It was a very Merry Christmas

We had such a great Christmas. Olive was a little under the weather that day and wasn't her normal perky self. She was interested in her presents, but kinda just moved from one thing to another. She has gotten a lot more use out of the toys in the days after Christmas when she was feeling better.

She got a whole bunch of Little People toys, puzzle books, and an adorable Christmas outfit. Other people gave her baby dolls and accessories, dress ups, bath toys, and a play purse. She is in heaven seeing as she is a total girl.

We got her this spinning toy that plays music. She can't do it herself yet, but I think she likes it.

Her favorite gift was her new slippers. She is obsessed with slippers and constantly asks to put mine on. So we got her some of her own. Unfortunately they don't stay on very well.

Here she is in her cute outfit. Isn't she sweet?



It was over way too fast, but we had a great holiday.

Merry Christmas!

If you didn't get a card from us we want to wish you a Merry Christmas!

It's quite the view

This is how Olive watches TV. For some reason her best viewing angle is to be standing and only one inch away. She had not watched hardly any TV until we started working on the house and we needed a way to distract her. She instantly fell in love. We only had a small portable TV that we would place on the floor and she got used to watching it from a very close distance. Now, even though we have furniture and space for her to watch more appropriately, she insists on being exceptionally close to the screen.

I recently rented her some Signing Time dvds from the library and they have been a big hit with her. She will bring me the box at least twice a day asking to watch. Its educational right? And at least it is bearable for me to sit through unlike some kids shows. I used to be one of those parents that said I wasn't going to let my child watch any TV during the day. Then reality set in and I realized that if I am in charge of entertaining her ALL day (especially in the winter) and want to accomplish anything else, TV time is very necessary. Don't get me wrong, ideally she only watches a show while I get ready/exercise and another while I am trying to make dinner, although there are those occasional days where the TV doesn't seem to get turned off. It used to make me feel really guilty if she was watching on and off all day especially while we were working on the house and I felt like I was ignoring her, but somethings are easier to feel guilty about than change. I try and remind myself that it is all about balance. How much TV do your kids watch?

Oh what a hallway!

Let's appreciate my new house again. So, you may think who cares about hallways? Typically I would agree that they are boring and functional. But not mine. My hallway is unique. I'm not exactly sure why I love it so much. It is one of my favorite place in our house. It might be that it is more of a little landing rather than just a dark narrow passage way. Or perhaps it is all the white on the doors and the old door frame detail that I love. Maybe it's all the symmetry.

It's possible that I love our built in drawers and cabinet the most. I have had these at multiple places we have lived and they always say "old house" to me. All these reasons could explain my love, but I haven't mentioned the best part of the hallway. That would have to be the laundry shoot in the bottom drawer that goes straight to the laundry room. Who knew I would love laundry shoots so much?

Our fabulous doors play a big part in the wonderfulness of the hallway. We don't have just any doors. They are heavy and old and have these wonderful original door knobs. And now that we made them stop squeaking we can really enjoy them.

I hope you enjoy my hallway as much as I do.

New house appreciation

The tile in our up stairs bathroom is absolutely delightful. Look at it! It makes me giddy. We have original 1920's honeycomb tile WITH a beautiful mosaic tile border to match. Yes, delightful.

The best part of this tile is its story. We had plans to tile over the ugly blue marble linoleum flooring that matched the ridiculously ugly blue marble counter top. On the Saturday of our project, after picking out our new tile and vanity, we ripped out the old cabinet to discover this glorious tile underneath. Scott called me on the phone and said " You have to come see the bathroom tile RIGHT NOW!" So I rushed over to find this marvelous miracle. Not only did we not have to do all the work of putting in new tile, the gray and white color scheme matched perfectly with everything we had just painted.

Here is a close up of the mosaic detailing on the border. Wonderful isn't it?

This is what Olive and Scott were doing while I was taking the pictures. She loves bouncing and jumping and begs to get on the bed. What a cutie.

Olive's first snow day

It snowed all night so we woke up to a nice fresh coating of snow. Olive has never really gone out to play in the snow and I thought this would be the perfect day. It took 30 minutes to put all her snow clothes on, especially since she wasn't willing to help. She only stayed outside for 15 minutes before she got cold and frustrated. It really made me wonder if I was doing it all for her or just for a picture, but whatever.

Olive didn't quite know what to do with the snow other than walk around in it. But she tried making a reverse snow angel.

A new beginning

Now that all the hair-pulling-out stress is over (mostly), I feel like I can post about all the great things about our new house. And there are SO many great things in this house that we fell in love with. I have vowed that I won't post a full house tour until everything is how I want it, sorry for the disappointment. So instead...I am stealing a cute idea from a blog that I read where she does a weekly appreciation of the cool, and cute things in her new house (except she has a cute name for her house and does everything way better). Here is our second rate "Pemberley Appreciation":

Our charming door knocker:

I think this old door knocker is so amazing. It has the family crest and name of the previous owners. This house has been in the same family since it was built so that really adds to the heirloom-ness of this knocker. We have plans to someday get our own family crest made into a knocker and put it on the door as a sort of geneology of ownership. This is why I love old houses.

I Can-not Believe It!

....As Tyrone would say on Little Einsteins.

To update you on our water issues we are doing much better. We were having a plumber come out the day after my last post. He ran a snake and found more roots, proving that the plumber from the warranty company was utterly useless. He hit something that he was not able to get past and said that his blade was coming back shiny which probably means it was hitting metal. But since it was draining, he didn't think that it was a broken line. So we paid him and we thought we were in the clear. Later that evening he called back and said he just didn't feel comfortable about how he left it and was worried about the line. He was worried that it might be broken and it was so far out it might be broken in the street which would still be our responsibility to fix. If that was the case we would be looking at $5,000 or more the excavate, repair the line and replace the asphalt. He told me to call the sewer company to get the plans for our house and that he would come run a camera for us the next day. It was our greatest fear but even worse now that it was possibly broken in the street.
The next morning I called the sewer company and they told me that usually the records on older houses have been lost over time. He said he would do some research and call me back. Next thing we know, the sewer people are knocking on our door. They said they can't find the records but would look around to help us locate the exterior piping and they would stay to help our plumber. It was going to be awhile because our plumber was just "squeezing us in" especially considering it was the day before Thanksgiving so he might take hours to get to us. The sewer guys found out that we were having a camera run through the pipe and said "we have a camera in the truck, should we just use that?" I jumped for joy and said YES!
As they were scoping with the camera, we heard laughing and some rather boisterous talking. Scott went down to see what was happening. About where we thought we had a broken pipe issue, they saw a pole going right through our pipe. A huge, giant, wooden lamp post was blocking 3/4 of our main sewer line. Apparently about 10 years ago, or possibly more, the city power company installed lamp posts on our street and didn't check where pipe were and went through ours. The previous owner had lived like this for years and my guess is that she never used enough water to have problems.
The sewer people called the power people and within 20 minutes they had the lamp post removed. They then had an excavation company dig up the pipe and replace it. Fortunately it was still on the park strip and we didn't have to deal with any street excavation, but it was close. They had the pipe fixed and buried all by 5 pm. We were all repaired just in time for Thanksgiving. It was the best holiday ever.
The most amazing part of it all is that it didn't cost us ANYTHING! And they agreed to pay our deductable for all the water damage. Our downstairs will be all replaced and updated and all it cost us was some time, lost sleep, and (quite a bit) of inconveince. What an amazing blessing. It worked out better than I could have ever hoped.
I love, love, love Murray so mcuh. When we moved here I thought it was a nice place and I was excited about it. But after this experience, I don't think I will want to leave. If it had been any other city I know it would have been nearly impossible to get anyone from the city here let alone argee on the problem AND take responsiblity to repair it. I love it!
I will leave you with some pictures, mostly in hopes that you will continue to visit my blog and that I won't alienate you with all this jibber-jabber-no-picutre-posts. Please enjoy the current state of my downstairs.

Here is our hallway.

This is the bathroom with everything ripped out.

A close up of the bathroom where you can see the toilet hole and the sink piping.

This one is the hardest to see because of the stupid point and shoot camera flash, but if you look closely you can see where they removed the carpet and tore off the drywall. Lovely isn't it?

Don't be angry, don't be angry, DON'T be angry

I am saying that to myself as much as anyone. I am happy to announce that we did actually move into our new house. I am not happy to say that I currently do not feel like celebrating. I only feel like griping. And you should too because I don't have any pictures to share yet.
So, here are our problems. After living here to 4 days we had a big flood in our basement from our sewer line. We had a home warrenty so they sent out a plumber to clear the line but he found roots were in the line and they do not cover that (I am not sure what they actually cover because everything seems to be excluded). After getting extremely frustrated with them because they also do not cover any clean up since its "secondary damage" we had to clean up all the water (which was disgusting). Since we didn't have a professional crew clean up, or know that we should have we now have some mold that began to grow on the walls. Now we have to replace our new carpet and everything in the downstairs bathroom including the dry wall. We had no idea all that needs to be done if you have a flood. I guess we learned the hard way. Now we have hepa filters to clear the air and dehumidifiers to dry out all the damamge. It is a serious mess.
And, now, today, to top it all off, after paying for them to "clear the line" and our deductable, we had a back up again. Since they found roots we are no longer covered for stopages by our warrenty. It's just a ridiculous rip off if you ask me.
Seriously, seriously I think we were pretty well prepared about buying an older house. We knew what we were getting into, and we had a lot of good information and repairs done before we moved in. But we were not expecting this in the first week. We thought we might have to deal with this in a year.
Gripe, Gripe, Gripe!
But, its Thanksgiving and I am done being stressed and frustrated and rather frantic all week so I should think of some great things that I'm thankful for...
-because they found lead paint in our windows we get them all replaced with new, energy efficient windows for free
-we are getting all of our plumbing problems taken care of now and won't have to deal with it later (right? right?)
-we get our downstairs bathroom remodeled (technically) because they have to replace all the damage
-it no longer smells like mildew
-we have a really cute house, even if it has flooding
-my most sweet adorable loving baby who is nice to me even when the warrenty people are not
-a perfect husband
Well, I am sure that did nothing to help your disappointment at the lack of pictures but I feel better. And trust me, I will post pictures and you will probably be overloaded. Until then, Happy Thanksgiving!

We don't want to suck YOUR blood

We had a great Halloween this year. There were once big plans for costumes and Wicked themed parties but the new house kinda reeked havoc on all plans. Maybe next year. So instead we threw together some makeshift costumes and called it good. Olive was a ballerina, 1) because I had the costume and 2) as inspiration for her because she does always walk on her tippy-toes so I have high hopes she will someday be a ballerina.

My flash wasn't working so the pictures are a bit dark and blurry but you get the idea.

I just had to include this picture. Look at those thighs!

This is her looking at the scary decorations. She is so funny!

Olive went trick-or-treating with her cousins and it was hilarious. She was running the whole time to keep up with them. Also, she wouldn't hold her basket (all I had was an Easter basket for her to use) but just grip the candy to death. Then when we would get to the door she would drop the candy in her hands and grab the new treat. All of her candy was pretty smooshed by the time we were finished. I think she loved just being out with everyone more than anything.

Like I said, Scott and I just had to throw something together. We wanted to be pop-culturish and current. So we decided to be Edward and Bella from Twilight. We aren't that into the series, I havent't read any of them, but we thought it would be easy. Here I am doing my best to look pouty-ish. Although this picture doesn't do it justice, Scott has a pretty good "Edward face" or in other words I am going to be an old creepy controling vampire look.

What a difference a week makes

It always proves to be true that if you put a lot of energy and time into the preparation, the actual project will go fast. We spent weeks and weeks getting it ready to paint and once it was all prepped, we got it painted in one weekend. Every square inch, including the ceilings! We had so much help and we couldn't have done it without all of our family. Yippee!
Plus, we got new carpet installed, counter tops refinished, cabinets rehung with hardware, and hardwoods refinished. That is big progress. We are getting there! It is all coming together and I love how it is turning out. There is something so gratifying in doing it yourself.

Remodeling

Right now I feel like we are crazy to have taken on this remodeling project. It is the second time in less than 2 years that we have completely remodeled our house. First we repainted everything in our condo and installed beadboard, new light and electrical, and new hardware before we moved in and that felt like a lot of work. Now we are doing the same for our new house plus tons more. It is going to look great when it is all done, but I can't help but feel really discouraged at how it looks worse before it starts looking better. We have been stripping wallpaper for 2 weeks now. I will never ever wallpaper anything ever. Fortunately we only had 2 layers in the main room, and three in the kitchen. Everything else was only one layer! The other discouraging part is that the progress and changes are so slow right now. I just keep telling myself that is will really suck right now and then it will all be over. I should start thinking about the good things. Like, Olive has been super awesome and plays there everyday. And at least we are not trying to live there and remodel because that is even harder. Hopefully this next week it will all start coming together and I will be able to sleep at night without waking up to think about all that I have to do on this house.

P.S. Please have the moral conscience to not wallpaper your house.
P.P.S. I wish I had pictures to show but I've been to busy.

Yay for houses, boo for moving

Great News! We bought a house. It is a 1923 Arts and Crafts style house. It has lots of beautiful wood work and detailing. We have been looking for a few months but we finally found something that we could comfortably afford. We saw a lot of nice houses, but it felt like they were still priced so high even in a soft market. A very sweet older lady lived there, actually it has remained in the same family since it was built. Now we have quite a bit of remodeling that we want to do (blasted wall paper!). It is going to be a crazy October, but it is worth it to have a yard and a garage! Yay! Pictures to come soon.

The girl can WALK!

Olive has been cruising for months now and about 2 weeks ago she took her first steps on her own. She took eight steps and we thought that was it, she was a walker now. We were wrong. As with most things, it is only on Olive time. We would try and make her walk all the time, but she was not interested. Even when she would be standing on her own she would slowly lower herself to her knees and start crawling. She was a very fast crawler so I can't really blame her. We could not entice her to walk at all. Everything we tried she refused. It had to be by her own will or she was completely uninterested.
But last Sunday, everything changed. It seemed normal enough, Olive was in the foyer terrorizing the other babies who were trying to play through sacrament meeting when she decided to stand, walk to one baby, turn and walk to another baby without any hesitation or help. We knew that was the change we had been waiting for. From then on she is constantly walking and it is her favorite activity to do. She loves going outside now and walking around vs. her previous experiences outside, trying to (painfully) crawl on the sidewalk.
So I thought I would document and share her progress.

See, that is a real step!

Playing peek-a-boo in the trees.

"Here I come Mommy!"

Step,

Step,

Stop,

Step,

Sit.

I love how she toddles around and is so proud of herself. As you can probably tell, every step is very laborious and rapid at the same time. It is hard for her to take steps, but then they come in rapid sucession. I am a bit sad that she doesn't do the Franken-baby arms for balance because I think they are so cute, but apparently she is better than that (even though it looks like she is doing Franken-baby arms in the pictures but I think it was because she was holding that piece of bark).

One Year Older and Wiser Too

Our big girl has had a week to reflect on being one and I think she likes it. The doctor said that she is doing great, but we were pretty sure of that. He described her as "intense" which I thought was very accurate. She is 25 pounds and 28 inches long. Again, he never tells us what that means compared to other babies, so this time we looked it up. She is above the "95 percentile" line for her weight for girls. I was surprised for length though, she is only in the 20th percentile.

She really is getting so grown up. Now that she is one she can:
-take steps independently (8 is her farthest distance) even though she much prefers crawling still
- do the baby signs for more, milk, eat, please, out, and daddy
-say her first word which was "dada", and can also say "out" and "up"
-play patty cake, peek-a-boo (which is her just hitting the sides of her head), blow kisses, wave goodbye, and pat her tummy when you say "Who's Olive?" but only on her own will, she never wants to show off when I want her to
-dances and claps her hands whenever she hears music
-sleep like a champ even on vacation and in strange places
-hold the phone and talk to people, mostly daddy
-give big hugs where she pats your back
-attract a lot of attention from strangers and is now not as serious and concerned when they talk to her

She is a very happy and cheerful baby, although at times she is definitely "intense" seeing as she has started screaming when she wants something. She is opinionated and will let you know. She makes us laugh every day. We love how inquisitive and curious she is. Olive explores everything and really treasures the independence her increased mobility is providing. She loves electronics and books and carries them around with her. She has added so much to our little family and we have had the best year with her.


Here are the videos as promised. Please forgive the cheesy music, I had to use the stock music because my own wasn't working. This is definitely Olive picture overload, so don't get overwhelmed.

I had the idea to take a picture of her in the same place every week for one year. Here are all of her pictures put together. Towards the end, you will notice that she didn't like lying in her crib for the pics so she looks pretty upset in some of them.



This next video is a slideshow we put together for her birthday party to remember some of our favorite parts of her first year.



And finally, a slideshow of her one year old photos. We decided to take them while we were in San Diego to try and get some cute beach shots. The first night of our stay we noticed what a beautiful sunset the beach had and thought that would be the perfect setting. Turns out we were right and I think we got some really pretty shots.

Happy Birthday to us!

On Monday Olive turned one year old! We had a little party for her on Saturday to celebrate.
We had planned a pool party because I thought it would be the easiest way to keep lots of kids entertained with the littlest effort on my part. Because of the August heat I couldn't for see any reasons why a pool party wouldn't be ideal. Naturally, it was wicked cold, raining, and there were amazing thunderstorms the morning of the party. Just our luck!

As you can see we did end up at the pool, although we opted for the indoor one. We didn't have much of a back up plan so swimming was our only option. But this pool turned out to be really cool.

It had a mini lazy river section where a current would move you along. That was Olive's favorite part and she spent the whole time in the water. She is definitely a little fish.


To try and pull some kind of theme I decorated her a fish cake. Kinda cute right?


Here she is with her own cake. She was disappointed when we blew out the candle because she kept trying to grab it. We thought that stripping her down and putting her on the floor was the best way to let her "have at it". That was a big mistake. *warning* some of the following pictures are pretty gross.

Since this was the first time she had ever had chocolate she was a little unsure at first. She was also confused about just what we wanted her to do. (Also, since we put her on the floor there are a lot of people's legs in the pictures. I apologize)


"How do I go about this? Do I pick it up"


"That's not to bad actually. I kinda like it."


"It is very squishy in my hands."


"What is it like to crawl through?"


"Am I doing this right?"


"Oh, I love chocolate! I can't get enough in my mouth!"


"I'm a chocolate MONSTER!"


This is the demolished cake. It was crawled through, sat on, squished, had toes dunked in it, and probably some of it was eaten. I think it served its purpose.


After cake we opened presents. Here she got her very own remote control because the girl loves everything electronic.


More books. Yay! I was so excited about this gift because I have all her other books memorized from reading them everyday. She really needed some new books.


A new baby doll that she loves and gives hugs. It is really adorable.


We gave her a "music table" that has interactive parts that play music or teach something. It turned out to be a big hit, but not just with the one year olds.

There is more to come, I have a few slide shows and some really adorable 1 year old pictures to share but I thought I would save them until the doctor's visit so I have stats to share (if anyone cares). Stay tuned!