March Mayhem

 March has been a jam-packed month!  Let me start off by saying that I neglected to post some very February-worthy pictures last month (don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll get better at this as time goes on), so they are displayed in a separate post below.  This whole monthly blog entry thing is a little difficult since we cancelled our internet at home so who knows when I’ll actually post this online, but what matters is that I’m writing it on time, right?  Right.

Anyway, this month has been a little nuts so I’m going to categorize it in the hopes that I won’t just spew a collage of thoughts onto the screen here.

HOUSE
We’ve been helping my brother look for a house to purchase.  Maybe “we” is misleading.  Tyler has been helping my brother find a house to purchase while I sit back on the sidelines and admire pictures of kitchens that are cooler than mine.  Doing so quickly lead us to the conclusion that home prices are vastly different from what they were like when we bought our home.   When we were looking back in 2008, $120K got you a dumpy, old house in need of huge amounts of TLC unless it was in inner-city Ogden, in which case your neighbors were likely drug dealers and convicts.  Haha!  Okay, the neighbor part might be a bit of an exaggeration but you get the picture, right?  Our house was a total steal at the time.

Now days, $120K gets you a cute, split level home built in the 90’s with lovely little kitchens that elicit gasps of jealous admiration from yours truly.  Those were going for $150 – 160K when we were in the market.

You see where this is going, right?  Add this to the fact that interest rates are at an all time low and can’t stay this low much longer, and Tyler didn’t have to do much convincing to get me to look at houses for us too.

We figured we would look tentatively since we’re still fine where we’re at and that if by chance we found something golden, we’d jump on it for future purposes (i.e. more space with lower payments).

We put our first offer on a beautiful Hud home in Clinton.  This home was way too good to be true and I’m positive that our bid was nowhere near the final sales price.  Since then we’ve been looking more rigorously because every time we found a home we liked, it already had about 9 different offers on it.  It would seem that you have to jump on a house the moment it hits the market if you actually want to accomplish anything (example: we put an offer on a home in Layton yesterday on the second day it had been listed.  It already had 3 other offers).

I can tell that I’m on my soap box now so I’m just going to summarize instead; we are looking for a new house.  Will we get one? Maybe… or maybe not.  That’s the beauty of it—we’re fine either way.  But if it happens, it will happen fast.  

ST. PATTY’S DAY
Our wonderful friends Luke and Andrea had such an awesome idea.  They had a St. Patrick’s Day party.  So awesome!  We had a yummy Irish dinner and enjoyed some great company while Aleah tried her hardest to gross out Britney’s date using the classic spit up technique.  I am now an official fan of St. Patty’s Day parties and of Andrea’s delicious potato concoction (Andrea, if you’re reading this, you must teach me how to make that dish!).

GROSS BUGS

Tyler doesn’t want me to post about this because he thinks it is embarrassing.  I kind of agree.  However, since we’re using this as a family journal, I think it would be pretty silly not to post about because it has been quite a big deal to our family.  Besides, it’s not like we could have done anything else to prevent this from happening.

Since we’re thinking about moving, we decided that we should start getting our house ready to list.  Our carpet has definitely seen better days so we decided to recarpet the place. This was quite an undertaking since it meant that all of our furniture had to be packed into our living room and we pretty much lost all walking space for a few days.  While our home was disheveled, we happened to move our refrigerator which I’m positive we wouldn’t have done under normal, non-carpeting circumstances.  This is what we found behind it:

I like to think I’m a pretty calm, collected person in most times of trial.  Not when I find this popping up on walls in my house. We knew instantly that it was either mold or termites but we had no idea who to call and ask about it at 10:00 at night.

Long story short, it was termites.  DISGUSTING!!  If you notice me scratching my legs and arms and stomach, etc… it’s because these things totally creep me out.  My skin crawls and itches every time I think about it. 

The first exterminator quoted us about $2,000 to come take care of the problem.  Crap.  Thankfully we called several companies, did our research, and ended up with a company that was “Gephart-approved” (whatever that entails), offered a 15 year, transferrable warranty to anyone who owns the home (new buyer included), and used the best product on the market (Termador).  This guy drilled holes every 12 inches around the house, injected termite-killing magic poison, and called it a day.

$1400 later we have new carpet, a termiteless house, and a checking account that feels very much like it got the short end of the stick.  However, I will say that we got very lucky.  The exterminators told us that we caught the problem early, that the bugs were only in one spot in our house, and that termites are super common in the Ogden area.  Knowing what I know now, I would never buy a house in the Terrace or anywhere in Ogden that didn’t come with that transferrable guaranty.  So… if you’re looking in the area, keep that in mind so you don’t wind up paying for it like we did.

OUR SWEET BABY
Aleah is getting more fun every day.  She smiles and laughs all the time now, rolls, scoots, and is even starting to crawl around.  She wears her emotions on her sleeve so you always know where you stand and how she is feeling.

Our Newish Toy

We bought her this very used saucer toy for $10 at a consignment sale.  As I said, it is very used.  Furthermore, it partially melted in the back of our car while it sat at the dealership (see next category for explanation), so all the toys are bent at funny angles.  Did she care?  Not a bit.

The moment we sat her in that thing, she lit up with excitement.  It’s so cute because when she gets really excited, her eyes open up wide and she puts her arms out to the side and shakes like crazy.  She did this for quite some time and then couldn’t pick one toy on the saucer to play with so she constantly went back and forth from one toy to another and totally loved it.  This was all during conference so needless to say, I’ll definitely need to catch up on my Ensign reading next month.  It’s just so fun and totally distracting to see such a happy baby in front of you.

Lesson learned: babies do not need expensive or luxurious toys, so there’s no need to spend your life’s fortune to make your baby happy.  Just love them and play with them and they will be satisfied.  One of my favorite things is hanging out with Aleah while I cook dinner.  I sit her in her bumbo, hand her a spatula or other similar cooking utensil, and she entertains herself the entire time.  I love this about children

CAR
This post is already long so I’m going to keep this as short as possible.  Basically our car started having problems.  We took it to the dealer and freaked when they told us all the stuff they wanted to replace.  We cheered the whole way home (and promptly forgot about Aleah’s toy sitting in the trunk) about letting them up-sell us to an extended warranty when we bought our car.  We wondered if we were suckers after we bought into it back in the day but since our car repairs amounted to around $4K and we paid a whopping $50, we were pleased as punch.  Plus, we got to drive around an SUV for a week that was just as expensive as it was beautiful while they worked on it. We now have a new car after all they did to it.  Sweet deal!

Tyler here. I was able to sell our Bravada this month.  I was quite sad to see the car go, I have grown quite fond of it.  The four doors were amazing. I know Shaela really liked it as well but with us looking for a house we might be needing the extra cash.  She did say that she has enjoyed having a new car to drive.  I think the next car I'll be looking for is a Honda Accord EX-L or Toyota Camry XLE both of those cars would be fun to drive.  I think a new car every 5-6 months would be great. Thankfully we buy at the auction.  

CLOTHING SWAP
I received an online invitation to a clothing swap and decided to go check it out.  I didn’t know a soul there but it was totally awesome!

Only four people showed up but it was so worthwhile.  All of us girls cleaned out our closets and brought the clothes that we weren’t wearing anymore.  Then we did something beautiful—we traded.  I ended up with a cleaner closet and some great new clothes.  I can only imagine how much cooler it would have been if even more people showed up.  Seriously.  You should all do it and invite me so I can come to more.

SCHOOL
Tyler started his graduate classes this month.  Eek!  Lol.  It has actually been much better than we expected so far.  He is enjoying the coursework and the schedule hasn’t done anything too crazy to our lives just yet so we are quite thrilled with how things are playing out.  I keep telling him that he is lucky because unlike many other students out there, at this point he knows that he picked the right field since he is enjoying himself so much.

CONCLUSION
March has been a great month with a lot of big events.  I feel like the paragraph dedicated to Aleah falls short of how much fun we’ve had with her this month, but this entry has gone on long enough I think.  She really is the most wonderful, beautiful thing I’ve ever seen or known and every one of our days are better because she is a part of them.

In short, life is good.  Here’s looking forward to a new, beautiful, bug-free month!  April, here we come.

February Pictures

Chewing on our coffee table- yummy!

February 2012

FEBRUARY

It’s a beautiful day outside and I just put Aleah down for a nap.  Naturally,  my messy house is calling out for some serious attention, but Tyler and I have been planning on doing this for a couple of weeks now and it simply must be done so let’s hope I can get through this quickly and turn my attention elsewhere, eh?

Explanation:  A couple of weeks ago, Tyler and I decided that we wanted to do a monthly family history and print it out into books.  I love blogs and thought that would be the perfect place to get the job done.  So unlike other goals, you’ll know if we actually follow through with this one.  If you ever see a month without this sort of post, feel free to let us have it! 

Now, onto February…

February was an awesome month in Grangeville.  Aleah turned 4 months old on February 5 which meant that Mommy got to take her to the doctor for a check up.  Here we found out that she is in the 95^th percentile for her weight and the 55 percentile for her height.  I didn’t believe this at first since I myself was never on the charts.  It will forever amaze me that I have a child in the 95^th percentile of anything size-wise.  Once I got over the shock though, I was so excited.  I have always wanted a baby girl whose cute, little baby rolls I can show off in one of those darling sun dresses in the summer.  Hooray!  Bring on the sunny weather!

She has been so much fun this month!  She rolls over all the time, scoots around, chews on everything she can get her hands on, talks and makes noises, and gives the sweetest slobbery kisses that her Mommy and Daddy love.  We can’t get over how much more alert and curious she is now and we are absolutely, completely in love with her.

Tyler somehow conned me into letting him buy season tickets this year.  We are splitting them with a friend of ours and Tyler dreams about using them every day.  The actual purchasing of the tickets was sort of hilarious because it came out of a misunderstanding/miscommunication that resulted in a very upset wife and consequently, some very lovely gifts including a salon-quality waxer and 3 new pencil skirts.  Haha!  Needless to say, it has been quite the expense and prospects for future season tickets aren’t looking too promising.  But we really are looking forward to using them and spending time together during the upcoming season.

Also exciting for Tyler, is our latest venture—graduate school.  We’ve been going back and forth about whether or not it would be advantageous and then one day Tyler made the call.  He’ll be starting in just a couple of weeks at Webster University on base in the MBA program.  We are both terrified of living the student life again, this time with a  child, but finding the time to do it will only get harder from here on out so there’s no denying it, now is the time.   Scary as it is though, we are so thankful for the opportunity and know that Tyler will do well since he was pretty much born loving the subject material.

I nearly forgot to mention that we finally blessed Aleah during the first week of February.  We planned on doing the traditional big dinner which is pretty intimidating considering the size of our house and both of our extended families, but ended up making a last minute change due to some unforeseen circumstances with people we care deeply about.  Instead we held it on our own with immediate family and grandparents.  It was a beautiful day, one that we’ll always remember.  Aleah wore a big fluffy dress and posed as Mommy’s doll again and it was such a special experience to be surrounded by incredible people in support of Aleah’s big day.  She has been such a blessing to our family, I’m really at a loss of words as to how I can describe that.  We just love her to pieces.

And with that, I'll bid you all farewell until next month.  Here's looking forward to a very merry March!

Prego Picture

I totally forgot to post this, but I wanted to post our final fat picture before Aleah arrived.  I like having her on the outside MUCH better than the inside!

Thanksgiving

Happy late Thanksgiving everyone!  I hope you all ate lots of delicious food and had an excellent holiday. This will just be a short post to let you all know that we had an awesome Thanksgiving and to give a quick little update.

This year was our year to have Thanksgiving dinner with Tyler's family and we made sure to only include immediate family since we're still trying to keep Aleah away from crowds and germs.  We had an awesome time!  Pumpkin rolls are quite possibly my favorite dessert in existence but since Tyler can't eat dairy, I only make them during the holidays when other people can help me eat them.  This time around I decided to make things interesting by doubling the filling in our pumpkin roll and my oh my was it tasty.  It was probably a gazillion calories but totally worth it!!

We love Thanksgiving at our house because we get to enjoy family and friends, eat good food, and join in festivities, but skip all the stressing over presents.  LOVE it!  Plus, how cool is it that we have a day dedicated to counting our blessings?!  Pretty dang awesome if you ask me.

This year especially, Tyler and I have been amazed at how abundant the blessings are in our lives.  It has been amazing to watch the blessings pour in once we found out that we were pregnant.  We have incredible families and friends, food and shelter, a wonderful ward, tons of opportunities, great jobs, etc.., etc...  Plus, we have been given the gift of always finding ourselves surrounded by some truly great people.  In fact, I think that the people in our lives are oftentimes are greatest asset because of the support and shining examples that they always give us.

In closing, we are soooo THANKFUL for a wonderful year.  Life pretty much rocks.

7 Weeks Old

The other day it occurred to me that I haven't posted pictures of our growing little baby on here.  For one thing, we're so horrible at taking pictures that we don't even know where our camera is right now.  For another, I've been trying to soak up every little minute I have with her on maternity leave.  But anyway, enough with the excuses and on with the post...

Thankfully I do have some pictures.  They were all taken on my phone so you'll have to overlook the poor quality and know that hopefully soon I'll be able to redeem myself.  We recently bought a camera online that is small, durable, and does video and pictures so I can have it on me at all times.  Now we're just waiting for the shipment to come in.

Anyway, can I just say what a joy it is to be a mommy?  I seriously ADORE this little girl!  She doesn't like me to sleep, eat, or get myself ready in the morning, but I couldn't be happier.  I mean, I get to wake up to this face every morning:

It doesn't get any better than that :)

As you can see by the above picture, she has grown a lot.  She is starting to get those cute baby rolls. Hooray!  I love them!

Here are some of the other pictures I've collected over the last month or so:

I took this one yesterday after she fell asleep on me in a sling.  I love it when she curls up like this!

Aleah has a cute habit of reaching up to find skin when she falls asleep.  She likes to know that she is being held so oftentimes she'll keep her hand there just in case you decide to pull a fast one on her and lay her down.  That's my theory anyway ;)  Tyler wanted me to take a picture of it because he loves it so much.  He always tell me that it "melts his heart". Aww.

Aleah's arrival has introduced us to the most comfortable sleeping position ever.  Here is a picture of Tyler demonstrating it for us.  I snuck up on him one night to get this image so he has no idea that it exists.  Mwahaha!

Everyone told me that Bumbos were amazing but I had no idea how cool they really were until we put Aleah in it.  Not even a month old and she sat up just fine in it.  Pretty crazy-cool, right?

I took this one last week.  She just looked so beautiful, I couldn't help myself.

This was taken on Sunday.  I just love these little lace rompers!  Hooray for having a girl that I can play dress up with!

 One of the things I love about this girl is that she pull faces all the time!  Here is me trying to capture some of them on camera one day.  She is just a few weeks old in these pictures.

I'm afraid that's all for now.  Basically we are all doing well and loving life.  I can't express how thankful I am to have this little girl in my life!  She is such a blessing.  I feel so humbled to have her.  I really don't know what I ever did to deserve this sweet little girl but I will be grateful for such an incredible blessing.

Sorry to only be posting about baby stuff right now.  Since we've locked ourselves in the house during cold/flue/RSV/crap season, she's literally my world.  But I'm totally okay with it.

Until Next Time,
Shaela

3 Weeks and Counting

I can hardly believe that Aleah is already 3 weeks old!  She has seriously been so much fun already.  Tyler and I are still working hard to figure out how to be parents, particularly how to get her to sleep at night.  While we're not there yet, we've sure been enjoying ourselves along the way.

Aleah is growing fast!  At her two week check up, she had more than surpassed her birth weight and the pediatrician was impressed.  She went from 5 lbs. 14 oz., to 6 lb. 8 oz. in 2 weeks.  Alright!  We must be doing something right if that's the case.  She is in the 25 percentile for height and the 10th percentile for her weight.  She is beautiful, cuddly, and smiles a lot (and no matter how many times I hear it, I refuse to believe that it is gas in her case. She does it on cue when we're talking to her... so don't even go there).

Motherhood really is the best and I feel so blessed to have her as part of our family.  I'm already dreading the day that I don't get to spend all day at home with her, loving every second.

We had her first photo shoot 6 days after she was born.  Here are some of my favorites.  More to come later!