We're Moving! (Not Far)

Yes, we are moving again. We really liked our current home, but the owners owed too much on their home to come down in price. And we could find a comparable home for tens of thousands cheaper. So alas, we are moving again. The house was build in 2008, so only a few years old, and it was custom built for the previous owner who was relocated in February. My understanding was that it was an older couple. The wife clearly had a good idea of what she liked, and I loved what she did with the place. Which is why we are buying it. ;)

We hope to have the papers signed no later than the 23rd, and then we can move before conference and Kendall's recruiting trip to the University of Utah the first week of October.

Here are some pictures of the house. It sits on an acre, about 5 minutes closer to town, but only about half the property is developed. There's still 1/2 an acre to do something with over the next few years. I suggested a pool with a Mediterranean courtyard surrounded by cedar trees and oleander, but we'll see. ;)

 Here's the front. It's much bigger than it looks.

 Here's the build in fire pit.

 A view of the rear of the house. The windows on the left are part of the master "wing".

 A view from the back porch to the patio and the mountain beyond.

 The built in BBQ on the patio.

 The front door is just out of sight to the left. The alcove is flanked by 2 closets. The woman who built this house knew the value of LOTS of closets. I love her.

 This will become the "piano" room instead of the "pool" room. The door you see leads to the kitchen, so it could also be used as a dining room. But I want room for a baby grand some day...

 A couple of different shots of the great room area.

 I'm not sure why, but the space looks much smaller in the pictures. It is a really large room.

 The dining area. It looks smaller, too. It could easily fit a table for 8.

 Sigh. The Kitchen. Loved it. Soooo many cupboards and drawers and places to put things. And a great breakfast bar that will fit all the kiddos.

 You can't tell from this picture, but the stove is gas. I have missed gas. I was thrilled to see this! There is also a water softener (yay!) and reverse osmosis for drinking. This will be the first time in forever that we have that. And the hard water around here is awful, so I'm thrilled!

 This wall has the fridge (which they left and is part of the purchase) on the left and the doors on the right are the in-kitchen pantry. Yes, there is another entire pantry off the kitchen, perfect for long term storage. Did I say I loved this woman?

 The master bedroom. They left that nice love seat, too. Yay! Financed furniture! ;)

 The master bath, with separate vanities. If you look in the mirror, you can see the shower on the right, the "loo" on the left, and the two doors on either side are walk in "his and hers" closest. Huge. Closets. The jacuzzi tub is right where the photographer was. This was a happy bathroom. :)

 This picture and the one following are of the same room attached to the master by the two glass french doors.

Of course we're taking our children with us. The house has 3 other bedrooms, so we'll have the same arrangement as currently. They are spacious, if not as humongous as our current house. But considering how little time the kids actually spend in their rooms, preferring to be all together in the main living areas, they saw the benefit of having more space where we spend the most time. It also has a fabulous laundry room near the master and the half bath off the kitchen.

Well, I hope you enjoyed the tour. Wish us luck...it's going to be a crazy few weeks.

Long Time, No Post

We are very boring. I mean...really, REALLY boring. Everyone seems to make all kinds of fun posts because they're doing fun things. We are NOT those people. We are stay at home bums, most of the time.

So a brief update: School is over. Duh. I've had the kids home for a month, and I'm so grateful for a house big enough that people aren't tripping over each other.

Andrew is headed for school this year. He's so tall, he's as tall as my friend's 10 year old. (Who is thoroughly disgusted by this fact. But their family is short and mine are tall...genetics. What can I say?)

Benji asks me everyday if he is going to school with Andrew. When I tell him no, he gets to do preschool with mom and won't that be fun, he throws a tantrum (which consists of stomping and snorting like an annoyed bull). I think I'm very glad there is only a year between them in school after all. Though I can hardly believe that Benji is 4. Way too old.

Meri is missing her friends. One of the pitfalls of living in the "suburbs" of a small town is lack of friends. There are a couple of girls her age nearby, but we have run into the "oh, you're Mormons?" issue. So she waits for school to start again so she can play. I am glad that the youngest 3 play so well together.

Pete is excited for scout camp coming up in mid July. They were supposed to go up on Mount Graham to camp, but the fire danger is so tremendous around here (by the way, we're fine...the fires are far away from us) that they're doing some merit badges the first two days at the stake center and then heading over the border to New Mexico (about an hour away) to camp for 3 days. Not the 5 days of filthy camping you'd expect a 12 year old to love, but close enough. But he is headed to middle school next year, including band (thanks for the xylophone and drum kit, Benton!), so hopefully he'll make some good friends there.

Sarah is officially 15, and every inch a 15 year old. She auditioned for the performance choirs this year and made it into the "Xela" type choir, all girls. She was very disappointed not to make it into the mixed girls/boys choir, but she has two more years to audition. I'm sure she'll enjoy every minute of it. She's really missed the Salt Lake Children's Choir, not just for her friends, but for the singing. Mr. Woodward was a weird old music geek, but he knew what he was doing.

Kendall works. And works. And sacrifices 2 hours a day making the drive up to Morenci so we can have a house big enough for all this insanity. And then some days he comes home and goes out visiting for his calling as High Priest Group Leader. He's a good man, my husband.

We occasionally go out on dates and get to talk without interruption. Very. Occasionally.

And I'm Mom. So there you go. It'll probably be another 2 months before I update again, just because nothing really changes around here. :)

Happy Holidays!

This is our first holiday without family nearby. There's a part of me that is sad, but a part of me is excited to start our own family traditions. So today we had an Italian inspired feast, including six courses. Yes, you heard right, 6 courses!

We didn't go monster elaborate, it being Sunday and all, but we made an exciting discovery (for us anyway). We've quested for years to find "panna", italian table cream that is thickened and makes a fabulous sauce for pasta. Now we've never found anyone that sells it. But yesterday while at Walmart Kendall found something in the Mexican food aisle...a product that seemed suspiciously like panna. We bought a can (a steal at $1.45 instead of the $9.99 if we'd bought actual panna on Amazon) and used it today to throw on tortelloni. A great substitute. I'm thrilled, because it means easy cream sauces, or pink sauces, or other nummy stuff.

So while we miss family, it was fun to start something new for just us. :)

Where to Vacation

So even though Kendall just started a new job, he'll have almost 3 weeks of vacation this year. We have only a couple of months of summer break (the kids start again in the beginning of August), so we have to squeeze it in somehwere between girl's camp and scout camp. We're contemplating all kinds of things, but since we are in essence at least a day away from anywhere, more like 2 days, it's kind of a challenge.

So...any recommendations would be nice. :)

Anniversaries

Anniversaries. We celebrate or commemorate all sorts of occasions with days of remembrance. Our birthday is the first one that's truly important to us. As we get older we find other reasons to stop and recall what made a certain day noteworthy.

Not all anniversaries are happy. But today is one for me. (It is still today, even though it's after midnight as I write this.) Today is our 16th wedding anniversary.

Now this can seem like an eternity to some, and a mere sprinkle of the sands of time to others. But as I sat here pondering this occasion, it occurred to me that when I was sixteen, I was a boy crazy teenager, eager for my first date. I had a very shallow notion of what type of person I would like to marry, other than he fit my standard of "good-looking". I had no idea what it really meant to be married, to bear each other's burdens sometimes, other times yoked together, straining in unison against the weight of life.

I've discovered something...unlovely about myself. I seem to have a knack for getting an idea in my head and continuing with it like the rest of the world no longer exists. Time and time again I have seen the Lord's hand in my life, literally picking me up and moving me out of my place, just to set me on the right path. I'm not sure why I deserve such conscientiousness, but I am eternally grateful for the hands that placed my feet on the road that led me where I am today. I would have been lost, and the Lord knew that, and straightened my road so I wouldn't get confused by the twists and turns.

Love you, K.

And So They Grow...

Andrew lost his 1st tooth today. (I would take a picture but our camera card is having issues.) It was a little scary, with all that pain and all, but he let mom get a good grip on it finally and POP! out it came.

With all my other children I saw this milestone as one for celebration. This is the first time it hit me that my little boy is not so little anymore, and I wished that I might have had a day or two longer.

To top it off, Sarah announced to me this afternoon, "Mom! One more year and all your kids will be in school! What are you going to do with all that time?"

Of course I have a list a mile long for when that day comes, but for right now, that's still a couple of years away. But that will be a sad day. I thought I would never get beyond the baby phase. It was inconceivable. But today it's a little bit closer, all with losing a baby tooth.

Safe Arrival, et al

As I write this I am typing from our new office/music room, looking out the front window at our new neighborhood. I want to post pics, but I haven't really taken any yet because we're still covered in boxes. But I did manage to wrestle the computer cabinet into place and set up the computer by myself, as well as place a few pictures. There were a couple of nails still hanging on the wall in here that I thought would be the perfect height for our REALLY BIG landscape painting we have, but now that I'm looking at it, combined with the previous owner's magazine that got mailed to us titled "Hunting", I'm thinking there might have been a hunting trophy there. Hmmmmm....I guess a picture that has a few deer in the foreground would be a good replacement.

I've discovered that life, with a few shifts, is pretty much the same. Kendall wakes up at 4:30 now to make the drive to Morenci for an hour every morning. I am up by 5 so I can help him get out the door and get Sarah up at 5:30. Her bus comes at 6:40, about the time I wake up Peter and Meri (if she hasn't woken up already) to get them started. Their bus arrives at 7:25, and then there is quiet for maybe 30 minutes before the little boys get up. The rest of my day is a delicate balance between housework, feeding, scolding, and more housework, whereupon I collapse at the awfully early hour of 10:30 pm. Early for me, anyway. Really, really, early.

We are enjoying the great Arizona winter/spring. We haven't quite shaken off the Utah temperature, and I expect every moment it to plunge back into the 30s. Nice. I like it a lot. :)

The little boys are enjoying the sandbox that is our backyard. It's not landscaped yet, so that is somehow fun to them, and I have started having to wipe this superfine sand off of cabinets where their dirty pants have brushed. This is very familiar, and brings back lots of memories of Kearny and the constant sweeping of sand out of the house.

So far everyone is surviving the move. Sarah is a little slower to assimilate, but that's to be expected. I hope by the end of the school year she'll have made friends with a few people, hopefully the girls in our new ward.

We've already been welcomed by our new Bishop, and our "church service pedigree". I confessed, reluctantly, about my most recent calling of ward choir director, only to find out later in RS that the current one is moving to Pima, two towns away at the end of the month. Sigh. I was so hoping for something else for a while. Makes me wish I'd shipped all the music that belonged to the Angel Crossing Ward with us, lol, so I'd have access to all the music I used/accumulated over the past couple of years. But who knows...maybe they already had someone in mind. I can only hope.

As soon as the house is decent I promise to take pictures and give you a virtual tour.

Finally Finally!!!

It finally really official. Kendall has accepted the job offer in Arizona. After the initial offer we countered with some concerns, and then had to wait while apparently the entire mine was off for the month of December before anybody got back to us.

But it's done, and Kendall's first day is Feb 7. Now panic sets in as I try to declutter and convince my children that no, they don't need twenty of the same thing.

We'll miss the spring up here, but we should be there in time for poppy season, my favorite!!!

Finally!!!!

Yesterday Kendall finally got the job offer! Yay!!!!!!!!!! We don't know all the specifics yet (his liason at Freeport-McMoRan was out of the office today), but we should know more on Monday. The job is as a Metallurgist in the Morenci, AZ mine. Our plan is to live in Safford, about a 50 minute drive away. We're sad to have to move, we've loved our ward and the friendships we've made here, but it feels like it's time to move on.

We'll post more info as it becomes available. Thank you for all your prayers and happy thoughts on our behalf!


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Amazingly Beautiful

(Just a quick note: we don't know anything yet, but it looks like Kendall has moved to the final stages of the process for the Arizona job, and is currently undergoing a background check. No offers have been received, but we're hopeful that maybe in another week we'll have more info.)

I am a compulsive reader of a few weekly articles. One which I love to read is Orson Scott Card's weekly columns that appear every Thursday. One is on Mormontimes.com, and the other is Rhinotimes.com. Mormon Times is an online magazine that has different articles everyday relating to everything Mormon, both religiously and culturally.  The Rhino Times is a paper local to Mr. Card in North Carolina, and he reviews random things every week.

Today he shared a link to just the most amazing thing. He said it brought tears to his eyes, and it did to me, as well.  Just glorious, and I had to share. Enjoy! (Sorry this is so big...I didn't want to cut anything off.)