Our Last Goodbye

Snuggling with my babies for the last time in the little apartment we called home for six years.

It's been a long day of moving!!

And although we have lots of happy memories here, we are ready! 

Vacuuming our apartment for the last time!

My little helper...

Unplugging the vacuum EVERY time I turn it on, just for laughs!

I thought I'd never get the cleaning done :)

My girls cleaning the baseboards...I think :)

 

Minnie came to help me finish up some cleaning at the apartment today, and although all the furniture and things are gone, she still took her boots off and placed them in their usual spot in her bedroom.

Yes, I'm a tad sentimental ;)

I'm going to miss so many things about this place!

So long little home.

Set Back

We were so excited to be able to hire a painter for the inside of our house, because we've been in over our heads. 

SO, you can imagine our dissapointment when we walked into our freshly painted house to find the paint bubbling and pealing off the walls! 

The painter we hired skipped priming the freshly textured walls and went right to the paint (trying to save himself a little time and money). 

We are STILL paying the consequence for his dishonesty!

I don't know if you can see it very well...

The paint on our walls was just pealing (falling) off and bubbling all over.

Needless to say, the husband and I spent the next couple of nights painting ourselves...

Those were some very long, crazy nights!

I'm pretty sure we got a little high on fumes....

 

Once we painted as long as our eyes could stay open, the husband headed to work, while I played the zombie mom. 

I'm so glad that's behind us now. 

Lesson learned! 

And our walls look amazing :)

Miracles, Humility, & Gratitude

We were in trouble!

Pulling all nighters and working every possible hour during the day just wasn't cutting it.

We had painters coming in two days and weren't sure how we were going to be ready for them!

We had carpet to pull up, baseboards and trim to finish, closet shelves to build, holes to mud, joints to caulk, scrubbing and vacuuming to do... and then we learned that a sub floor needed to be laid.  

The bathrooms could wait, thank goodness.

There was definitely a feeling of helplessness between the husband and I. 

We just didn't know how we were going to pull it off, especially since we were pinching penny's and JP had to work full time.

It's hard to ask others for help when you know they have very busy lives too. 

All we knew to do was turn to the Lord in prayer and ask for a miracle.

I woke up Tuesday morning to a knock at my door.

It was 8AM and I hadn't rolled out of bed yet, because I was overwhelmed and exhausted from working with JP late into the night. 

It was my awesome friend Janna.

She yelled at me to get up and get dressed, because the Lord had told her she needed to help me that day.

I looked rather terrifying! 

She told me I looked awesome and to put a hat on, that her daughter was headed over to watch the kids while we got crackin'! 

I couldn't believe her! 

She went with me to shop for appliances, because she's a caterer and knows all about the good stuff, and I was so nervous to figure it all out by myself.

I really needed her reassurance that I had found a good deal before cutting that massive check!

Then she spent her whole evening helping me vacuum up mud out of our house instead of watching Pretty Little Liars. 

She was my angel that day, and I'll love her forever for it.

The following morning, I received a phone call from my dear friend Aubrey. 

She just felt she needed to check on me and see how I was holding up.

I had just gotten off the phone with JP and learned that he was going to have to work late, so we would have to work on the house through the night.

I was trying to remain optimistic, but as soon as Aubrey asked how I was...I kind of lost it. 

The tears just started coming, and I felt SO bad to have unloaded on her, but it also felt kind of good to release all that emotion. 

She's a warm shoulder to cry on and always seems to know when I need her.
I've been so thankfull that she's taken on the role as second mom to our kids.
I couldn't get half the work done without her!

Once I got it all out, she told me she was going to beat me for not coming to her sooner!

Her husband Jer has had lots of experience building homes and was home from work for the day, so she asked if it would be okay for him to go over and take a look at our house.

(He was already helping us tile our bathrooms and they were looking SO great!)

Long story short, he walked around with me, made a list of all the things that needed to be done, and told me to get in the car.  We were going to Home Depot for supplies. 

I couldn't believe these people! 

JP was so overwhelmed at work and beyond exhausted to resist any help offered.  

He was just incredibly grateful. 

Jer took over and made some phone calls.

He said we needed to pull a team together if we were going to pull this off.

Before the evening was up, friends in our ward showed up with tools, water, vacuums, and smiling faces to help.

Even the young men stopped by to help carry wood in for our sub floor and rip all the carpet out!

I was so humbled by their charitable hearts and willingness to serve, with no thought for themselves. 

It was really hard for me to accept help at first.

It was a week night and everyone had work, school, and responsibilities to tend to.

I didn't want to seem needy or to put anyone out. 

But, these wonderful friends made me feel loved and important to them.
And my very pregnant sister took our two youngest for the evening, then kept them late that night, so I could keep working.
I was SO relieved to not have to worry about them being cared for.

Saying thank you just doesn't seem good enough. 

They literally rescued us. 

Our hearts are full.

{Jer and Kim laying the sub floor while JP finished the trim and Sam pulled out the upstairs vanities...}

This was the broken sliding glass door and old flooring before both were replaced (see above picture).

These three worked until 1am to get that floor finished...

This picture is for my dad and bro's...

(Kim served a mission for our church in Arkansas.  That should answer any questions! HaHaHa)

Here is what the house looked like the night before.

Dirty carpet and trash from construction everywhere!

These young men helped tear out the gross carpet and load it in the trailer.

They also hauled wood in AND out, pulled staples and scraped glue off the floor from the carpet, picked up trash, and helped mud baseboards and trim.

Warm doughnuts just wasn't a good enough thank you!

I hope our boys turn out as awesome as these young men.

My amazing friend Erin is one fast worker!

This girl showed up with a vacuum and didn't stop until the WHOLE place was cleaned up. 

She saved my back a lot of pain and made me laugh!

I needed her optimism after the vanity in the upstairs bathroom was pulled out and the downstairs laundry room ceiling started gushing water from a leak (it had been there a long time and had rotted the wood out.  I'm glad we found it, but at the time it was a step back I wasn't ready for. Replacing a ceiling just wasn't on my list of "to do's".)

I can't get over how easy she makes serving others look. 

Even though her life is very full, she's always making time to help someone! 

I just love her and am so grateful she's a part of my life. 

I had not met Matt before that day. 

He's new in our ward, but lives a few houses down and heard we could use a hand! 

He spent hours caulking all the window trim.

Come to find out, he's caulked a lot of trim in his day and did a fantastic job!!

He saved us SO much time. 

Now I know Matt and will never forget him! 

Jer and the boys working on the tile in the kids bathroom.

It's going to be beautiful!!

Sport helping Jer with the cement...

 These two buddies are good little workers!

 We had help until after midnight.

Friendly faces just kept coming and going until our house was where it needed to be for the painter. 

I went to bed pretty exhausted and emotional that night. 

The Lord was aware of us and had answered our plea for help through others. 

I felt so undeserving. 

These wonderful friends taught me a valuable lesson about service, compassion, love, and friendship. 

JP and I woke up at the crack of dawn to clean out the tools and finish up a few things.

Our house looked amazing compared to the disaster it was the day before.
We just said a prayer of gratitude and sighed a big sigh of relief!

{JP finishing up some caulking around the windows...}

I put mud in the nail holes, sanded and admired my pantry (with a door and shelves) that JP finished up the night before...

Then Jer showed up with his little brother after getting his finger stitched up from the cut he got the night before while laying the sub floor, to help us finish up!
That guy is the energizer bunny.
I don't know what we would do without him!
They put the doors on the game closet that JP added to our family room that looks like it always should have been there.

Isn't it lovely?

Eeeek!  Look at those wrinkles!

I'm going to chalk those up to dry, cracking skin from sheet rock, mud, and no sleep!

Filling nail holes with mud is not my favorite thing to do in the wee hours of the morning...

Look how clean! 

Everything's vacuumed, dusted, and cleaned out.

Windows are covered, and we're ready for the painters...

{Family room}

The painters arrived and did a spot for me to see my color choice.

I kind of freaked out at first because it looked SO much darker then I anticipated!! 

But, it lightened up, and I actually love the color.

I can hardly wait to see it finished!

{The streak of wet paint in the living room}

 

There is NO WAY we would have made it alone.

Miracles do happen.

And we will be forever grateful to all those that were willing to give of their time and talents to be an answer to our prayers.

Dusty Weekend

I'm still coughing up mud-dust, and I was wearing a mask!

But, someone has to clean up the mess :)

All the sheetrock and texturing on the walls and ceilings is finished!

It's starting to look like a home...

{Boys room and master bedroom}

I vacuumed and sanded mud off the baseboards and floors late into the night.

It's been very exhausting, but rewarding.

It's all in preparation for the paint.

Which is so exciting!

Our bro-in-law Seth spent his Saturday helping us with baseboards and trim.

He's pretty awesome like that!

And thanks to my sister for holding down the fort at home.

I wouldn't have been able to get much done with a baby on my hip!

This picture was taken at midnight... 

My JP had to get all the trim finished up for the painters on Tuesday!

Doesn't it look fabulous?? 

I've got me a handy man :)
We will fill in the nail-holes and joints tomorrow.

{Basement family-room windowsill and trim}

 

Next comes paint and flooring. 

Ten days till move in!

AAAHHH!!!

Dentist

Since JP's employment has changed, we are losing our dental insurance.

At least, for a little while.

So...I made appointments for the whole family before the month was up!

It was Minnie's first time to the dentist.

She was so excited!!

It was always hard to watch her older siblings walk out with all the goodies.

She actually had a lot of fun, and giggled when the suction hose sucked her tongue! 

These two are pros's and were sure to give little sister Minnie all the details about their experience and what to expect...

 

It's always a good feeling to walk away cavity free!

All that nagging to brush teeth must be worth it :)

She's All Ours

{Or will be...in 30 years}

 Now, don't go judging a book by it's cover!

Give her a chance.

She has a lot of love left in her :)

Kitchen, dining room, living room, family room, five bedroom, three bath, storage room, dry storage, patio, and a yard.
That's a lot more room then I'm use to!
Let me give you the grand tour:

View from the front door: Living room

Front entry & living room:

 Stairs up to bedrooms and down to family room/bedrooms...

Living room...

Kitchen...

Kitchen...

Stairs up to bedrooms/bathrooms...

Children's bath upstairs...

Girls room upstairs...

 

Boys room upstairs...

Master bedroom (fuzzy wall paper and all!  I've already pulled most of it down...not my taste)

Stairs back down to the living room/entry...

Looking down into the family room...

The soon-to-be office just off the family room...

(Yes, that bar is legit! It even came with bottles of beer.)

To the left is the laundry/bathroom and stairs leading to the basement...

Laundry room/bathroom...

Stairs leading down to the basement bedrooms, storage, and cold storage...

View from my kitchen window...

(I think I'll keep the curtains)

JP and Sport's treasure in the back yard!

The shed with the friendly indian...

The big tree where plans are already being made by the children for a tree-house (we shall see)...

And the pole is a basketball hoop just off of the court covered in leaves...

 The backyard with lots of fruit vines and pretty trees (or will be, I hope, come spring)...

 

Just a few of the 80 or so statues that fill our yard (Not including the gnomes.  I'm not even kidding when I say we've counted over 50 of them!)

The lions that guard the gate to "the secret garden" as the girls say...

(I can't wait to trim those rose vines this spring!)

How she came to be ours:

Back in May of 2012, the Mr. and I decided it was time to settle down and take advantage of the "great time to buy".

We've been keeping our eyes open for something to come along for years... but as time would pass, we would eventually tucker out with the whole house hunting thing.

Frankly, it's exhausting...and I hate it!

Anyway, last May we were on the hunt again, determined not to quit this time. 

We LOVE our neighbors, friends, ward, and school.

It was breaking my heart to even think about moving away (change isn't easy for me).

But, we branched out and were open to anything as long as it felt right.

In July, my dear friend Aubrey suggested we check out this house about two blocks from where we live now.

She didn't know all the details at the time, but knew it was up for grabs, it just had not been listed yet.

So, JP and I did a little drive by and thought better of it right away.

We knew this house.

It had been in litigation for years (the children were fighting over who would inherit the property), and JP had cleaned the yard many times with the Young Men of our church to keep the place up.

It just wasn't a good idea. 

We didn't even know how long it would take for the court to make a decision to sell the place. 

So, we moved on.

We came across so many cute homes, but nothing felt right to us. 

It was getting frustrating!

Finally, we decided to build. 

We found ourselves a nice piece of land out in Saratoga Springs.

A beautiful, newly developed town away from the city.

I had always wanted to get away from the noise, and this community had everything...IE:

A REALLY good school that my children had to get in on the lottery and DID, a brand new park, cute little neighborhood, and shopping centers just five miles away.

We were all about it!

After meeting with the builder, picking our lot, and signing the agreement, we went to work choosing our colors and woodwork.

Let me tell you right now, building is HARD.  And STRESSFUL!

At least, it was for me.

There are just way too many things to think about and work through, and there's never enough money to do what you really want to do!

At least, not for me. 

I was losing so much sleep. 

Stress was taking over my life. 

I spent so much time on my knees praying for inspiration and help, pleading with the Lord to stop us if this was the wrong decision, but to please help us if it was the right one. 

After a week of no sleep and hitting all kinds of walls, red flags started popping up everywhere. 

The builder wouldn't sign a paper saying he would renegotiate the price if the appraisal value was lower then what we were going to purchase the home for, which was just odd...given no other builder had that stipulation. 

So, we decided to take a drive around the neighborhood and talk to the neighbors.

Sure enough, the first person we talked to said that the appraisal of their home came in under what they purchased it for.

And then we met our next door neighbors who just happened to have the last name of PAYNE.  

What are the chances?  They didn't like that...and it may seem petty, but I was a little creeped out by them.  

I'm sure they are great people.

Then suddenly the price changed due to some building changes, which meant our mortgage payment would be slightly more then we had planned.

But, we just kept telling ourselves that we would regret it if we walked away from this.

This was what we had always wanted.

We were doing this! 

But, even our realtor was feeling a little uneasy about the whole thing and kept telling us to "just be aware" of this and that. 

After a very sleepless, exhausting, stressful two weeks, the Mr. and I whispered to each other one night that something just wasn't right about this.  

It just shouldn't be this hard or look this great, but feel this terrible.

We realized that we had slowly talked ourselves out of all the things we wanted in a home.

Such as, a big yard with big trees and mature fruit, an older home with character, a place where our kids could grow up with good memories, because we weren't mortgage poor and could put more into our children and their lives.  

This wasn't suppose to be about us.  

This was suppose to be about them.

We called our realtor and walked away.

That night, I finally had a peaceful nights sleep.

We hoped we wouldn't regret losing that perfect lot, but we didn't feel like we would.

A month later, Aubrey mentioned that house two blocks away from us...saying that there had been some new developments in the litigation battle.

I didn't really want to go look at it, but our bishop stopped by with the keys and suggested we do.

He told us that he felt it could be a good fit for our family and would love to have us for neighbors (he lives across the street from the house).

So, on a Sunday afternoon we walked the two blocks and took a look around. 

It smelled of old carpet and dusty curtains.

The children headed for the backyard and started climbing the big tree, while JP and I toured the inside. 

I was just shaking my head at all the work that needed to be done.

JP, on the other hand, was getting excited about all the "fun" projects he could do to fix the place up!

I let him dream and walked up the stairs to check out the master bedroom and bath.

When I reached the bedroom with the bright red carpet and fuzzy red wall paper, I laughed out loud! 

This place was a charmer in its day.

Then I looked out the master bedroom window and saw the gorgeous mountains, already turning bright colors for autumn, and a feeling came over me that I will never forget. 

It's that feeling that keeps me going as we run into renovation problems, a shortage of funds, and lack of time to get it all done. 

It was a feeling of peace, comfort, and a reassurance that this was home.

When JP walked in the room and stood next to me with that big grin on his face, I knew he had felt it too. 

I just looked at him and said, "I can't believe I'm saying this, but this is it!" 

He nodded his head and said, "I know. I feel the same way."

Just then the children came barging in asking which bedroom was theirs!

We called the lawyers right away and put in an offer. 

The son battling for the rights to sell the place contacted us and wanted to practically give us the house once it was out of litigation.

We couldn't believe the steal of a deal! 

Months passed...and still we waited to hear that the battle over the house had ended between the siblings.

We weren't even sure if we could buy the place in the next year!

But, the spirit kept whispering to be patient and that we would be in our home by spring time.

So, we got to work.

Everyone thought we were crazy, but we had a key and permission from the family to start working on getting the place ready for appraisal.

The son had assured us that we were the only ones he wanted the home to go to. 

Of course, we got something in writing saying that he wouldn't sell the house to anyone else, just to be on the safe side.

After five months of waiting, the litigation finally ended!

We could get to work with our broker to get the house. 

Although we ran into all kinds of things during closing, it was as if the Lord was handing us the home. 

We would hit a wall and somehow come out on top.

Then, JP got the news that he was losing his job.

The company he was working for was closing it's doors.

We were beside ourselves.  

How could this happen? 

After all this time, should we walk away from the home, just before we sign the papers? 

We prayed for an answer and kept feeling we should keep moving forward.

So we did.

By all accounts, it didn't make sense!

JP's former boss is a GOOD man and dear friend. 

He kept JP employed long enough for him to put his application out there and close on the house. 

We went a few weeks without a paycheck, but it didn't take long for JP to land a new job.

Which is a huge blessing.
We have friends that are still looking, and I worry and pray for them.

We closed on our first house the end of January, the weekend before JP started his new job.

Our broker said he had only seen a handful of clients successfully close on a deal like this, where the owner walks away having willingly made little to nothing on the home, leaving the new owner with money to put into the home.

Since then, we have been busy, busy!

There's a lot to do, and we have to be moved out of this dear little hole in the ground apartment that we've called home for six years, by the end of the month.

We've made a lot of fond memories here! 

I'm so grateful to stay near the people we love so much. 

Our home may be old and in need of a lot of work, but every time I see her, I remember the miracles that led her to be ours, and I can't deny that I'm where the Lord wants us to be.

That's a great feeling and all that matters!

Everything else will work itself out.