The Jones Family

So this is the latest update with us looking for a house to buy.

We now have everything in line to purchase a house, after waiting forever for everything to come together.

We started looking for houses everywhere! Our realtor, Tim was looking, we started looking on KSL for FSBO's, we just needed to find something fast and get out of this over priced apartment. Even if it meant to buy now and live in it for two years, then turn it into a rental and buy again.
I came across a house that looked pretty good. When I called on it and ask some questions about the house, it wasn't quite what we were looking for. It didn't have at least one garage. We were wanting at least one. So the man then asked us what we were looking for. Come to find out, this man does flips and currently was working on 12 houses, a few that he thought would fit us and were not on the market. So we met up with this guy, let's call him Jason, to look at another house he told us about. The house wasn't our favorite floor plan, but it could work. Jason saw our hesitation and told us that there was another house that he thought would work better for us. We followed him to the house and looked around. It was in the middle of being remodeled, so we had to look past that, just like our house in Colorado Springs. We did like the floor plan and everything about it! It was over 2300 sq ft, 6 bedrooms, 1 den, 3 bathrooms, a laundry room, a dinning area big enough to fit our kitchen table, a bigger backyard then the Midvale house we were attempting to buy (which is already sold now), it had a great big shed and one car garage. We were excited. There was one drawback. It was on a fairly busy street and across from a high school, Granger High. We then found out that the high school had one more year of school before it would be torn down and a park built in it's place! We couldn't pass it up.

The flip guy, Jason, helping us out, told us all the plans for the house. It was to be stuccoed along with the shed and garage, a whole new roof stripped down so there would be plenty of years ahead on it, new gutters and everything, new carpet and travertine tile in the kitchen and bathrooms, new cupboards, counter tops, appliances (not including a fridge or microwave), all new light fixtures, front door, windows, vanities in the bathrooms, new showers done with eco stone, 3 tone paint throughout the house, and...that may be it. Basically everything redone from top to bottom. The best part is the we can pick, (from what they have) our colors, carpet, counter tops and everything. This is exciting! It is well within our price and it is going to be finished in two weeks.

Tuesday night we met with Jason and signed papers, picked everything out and now we have a house that wasn't on the market and for a great price! We are very excited. There shouldn't be anything in our way this time.

We close on June 26th (Tuesday) This is good timing for us. We will pay one more month of rent, be moved in before I teach my summer cooking class and before our Family reunion...most importantly before the baby comes.

And I got a very short hair cut last night. Today I'm going to attempt to style it and make it look fantastic...or just good. We'll see how it all comes out. Stay tuned for pictures!

Can I just tell you how much I love Shutterfly! They are always doing promotions and free things as well as having cool stuff that you can make for presents. The latest is a FREE Father's day card. So now I have a cute card that I didn't have to spend 5 hours making at home, like last year. Now mind you it was the coolest card EVER! But it took FOREVER to make. Now this year Brian will be getting a card with pictures of him and the boys on it and I just assembled it online...cool.

So many things have happened between now and my last post. I'm going to number them in order of what happened first. Here it goes!

1. This is the reason why I'm so far behind, I regretted writing this. We lost our house, here is the story.  Our loan guy called us three days before closing and told us that our financing wasn't done...that they hadn't looked at it yet! This is insane! So we pushed the closing date back. Then he calls and tells us that we have to take care of a few things...YOU are now telling us this when we are about to close and you had all this time to tell us! Well the seller was patient with us and gave us a week and a half. SO we hurried to get it done. One was a letter that we needed. It is the only thing holding us up from buying the house. We called and called and tried to get it, still to this day (almost 30 days later) no letter in hand. The loan guy didn't help much, calling the seller himself and telling him that we couldn't get the loan, before he knew that it had been taken care of. (I'm still upset about that and all that our loan guy has done to ruin this for us.) So then our plan was to still get this letter and move on as soon as possible. Two weeks later the seller gets a hold of our realtor and tells him that if we could buy it, they'll work with us. Apparently the other buyer fell through. WOW! It was a miracle! We might get this house after all! A week and a half later, we still don't have the letter, so we gave up the house sadly, for good. To this day the letter still hasn't come. We are going to wait until the letter finally comes before we start looking for a new house again. Oh, and we have three new loan guys to look into instead of going with the one we currently have. Things are looking up!


2. Tyler had his Preschool reading celebration April 13th. It was neat to see the kids so excited about reading. When they called the student's name, a parent went up and got a candy bar, since they did all the reading and the child got a medal with a bag of fun stuff. Tyler was so proud (as we were) and wore that medal all day...until he left it at the park and it was taken within 15min. He cried that night, but we do have the pictures of him wearing it!


3. We came across the Utah Orienteering club this month (April). We gave it a try. There were three courses set up depending on your ability. We started with the beginners. They handed us a map with a compass on it that we were to use to navigate through the park to the different spots, where we punched our sheet to show we made it. We told the boys that it was a treasure hunt and that we would be using the map to find the treasure. Brian and Tyler took off and Caleb and I caught up after a few spots later. The boys had a great time taking turns punching the sheet. Tyler learned how to read a map and knew what direction to go next from the map. We had fun. However we didn't get a treasure at the end. It was a good thing that I brought some cookies, they became our yummy treasure. This club does this monthly at different sites. We hope to do more of them and graduate to actually using a compass on an upcoming adventure!

4. Caleb has been repeatedly taking off his diaper and trying to sit on the toilet. He's been telling me that he needs to go to the bathroom throughout the day. One morning we woke up early and we found him butt naked! I refused to potty train him because of everything happening and going to happen. However you can't ignore all of that when it happens daily. That night I found the training toilet and got out the underwear, pulled together the Easter candy and started the day with potty training. He has surprised us all! It took two days before he pooed in the toilet and does it every time now. It took about three days of him going pee in the toilet before he tells me every time when he needs to go and stayed dry ALL day! Over the past two and a half weeks, he has had 2-3 accidents where we have had to change his underwear during the day. I have to say that he is doing amazing! This was so much easier then training Tyler. I'd welcome this any day. We are so happy with Caleb.

5. This last one has been a bit of a shocker for, I would say us, but I think that it is really only me. With this pregnancy it seems to have been a lot like the others I have had. The doctor listening to the heart, seeing where the baby was located and how active it was thought it was a boy...I agreed with him. This whole time I was looking forward to having another boy. I LOVE boys! We would have a sports playing, home wrestling, mission going, priesthood holder family. I was excited. April 29th came and I had a thought pop into my head. I wonder if this is a girl. I remember being a little wild thing (well not at home since I had 5 older siblings and a younger one to compete with). I started to worry that I would have a little wild "me" to raise. I told Brian my thoughts and he was so kind and told me that it didn't matter. We would love her no matter what. The next day, we went in for my big ultra sound. We checked out the heart, the blood flow and everything that would or could go wrong that we have seen happen to us or a family member. No red flags yet, but it was still a little early for some to start showing up. SO for now the baby looks good and healthy. We'll be going in again for another one in a few months just to make sure. We did find out that it was in fact a GIRL! I teared up right then. I fears will now come true. I was so shocked. But you can't change this. Brian reassured me that I would be great and that we would love her no matter what. He is always right.  I then thought back to all my prayers of thanking Heavenly Father for another baby and that we would be excited to have another baby in the family. She is meant to be with us. I just hope that she ends up mellowing out the boys instead of joining them. I get a little more excited everyday to know that I'll have a little girl to finally do her hair, dress her up, sew things for and teach to cook. I also look forward to teaching her why she is here and how she can get back to our Father in Heaven. Also a little girl who will love her Daddy. (Instead of two Mama's boys.) 

 I've finally taken the time to sit and down load the pictures that we took of our new house. There are not many of them, but you can get a feel of what the house is like. We are scheduled to close Thursday (two days away), however we are currently waiting to hear if we'd be able to close from our underwriter, or if we'll have to postpone it for another week. We are all on edge and starting to live out of boxes. Don't worry I'm not that good at packing, there is still plenty left to pack. Happy Trails!

In these picture, we don't have a picture of the other bathroom, the two smaller rooms and the room into the front room. Like I said, just a little sampler of what we'll be moving into soon...very soon we hope.

Close up on the granite counter tops and new appliances

Kitchen

This is a large bed room that has a door leading out to the patio

The door leading outside from the great room

This is the master bathroom with granite counter tops, it's a lot bigger then the picture

Master bedroom with a large walk-in closet

This is the front patio

This is the great room looking at the master bathroom on the left ans the laundry room to the right.

Our very large garages with a very large paved driveway and a working water pump nest to the house. Between the garages we found that it attracts bugs, which Tyler is very excited for.

This is off the great room showing the door to the garages on the left and the door leading outside on the right.

This has happened so quickly I still can't believe it myself. Last entry I mentioned that snicky snook that gave away our house to another buyer, that happened on Friday. So our faithful realtor set up houses for us to look at on Saturday. Come early Saturday morning, before 8am, I get a text from our Tim telling me that three new houses went on the market that day and he had set up showings for us. When I did wake up and we got ready, pulling our sick kids, even Brian out of bed, we went to look at houses once again. By the time we met up with Tim, there was a few cancellations, no biggy. We looked at one that we thought would work out if we didn't see anything else. (Right now we needed to be out with our rent already up $300 from before) The next houses, not so much. Tim talked us out of the next house because there was a lot of work that needed to be done on it. On to the last house, one of the new ones that went on the market that day. We walked in and loved it from the start. It was beautiful! Textured walls, everything well done with granite counter tops, a huge one floor layout with a front porch and a large driveway. It was great! We all looked at each other and immediately started everything to put a bid in ASAP! Tim called the other realtor and told him that we were putting in a bid and if there were any bids currently on it, no. He also mentioned something like, my poor clients can't get a break. So many houses have fell through. He knew the words to say. SO we quickly got everything together, wrote a check for the earnest money and paid full price. We were not going to let this one go. He drove it over. Later that day we got a call telling us that there were other bids, but if we raise our price to a certain amount that it would be ours. Of course! So we got together and signed the counter offer and took it over, WE MADE IT! The owner was so nice to give us a second chance before anyone else. I told you our realtor knew what he was saying/doing. The next day we find out that there were multiple offers and everyone was mad that the owner didn't do a best bid and take the best offer. What a blessing, we have a house!!! We are closing April 5th, ready to move in on the 6th. When we find the cord to transfer pictures from the camera to the computer, we'll post pictures. Until then, two more weeks!!!

So today I was super excited and then fell to the couch and wanted to scream my head off.
The last blog I mentioned that we had put two offers in on two different houses. One house I still haven't seen and the other house was a very nice house a street away from the other house. We went to see this house Tuesday of this week. On Thursday we get a call saying that our offer has potential, however with other offers coming in and more showing yet that evening, we had to do something quick. They wanted a little more, or closer to their asking price. SO we did. Today Brian calls and tells me that they accepted All the paper work for our offer got set up, even our closing date. I was so excited, WE HAVE A HOUSE!!! Our Realtor had everything ready and was on his way to drop off the contract when he gets a call, 10 min. way from the office telling him that someone else came in with a better offer so we are out of luck. What horrible luck! After all that we went through with the owner and he just gets something better and throws us out the window. Of course I went and started calling everyone to tell them that we had a house and now I have to let everyone know again that someone doesn't have any ethics. So we are left with the house that I still can't get into see, with one week remaining, if we don't hear anything we are withdrawing our offer. Either we find a better house or we hear something from the bank and I can see it!
To top it off, since I'm venting, my husband and two boys are sick.
On the upside, today is the last day to get my birthday "buy one first, then get your birthday one FREE" smoothie at Orange Julius, which I'm going to make that happen! Now tell me why on your birthday do they make you buy a smoothie, why not give you a free little one?
Who's up for a smoothie!?!

It sure was a nice try to do one blog entry a month. I look at it this way, I made two entries in January and I'm just doing February's a few days late...it's good thinking and could work only if I can do one more in March...which I probably will. Pray for me!
A few things have happened in February that have been a bit exciting.
1. Valentine's day - Brian surprised me by coming home for lunch, which he never does, and brought me chocolates and a dozen beautiful red roses. It was wonderful! Tyler was jealous, he wanted a red rose too. He thought they were for him because they were red and red was his favorite color. So I gave in and gave him one rose to put in a vase. He then sat in front of it while eating, took it where ever he went and even talked to it. We then were able to go out to dinner and a movie for a very nice date night.
2. We put an offer on a house that is short sale. We keep hearing different things and to this day we still haven't heard anything from the bank.
3. My birthday - We actually celebrated it the weekend before. Dinner and a movie once again, we are getting spoiled, thanks to Gary and Emmalee who watch our kids for us. (We return the favor for them too, don't worry.) It was just a normal day, but oh the expressions of love and wishes from everyone I know. It made me feel loved and thought of through my not so special day. Thanks everyone!
4. This actually happened March 1st but... I went to see the doctor and was amazed to see a little body with arms and legs kicking and waving around in me and the heart beating. Yes, we are expecting. I just finished my 1st trimester without any problems or sickness, thankfully. The due date is September 19th. We are all excited, especially Tyler. Starting about 6 months ago Tyler has asked and pleaded with me to have two more boys and a girl. He really wants more siblings. He must know something right? He has been great about his whole thing. Caleb I'm afraid will be the one to wish the baby back from where he came from. We'll have to work on him.
5. Another offer- This happened tonight. Our realtor called and told us that there was a MUST see house, so we went to see it. It was gorgeous. Yes, there will probably be a little work, but upgraded well. We decided to put an offer in here, it is currently vacant and it isn't a short sale. It has a few more things that we like. Compared to the other house... I still haven't seen it since the guy never will let us in to see it.  Brian got to see it once, but with all the obstacles, I felt better with this one. We'll just have to see what happens next.
What a crazy month, but it has been a good one. We hope that March will bring even better news!!!

The last day of the month comes and to keep my goal of blogging alive, here it is.

We celebrated Brian's birthday this month. It was exciting for him, not so much for us though. In the wee hours of the morning, we made him breakfast, wished him a Happy Birthday, and he opened his cards and present. It was nice. Brian was then off to work for a half day. The other half he spent with friends on the mountain boarding. He loved his birthday!


One thing that I was able to do was make a cake for a friend's daughter this month.  It was her 8th birthday so it needed to be a special cake. I made her a Belle cake from Beauty and the Beast. I learned a lot from that adventure. I have also created my own cream cheese fondant recipe that was told to me from experts that it couldn't be done. It isn't as easy to work with as regular fondant, but it tastes a whole lot better!




Another exciting thing is that we are now pre-qualified to buy a home. We just have to find one now.

The rest of the month has been filled with taking Tyler to school, shopping, cleaning and cooking. Just about the average thing I do.

  

I've noticed that my last two posts were from different years so that means I have an average of one post a year.

So far this year I have done two things that I only did once last year, post a comment and wash my car. This year I would like to make my 2012 goals of those that I only do once or a few times. I already have two goals set! Here are some more goals that I want to do more of:

1. Wash my car once a quarter or more if needed.
2. Write a blog post once a month, summarizing that month, or more if needed.
3. Finish reading both (not just one) of the conference Ensigns before the next General Conference.
4. Share the gospel with someone.
5. My annual goal of reading a church book (other then the scriptures), and another book. 

I know that I can do these things since I half did them the year before, this year I will just be improving. Good luck to everyone else with their goals for 2012!