Home Sweet Home

We've had some new things added!! We have our siding, which has yet to be painted obviously, we have all our windows and our bathtubs and our shower!! I'll spare you having to see every single window, yes I took pictures of every window...

These windows are in our "office" or 4th bedroom. Everthing that's not siding, will be brick.

These 3 windows our in our master bedroom!! I'm so excited, we have the same 3 in our living room as well.

Obviously the back of the house. You can't see it but the door has a nice big window, basically the whole size of the door. The two next to the door are where our table will go. The smaller one is our master bathroom and the 3 are our bedroom!! We are so excited!! July needs to come faster!

Operation: Think of a cheesy Young Women's hand out

I'm teaching the combined YW lesson this week and it's about the blessings of the house of Israel... so, I'm looking for a candy that I can create for a hand out with the meaning of something like "reach for eternal life", "keep an eternal perspective", "choose the right" (with gum) or "don't settle for less than exaltation or temple marriage" or something of the like... help!! So far all I've come up with is a lolli-pop with the slogan "Don't be a sucker" (and fall for worldly endeavors that won't matter in the long run)... I need help. The cheesier the better too!

Broccoli Soup and Fort Sunday

Mariska loves broccoli soup...

I can't take credit for the fun she had with this fort... I was napping. Daddy is way more fun than Mommy! She had a blast!

Framed! Framed! Framed!

Our house was framed!!!Our roof from the road!!The picture below is from the back, through the kitchen, into the living room and garage.

This picture was taken from the wall of the garage through the living room into the kitchen.

Our killer yard!

Just a cute picture of Mariska in the car on the way to see the house!

Good Times

Ryan visited this weekend! It was great fun! It started out a little rocky when he was delayed and stuck sitting on a plane in Wichita Falls for 4 hours due to a bad storm DFW was having. Brent and Ryan spent Friday at Six Flags. They had a good time but came back a bit "beat up"! So we drove down to Waxahachie and saw our house! We have a foundation! We also tried out a nearby mexican restaurant that turned out to be quite good. On Saturday we went over to the 6th Floor Museum (Where JFK was killed) and spent the day reading up on all the conspiracies! Afterwards we drove to the Fort Worth Stockyards and saw some cattle. We also did some "window shopping". We stopped in at a giant candy store and stocked up on some saltwater taffy. The brand may be familiar to some of you... it's Taffy Town. Yes, we move 1200 miles away to get Taffy Town, made in Salt Lake City. It was a really good visit and we hope to get back up to Utah sometime soon. Here are some pictures...

This is our house with Brent standing in the garage. This angle makes the house look so tiny compared to the garage... it's not though, it just looks that way

Mariska loved sitting on these horses!

But she was really scared of the cow. Go figure.

Look out Lance!

Mariska came riding into the kitchen today, using her petals!! Just in time too, tomorrow's playgroup is at a park to go on bike rides, she won't be left out now! Hmmm, now we just need to get women into the Tour De France!

no real title

So, we had our preconstruction meeting... our house actually won't be finished until about mid July, depending on the weather. This is fine with us, because our last month of renting this place is July, so our rent here won't go to waste, AND since we'll move in during July then our first mortgage payment won't start until September, and we'll have August OFF! So staying here a couple more weeks is a pretty big blessing financially. And then after we had our meeting we went to the Waxahachie Dollar Tree, which happens to be the nicest and biggest dollar store I've ever seen! We let Mariska pick a toy, for being so good in our meeting. She picked a bat and a ball and we let her sleep with it, and she was too cute to not take pictures!

A Little Too Close For Comfort

Sometimes the greatest blessing we receive, is simply the absence of something bad happening. This morning at about 3:30, I was simply laying awake, trying to go back to sleep. I sleep with earplugs in and thought I heard a noise and took out my earplug to make sure it was only thunder... I heard something else, the tornado warning sirens. So, I woke Brent up, he grabbed Mariska and we headed to the laundry room. About 1 minute after we got "comfortable" the electricity went out. Luckily, a week or so ago I plugged in our emergency flashlight in the bathroom just about 3 feet away, so I grabbed that. When I say comfortable I'm being very kind to our laundry room, Brent was on the floor up against our shelves of cans and Mariska's stroller, and Mariska and I were leaning against about 8 inches of wall sitting on a box of laundry detergent... The sirens turned off after a little bit, but since the power was out and we couldn't follow to weather radar and didn't know if this was one of those storms where it just takes a 10-15 minutes break before hitting harder, I was hesitant to leave the "safe room"/laundry room. So then we decided to just go sit on our couches and if the sirens went back on we would jump back in. We noticed large amounts of police sirens and had no idea what was going on. Brent stepped outside (the storm was really calm at this point) and thought there was a car accident at the end of the road. So, after about an hour and twenty minutes of being out of bed, I suggested we go back up to bed. We went back to sleep and just over an hour later Brent left for work, poor thing was SO tired. Once he got to work, he called me to fill me in on what was really going on at the end of the street... This house is just at the entrance of our complex. Across the street a fence was destroyed and a tree in the median of the road had fallen over, but was cleaned up by the time I went out there. I woke up a little bit after Brent called from massive amounts of helicopters, I had to jump downstairs and turn on the news. This was the only damage in Desoto, but there is much more up in Euless, Hurst and Allen... our power came back on around 7:30, although there are still thousands of people without power today. I guess in "counting our many blessings" we could go on and on with things that DON'T go wrong, like serious illness, car troubles, natural disasters, etc...
This photo is from a local news website, I couldn't get around to get a "good shot" of all the damage... you can go to www.wfaa.com or www.cbs11tv.com or www.nbc5i.com for better details on all the damage throughout north Texas.PS: On a happy note, we have our pre-construction meeting with our building contractor today!!

Mariska's Funny

She put her socks on by herself! She was very proud!

PS: the pictures should be fixed to go big when you click on them.

Thank you!

Mariska's cousins Haylee and Mackinlee made her some great jewelry! Thank you girls, she loves them!

(sorry if I spelled your names wrong!)

Extra Extra!

WE HAVE PIPES! It's raining a lot today, so we know they won't do more today... but we drove by yesterday and they've placed all of the pipes for our sinks and pottys and such! We are so excited to see progress! We can't wait to be in our very own house!

what to do

Does anyone have any advice on how to get Mariska out of this "MINE" phase!? She'll take stuff out of our hands, run away with it yelling that it's hers... or if you reach for her while she's holding something, she pulls it away and yells "mine" or "my book"... I don't know what to do... any thoughts????