12th Anniversary

On our 12th anniversary our weekend looked like this!

It was a very hot day with lots of moving.  We told our movers not to try and cram everything into the truck for one trip since we were not going to far.  Boy do we have a lot of stuff!  I really need to de-junk more!  The new house was getting the carpets cleaned that morning, two rooms were getting new carpet and painters were finishing up a wall.  I was getting calls left and right, baby needed me, kids needed me, and I was needed by people going in and out of the new and the old house. It was crazy!  One good thing was that my sister took the kids for the first half of the day so that helped the craziness for a little while.

Every room I looked at was filled with boxes and looked like a ton of work.  (I'm writing this almost 3 months from when we moved and we still have boxes in places- does it ever end?)

This is our view from the family room, formal living room and the master.

Devin was so good and just hung out and played on the floor.

After all things were moved in, Abby and I headed to the store to pick up a few things and Alec wanted to come too.  He promptly feel asleep in the cart.  He had the cutest head bob going.  We were all tired and collapsed that night.

Before we moved the girls made a countdown chain of things that they were looking forward to:

Trampoline

Size

Secret Passageways

room (space)

pool

room with Olivia (Alec)

smelly laundry room

look out from 2nd story

playhouse

new friends

new ward

bigger backyard

new church with new friends

my own bathroom

all new rooms - like kitchen, living room, bathrooms

newly stained floors

space

fort

my own room

Final Good-Bye

The Sunday after we moved everything out we came back to do one final walk through and say good-bye.  Surprisingly, no tears were shed, I think it was due to the fact we are staying close by and looking forward to the new adventures!

Good-bye our first house - we loved you!

House on the Market

Moving takes a lot of work!  Probably why we haven't moved in 9 years!  We bought our house when Abby wasn't even a year old yet.  I brought all my babies home to this house so it was kind of sad to say goodbye but it was time to move on.  

Can I tell you how difficult it is to pack and clean a house during the summer when 5 kids are around 24-7 and one of those kids being a newborn that needed to be feed every few hours.  I was cranky and not a very nice person to be around.  Hormones, lack of sleep, and the stress of the renovations and moving put a huge toll on me.  I have to say a HUGE thank you to JoEllen, Miquelin, Michele, and Summar who all took some time out to help me pack.  Two of those ladies were also moving themselves and took time out of their own craziness to help me.  And then Kristi, Rebekah, and lady I didn't even know from church, showed up and helped me clean my house when we had everything out.  They helped take some of the stress from me.  And Laurie, who helped me finish the last touches of staging before pictures.  Couldn't have done it without these ladies.

Here is a car load of crap we took over to the new house to get our house ready to be staged.  After all the car loads Todd and I took to store at the new house, we decided we needed to get rid of 1/2 of our things.  Moving does that I guess.  Hooray for purging!

Once the house was finally staged we showed the house one weekend.  Todd asked if we could ever keep a house that clean all the time.  I immediately laughed but I felt all I did for two weeks was clean and put things away and snap at anyone and everyone.  Let's just say I'm glad it's over.

Here are the pictures that were posted by our realtor.  Some of the things they had us do to stage the house drove me crazy and I thought was unnecessary but we went with it.  Our house has never been so clean.

 

Weekend away

We listed our home for sale at the end of June.  I told Todd that it was almost impossible to keep the kids happy and the house clean while showing so I made him get us a hotel room.  Best little vacation.

 We spent a lot of time at the pool.  The kids were enjoying free popsicles, Kaitlyn was at a birthday party, Devin was asleep in the stroller next to me, and I relaxed.  Ahhh.

 We introduced the kids to hibachi and they thought it was fun.  I love Abby's expression when our chef made the "volcano" and flames shot up.  Blurry picture - oh well.  

I was glad to get away and at the end of the day we ended up 4 great offers on the home.  I was happy we were done with all the selling craziness and now we could focus on the new home.

July misc

July was full of fun summer activities on top of us packing up the house.

We had fun play dates and Abby and her friend made cookies for everyone (everyone had a friend over and the house was buzzing happily with all the playing) and one big cookie for themselves.

 Kaitlyn tried something new - a sewing class where she made a new outfit for her American Girl doll.

 July was absolutely beautiful that we spent a lot of time outside playing.

 Had friends over to the new house to test out the pool

Kaitlyn spent a lot of time doing Lego challenges and there was a lot of lego playing with everyone.

 Tomato plants that we planted with Gma and Gpa Yost back in March produced yummy treats.

Tons of reading was done and we went every week to the library shows.  I started keeping track of all the books the girls were reading and how many pages just to see how much they did.  It was so much I couldn't keep track.  They'd go through a book in a day or two.  I love that all of my kids enjoy reading so much.

 We had this cute girl helping me this summer and she made this awesome rocket ship.  This was used for hours of enjoyment.

Olivia begged all last year for ballet class but I just couldn't squeeze it in with everything else and the baby coming so she was able to do a princess ballet camp - two different ones actually.  She's loved it so much I finally got her signed up for dance classes in the Fall.