Daddy Daughter Dance

Last week, Jason got the opportunity to take Payden and Ava to the school Daddy Daughter dance. The girls were so excited, and had a great time with their daddy. They all came home all smiles and full of stories. What fun!

Valentines Day 2011

Since Valentines day fell on a Monday this year, I decided to make it a fun family night. Jason and I had our Valentines day out on Friday, so it worked out great. For Valentines breakfast, I always make the girls pancakes that tell them how I feel!

YUM!



During the day, I had Corrine do an activity with conversation hearts. I colored hearts the same color as the candies, and she sorted them out on the correct hearts. Then we counted how many there were of each color. She really like this. I thought for while that she might be color blind, because other than orange, she can't remember the names to any colors. All my other girls had it down by now. She sorts great though, so she can't be color blind. She is just having a harder time learning the names of the colors!

Getting to eat them after was fun too!

For dinner, I went all out. I made a special dessert in the morning, then at when the girls came home from school I gave them construction paper and free decorating reign. I decorated the table, and prepared a fancy dinner.

We had rib eye steaks, shrimp scampi, homemade biscuits ( the girls favorite) in heart shapes, roasted red potatoes and roasted broccoli and grilled orange peppers. It was a lot of work for Monday night dinner, especially with the added work of decorating, getting dressed up, and planning a Valentine FHE, but it was a labor of love. I hope the girls remember it!

The girls liked our fancy dinner with candlelight and champagne glasses. (Only one broke!) We all got dressed up for the occasion.

After dinner, we had some Valentine activities. To start, we played a game where you had one minute to get as many conversation hearts out of the bowl as possible using chopsticks. This was a lot of fun!

Everyone could play!

Those of us sitting out played cheerleader for the ones playing.

Then we had a scripture chase where you had to find the words heart or love in the page number I called out. When you found it ,you got a conversation heart! The older girls really liked that, and Ava helped Daddy. She is getting to be such a good reader she spotted some before Daddy! Ninny just sat in front of me eating hearts!

Then we did a fun family photo where we took turns trying to hold up one person. That was pretty funny!

Then we did a family trivia game where everyone wrote down 5 things we didn't think anyone knew about us. Some crushes were made known!

Then we got to have our yummy dessert, chocolate pots de creme. They were very good.

Then we gave the girls their presents; they each got a cute pair of Valentine pj bottoms and a box of candy. The older girls got jewelry and the younger ones got a stuffed animal.

It was a really fun night, and I am so glad we got to enjoy it as a family!

The Good and the Bad- learning not to have fear

After looking for a while, not finding much that suited our purpose ( a home we would be able to rent to own, building a down payment with a portion of our rent while we saved up) we finally found a home that we liked.

We have been looking forward to this for so long. From the moment we found out we had to move to Utah, we started looking to purchase a home. But not being able to sell our house in Idaho, then not being able to refi and take money out for a down payment ( because the market is so low our house won't appraise for what it needs to) put a kabosh on that. So we started looking outside the box, at rent to own options.

It will take us almost a year to save up a down payment, the majority of which will come from me working Saturdays. (YUCK.) But I will gladly do it to get into a home. Enter in our new house we found. SO EXCITED!

It is a nice home, on a golf course in a nice neighborhood, big enough for us and has a nice layout. Good schools.

After a weeks worth of negotiations, during which I feared often ( will this work? why are they so willing to work with us? is there something wrong with the house we don't know about? why am I not receiving confirmation that this is right?) we settled on an agreement that would allow us to rent the home, a portion of our rent goes toward down, the sellers will pay closing and a portion of the down, we can have our pets, and a bunch of other stuff that we worked out. The only thing that bothered me was that owner would only sign a 6 month rental term, at the end of which she would extend it if we still wanted to buy. She wanted to be able to put the home on the market if we didn't want to buy, which is understandable. She was also building in an out for us if we decided we didn't like the home. This is what made us worry there was something wrong with the home, but the market here is just so bad we think she is welcome to any legitimate offer. Plus we get to try the home out for 6 months. That is a definite bonus.

But I really didn't want to move again in 6 months. The uncertainty about it made my stomach have knots. This is where my fear really kicked in, the fear of the UNKNOWN. We have a purchase agreement that protects us, but sometimes those fall through. Would we have to move AGAIN in 6 months? As I was pondering (worrying) about this, I remembered where fear comes from, and its not from God.

Fear comes from the adversary.

As soon as I accepted this well known fact, I received the confirmation that I was waiting for, that this was the house for us and everything would work out. I couldn't wait to tell Jason, I felt so much better. We signed the lease and paid the non refundable deposit yesterday.

Yesterday evening, we got the Syracuse Islander, a little small town news publication, in the mail.

On the top of the front page was the report about the new interstate they are considering building. They proposed 3 options, two of which didn't bother us in the least.

The third option puts the interstate directly in the back yard of the house we were so excited to purchase.

Have you ever driven along the interstate and looked at the houses whose backyards butted up against the road and wondered how they lived like that?

That would be us.

I spent the whole night in a state of disbelief.

What are the odds, that of all the houses, we would pick this one, and that on the very day we pay the deposit ( remember, non refundable) we find this out?

I have to admit, I was pretty discouraged.

I kept wondering, WHY? But more than that, I started worrying. Will we be able to learn which option they choose before we purchase? Should we walk away now and forfeit our deposit? Moving again in 6 months now looked like a definite possibility; worries abounded.

I was not oblivious to the blessing that we found this out before we purchased, but I was so discouraged that the blessing was overshadowed a bit.

After some thinking and praying, we have come to the following conclusion; we will continue on with our plans, moving in on the first weekend in March. It doesn't make much sense to forfeit our deposit. Hopefully in the next 6 months they will settle on a location for the interstate and we will be able to make a decision. If not, we will probably back out anyway, not wanting to take the risk. If they do decide to put a interstate in that property's back yard, the owner will have a harder time selling ( I feel so sorry for her) and we can probably rent for longer, while we continue to save up for a down. We won't get the portion of our rent towards our down, that was understandably just for this home purchase. But maybe we won't have to move right away, she will probably still appreciate getting rent while she figures out what to do herself.

And if the location is different, we will purchase the home.

Back to my question, WHY? I don't know, maybe there is no reason. But I think I am supposed to learn to not fear. Even in the face of such distressing options, we are supposed to have faith that things will turn out for the good for us. I have much experience that this is true, and yet I still default to fear when something like this happens.

If this is a lesson for me, or even if its not, I am going to make the best of it. I will try my hardest not to get bogged down in discouragement, to have faith. No matter the outcome, we will be ok. And with my limited, earthly perspective, I can't see what Heavenly Father has in store for us. Certainly it is probably better that anything I could plan.

So I will remember that, to not fear. To have faith. Regardless of where they build this interstate. We will end up where we are supposed to be. We will eventually get a home.

FAITH!

Just in case you haven't met your daily cuteness quota:

I give you Corrine, ready to go to dance/tumbling.


Feast your eyes on her cuteness! Does my heart good every day!

FHE Temples

For FHE this week, Ava wanted to give the lesson. I prepared a simple lesson on temples which she gave. I think her big sisters doing FHE are a really great example to her. For our activity, we made temples out of mini marshmallows. I really didn't know if it would work. We dipped each marshmallow in water to encourage stickiness, and it did work! For treat, we had brownies and got to eat our creations.

Corrine made such a mess; her whole brownie and marshmellow creation was a soggy mess, which she ate with delight. Yuck.

Here is my SLC temple.

Michaela did the IF temple.

Ava's temple. We all had fun finding off shaped marshmallows to be our angel Moronis.

Here is Paydens.

A fun cheap activity!

Because Ava is so tiny...

She can fit into a little plastic container that should be holding her Mr. Potato head stuff, but of course the Mr. Potato head stuff was on the floor of her bedroom and she was downstairs inside the plastic container instead. Because she is so tiny.

Ninnyisms

Corrine has a very cute, very round belly. A while ago, I started calling it her Buddha Belly, and rubbing it. ( None of my kids knew who Buddha was, I had to show them a picture so they would get why I called it that.)

So now we all call her belly that, so much so that I think she thinks that is what it is called. Not a belly, but a Buddha belly. It is so cute how she says it too, "my Buddha Bouwie".

Tonight, she was eating something and Michaela couldn't see what it was. She asked her to spit it out, and Corrine said:

"I can't"

"Why not?" says Michaela

"It's in my Buddha Bouwie!"

That was outrageously funny.

Then again tonight, she had finished her dinner and was sitting in Dad's lap. She asked for a treat, and he said no. She asked again, and he said no again. So she said:

"Daddy, I love you."

"Oh, that's sweet. Thank you honey."

"NOW can I have a treat?"

She's a sly one, that girl. Keeps us laughing!