At long last...

I finally gave in and even though my house is not yet remotely put together and we have a lot to do, I used Justin's camera to take a few pictures tonight. His camera died pretty soon- so yeah, there would have been more and better ones but take what you can get:)Here is our living room (or part of it, the battery died after this pic). We still need to put the molding back on the walls and clean more but this gives you an idea of how our walls and floors look now. I am really impressed with the job that Justin and our friends did on this floor and for how cheap we were able to do it!
Here is the shower that Justin and another friend of ours tiled. Before it had been a nasty old stained and broken tub with ghetto glass doors but he ripped that out and replaced it with a perfectly good used $20 tub and then tiled the rest. This is currently my favorite part of the entire house.
He needs to re-plaster above the shower but I wanted to show it off more. So many projects to do... We still need a bathroom door, doorknobs, a kitchen floor and to gut the rest of the bathroom. And those are just the big things but it is fun and Justin has learned so much in this process.

And here is cute Macy the night before we officially moved in to the house. We had her watching a movie on the computer while we cleaned and then I went back to Randy and Debi's (where we had been staying) with Kylie and Justin stuck around to keep working but pretty soon he discovered a zonked out little Macy Jo.

Other than this we just keep working away at our house, cleaning, doing little projects and unpacking. I am looking forward to being unpacked so we can focus on finishing everything else up. We took a little break from everything and went camping in Hope (70 miles south) Wednesday night and then Justin fished much of Thursday while the girls and I played outside and watched. It was great to see him get his first Alaska salmon and I know he had been looking forward to that since we moved up here. I have pictures on my other camera that I will get up as soon as I can.

I have been working away on my little coupon blog with my friend and Monday we are going to be on the local news to talk about our site. I am excited and anxious to get ourselves out there more and I think it will be fun for the girls because our five children (between Kara and I) get to all be on too. I will post a link to the video if we can get it, wish us luck!

Chatterbox

Kylie has been learning to talk more and more lately and her latest new phrase reminded me that I ought to be writing these down more so here are some of the cutest things that come out of her mouth:
- "I don't know!"
- "What Happened?"
- "I see you!"
- "Where are you?"
- "Why?"
- "Where Macy go?"
- "Want it" while shaking her head means "I don't want it"
- "Done!"
- "Lay Down!"
- "Hair" and "Bow" for when she wants me to put a bow in her hair to keep it out of her face.
I wish you could hear the cute sing-song way that she says all of these things. Maybe I will have to try to record them later.
Currently we are residing at my cousin's house in Eagle River (just outside of Anchorage) and really appreciating their generosity in letting us stay here. The girls have been loving the trampoline and I am learning how to take care girl of the girls without the help of PBS in the mornings (it is very useful for giving me and the girls time to wake up and allowing me the chance to shower) Justin has been back in the routine of working on the house, work and back to the house to work some more. I am glad he is working so hard but the girls and I definitely miss him. Hopefully the house will be suitable to live in this weekend.
Here's to a sunny 65 degree day!

Our lives...

Nothing major has been going on in our lives lately (except for getting ready to close on our house this week) except a lot of time playing outside in the perfect 65 degree weather. If it weren't for all of the trailer parks, Anchorage could be heaven on Earth in the spring.
Justin went camping Friday night with some of our friends. The girls and I were going to go to but we woke up Friday morning to pouring rain and colder temperatures so the girls had to stay home. I was disappointed but it wouldn't have been worth taking the babes. Justin was a little worn out after his trip and Macy refused to take a nap Saturday afternoon so this is what I was greeted with after I put Kylie down for bed.

Yes, they were both out cold. I placed Macy into bed and told Justin to go lay down and then enjoyed an evening to myself, which was kind of nice although I had been looking forward to hanging out with my husband since he had been gone the night before... oh well.
And then this morning the girls insisted on helping me make frosting for our cupcakes for today's linger longer after church. Justin seemed to get a kick out of this. What he doesn't realize is this is what happens whenever I try to make anything.

And then some of our wonderful friends bought themselves a nice new bike trailer so they kindly gave us their old one. Justin couldn't resist testing it in the backyard after dinner:

The girls were huge fans. We are off tomorrow to get them some proper helmets so we can go on a real bike ride.

And here is Kylie playing outside. She really enjoyed laying in the grass and searching for rocks. She's pretty adorable, if you ask me.



And to answer any lingering questions about our new house, here you go:
1. No I am not excited to move. I love my ward and the part of town we live in, I love being by the coast and so close to the airport. I will miss our friends and location a lot.
2. No, it isn't bigger. But it is ours. After having owned our homes since we got married, we have hated renting up here. Finally though,we are getting a little house. It has a heated garage (a must for up here) and a fully fenced yard. Those things I am excited for. Homes are crazy expensive up here so it has been difficult to find something in our price range, especially since we still own our house in Spanish Fork. We ended up buying a HUD foreclosure so, you guessed it, this new place is going to be quite the project. We are going to work on flooring and painting before we get in there and hopefully we will be able to fix and replace things a little at a time. (Ok, everything needs to be replaced, but we will just have to be patient...) I don't love the part of town we are moving to (ghetto but not terrible) but at least we will be really close to Target and Joann now :) Justin is going to love having projects again and we are happy to not be throwing money away on rent anymore. Hopefully, after some sweat equity, we will be able to sell it for a bit more in a couple of years and then get something that we will like more, but that will come in time. We were thrilled to discover hard wood under the nasty carpet so hopefully that can be refinished fairly simply and cheaply.

So that is the story on our house, because I keep getting questions and I realize that I have not explained the situation well. Wish us luck and if anyone knows anywhere in Anchorage to get cheap doorknobs we need a few! (The previous owners took them all when the left :))