TAGGED!

Well that was a pain in the neck! I am an incompetent blogger and couldn't for the life of me figure out how to get this tag image onto my blog. I tried what I thought was the most logical quickest way to do it, but noooo... I had to make it into a jpeg and copy it into a folder and then find it on my computer and... And then I didn't like the way it looked so I had to do it again...So you can see I am pretty incompetent in this area. Plus I am not very successful in making links yet either, so we will see what happens when I go to try that at the end of this posting when I attempt to tag other people. I really need lessons - where is that enrichment class? And I have short term memory as now I can't remember what I am supposed to talk about in this tagging. What a way to start my day - already feel like a dork!

Okay - so step one says I am supposed to link to the person who tagged me. Well, my first attempt didn't work. And my second - and the help center told me it couldn't help me with my request, so now lets see. Hmmm. I have done this once before, so I should remember how this works. My friend who is making me struggle and work hard at something I am not good at, is actually appreciated as hopefully I will remember all about how to make links, since I have to make quite a few with this tagging.

The Next Day - finally to step two - I will get there yet. I almost forgot what I was supposed to do here since I got so sidetracked with my first sentence for the day. But I know - seven random or weird facts about myself. That is hard as I try hard not to be random or weird...unsuccessfully of course, but I do try to kid myself and my kids (and especially other people) that I am very stuffy and straight-laced and serious, and usually it works. So I guess that would count as my random fact number one, especially since there are only few people that know I am really super casual and laid-back and even weird.

Almost Day Number 3 - It will be in 30 minutes. Six more random facts.
- President Faust sat at my desk in my bedroom and conducted temple recommend interviews when we lived overseas.
- I would love to learn how to paint. My kids took a class and it looked like a lot of fun and some of my kids were very good at it too. Conner was just a toddler and I knew it wasn't practical at the time for me to take the class along with them, but I would like to some day.
- I bruise super easy. Practically if anyone looks at me cross-eyed I get a bruise.
- I very rarely get the hiccups. I usually swallow them and they are gone. This makes my kids and husband very mad as they get the hiccups rather frequently.
- I used to have an embalmed baby shark. We had dissected sharks when I was in seventh grade and the mother shark had four babies inside of her. I got to keep one, and my dad stuck it in embalming fluid. I had that shark in a jar for about 15 years or so.
- I am extremely afraid of heights. It even makes me nervous when someone else gets close to an edge and I can feel myself go into panic mode.

So that is it. Now I will have to see if I know enough people to tag that haven't been tagged. Looking at my list - I guess not, sorry guys, I haven't been blogging for very long so I really don't know that many people yet. I guess I will tag Rochelle. I had a few more people on my list, but the links weren't working and I am tired of playing so I am going to post this and be done.

The Story of Our House

We finally listed our house with a real estate agent this week. Kind of a sad moment for us. I just thought I would record the love story we have had for our home as it has been more to us than just a house. And this house must surely be loved as even though this house was built back in 1963, we are the second owners. The first ones lived here until quite a few years after her children were grown and raised and her husband had passed away. She moved to Seattle to live near her kids. But she was here for nearly 30 years, and we have been here for 17.

When we moved to the Tri-Cities in 1991 so Brad could work for Boeing we lived in a hotel for the first month and then moved to an "A" house after that. I began looking for a home for us to purchase and gave our real estate agent some specific guidelines as to what houses she could show me. The home needed to have a two car garage, needed to be at least 2000 square feet, and it needed to not be in Pasco. That was my only stipulations. She was very good at showing me exactly that. And nothing seemed to call out to me saying, "This is it." But lets back up a moment. Not having lived around here prior to 1991 and knowing nothing about the schools, wards, towns, etc. and wanting the best for my family, I prayed before I ever started my search for a home. I prayed that we would find the place to live where our family could grow the most in the gospel, and where we could serve the most and grow through our service. Michael was only 7, Courtney nearly 5, and Erin almost 3. I was homeschooling, so I didn't really care about the schools, but I had checked out Hanford High and knew the kids who graduated from their had the best GPA's and test scores and went to great colleges.

Day after day the real estate agent took me out to look at houses. I perused the newspaper and even picked up one of those free Land and Home magazines at the grocery store. I read it avidly and came to house that I thought might fit my family's needs and showed it to the realtor. She looked it up and said, "It doesn't have a two car garage, it only has 1901 square feet, and it is in PASCO." I told her then don't bother and she continued to show me other houses. Of course, they all began to blend together. We even looked into buying land and building ourselves, but we didn't really know anything about that so that was really questionable. Day after day after day, the house in the Land and Home magazine pestered me. Finally, I told my agent to take me to the house so I could get it out of my system. After seeing all of the storage, the great organization of the house, and all of the bookshelves and built-ins, I knew I had to show the house to Brad. We went back that night, he walked around the house and said, "This is our house." We gave an offer on the house, and moved in a month later. And as they say, the rest is history.

We have loved this house so much. So why are we leaving? I use to visit teach a sister in the nursing home. We often talked about her family that lived in another ward here in Pasco and it made me very sad, as they rarely came to visit her. She never got to go for a walk outside with her children or grandchildren, even before she became an invalid. She lived there for many years until she passed away. It was always sad for me to go there to see her as I could see how sad she was. After talking to Brad, we decided that as long as we were capable, that was not going go be our family. We wanted to be able to have a place where Brad's folks could come, or my mom or my brother, or whomever. We began looking at homes through out the Tri-Cities, but wanting to stay in Pasco and never could find a house with as much storage as we have here, and still be able to have an extra room or two for other family members to come live with us. Every house that we saw we would have to use the extra rooms for the food storage, etc. We invited a contractor to look at our home and discussed adding on an upstairs, or an extra room instead of our covered deck, or even digging out a basement. He strongly suggested we not doing any of those options as it is too expensive and we would never make any money on it when we went to sell years later. We even bought a piece of land on Road 56 and held onto that for a few years before selling it. Finally after praying again, we jumped at buying the land off of Road 76 and began building. We aren't doing anything fancy, just somewhere that if we ever need to have a place for our family to come live, we have a spot for them.

So, it has been with much trepidation that we have finally put our home on the market. If you know of anyone who is looking for a home with lots of storage (we have a storage room with shelves and a work bench, built in book cases in the computer room and family room, built in cubbies in the family room, an attic with pull down ladder, a crawl space that we have shelves in for our food storage - and plenty of space for a couple of buckets to be stacked on top of each other), pull out drawers inside the kitchen cupboards, storage closet on the back deck, 3 bedrooms, 1 1/2 baths, 2 carports, and by the way - we had the house measured - it is actually 2113 square feet, not including the attic or crawl space.

Best of all - we have the best ward! Even with all of the changes in the stake I am so sad to leave behind this ward. My older kids have grown up here and have great memories. Zach (16), Kylee (13), Kaitlin (11), and Conner (6) were all born in this ward and some are reluctant about leaving behind their teachers, friends, etc. I know we aren't moving far away, but this has been home. We have loved Pasco 2nd ward and they have been so good to our family. My children's testimonies and mine have all been strengthened here. We have really grown strong in the gospel. My prayers were truly answered in our move to this house that we thought wasn't even on our prospect list.

Our neighbors are great too. Just last winter, I was out cracking snow and ice from the road so I could go pick up my kids from school and my non-member neighbor from across the street came over and helped me. Whenever we have need help, or had to borrow a tool, or whatever, our neighbors are there for us. When we went on our month long RV trip, the neighbors kept an eye on our house and made sure everything was safe, turning lights on and off, mowing the grass, etc. They have always been like this. What more could you ask for!

So if you know of someone looking for a great ward - a starting out family, or a retired couple, someone looking for simple and homey, head them our direction. We would love for them to love our home.

Jumbled Pictures

The back patio - Brother Bassett's work
The front walk way - Brother Bassett again.
The master bath - you can see more of the detail of the cabinets.
The kitchen.
Conner was concerned that we would not remember what the key to our new house looks like, so he took a picture of it in case we lose it.
This looks pretty bad - I was trying to do something else, but am now too tired to fix this so I am going to just let it go, because I don't really care right now.

Before and After

I had permission by the owner of these photos to post them on our blog. I know they aren't related to the house or anything, but this way I will have a record. This is the before:




And this is after:



I told her she should tell everyone she got in a fight and the other guy looks worse than her...Actually she was out in the backyard and was attacked by a wasp or a yellow jacket. It stung her multiple times around the eye on Sunday afternoon, then hid in her hair and was climbing around there too. A different one stung her stomach - but he only got her once. It began swelling last night, but wasn't too bad. She woke up this AM and her eye was completely swollen shut. Brad took her to the doctor and they gave her steroids and three different pills she is supposed to take for a week with one of them being a steroid (told her she couldn't be in the Olympics for a while), and one being nearly as big as a horse pill. She takes one one time a day, one twice a day, and one four times a day. Also she now has an epi-pen that she needs to take with her and use if she gets stung and begins to have an allergic reaction. Remember Pure Luck? It is just like when Martin Short gets stung - if Kaitlin can't breathe, she is supposed to stick herself in the leg with the epi-pen and then go to the hospital. We were given two of these - one for wherever Kaitlin is and one for school. She may not have an allergic reaction as severe as this ever again, they figure it was because there were multiple stings. I will take her back tomorrow so the doctor can check to make sure the swelling is going down. I can already tell it is as she can open her right eye just slightly now. When I went to Win Co tonight I bought a bag of chocolate eye balls as a treat. YUM!

To Spokane and Back - Excuses

I have great excuses as to why I have been absent. After going to Michael's graduation down at BYU-Provo, we brought Courtney and Will and all of their stuff up here to Washington. We unloaded most of their things into our RV - who knew it would make a great storage unit! And then they stayed with us for a few weeks until their apartment was ready for them in Cheney. Erin flew down to Provo on September 1st and Brad moved the Keeler's up to Cheney on the 6th. We had lots of fun - playing games, going to Silverwood, just visiting, shopping, getting ready for school, etc. Zach had stayed in Provo to spend time with Michael and to go to Education Week. He flew to Spokane - his first airplane flight - on August 23rd. So in that time period we went to or through Spokane four times.

We did check on the progress of our house periodically during that time period and here are a few pictures from then: The Master Bath Tub
Our Pantry
Stair Well
From the back door across the family room and the stairwell at the back.
The Front of the House with the beginning of a front porch.
It was nice to see walls instead of just studs. From the time we left Courtney and Will up in Cheney we have been working like crazy. We had to spend time picking out light fixtures (that is an extremely boring date), and picking out paint for both the inside and outside of our house. We had picked a friendly yellow for our outside but the painter said that we won't be happy with that particular color in a few years as it fades in a short time, so we went with a gray color. I also met with the closet guy and we figured out what we wanted for each closet - just basic stuff, we aren't very fancy. Then Brad and I have spent nearly every spare minute at the house painting doors, closets and trim and baseboards, and the living room and the girls bedroom for the past two weeks. The doors we sprayed except for the pantry door, but everything else we rolled with rollers. It sure seems like we are short the pocket door that goes into the living room so I don't know if we still have that or not, and I have about 20 more baseboards to paint. Who knew there could be soooo many and they need at least two coats of paint.



Our kitchen cabinets got delivered to the garage one of the days I was there painting. (Also the bathrooms and laundry cabinets as well.) They just kept on going and going and I thought the trailer would never empty.


Every time we go out to the house Conner uses the facility. Figured this was good bribe/embarrassing moment when bringing home dates type info.
Our Painted House
We actually have a street sign so people don't have to wonder where Jacobs Lane is any longer.
Conner's first day at MCP - he is so excited to be able to go to real school and wishes it was every day instead of once a week. I guess he hasn't learned about homework yet!

Been Chastized

I have been chastized from quite a few people about not keeping up the progress of our house. We have actually had a lot going on so I will just run through it and give my excuses and apologize.

After my last update we took turns having the flu. And of course, no one had it at the same time. So it took two weeks to get it out of our system. I had to do a walk thru with the electrician and tell him where we want outlets, phone jacks, satelitte cables, lights and switches. Sure glad the electrician knows what he is doing as he was able to give lots of pointers as I don't really don't have much experience in making those kinds of decisions.

Then just as we were getting ready to go to Utah, the plumber at our new house said the garden tub we had picked out wouldn't fit inside the spot, so we had to go and pick out a different tub. Then he told us it would be much easier for us later if we put in the tub/shower in the unfinished bathroom in the basement now instead of later as then he can hook it up and test for the water pressure with that in place as well. So then we went and bought a tub and shower at Home Depot. That in itself was an adventure! We needed to have a two or three piece tub in order to get it down the stairs, so we got one that was two pieces, but at Home Depot they are already screwed together, so of course it wouldn't fit into the back of our van. If they were seperated we could put one half in at a time and take two trips. We didn't have any tools and Home Depot said we couldn't take it apart at their store anyway. Since it was almost closing time we went home and then the next morning (Tuesday the 12th) - before Erin and Brad went off to work, we invited Zach to go with us, all went to Home Depot using a borrowed truck. Once there we loaded the tub/shower unit into the back of the truck and then tied it down, but still had Erin and Zach sit in the back of the truck to hold down the fiberglass tub to keep it from tipping over. They reported that there was no movement, but it was rather chilly. Once out at our house, we struggled to unscrew the screws, except for Zach who seemed to have a knack for it and was able to unscrew the screws alone, while the rest of us were making each screw a two-man job. Then we carried each piece into the house and down the stairs and put it into the right spot. Boy was it a tight squeeze! It fit exactly right - no room to spare, so it was tricky putting it in, but we managed with Erin manhandling the tub and forcing it into the right spot.

Later that same day we left for our trip to Utah. We went down there for two reasons, the main one being to attend Michael's graduation from BYU, and the secondary one to pack up and bring Courtney and Will up here to Washington as they will be going to grad school at Eastern in Cheney. The graduation was great - I will post pictures later and packing and driving up here went relatively smoothly but we didn't get home until very late Saturday night. We were able to unload their truck and stored most of their stuff in our old RV until it is time to take them up to Cheney.

Then we had to get school schedules and do some school shopping, so I have been a bit busy. Before our trip to Utah, we also celebrated Conner's birthday. His birthday was actually the day of graduation, but we told him we wouldn't be able to do much fun things for him , so he chose to celebrate on the Sunday before. He wanted a pinata, so Conner and I made a pinata - a panda bear - with Todd as our model. It turned out really cute, and Conner loved breaking it open and getting tons of candy.

Most of the siding is on - it is pretty heavy duty, the front porch is up but not the banister for it, and the house has lots of wiring running through the walls. The AC/Heater systme is almost in. So progress is being made. Plus we finally figured out what color we wanted the outside of the house to be painted and what kind of rock we want to have installed on the outside. Much of the progress left to do is inside so changes on the outside will mostly be minimal. Here is the last picture I took there:

Bored and Cleaning

Dad has kept us busy cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. We have been glad dad goes to work everyday so we could have a break. And it was nice to have to take the kids to the park for swimming lessons, so I wouldn't have to clean, clean, clean. Are you getting the picture that we have been cleaning? Not just cleaning, but scrubbing, polishing, and disinfecting. We put the house up for sale this week. Just stuck the sign up on the front lawn, and now we need to advertise. I will have to get to that this upcoming week. It really seemed sad the first day to see a for sale sign on our front lawn. Now it doesn't bother me in the least. I took pictures of both the inside and outside of the house so we will have those for advertising, but I won't bore you with those as you have seen this house. But it is exceptionally clean. I do need to do the outer windows, but I even cleaned the window sill tracks. Well, enough about that boring stuff. Except we did go over to the new house and clean there too. We just went through the throw away pile and pulled out the good enough to make shelves wood and carried it to the back of the lot. We figured we paid for the wood already, why not put it to use later. Then we also cleaned up a bunch of junk that has been sitting around and began sweeping, but that is really a lost cause until we get all the windows and doors in. Speaking of which, some of the windows are in, and the shingles were begun to be put on today. Our builder is really good and didn't want just some old cheapy shingles on our roof, but the roofing company didn't have 40 year shingles in stock, so we ended up with 50 year shingles. So that is really good. Ken really likes to keep a tight schedule. Here are the latest pictures taken just today. The front of the house, the back of the house, and beginning to shingle.