We Are Tardy-Heads

Oh, May.  What to say about May now that it’s June 14^th and I’m just now getting around to writing this?

May is such a blur and I have a sneaky suspicion that June is going to be similarly whisked away.  Nonetheless, here’s a breakdown of the parts that I remember :

·         I got to spend my first Mother’s Day as a mommy!  Yay!  Tyler and Aleah got me a nifty suede shopping cart cover (for Aleah to sit in) that doubles as a booster seat cover (to use at restaurants).  I’ve been coveting these for a long time and was so excited to get it! 
We celebrated with both of our mothers and had a lovely time doing so.
This is going to be quick and way too short to describe the depth of my feelings, but I want to take a brief moment and talk about my kind, wonderful, angelic mother.   I love her; I am crazy about her; I will always look up to her.  This year of all years, I’m so thankful to have her as a mom because of the incredible example of motherhood she has set for me.  My mom is one of my very dearest friends/kindred spirits.  Even now that I am grown and out on my own, she still amazes me every day with her selflessness and determination.  Being a mom is intimidating some days when I think about how I am literally shaping my child’s life at this point.  Thank goodness I have my Mom to look up to.  Simply put, I love her.  

On that same note, I would feel like a total ingrate if I didn’t mention my sweet mother-in-law.  We are going to live by her soon and as such, have spent a lot of time at their house as we’ve been back and forth from Roy to Washington Terrace constantly.  This has given me the awesome opportunity of getting to know Jeannie more and I love it!  She is so fun and kind-hearted and a superb Grandma.  Plus, she raised my husband and I owe his kind ways to her and the tender manner in which she raised him.

For the record, I think that being a mom is the best thing in the entire world!  Every day that I get to wake up and be a mommy to Aleah, is the greatest day ever.  Tyler and I both agree that we didn’t really know what joy was until we became parents.  It was wonderful to reflect on how blessed I am to be a mom this past month!

·         We sold our house!  Yay!  It was a very interesting, stressful experience that I hope not to relive for a very, VERY long time.  Since this is our family history, I just have to share a cool experience associated with the sale of our home.  I’ll try to overcome my wordy ways and make it brief.  Basically we received our first offer, got super excited, and submitted a counter offer so we wouldn’t have to come in with so much money after paying all the realtor fees.  At that point we found out that the offering party wanted much more from us.  We went back and forth with them for a while before realizing that we would be coming in with way more money than we wanted to  in order to sell our home (yuck.  Who wants to do that?) if we accepted their offer.  We felt we had no choice but to reject the offer, but we wanted so badly to find buyers that month.   Tyler and I both prayed about it throughout the day but got no answer.  Finally, feeling like we had no other choice, Tyler called the realtor just before the deadline to tell him we couldn’t go through with it.  Before he called, my prayer went something like this, “we don’t know what to do but we’re not getting any answers from you.  We are going to go forward with our decision so if it is wrong, please feel free to stop us.”
Just as Tyler opened his mouth to tell the realtor that we were going to say no, something entirely different popped out.  Instead, he described a perfect solution to the problem that split both of our wants right down the middle.  When he was done, we all paused for a minute and then were surprised when we realized that it was a perfect solution that none of us had thought of up until that point.  It wasn’t particularly
 difficult and didn’t end with us making loads of money, or anything like that, but it satisfied both parties and was exactly what we were looking for.  Aren’t answered prayers so cool?

·         Our new house is finally undergoing pre-moving construction.  So far we have put in new appliances, new crown molding on the cabinets, all new paint, and next week (cross your fingers), we should have the new carpet in.  Things are coming along nicely and we’re hoping to move in during the last weekend of June.  Wish us luck!  We are so excited to live in our new home.  Anyone willing to contribute their time and physical labor to the cause may contact us and prepare to receive of yummy treats that will be provided.

·         Aleah:  This month has been quite the developmental time for Aleah.   Once May hit, Aleah started crawling all over the place and it was very weird to get used to.  One day in particular, I remember putting her down by our coffee table in the living room, running to the laundry room to get clothes to fold, and coming out to find her totally gone.  She had crawled into the kitchen, and was going through the pantry in just that short amount of time.  At that point, I realized just how very much things had changed.  She makes noises all the time now, sings with Mama, and has a new favorite toy- Eucerin cream.  Funny, right?  She loves that stuff!  No matter where I hide it, she finds it.  She likes to grab big handfuls of it and watch it squish between her fingers.
We’re only now discovering how much harder it is to move/fix up a house with a baby.  For example, Tyler and I were both caulking/hammering stuff and had to put Aleah down.  She was crawling all over the floor covered in hammers, crow bars, nails, bits of wood, etc…  Now that the carpet is torn up, putting her on the ground isn’t even an option.  Taking these things into consideration, it’s really best that just one of us works at a time J  However, she has been an angel through this process and has loved having various family members over to help.  Here is a picture of her enjoying the house that Grandpa Wall made her after helping us install a new dishwasher.

·         Tyler here – I just wanted to add that I finally hit my three year mark at Hill AFB and really enjoying what I do.  In addition to liking my career choice I now get more sick and annual leave which is going to totally rock.  I love being able to take off work basically whenever I need.

·         I think that about covers it.  May has been a fun, transitional month and I’m already anxious for things to slow down once we establish some routine in our lives again.  Here is my collection of pictures we’ve taken along the way:

Aleah sleeping in Daddy's "man sling"

Playing with Grandpa

6 Month Pics

Here is a sneak peek of Miss Aleah's 6 month pictures:

A Very Crazy April

Has it really been another month already?  Time has really flown by this month, but we have totally enjoyed it.

I’ll start with the biggest news first: we’re moving! As mentioned in last month’s post, it happened fast.  We found a hud home in West Roy that we fell in love with, put an offer in just to see what happened, and then were totally shocked when we got an email the next week telling us that we were the winning bid.  It appears that we like living on one level because just like our current home, this new house has no basement and no upstairs and we love it.  Tyler calls it our house on steroids because it has so many similarities to our current home, with a few key differences, namely, no wood paneling, a garage, nice fence, central air, natural gas/electric hookups (we get to choose) on the inside and under the covered patio, a master bedroom, more space, 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, cement driveway, and improved laundry space.  Woo hoo!  Here are the pictures of our soon-to-be home:

Front View

Front Porch

Living Room

Another view of the living room

Kitchen

Master Bedroom

As you can imagine, life has been pretty nuts since we received that fateful email.  We went into a total frenzy as we rushed around to pack up extra items and clean our house from top, to bottom.  The final product was bittersweet.  We love our house!  It has been so good to us over the last few years.  Furthermore, it is full of memories!   We have had some great moments in our first home and put our hearts and souls into making it nice.  Some of the improvements we have made include: wiring/venting the home for a dryer (this included the use of a cross bow), painting, bead board, trim, new windows, new roof, built a new overhang, built flower boxes on the patio, put electricity in the carport and shed, installed a garbage disposal (how did they ever live without one?), new wood floors, new carpet, installed rain gutters in the back, put flowers and trim going up the driveway, and probably even more than I’m forgetting to mention.  What a great learning adventure it has been!  We never want to forget this beautiful home or the absolutely incredible people in the neighborhood.  Tyler and I both agree that this is hands-down the best ward that either of us have lived in, which makes it even harder to leave.  We are hoping and praying that we will get some buyers as soon as possible, but even more that they will be good people who will be good additions to the ward family that we have come to love so much.  If you know anyone awesome out there looking for a cute starter home, send them our way!  Here are some pictures of the house that will always be close to our hearts:

Tyler only has 2 classes left in his first MBA course and we are happy to say that he has done so well!  Here’s looking forward to many more!

Aleah had her 6 month checkup this month!  She weighed 18 lbs, 13 oz., putting her in the 90^th percentile for her weight.  She was in the 75^th percentile for her height (26.5 inches), and is totally amazing her mother!  I can’t believe I’m only 3 feet taller than my 6 month old child but I’m so excited that she is not going to be stuck being a total shrimp like her mommy all her life.

As I’m writing this, she is nearly 7 months old and I am astounded at how quickly time goes by with my sweet daughter.  7 months?!  She is now closer to being a year old than she is to being a newborn.  What the?

Aleah is so much more mobile now!  She moves all over the place, loves to stay busy, and is so curious about her surroundings.  She wants to touch everything and know what it all is.  She LOVES being outside, which makes her mommy extremely happy!  Now that the weather is nice, we go on walks together all the time and she totally eats it up!

Speaking of eating, she is eating solids now!  I have been nervous for this stage of life because I totally love breastfeeding her and I was afraid that once we started her on solids, she would lose interest in nursing.  Thankfully, this was not the case.  Aleah loves solid foods (so far she has tried carrots, apples, pineapple, yams, peas, pears, bananas, and of course, rice cereal), but Mommy’s milk is still her favorite.  Yessss!  Someday I’ll have to do a post on breastfeeding because I am a total fan of it.  I know there are several people who aren’t able to breastfeed for some very real reasons and I totally respect that, which is why I’m even more grateful in the most humble of ways, that I have been able to experience this with Aleah.  She is such an angel.

One more thing we’ve discovered about her this month- this girl loves music!  We took her to Aunt Kinli’s ballroom dance concert and she was in heaven!  She sat on Daddy’s lap and bounced up and down with her arms out the whole time.  At one point, she got squirmy so I walked with her up and down the side of the auditorium; she sang with the music the entire time.  Can you say adorable?!  I will definitely be putting this girl in dance when she gets older.

Grandpa and Aleah's latest trick



Blurry phone pic of Mommy and Aleah at the temple waiting for Ben and Lauren to come out!



This past month Tyler and I ventured out on our own for the first time without our Aleah.  I felt really uncomfortable without her there but we still had fun together.  Our first outing was a ReAL game.  It went great!  Next we went to the Supercross.  At last year’s supercross, I was pregnant with Aleah and had to pee like 5 times, so this year was a little easier in that respect.  I of course forgot to take pictures at both events, so you’ll just have to know that we had a fun time.
I think that's a pretty good nutshell version of our month. And now.. bring on the May!

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.