offered to set it up for us today. We had to meet with her anyway, to get our offer signed and done in time, so we went ahead and looked at that house today. Everything was timed just about perfectly--we just had time to finish listening to Conference (except our internet connection petered out only five or six minutes before it was done--urgh), get ready and go. Sean wasn't quite awake yet, so I opened the curtains in the bedroom and left the door open, so he'd wake up. He was awfully cute while he was asleep:

We got all the way to the house when I realized that I'd forgotten our loan preapproval letter that Terri needed to submit with the offer, so we had to go all the way back to our room and get it and go back again. It's a good thing this house is so close to the Academy. As it was, we were pretty late. We looked through the house quickly. It was the exact same floorplan as the house we wanted to offer on, but it was more expensive, and didn't have nearly as many upgrades. The yard was smaller, too, and the patio (which had a huge crack in it) faced west, which would be very inconvenient for the evenings. On the whole, it just didn't impress me. We decided that if we don't get the house we want, our second option will be another house a few minutes away. It's older, but I think it would work better than the house we saw today. We signed all the paperwork and that was that. Now we are just waiting to see what the bank will say.

This bluebird was on the fence of the house we saw today. I will miss the cardinals in Ohio, but at least there are other vibrant birds out here.

We got back to our room at about 2:30, so we'd already missed a chunk of the last session of Conference. We tried to listen again, but I'm not sure I could really tell you anything that was said. Pretty sad, I know. I tried to get Sean to take another nap, since he ususally takes two naps a day, and the first one was interrupted, but he was not happy. I hope there is no one in the room on the other side of us, because he screamed a long time before he finally fell asleep, and then he only slept for half an hour or so.

It was only 4:30 by this point, and neither of us wanted to hang around in the room trying to keep Sean occupied, so we decided to go out. We went to the Garden of the Gods, a small park near here that has beautiful red sandstone formations. My hip started hurting after one small hike, so we didn't stay long. After that we just drove around and old historic town called Manitou Springs, and through part of Old Colorado Springs. It looked kind of touristy, but there were lots of fun little shops that would be fun to poke around in. I also found out that there are some old Anasazi cliff dwellings right near the Garden of the Gods, that are open for people to tour. Supposedly, you can even go in them and touch things. Hmmmm....maybe that will be something for us to do tomorrow.

Since our offer is signed and done, and now we are just waiting, there is nothing useful for us to do tomorrow. We considered trying to fly home tomorrow instead of Tuesday, but it would've cost at least $150 each for us to change our tickets. It's not worth it. We'll have to look up more touristy things to do tomorrow. I'm glad we're coming back here, because there are a lot of cool things to do, so it doesn't feel like a vacation where I have to cram everything in, or miss out. We'll be back, and we'll have lots of time to see things. And if anyone comes to visit, we'll have lots of places to take them.

Balancing Rock at Garden of the Gods.

Sean wanted to get down and walk a lot of the time, which greatly slowed us down, but that was okay. He was fascinated with the rocks, and picked one up to carry around with him. He kept it after Nate put him back up on his shoulders. I caught him sticking it in his mouth. When I told him "No", he started hitting the side of Nate's glasses with it instead. That's when Nate took the rock away.

He wasn't really crying, his eyes just water a lot when there's even the tiniest bit of wind. He must have dry eyes too. He had a lot of fun outside today, anyway.

Fabulous fortune cookie

I think I mentioned that we got Chinese food while on the go the other day. We had so many houses to see, that we barely stopped for the food, and then ate it in the car. Well, I was doing a bit of cleaning up in our room today, and I found some fortune cookies in the bottom of the Chinese food bag. Nate's said something like he had a stellar personality, but here is mine:
Hahahaha! What could be more apropos?

Oh, deer!

As we left our room last night at about five, we saw this herd of deer just up the hill from us. There were eleven or twelve in the herd. Nate had never seen such a large herd of deer. We see them a lot in Ohio, but they tend to be in twos or threes at the most, and often they're alone.

We got pretty close to them. The building in the background is the Academy fire station. I didn't zoom this picture at all.

After Nate finish marvelling over the size, we turned around and went about a quarter mile down the hill, and found this herd. It had about 24 deer in it.

I-25 runs right down the middle of Colorado Springs. The Academy in on the west, and the houses we're looking at are on the east. There is a lot more wildlife on the west, since the mountains are on that side as well. Terri said there are tons of deer (as we've seen), and foxes and occasionally a bear or mountain lion. Her friend was out walking his dog one day (there are TONS of walking trails all over here), when a mountain lion rushed out, grabbed his dog and ran off with it. Scary. Good thing we'll be on the east side.

I miss my girls

We left Bethany and Meagan with Brenda and Arle while we came out here to Colorado to look for a house. The other day Brenda sent me an email with pictures, and it really made me miss them. I'm glad they're looking so happy. Brenda told me they are still having their normal fits and temper tantrums (I think Meagan is going through the terrible twos now), but for the most part they are happy and comfortable with where they are.

Here is the email with pictures and captions that Brenda sent to me:


Hi Karen,


Hope the house hunt is going well. I am sending some pictures of the kids. They are having a fun day today.


On our way home from Walmart earlier Meagan looked out the window and squealed, "I see aliens!!!"
When I asked what she meant she said, "You know, those little yellow flowers that are for picking up, silly." There was a whole field of dandelions. So cute!

The three little girls had a bubble bath last night. It's not a great picture because they wouldn't hold still. They were painting the wall with bubbles.

Picnic!

The top right is Bethany's and the one under it is Meagan's. They spent almost an hour and a half trading stickers and making these this morning, "Who would like this lion? I would thank you, and would you like this jungle tree?"

Sidewalk chalk

She had more fun playing in the little pile of sand on the driveway than with the sidewalk chalk. :)

Meagan drew a gorilla! (Yes, I know Meagan is wearing a pajama shirt. She got herself dressed this morning and when I tried to correct her and have her change she became quite indignant and insisted she was wearing what she wanted. So I let it go.)

More chalk.

The best laid plans....House Hunting Day #4

We had a very nice morning today. We decided this morning to put an offer on the foreclosure house, so I called our agent and we set up a meeting for 1:00 at the house. We spent the rest of the morning driving around, familiarizing ourselves with the area and the shopping centers and such. I know Conference was going on, but there is no way we would've been able to concentrate on it with Sean in the room, so we decided to go out instead. Sean did get a good nap in the car as we were driving around, which was nice. We were a little early for our meeting with our agent, so we went to the house, and put Sean in the stroller and walked around the neighborhood. The few people we ran across were very nice, and there is a very small playground only a few houses down from the house we're looking at. Our agent asked her son to come along, he does a variety of things like landscaping, remodeling and finishing houses, that sort of thing. He came to look at the basement so we could bounce ideas off him about finishing it and get a rough estimate for how much it would cost. We talked to him, got some good ideas, then started talking to Terri about what kind of offer we would put down. Now here's the bad news. The listing agent sent Terri a message that she was getting another offer on the house today. So now we're not so sure that we can get the house. We're still going to put in an offer, but it will be higher than we'd first planned to offer, without asking for closing costs, like we'd planned to ask for before. All along we've siad that we have lots of options, it's a buyer's market, we can wait for a good deal, blah, blah, blah, but once we made the decision to offer on this one, I started thinking of it as our house, and thinking about what I was going to put where, and having friends over to barbeque in the fire pit, etc. So to think that we might not get it was very disappointing. Our offer will go in first thing Monday morning, but we won't hear if we got it until we're already home on Tuesday. So suddenly we're scrambling for a backup plan. We ended up going to look at the new construction again, and we even toured an already finished home priced at $283K. It was absolutely beautiful, but there's no way. The guy out there said it was a bare bones home that a buyer had put together--meaning he was on a budget and didn't add many extras to the home--and then that sale fell through. So they had this customized, finished home, with no buyer. He thought we could maybe offer $260 for it, since the builder was eager to sell, and worried about selling that one, but even at that, it's out of our price range. It was an awfully nice home, though. But, we're walking away from that option. So then we came back to our room to look at our other top choices and see what other backup options we have. We decided not to go for the artsy house. There is another house that is almost as close to the base as the foreclosure home, and has a similar layout with unfinished basement, but it is twelve years older, and it is $8K more. We liked that one well enough, so it could be a good backup. Then I found a new house just listed today that is just a couple streets away from the foreclosure house, that looks very nearly identical--on paper anyway. It's got the same number of rooms and square footage and basement space, built in the same year, probably by the same builder. It's $10K more. We could go for that as a backup, and ask the seller to pay the closing costs (about $6K), which we didn't ask for on the foreclosure house, and it would come out to be close to the same price. We're going to go look at it on Monday at any rate, and see if it is as good as it sounds. Since it was listed today, it's not likely to get another offer this week (unless it's the other couple offering on the same house we want). So we're making contingency plans, and will just have to go from there.

The good news of the day is that our house in Ohio is getting its third showing Monday morning from 9:00-10:00. Ha. I would never have said yes to that time if we were at home, but as it is, they can come on it.

The Great House Hunt, Day #3

Poor Sean. Poor, poor Sean. His whole schedule is kind of screwed up right now. For the past two days, his body has been on Ohio time, waking up at normal Ohio time, which translates to 6-6:30 here. Then he gets dragged around all day without a real chance for a nap--he got in a few catnaps today--without a real eating schedule, either. He was sooo tired tonight. We don't have anywhere to rush off to in the morning, I don't think, so I'm kind of hoping that he'll sleep in a bit and rest up. On the other hand, he may wear himself out so much that he may actually sleep on the plane Tuesday.


After we were finished for the day, we met up with our friends Marci and Roger. Roger was in ROTC with Nate and me, and then we were in the same ward in Enon. Marci and I were in the primary presidency together. Our kids used to play together while we had our presidency meetings. Roger's been teaching at the Academy for about two years now, I think. We went to their house and had dinner and just basically gabbed for hours. It was so fun to catch up. I'm glad we'll be living near them again. Sean had a great time being able to get down and actually touch something. They also have a daughter who is two months older, and they played really well together. Sean has never played with anyone his own age before. They shared tortilla chips (while dinner was being fixed), toys and hugs. It was so cute. Neither one of them had great balance, so they'd try to hug and fall over. It was about 9:30 before we got back to our room and got Sean in bed. Yeah. We just made his tiredness worse. Oh well.

Last night we sat down and narrowed the thirty-something homes we'd seen down to six. Today we saw just a couple new ones, then toured those six again. We narrowed those down to just two: one we call the artsy home, and the other is the foreclosure home. Then on the spur of the moment, as we were driving past a new development, we decided to look at a new house that our realtor, Terri, thought was in our price range. So, those are our choices.


Choice #1: The artsy-fartsy home, so named because the owner has a photo studio set up in the basement, tasteful works of art all over the whole place, and just because of the general ambience of the home. You walk in and there's this great entry. To the right is a big arch into an office. Straight ahead and slightly to the right is a step up into a fabulous kitchen with tons of cupboard space, an island and even a little nook for a mini desk with built in cubby-holes and stuff, perfect for a laptop setup, paying bills, and storing all those little paper the kids bring home from school. Straight ahead and slightly to the left of the entry are a few stairs down to the living room. There are two stories of open space and huge windows, a gas fireplace, and some built-in cabinets. From the living room, there are three arched doorways into the family room, and a small hallway that leads to the laundry room, a powder room (half bathroom) and the garage. The garage is a three-car garage, but from the road it looks like a two-car. One side is extra deep, called a tandem garage. The current owner has just turned it into a workshop.

Back in the entry, to the left is a stairway down to the unfinished basement, and a nice stairway up to the second floor. At the top of the stairs is an open catwalk. You can look from it down to the living room on one side, or the entry on the other. Following the catwalk to the right is the master bedroom with a HUGE walk-in closet and the master bathroom. Following the catwalk to the left are two smallish bedrooms and a bathroom.

There is a sliding glass doorway in the living room that leads to the backyard. It's kind of small, but does have a really nice deck.

The basement is unfinished, but has the rough plumbing for another bathroom, and there is room for a bedroom and family room, or two large bedrooms. It also has an access door to this weird crawlspace area, located under the living room. The door stood about three feet off the ground, and is about two feet square. The crawlspace is maybe four feet tall, and about the size of the whole living room, maybe the living room and family room together. It's insulated, but the ground is just dirt. The current owner has put this thick plastic down, and put lots of storage in there. It looks kind of handy, but it's weird.

Asking price for the artsy-fartsy home: $240,000. Built in 1994.

Negatives: The house is almost intimidating. I was picturing my furniture and wall-hangings in that house, and thinking that it just didn't fit. I could easily see me wanting to buy new furniture and "art" to make the house look nice. But then, I also felt like it was almost a bit too ostentatious. And although we could afford this house, it's more than we'd wanted to spend.

Front view (with Terri--she ended up in a lot of these pictures).

Office off the entry.

The kitchen. (Duh!)

Anther view of the kitchen. The skinny white door is the pantry. To the right of it is the laptop/paper collecting nook, but you can't see it very well.

One of the reasons we call this the artsy home. This little niche is right at the top of the stairs, at the left end of the catwalk. If you stood looking at it, and took two steps sideways, you'd see down into the living room.

View from the kitchen across the living room into the family room.

Another view of the living room, showing the double storey windows.

The gas fireplace and built-ins in the living room. The fireplace turns on with just a flip of a lightswitch-looking switch.

Stairs up to the second storey.

View of the living room from the catwalk.

Crawlspace access.

Back deck. It has some nice benches built into it, but the rest of the yard is pretty small.

Choice #2: The foreclosure home. Built in 2005. This was the first home we saw on the second day, so it seemed especially good to me after the yucky ones we saw. You walk right in to the living room--there isn't really much of an entry--which has a hardwood floor, and double storey windows. If you keep going straight, you'll pass the stairs to the second storey on the right and walk right into the kitchen table area. The rest of the kitchen is on the left, and the family room is on the right. Keep going, and you'll get to the sliding glass door leading out to the huge deck in the backyard. The kitchen is really nice. I'm guessing that the last owners had a lot of extras put in, because it has a gas stove, matching stainless steel fridge, stove, dishwasher and microwave, and really nice countertops. I forgot what it's called--it looks like granite, but it's something else.

The family room is a bit ugly at present. For some reason I can't understand, the previous owners decided to paint the wall around the fireplace this aquamarine blue. That definitely has to go. Also, the house wasn't winterized after the last people left, and a pipe burst. The pipe has been fixed, but in order to do so, there are lots of big holes cut in the sheetrock. Actually, there are holes all up the wall, in the ceiling, in the laundry room and in the master bathroom upstairs. I've been told that will all be fixed. The carpet is stained too, but that's supposedly going to be shampooed. If we really had to, we could replace it.

Like I said, the deck outside is huge. The yard is also pretty big, compared to many of the yards here, and it's been nicely landscaped. The back fence backs up to a large road, but there are trees all along it, which will help block out any noise of traffic, etc. To the right of the deck is a big firepit. There stone benches on two sides, which look like they're still under construction, but all the brick for the job is there. We'd just need to get some cement and finish bricking it up. The pit itself looks usuable now, though, and what fun we could have building fires and roasting hot dogs and toasting marshmallows during the summer.

Okay, so I mentioned the stairs up to the second storey. There are three bedrooms and a "loft". The loft is a room that is open to the living room--there is a bannister you can look over down into the living room. It has a wall of built-in shelving and could potentially be turned into a fourth bedroom. We'll probably use it as a play area, with maybe the little TV or something. The master bedroom is a decent size--not small and not huge--but it does have a nice walk-in closet, and a really nice bathroom with a jacuzzi tub (another extra I'm guessing the first owners opted for). The other two bedrooms are smaller, but not too tiny.

The basement is unfinished, and is about the same size as the basement in the artsy home, but it feels more usuable. We would want to get it finished sooner than later, for a couple of reasons. It would add to the value of the home, and if we're going to do it, I want to do it sooner so I can enjoy it. Also, Nate will probably be setting up some fishtanks down there, and he'll need a sink. I also want somewhere to set up my sewing machine, and that would probably be in the basement.

One of the biggest perks of this house for us is the location. The artsy house is pretty close to the Academy (about 10 minutes, I think), but this one is even closer. It would only be five minutes. Most of the rest of the homes we looked at were 20-25 minutes away, which adds up. Nate really likes that the commute would be short. Besides that, this are is really growing. There are several new subdivisions being built, and lots of new commercial buildings coming in. Plus, it's only 5-10 minutes from a super Walmart. What more could you ask for?

Asking price: $229,900, down from $250,000. The orginal owners paid $258,500 for it, I'm guessing mostly because of the extra options I saw in the kitchen and master bath. There is a house about four houses down from this one with the exact same floor plan, just in reverse, that is for sale for $250,000. The asking price is still more that we'd wanted to spend, but it's less than the other house, and Terri thinks she might be able to get the bank to come down a little more. That would be a great deal for us.

Negatives: Hmmm...we'd have to finish the basement, which we'd have to hire someone to do, 'cuz I'm not doing it, and Nate can't. We may just have someone do the framing and wiring, and then I could do some sheetrocking and finishing and painting, and then have the carpet done, but I don't know. But the same could be said for the artsy house. There is a potential for other problems like the burst pipe, but the house comes with a two-year warranty, so we wouldn't have to pay much if something went wrong, it would just be a pain. Um, what else. I can't think of anything. Oh yeah, there are practically no blinds or other window treatments anywhere in the house. The past owners took everything.

Front view. I like the little porch.

Front door and living room.

Ugly family room. I'm standing where the kitchen table would be, and there is a half wall separating the two spaces.

View from family room into the kitchen. Kind of a blurry picture, but you can see there is lots of counterspace and cupboards.

The firepit. Perfect reason for all the Larson pyros to come visit.

View from the deck into the rest of the yard. It looks a bit ugly, but I'm guessing it will get a lot better as the spring progresses. It's a lot nicer than many of the yards around here.

View from the yard back towards the house of the big deck. The deck has lights all around it, as does the yard, which I think is controlled by a timer by the back door.

View from the loft into the living room...well, the top of the living room, anyway.

The shelving in the loft.

The master bath, complete with jacuzzi tub and holes in the wall. At least they didn't break the tile (it's up against the wall under the window), so it can be put back when the hole is repaired.

View of the loft from the living room.

The basement, just in case you couldn't tell.

The garage. It has a bit of storage in it. We're determined to actually use our garage to park cars in, so no stockpiling of crap this time around. In theory.

Choice #3: the new construction. I don't have any pictures of this house, and I don't have as good a feel for it because it is basically a hole in the ground right now. I've seen the floorplans, and toured a mostly finished version of the same floorplan. We have been absolutely assured, though, that it will be done by June, in time for us to get the housing tax credit, which is also right when we will be moving there. I'm honestly not so excited for this house, even though it would be brand new and we could finance through the builder for a lower interest rate than our bank will probably give us, for several reasons. One, they're asking $243,000, the most expensive of all the options. The guy we talked to said he could probably pay our closing costs, though, and would give us about $8000 credit in their home finishing store. I forgot what they actually call it, but that's where you go in and jack up the price of your home adding all the extras like nice appliances, jacuzzi tubs and whatnot. We're going to go tomorrow with our agent to see how far that credit could get us, because I'm not paying anymore than the asking price, at most. When finished, the front lawn/yard will be landscaped, but the back yard will not. No fence, no deck or patio even, and definitely no flora. If that credit could take care of some of that, I might be more willing to consider this one. It's the biggest house of our three options, but it is by far the smallest house in the subdivision. Many of the other homes cost over $300,000, so that's good for resale, and it is in a desireable, growing area, and close to the academy. The basement will be unfinished.

Negatives: It has no living room! I just noticed that when I went to check the floorplan for the number of bedrooms (4), but still, no living room?! I'm getting less and less excited for this one. I really don't want a dirt yard. And I really don't want to spend this much. Maybe I don't even want to waste my time tomorrow looking at their store. Okay, I think I've talked myself out of this one.

If you haven't guessed, my favorite is option two, the foreclosure. Whatever we decide, we will likely write up an offer tomorrow, and have our agent put it in first thing Monday. If we're really lucky we may even get an answer back that day, but likely not. We'll have to work the rest of the process from Ohio through our agent.

I was going to add a second post for today, titled I Miss My Girls. Brenda sent me some really cute pictures, and just looking at them made me miss Bethany and Meagan. It's good that they're not here with us, but I do miss them. Thanks, Brenda, for taking such good care of them for us. It's getting really late, though, so I think I'm going to add that post tomorrow. Tomorrow we're also going to drive around a bunch and get more familiar with the area. We may try to catch some Conference, but I doubt we'll get much of it with Sean in the room with us. Our Easter Sunday plans are still up in the air, but I'm not going to worry about that right now. I need some sleep.

House Hunting in Colorado, Day #2

Today was a looong day. We met our agent at 10:00 this morning, and we pretty much all day with a brief break to pick up some lunch (which we ate in the car), until 5:00pm. Sean did really well, considering. The worst part of it was that he couldn't really get a good nap. He slept for maybe 20 minutes, as opposed to 2-3 hours of naptime in a normal day. Maybe when we get home, he'll sleep a lot to make up for it. I can wish, anyway. At any rate, he was pretty good, until we were nearly done. Then he started fussing a lot, mostly when he was in his seat. He was good when we got out and were looking around. He's developed a fondness for door stops, the kind that stick out from the floor boards and make a cool "doing" noise when you play with them. He had a blast playing with them at house after house. It kind of makes sense, though, when you consider that there's not much to play with in empty houses, and they're right at his level.

Today's hunt was much more profitable than yesterday's. We saw about twenty houses today, and there are four or five that I could really see us making an offer on, a couple of which were really good deals. One had a nice lighted deck with a fire pit in the back. Another had a huge open area, with a catwalk across the top, with the master bedroom on one side and the kids rooms on the other side. We have to sit down now and go through them all and decide which we liked best and which ones we want to see tomorrow. Then I'm going to take a hot bath and go to bed.

House Hunting in Colorado, Day #1

I suppose this is technically day two, but since yesterday was pretty much taken up in traveling, I don't really count it as part of the real house hunting venture.

The flight yesterday was not too bad. We managed to keep Sean occupied for the first hour and a half or so, and then I finally got him to fall asleep. He slept for a while, but woke up really grumpy. I'm not sure if it was because he didn't get enough sleep, or if our descent was bothering his ears. At any rate, he cried for the last 20-30 minutes. One lady a couple of rows ahead glared back at me. I was thinking, "What do you want? Do you think I want him to cry?" It was very annoying. I finally got him to stop crying by sticking one earpiece from some headphones in his ear. He was distracted enough by the History Channel that he stopped crying (the TV was free on that flight because of antenna problems).

We arrived at the Air Force Academy at about 9:00pm, which to us felt like 11:00pm with the time difference. When we originally made reservations to stay here, we were told that we'd stay in a normal hotel-like room the first couple of nights, and then we could move to a more family-friendly room the rest of the time. There must've been a cancellation or something, though, because when we got here, we were in the family-friendly lodging. It's really nice, more like a one-room apartment than a hotel room. There is a bedroom, bathroom, and a full kitchen/living room, and even a washer/dryer. It's great, because we can put Sean down for a nap and still get work done out in the living room. We also don't have to eat out every meal. There's even a pack-n-play for Sean to sleep in and a high chair for him to eat in. It's perfect. It's also WAY cheaper than we could get a normal hotel room for.

We met our real estate agent this morning at 10:00 and started looking at some of the listings she'd sent us that we liked. I think we saw six houses today. Of the six, there were two that were possibilities, and the rest we pretty much rejected. We only went until about 1:00, because our agent had a closing or something this afternoon, but that's okay because it gave us time to go back to our room and put Sean down for a nap. The poor guy was pretty tired. He'd been up late (at least two hours past bedtime) for two nights in a row, with only a tiny nap on the plane yesterday, so it was good to give him some time to rest.

We ate lunch at a place called Ted's Smokehouse, or something like that, on our realtor's commendation. For $40, we got two bison burgers. They were great burgers, but the price was a little crazy. They also had paper straws instead of plastic straws. It was their contribution towards recyling and a cleaner planet, etc. It was like drinking through a mini paper towel roll.

We have some friends in the area that used to be in our ward in Enon, who have also moved here to teach at the Academy. We had plans to meet up with them and look at some things in their area and have dinner, but Marci's day got really crazy and so we pushed it back to Friday. But then she told us of another guy we knew from ROTC, Scott, who is also here teaching. I called him up, and he had several of his neighbors selling homes, so we went to look at those and ended up having dinner with them. His area seems really nice, and there are a lot of members there. There are two more houses there that we want to look at.

On our way back from Scott's we passed a Coldstone. Nate was tempted to stop, but kept driving. It took another block or two, but then he decided that he really wanted some ice cream, so we turned around and went back. They had a new flavor of ice cream that I kind of liked: oatmeal cookie dough. Sean liked it, too. I kept feeding him bits of it while Nate's ice cream was being finished. He screamed when we went back to the car and put him in his seat and he wasn't getting any more. He must have the ice cream gene. Nate was in a really good mood the rest of the way back to our room. He must've been looking forward to the ice cream.

Tomorrow we have a very full day of looking at houses nonstop. I think I'll turn in early. Hopefully we'll see some good ones.

Oh, poop!

This is really gross, but today I changed a kind of smelly diaper of Sean's, just before he took a nap. I put the garbage can out in the hallway so he didn't have to smell it while he took his nap, and then I rushed off to a doctor's appointment and forgot about the garbage can. After my appointment, I was in the kitchen, cleaning up after Sean's snack, and he comes wandering in with this big brown thing. Yeah, I bet you can guess what it was. I was just glad it wasn't softer, or he'd have smeared it all over. As it was, it was only on his hands. I think.

"But I keep talking..."

So, the other night, Meagan and Bethany were talking up a storm, instead of going to sleep. I finally had enough and decided to split them up. I moved Meagan into our bed until they both fell asleep, and then we shifted her back to her bed. Instead of the discipline this was supposed to be, it was apparently some kind of reward. The next night they were back to talking and making lots of noise, and when I went in to get after them, Meagan pops out of bed, walks right past me and hops into my bed. I asked her what she was doing, and she just said, "But I keep talking," in her oh-so-innocent-little-princess voice. She got really mad when I sent her back to bed. Now every night since then, when I tell them to be quiet, she protests, "But I keep talking!", hoping that I'll relent and let her go back to my bed.

And yet more photos

Nate got up with Sean in the middle of the night the other night. When I got up in the morning, this is what I found. How cute!

Speaking of sleep, the cat's favorite spot to sleep is the back of the couch. There is a permanent slump there now. He looked so cute with his paw around his nose the other day that I had to take a picture.

Bethany's class had Dr. Suess week last week to celebrate his birthday. One of their activities was to make these hats. Bethany called it her Cat in the Hat.

Bethany got some Lincoln logs for Christmas. Up until now, she hasn't really built much on her own, she just wanted me to build houses from the pictures on the box. She finally built one all by herself the other day, and called it her "sticky" house.