Visiting Texas

We left Utah on May 12th to head for Texas.  We stopped a couple times along the way since we were both driving different cars.  The kids did pretty well, but it was definitely a long drive! 

The boys were sure we needed to find a hotel with a pool.  This one is in Childress, TX

We did a lot of fun things at Grandma's house.  Eliza met her Shirley side of the family for the first time.  She loves them all!  However, I think her cousin Holden is her favorite.

Eliza and Holden relaxing with Aunt Lily.

RODEO

We went to a rodeo while we were there.  It was a lot of fun.  WE love our Grandpa!

Bradley, Daniel & Dad as things are getting started.

These are the Cowboy Chicks, or something like that.  They did some stunt riding and some horse "dancing" things.  They were pretty good.

This saddle bronc didn't want to be ridden.  He tried to jump out.  He was BIG too!!

The cowboy finally did get to ride him and he got a good score.

Bradley participated in the money run.  They lined all the kids up and through money out on the other side of the arena.  Bradley didn't really understand what was going on, but there were guys walking around giving money to the little ones who didn't get any.  Bradley sweet talked the guy into giving him one.  He was so proud!!

Eliza enjoyed her first rodeo!

WORKING AND VISITING

Mowing the lawn was one of our favorite jobs!

Daniel and Bradley were Dad's best helpers.

We got to visit with Heleman and Zandra while we were there.  Heleman went to school with Andy.  These are their cute kids.

Bradley, Eliza, Zion, Zoe & Daniel

Andy helped Grandpa run some wire to the barn for electricity.

WE went to Tyler, TX to visit Melissa and Daniel and help work on their upstairs.

Guard showed Bradley how to catch a chicken.  Bradley had never touch a chicken before, but he is an expert chicken catcher now!

This is a picnic roast, or something, it was AWESOME! Thanks Daniel!

Holden

Daniel and Andy hanging some sheet rock.  They were standing on boards suspended from the stairs to the ladder.  Andy fell off once and got a pretty good bruise.  IT scared all of us to here the thud!  Nothing was broken so we were all good.

Bradley swimming in Grandma's pool

Daniel playing with Grandma

Relaxing in the pool was one of our favorite things to do!

Bruise from falling off the ladder.  (It is all gone now!)

Cute, but silly boys!

SMITHS VISIT

Janna and her kids were able to come visit with us while we were there.  Thanks Grandma for hosting!

The boys got pretty wild in the pool, but it was fun.

Eliza got her first hair cut.  She had a couple spots that were longer than everything else, so Aunt Janna just evened things out.

There were kittens living in the over hang at the house.  When the mama finally brought them down one got stuck up there.  It was up there for a couple of days with out her and it was very hot!  Andy finally caught it and we gave it some milk and kept it in the shade until the mama came up to the house again to get it.

Abby

I love how much she enjoys her spaghetti!

Abby, Eliza, Andrew and Taylor

Abby and Eliza

Our Smith cousins left memorial weekend just before the Shirley cousins came in.  It was a great weekend except for when everyone took turns being sick! 

Bradley and Grandma were sick first.  They were both pretty bad.  Bradley just hung out in Grandma's room with her and slept off and on.

Levi, Grandpa, Andy and Quincy playing with the new press.  They had to change out the ball barrings on  Andy and Grandpa's cars.

The girls made bracelets and necklaces.  It was also Macy's birthday.

Verin showing off her new accessories!

The boys had fun playing computer games until the mom's would kick them outside.

Happy Birthday Macy!

Quincy helping Macy string a bracelet.  What a great Dad!!

MILKING THE COW

Grandpa has a cow he milks every night.  They get about 3 gallons a day from her. 

The grand kids loved to help with the milking.

The cow milking gang is getting ready to ride back to the house.

MEMORIAL DAY

On  Memorial Day we walked to the Kelsey, TX cemetery to put flowers on Granny's grave.  There are quite a few Shirleys down there.  Grandpa told us more stories about each person.  I really should write them down some time.

Atlas, Cannon, Kael, Macy, Brylee, Guard, Bradley, Xane, Locke, Calais, Verin, Daniel & Eliza

                      Quincy bathing Bender before they headed back to San Antonio, TX

This is the milk spinner. (I don't think that is the actual name, but that is what is does.)  They can adjust it to spin out as much cream as the want.  They use the cream to make butter. 

We had so much fun visiting everyone in Texas.  There are way too many pictures from our time there to share them all.  (Come visit me and I will show the ALL to you!) 

May 14-31, 2010

Playing the Wii

This is the first of many catch up posts!

Bradley having a snowball fight

We had to get Grandma's Wii set up for her and try it out. I know you are all amazed that I have lived this long and this was the first time I played the Wii. We did some giant slalom skiing, played birds eye view and had snow ball fights. I learned that it is harder than it looks, I am very unbalanced and that Bradley is really pretty good at everything!!

Andy is pretty good at the snow ball fights too.

Grandma trying to ski. It was really hard because the pad is so sensitive. She did better than I did on my first trip down the mountain!

I guess I am going to have to really work on my balance and exercise some more since the Wii thinks I am a little over weight and that my age is 37!! It thought Bradley was 13, so I am trying not to be too offended since he is in really good shape.

May 11, 2010

Life in the Cul-De-Sac

We have really enjoyed living in a cul-de-sac.  The kids have alot of room to run and play and I don't have to worry about traffic.  One of the best features of our new house is definitely the neighbor kids James and Niamh.  They are such cute well behaved kids!!  Bradley and Daniel watch for them and can't wait to do anything, but play with them.  (Niamh is pronounced Nee-iv.  It is a Gaelic name, fitting since they are Irish.)

James, 6 yr. neighbor, had quickly become the resident idol.  Daniel told us the other day that he wants to grow up to play soccer like James!

 Bradley spends as much time as possible taking advantage of having some one big enough to play ball, ride bikes, jump on trampoline, etc..

Daniel doing his best to "play baseball" like the big boys.  I was surprised at how long he stuck at it without getting upset over the number of misses.

Niamh, 4 yr. neighbor, is a little doll!  She is so sweet and polite.  She loves to help watch Eliza.  If only Eliza was bigger they could play dress up instead of ball.

The kids playing in the pool in our drive way.  I love their muscle pose!

Eliza gets quite a kick out of watching the kids play.

James, Bradley, Niamh, and Daniel getting ready to do sparklers.

We had a party on the 3rd and invited everyone in the cul-de-sac to come over for a BBQ and some fire works.  It was fun to visit with everyone.  We have a Polish couple, an Irish family, a couple from China, and the other two are from the USA.  The kids had fun doing the fire works.  I think the adults had more fun watching the kids than actually doing the fire works.  It turned out great and we will have to do it again.

Margret, Karen, Eliza and Niamh

Most of the fire work gang.

Jumping tracks a little: These are the first year residents at UNC.

Andy, Carrie, Eric and Eric.

Eliza was so happy to snuggle with her dad.  I am not sure who was the most tired.

Here we are getting ready for war.  We had cowboys, Indians, army men, knights, tanks, and several different fighter jets.  I think they have more fun setting up for the battle, than actually having the battle.

Side note: Every time Eliza started to whine, James would leave the battle preparations to make sure she had her Binky.  He is such a sweet kid!!

Bradley has recently discovered how fun it is to feed Eliza.  It was so cute I got a video to show our Dad.

 This is when we first got my recliner.  Eliza and Dad had to try it out for me.  One of Eliza's favorite games is to play peek-a-boo with a blanket.  She gets so excited to pull it off her face.

She is getting so big and we can't express how much everyone loves her!

 

The boys helping me get the tomatoes in.  Bradley and Daniel are such good and willing helpers.  I wouldn't know what to do with myself with out them.  :)

Our New House

I am finally getting around to the pictures of our new house.  Andy was really good to help me get things organized before he had to start his residency.  The downstairs is finished and there are only a few boxes left upstairs since we spend most of our time downstairs.  :)   Anyway, here are some pictures of the outside and downstairs. 

This is looking from the sitting room towards the kitchen.

This is by the front door showing the formal sitting/dinning room and the door way to the kitchen.

This is the kitchen from the family room.  The door to the dinning room is on the other side of the fridge.

This is the formal sitting area next to the front door.

A little closer look at the kitchen.  I have to do all the dishes every night so that the ants don't invade!!

               This is looking from the kitchen to the family room with the sliding door out to the deck on the left.

Bradley ran around saying "Cheese!"  every time I went to take a picture.

This is standing in front of the sliding door looking at the front door.

These are stairs, obviously, to the bedrooms

 This is looking at the house from the southeast corner.  I should have done a before and after picture of this.  The flower bed was very over grown.  It was evident that someone put a lot of time and effort into it, but it hadn't been maintained.  It doesn't look too bad at all now.

This is still the south side of the house.  WE planted tomatoes after ripping out some kind of plant.  This is basically the back yard.

The owners left us the patio furniture and the grill.  We have enjoyed both!

This is looking at the side yard.  The kids play here, at the neighbors house or in the cul-de-sac.  They have loads of fun!!

This is a picture of our "Harry Potter" closet under the stairs.  It is inside of the coat closet.  The boys think it is pretty cool!!  (So do I.)

Another picture of the outside from the north east.

                  This is our entry way.  We have has a lot of fun in this house already.  There will be more                     pictures from our May and June adventures coming soon!

House Hunting

WARNING!  This is a very long post with no pictures.  Pictures of most of these adventures and our Texas trip are coming soon!  (We hope!)


House Hunting in Chapel Hill, North Carolina


We arrived at our extended stay hotel on June 2, 2010 only to find that someone had decided to stay an extra day, so there wasn’t a two bed room available. They had us in two one room rooms across the hall from each other. Andy assured them that that wasn’t acceptable. We did stay in a one bed room the first night, but moved to the two bed room the next day. With that finally taken care of we turned our full attention to house hunting!

Andy found a house we had been looking at buying a few months ago that was for rent. We were super excited about it and went to drive past it. The yard wasn’t exactly what we had imagined, but we decided to walk through it anyway. We made an appointment for the next day (June 4). We decided it wasn’t too bad and that we wanted to put an application down on it. Then we found out we would be 3rd in line! Needless to say we kept looking. We drove over 300 miles in Chapel Hill and the surrounding area in the six days we looked for houses!

It seemed like every time we looked at a home we liked there was already an application on it. We went to church on Sunday June 6, 2010 very discouraged because we had NO prospects on any houses. We had toyed with the idea of going to a ward in Morrisville, NC but decided to go the Stake center in Chapel Hill instead, since we hoped to get into a house in that Stake. The people in the 9 am ward were very nice. Andy introduced us in Sunday school and told them we were looking for a house to rent, and asked if anyone knew of any houses for rent. A man approached him after church and told him about a house down the road from where he lived. We decided to go check it out on our way home from church. As we looked for the house we found two others that were for rent that were not shown on line.

We felt blessed to have found these other homes. One was a cute little old farm house with little yellow siding and green shutters. We called the agent and asked if we could walk through the home. We made arrangements for Monday. We walked through two homes on Monday and liked a two story in a nice neighbor hood better than the farm house, but we found ourselves second in line for it, so we decided to go with the farm house. It had a very unique and fun floor plan with space for us to grow. Did I mention it was on 11 acres? We had all kind of plans to get a riding mower, and washer and dryer. It was starting to get exciting.

Now a break from house hunting to the more exciting things…Monday night about 11 pm just before Andy and I were going to bed we saw flashing lights outside. We looked out and saw a cop car. Soon there were more cop cars and fire trucks, so Andy went to investigate. He came back a couple minutes later and said we needed to get the kids up and evacuate the hotel. We dragged the kids, who were peacefully resting, out of bed and outside. There were about 6-8 cop cars and 5 or 6 fire trucks around the hotel. Some bright person had started a kitchen fire and got enough smoke to set the fire alarms off. Fortunately it wasn’t in our building so after about 20 minutes they let us go back in to bed. (How exciting!)

We kept negotiations going with the agent about the farm house on Homestead rd. going for a couple days trying to get everything arranged. We were planning to sign our contract on Friday, June 11, 2010, so Andy started calling around to schedule the movers and get the utilities hooked up. He finally got our house hold items scheduled to be delivered on June 17, 2010, after talking to three different people, and started on the utilities. He discovered that the home was not well insulated and that they gas and electric bill averaged $500 a month! We definitely didn’t budget $500 a month for utilities, so we had to start all over again from scratch.

We found ourselves on June 9, 2010 with no house lined up and our options were very limited. All the houses close to the school were small and expensive, and the larger more affordable ones were either farther than we wanted or not available until July or August. In desperation Andy went back the computer and started searching for anything on line we may have missed. He found one on Kilbreth Ave, isn’t that a great street name for a dentist to live on?, and called about the availability of the home.

Now back to the excitement of an extended stay hotel! So Wednesday morning, mid morning, the boys and I heard and ambulance outside and saw some cop cars. Since Andy was on the phone trying to get things arranged with utilities and houses and everything else, the boys and I decided to take a walk and investigate. As we left the hotel through the front lobby, our room is above the front lobby, and rounded the corner of the hotel we saw the cop cars and ambulance. They were just loading a man in on the stretcher and the police were gathered in the far corning looking at something. They got out evidence bags and starting filling them. We figured there must have been a stabbing or drug bust or something. Things appeared pretty quite though. A few hours later as we were going to drive past some more houses to either cross off the list or make appointments to go see we noticed US Marshalls walking around the halls of the hotel. Exciting! We got back to the hotel a little after 5 pm and met the girl from the front desk. She said that the police were asking them to evacuate the hotel for about an hour. Apparently the man they took away in the ambulance earlier had stolen a car and had drug paraphernalia and had to be subdued. (I think the must have tazed him, but we couldn’t get anyone to confirm this theory.) They police thought he might have an accomplice and had been staking out the hotel all afternoon. We hadn’t had dinner yet and hot dogs didn’t really sound all that appealing, so we went out to dinner.

We came back a little over an hour later, and since no one tried to stop us we went up to our room noticing the increase in police presents as we went. We got the kids ready and into bed. Everything was just getting quiet, meaning the kids were asleep, and the phone range. It was the manager saying the police were on their way with a search warrant and wanted all the surrounding rooms evacuated. Could we please come to the lobby for about 20 minutes? Here we go again dragging the kids out of bed! We waited in the lobby for about 20 minutes; all the while more and more residences came trickling in. Finally the manager says that the po9lice would really like us to evacuate down the street the shopping centers parking lot. Luckily Andy had grabbed his wallet and the car keys on his way out.

We loaded up the kids and headed half a block away to wait in the parking lot. (It is now about 7:40 pmish.) Off to our left about 50 yards were two fire trucks, the haz mat, and halve a dozen police cars. We had front row seats to the staging ground! As the minutes ticked away with Scooby doo blaring on the dvd player, more and more cops showed up. Before we knew it a black armored hmv with about 7 men dressing in black body armor, helmets and automatic rifles hanging off the sides drove right in front of us. Where was our camera you ask, in the hotel with the diaper bag!! We had such a good shot too!

We watched as the drove to the front entrance and stormed in to the hotel. We were out there for about 2 hours before everyone started leaving and the other residence started going back in. As we entered the hotel and got to our room we could hear people talking in the hall just around the corner from our room. We got the kids back into bed and then Andy went to see what was going on. There were police in the hall talking next to a room two doors away from us. He asked it the guy was selling drugs or something and the cop say, “No, it was much worse.” What does that mean? All we could get from them was “watch the news.” Unfortunately we didn’t see it on the news since we watched the poor news guy walk around with his camera from place to place. I don’t think he every got it set up! The manager ordered Papa John’s pizzas for everyone. All we got from him was that the guy they caught earlier that day had a rap sheet a mile long so they were being really precautious since they didn’t know what they would find.

Back to house hunting…we made an appointment to walk through a two story home the next morning, June, 10, 2010, at 8 am. We made it on time, even thought we were up way past bed time hoping to here more about what was going on. The home was really nice and the couple who own it are really great. They answered our questions well and we started making plans to get a contract ready. WE talked a couple times during the day about what we wanted in the contract and then signed it that night. WE are so relieved to have a home! It is farther than we had originally planned, but it is on a cul-de-sac and close to the elementary school. It has a great deck out back and the owners are leaving their patio furniture and grill! WE are grilling steaks for Father’s Day baby!! Anyone who wants to join can feel free to drop in.

Looking back on the experience, past all the frustrations, we can see how we were blessed. Each house and disappointment helped us get to where we are. When we first arrived we wouldn’t have considered this house due to the location and availability date, but since we were desperate we looked into it. The owners have been really good to work with us on our move in date. They have family in the area, so they were willing to move out a little sooner than planned so that we could move it. They are a great couple heading to Austin, TX and we wish them the very best. Now we have a house large enough for visitors and to grow a little. We are excited to start finding neat places to visit so that we can properly entertain anyone blessed enough to visit. :)

Email me for our new address and phone number.