A VERY eventful two months!

It has been over two months since I last wrote, and A LOT has happened in that time... This is going to be information overload :) And since I have a bunch of pictures I want to put in, I'm just going to intersperse them sporadically until I get to the part I actually have pictures for :)

The biggest event--- WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!!!!

We found a house in the same neighborhood we're in that we really liked, so we put in an offer. The layout was a little weird, but we liked it anyway. After we put the offer in, we had some doubts as to whether it was really the right place for us. Turns out, it wasn't. The seller's decided to split up and the wife needed a place to live, so they took the house off the market....

There was a house for sale just around the corner from my parents house, in the ward we already love, but that only had three bedrooms. We had known it was on the market for quite awhile but hadn't even looked because we didn't think it would fit our family. Then we found out the basement was unfinished.... We went to look, and fell in love! The bedrooms are so much bigger than what you find in new construction! Since bedrooms are just sleeping places in our family, we could easily fit 7 kids (without any remodeling) and since we don't have that many, well, it fits.

We went through the house on a Saturday evening and told the owners we planned to put an offer in first thing Monday morning, and then after we left they received another offer and

accepted it Sunday evening. Somehow we know we wouldn't lose our perfect house for refusing to make our realtor work on Sunday, so even though we were worried, we knew it would work out the way it was supposed to. Two weeks after our original offer the other buyers pulled out and we ended up with a contract. A month later, and after all sorts of drama, we closed on May 14. That night we walked through it with the previous owners and the next day we were picking paint colors at the hardware store.

For two weeks I spent every possible moment stripping wallpaper, painting, and cleaning. I ended painting EVERY wall in the house! Fortunately I had some good help. My mom was great to watch the kids in the morning so I could go over to the new house, and my sister Jana took the girls for two days (and the little girls first sleepover :) My Sister in law Julie took the kids two different times all day. I should add that Jana has 4 kids of her own, and Julie has 3. Oh, and both of them have babies right about the same age as Jonathan.... We also had some great friends come help with the painting. And, we did it. Some of the trim work still needs to be finished, but nothing that would require the moving of furniture.

I have to mention that during all of this craziness Jonathan cut four new teeth, we got a stomach bug, and I ended up with a really bad cold two days before the move.

The move took place on May 29 and took all day. We had to get all of our everyday living stuff from my parents house where we've been living for the past three years. Then we had to get all of our big furniture and storage stuff from my little brother's basement. Fortunately, kids stayed with some friends from the ward all day....

Two weeks after we moved in we had a housewarming party thrown by our realtor and mortgage broker. We had planned to have tours of the house and then hang out in the back yard, on the 702 sq foot deck, (yes- it really is that big!) but Mother Nature had different plans for us. By the time the party started it was raining REALLY hard, so we let our realtor Dave man the bbq by himself and everyone else stayed inside. We found out that our house will fit 64 people and not feel TOO crowded, though it did feel full :) We had everything pretty well moved in by that point, though the garage and basement still need some help. Unfortunately not much has happened on the unpacking front since then....

The next Monday my sister arrived here from Virginia and we decided we were getting serious about potty training (those are completely unrelated except by time) We put the girls in panties. They did amazingly well. The second day, Tues the 15th, Miriam came down with the diarrhea that had been going around. Even with that, she did SO good. I put her back in pullups just in case, but she still went to the potty every time.

That night I decided to run the garbage out just before bedtime. On my way back in I took a shortcut and stepped down from the level of the garage floor to the kitchen without using the 3 stairs. Unfortunately, I came down on a screw that was being held in an upright position by the floor mat. Oh, and did I mention I had bare feet? Yeah- not fun! Even though there was no blood, the girls were all hysterical just looking at the screw protruding from my foot. So, Tim called my dad and asked him to drive me to the dr so he could stay with the kids (and yes, my dad definitely got the better end of that deal) The urgent care Dr. took xrays to see if it had hit the bone, then numbed my foot and simply twisted out the screw. My dad had wanted to do the same thing at home but I wasn't about to do it without the painkillers :) They put me on some antibiotics and told me I was to sit on the couch with my foot elevated for the rest of the week. I tried to contain my laughter... I'm lucky to sit for more than 5 minutes at a time.

(and you're all lucky I couldn't get the file to upload here, so you don't have to see the xrays...)

I have two sets of twins right now. My sister is on an Alaskan cruise with her inlaws, so I took their baby for the week. She is just 11 days younger than Jonathan, so things have been interesting. Honestly it has been a lot better than I was expecting, but I am still very grateful Jonathan arrived alone. I shudder to think of the dreams of triplets...

Here is a random picture, just because I think I have the cutest kids in the world :)