New Bathroom

The bathroom is finally finished and it is gorgeous. I must admit I was not overly supportive of the project from the get-go and was not thrilled with all the time it was taking. There is just SOOOOO much to get done around here. But, in the end, I think it was worth it. I took a long hot bath last night and then moved to the shower and I seriously felt like I was at a spa. What a bummer to be packing up and leaving it all behind.

Ben worked on it every weekend and evening for about a month and it was an insane amount of work. I spent all of 3 hours being Ben's water girl and sponging the walls as Ben moved along grouting. That alone convinced me of what tiring, back breaking, knee crunching, up and down labor it was throughout the whole process. Ooooof.

Before

Gutted

Framing

Dry wall

Here's to you Ben. You are so very talented and hard working and I love being married to such a handy man.

Moving

How quickly things change. I came into this summer without a thought in my head about leaving Colorado and now we are heading back to Utah in about two weeks! I can hardly believe it. It's all happened very fast and out of the blue. Ben is kind of a nut and has been talking about maybe moving since January but I never took him seriously. He was talking about Seattle and then San Diego because his current company has offices there. I thought he was mostly just bored at work and likes looking at real estate in different places. Then at the beginning of June he applied for a couple of jobs in UT. I have always told Ben that eventually I wanted to end up back there to be close to family but we always said the earliest that would happen would be after being in CO for 5 years.

In order to get a job at one of the very few companies that do wireless software in UT, Ben would need at least that much experience. Plus I always had Ben reminding me we would most likely never move back because jobs are scarce, the money would stink, and he wasn't that interested in living there or working for any of the companies in the area. Which was a hard thing for me to accept but had gotten much easier.  I always had a tough time saying goodbye to my family and the first hour of almost every drive home consisted of a conversation of some day getting back to Utah. But once we were home and back in our routine, we were happy being away.

Ben ended up getting a promotion a couple months ago which barely qualified him for some new UT positions, 2 years earlier then we expected. And when they popped up online he applied for them without saying a word to me about it. Even after several phone and on-sight interviews I still wasn't taking it too seriously because I didn't have very high expectations that it would amount to anything. I kept thinking that if he did get the job, the offer would be so lousy that we wouldn't even consider it because that was the case when he applied for jobs in Utah when he was getting ready to graduate.

So anyways...he finally got an official offer in the middle of July and it was better than we anticipated. This all was going on while I was in Salt Lake visiting family and Ben was at home working. It was very stressful and a much harder decision then I had anticipated. It has really surprised me (and Ben) how hard it has been for me to agree to this move. Debating this has made us realize how much we've come to love Colorado and our wonderful friends. There's a lot of things about this move that worry me and the timing seems less than perfect. Poor Ben had started having terrible attacks in July and went to the emergency room and found out he has gall stones and needed go have his gall bladder removed. AND while I was away in SLC he went ahead and gutted the master bathroom to remodel. So I came home to a husband going into surgery the next morning, the bathroom still far from being finished, and an entire house to pack. I had been feeling really great the last few months of pregnancy and out of nowhere everything changed and I felt really lousy and started having braxton hicks contractions at the drop of a hat. They were really slowing me down and making me nervous because I went into preterm labor with the girls around this same time in my last pregnancy. I was really wondering if this decision was right.

But this past week has brought a lot of comfort. I know Heavenly Father answers our prayers and is so aware of the things we are struggling with. Ben had surgery and spent most of the weekend in bed but has since made a full recovery. He has been slaving away on the bathroom every evening and it is ALMOST finished. The girls have been angels this week and let me make a small dent in packing. I'm feeling much better and I think lots of my contractions and feeling bad was probably just brought on by stress and all the anxiety I was having about making this big decision. Things seem to be falling into place and I have such a wonderful support group of women here who are lining up to help me and watch the girls and make this easier. Not to mention a husband that is seriously an animal when it comes to working hard. I know once this crazy bathroom project is done, the stress I feel over packing is going to be greatly alleviated.

Right now I feel more focused on how sad I will be to say goodbye to Colorado but I know once the move is over and done with, I will be thrilled to be back in Utah. I know it is where I want to be and I'm so grateful that this opportunity came around. Ben is super excited for this job and feels like its a good move for him career wise. Right now he works for a really secure, big company with lots of perks but ends up doing a lot of boring work or having no work at all because they end up canceling so many projects and there's lots of red tape. This new company is only about six years old and he'll be one of only 8 engineers and able to have a much bigger hand in development and hopefully a bigger impact.

Plus Ben is getting a little tired of all the back and forth we do to Utah for this or that. In the just over 3 years we have lived here, I have been been to Salt Lake 16 times to visit. That's about 16,000 miles and 256 hours in the car. Most my friends from Utah out here go back maybe once or twice a year and  find it baffling how much we make the trek. I know there is NO other husband on Earth that would do that to make me happy. So I understand why Ben was getting frustrated with me dragging my feet to make this move. It makes sense for us and I know our lives will be simpler and better for it.

Visiting family has been a huge priority while we were living here but I am so grateful that we spent the time away. We really became our own family in Colorado. Rosemary and Evelyn went from tiny 3 week old newborns to beautiful 3 year old little girls. It has been so good for us and we have been so blessed. We have made wonderful friends and awesome memories. We will miss all the open space and how everything is built on a trail system. We will miss the big sky and the sunny clear days all through the winter. We will miss hanging out in downtown Boulder and Denver.  We will miss our lovely home, our big back yard, and the awesome Rec Center we spend so much time at. We will miss our neighborhood full of such fun families that hang out every Friday night. We will miss our incredible ward that has been the best we have ever been apart of. We'll miss the moms group I spend a lot of time with and living near Chris, Cindy and little miss Sadie. We will miss having so many fun visits from grandparents, aunts, uncles, and dear friends coming to stay. I'll miss having Salt Lake as a getaway and a change of pace;  the excitement of going to visit and the comfort of coming back home. Even though it's crazy, I'll miss the long car rides with my family and the time to think and just sit and talk. There's a lot we will miss but a lot we are looking forward to as well.

We'll miss you Colorado. Thanks for being so good to us and becoming a place that feels like home.

These cute faces from our time in Salt Lake this summer are helping me get through the drudgery of packing and goodbyes. 

Newport!

Oh I love our annual trip to Newport Beach and it just gets better and better every year. Eve and Rose loved being with their cousins in the sand, digging for sand crabs with grandpa, playing in the water with their daddy, and going to get donuts in their pajamas for breakfast. Beach babies through and through.

Ben couldn't stay the whole week and left on Wednesday to get back to work and I hated seeing him go. The plan was to drive home in the minivan with my sisters and all the girlies on Saturday but we didn't make it very far. We hit a tire tread that was in the middle of the road about 45 minutes outside of Baker, CA. It broke something underneath the car and our air conditioning went out. It was 107 degrees outside and that van got HOT, FAST. All the little girls in the back were red cheeked and sweating, rubbing cold baby carrots against their cheeks and by the time to we got to the gas station in Baker we were all about to lose it. Hoping it was just a matter of recharging the A/C, we corralled all the kids at rest stop for over an hour while a mechanic looked at it and gave us terrible news. He couldn't fix it and said that we would have to go on to Vegas, where if we found someone to do it, it would be a 3-4 hour repair. Nightmare.

Then my super hero dad single-handedly unpacked and re-packed all of the luggage from both cars in that insane heat and got all the luggage into the minivan and somehow got all the car seats into the Pilot. My mom, my 2 sisters, me and all four kids drove home comfortably while he toughed it out in the oven car for the the next 10 hours home. Holy cow...I'm so grateful for good men in my life that step up and do unthinkable things to rescue the people they love. Thanks dad. 

IT'S A GIRL!!!!!

We found out this wonderful news about six weeks ago but we were keeping it a secret until we could see some family in person. We also had been debating on waiting to find out the gender altogether (and by we I mean me) but those plans got tossed out the window when we got some worrisome news. Our gender ultrasound was not the special, magical day I had been imagining. Our sweet baby girl had two soft markers for down syndrome and trisomy 18. She has Renal pyelectasis — a condition in which an area of a kidney is enlarged and a Choroid plexus cyst (CPC) on her brain. We had had the ultrasound tech seal up the gender results so we could later debate when to find out and do something special. But when the doctor came in with this news, the gender suddenly didn't seem to matter so much. We luckily got in to see a special the next week and they really helped to alleviate our fears. Both these soft markers are not that big of a deal on their own, but more concerning when seen together. Since then, I have gotten test results back from a new test they can do called  Maternity21 and baby girl appears to be just fine. I won't take the remarkable news of a healthy baby for granted again.

I thought I was going to do something really fun and cute to announce the gender to family but by the time we saw everyone I just wanted to do something easy. We were able to tell Cindy, Chris, Daniel and Becca at a weenie roast in our backyard and then my family on the 4th of July. Rosie and Evie loved passing out the chocolate bars and gobbling them up afterwards. We are very thankful and very excited to have this sweetie pie joining our family.

Rosie and Evie loved the 4th of July and we had a great time celebrating it in SLC before heading to Newport, CA.

Three Years Old

Three years old and right now Rosie and Evie are obsessed with Disney Princesses. They love the movies, books, dolls, songs, and dancing in the house while we sing the words. They love to play a game where they  take turns with each other and make Ben and I lie on the couch or bed with our eyes closed so they can kiss us awake like Sleeping Beauty.

We got them dress up clothes off ebay for their birthday and they have been wearing them nonstop. Recently they love pretending they are going to a dance and wearing my shoes around the house and breaking the plastic hangers in their room from trying to yank their church dresses out of their closet. They are definitely girlie girls.

They love swimming and playing in the water whether it be at the pool, splash pad, or in the kitchen sink always flooding the floor.  They love getting slurpees and call the 7-11 the "slurpee house". They love being outside and digging in the sand box and riding their scooters and pushing each other around in the toy car.
They love attempting to catch moths and other bugs in their butterfly nets and playing with rollie pollie bugs they find on the sidewalk. They love spotting American flags while out on walks or on a drive and we are very excited for the 4th of July.

 

Rosie loves candy but Evie will often spit it out. She prefers chocolate through and through. They are both still excellent eaters. We always give them a graham cracker before bed and got into the habit of leaving one on the kitchen table for them to go get in the morning before we are ready to come down and get them breakfast. Evie however started getting up at 3 or 4 am and wandering downstairs and eating both hers and Rosie's cracker in the middle of the night. We also had to put a lock on the fridge/freezer because they were breaking into popsicles at the crack of dawn. These girls are crazy. Evie asks us constantly if we are eating something: "what's in your mouth??" and will try to pry your mouth open. 

 

Rosie is extremely clumsy just like her mama. She is always charging around, running into things, and falling down. When we pull into the driveway or are all sitting together at dinner she says cute things like "I love my cozy home." or "I love my family sooooo much." 

Evie is obsessed with rocks and insists on picking one out of every rock bed or garden that we come across. 

Rosie used to be the ring leader of mischief but that has seemed to slow down a lot in the last several months. Lately Evie is the harder of the two because she just refuses to listen and gets so distracted in her own little world. Both miniature ladies have become a lot more dramatic and will race out of the room with their arms folded when they don't get their way or go sulk in a corner. They started screaming phrases like "It's not fair!!!" which I think they must have learned from their favorite obnoxious show, Caillou. Drama, drama...let it begin.

The girls love to pretend they are puppies, dinosaurs or tigers and run around either barking and trying to lick my legs or growling and scratching. 

They recently finished up their first community art and music classes and loved them both. They love going to nursery on Sunday and I've been told by the leader that they are the loudest/most spirited kids in there. hmmmm. We are working on teaching them about using their quiet voices. They can't wait to start preschool this fall and love loading up their backpacks to wear around the house. Rosie always says she needs paper, pencils, and cookies to take with her to school.

Rosie and Evie are obsessed with their grandparents, cousins, and aunties and uncles and talk about them all the time. They love having play dates with their friends but are so lucky to have their best friend always by their side.  They are both super stars at potty training and all of a sudden seem very grown up. They are so excited for this baby to come and we can't wait to watch them be the best big sisters. This is one lucky baby and we are very lucky parents.

We couldn't love these girls more.

Birthday Beauties

 Happy, Happy Birthday to my beautiful little girls! 3 years old and oh we love them so. They are perfect. They have tantrums that can be pretty fierce but they make up for it with all of their sweetness and funny comments and all the joy they bring to our home every single day.

Eve and Rose turned 3 last Tuesday and we had a great day. We decorated the night before and the girls woke up to presents and a special breakfast. The girls played in their new dress up clothes and with their princess dolls all day long and we had a fun filled day swimming and shopping. That night we went to LuLu's BBQ in Louisville and delicious Sweet Cow Ice cream. When the day was done and the girls were covered in sticky ice cream and we were running home to open a few more presents--  I felt pretty much partied out. I kept wondering why on Earth we were having a big birthday party on Saturday...

Said birthday party took over the rest of the week with the baking and errands and cleaning and planning but it came and was a blast. The night before I made Ben set up and fill the giant blow-up pool in the backyard so I could have one more thing checked off my list of things to worry about the next morning. Of course the 30% chance of rain turned into a truly insane hail storm/tornado warning and we woke up to a pool that was now punctured with holes. Ben spent close to 3 hours that morning draining and patching and refilling the pool  which caused some stress but by party time, it was up and running and the kids loved it. We had a great turn out and perfect weather. I wish I had taken more pictures. So much work goes into planning the party that by the time it is happening I don't want to do anything else.

We all really enjoyed ourselves and Rosie and Evie had a wonderful birthday. All the work is always worth it for these two. This is the first year that it felt all about them and their special requests which made it really fun. We only invited their friends, decorated in their favorite colors, and we had to have cheetos, lemonade, and pizza for lunch. They wanted a pool party with lots of balloons, chocolate cake, party blowers, and they picked out sunglasses for all their friends. Mission accomplished. Happy, Happy Birthday to my very special girls!