A Good Morning

Yesterday was SUCH a rough day. Emma was extra grouchy...practicing the terrible twos or something...and I had four extra kids all afternoon who had way too much energy stored up after being in school all day. I guess you can't blame them. So after fighting all day, dealing with a prank 911 call and the cops, and just feeling very inadequate I was done. I dreaded getting up this morning, but it really has been one of the best mornings I have had in a long time. I actually slept for 6 straight hours, which is probably more than I get most nights. I ended up getting up at 6, right after Jon left for work. I took a nice long shower, ate breakfast, read my scriptures, and got to do all the blogging I wanted. It has been such a nice, peaceful morning. I know it's only 7 now and things could change, but it makes such a difference for me to be able to start my day off on a good note. We have a music/singing time group for Emma this morning and a couple small errands to run this afternoon. I'm not babysitting today and the weather is beautiful so I know we can spend some time outside. It's going to be a good day.

Getting Ready to Move

Our big moving day is this Saturday! I am SO excited...if you couldn't tell from all my posts about it. :) We are so ready. We were able to furnish the entire house with nice stuff for free. Several of the ward members here had stuff they were getting rid of and we got a couple things for free off of Craigslist...including a brand new bed and a piano. We really feel so blessed in every aspect of this move. We feel so good about where we are going and know that it is where we are supposed to be. And we feel so blessed to have had everything work out so nicely the way it did.
I was able to go to our house last Friday and take some pictures so I thought I'd post some.

The kitchen is by far my favorite room in the house. I love it! We have more cupboard and drawer space than I know what to do with. It's great.

I think this room is so pretty. I love the counters and cupboards.

This is part of the living room.

The kids room

Our lovely WHITE bathroom. We need to add a lot of color.


And this is our room.


You've gotta love old house quirks....like how the back door is in our bedroom. :)

Funny Girl

These are just some random pictures from the last couple of weeks...all of Emma of course. She is such a funny little girl. She has so much personality and is always doing things to make us laugh. She loves being silly, especially with Jon's little sisters. We are going to miss having so much family around!

Emma loves glasses. If she finds them she puts them on. I laughed so hard when I saw her with these.

Emma has recently discovered My Little Ponies, which she calls panies. She loves ponies. She also loves Barbies and will point out Barbie in every book or movie that has her in it. We were at Blockbuster a few weeks ago and walked by a movie that had some cheerleaders on the cover. Emma got so excited when she saw it and yelled Barbie. She didn't want to put the movie back after that. It was so funny.

Another favorite is play doh. Before she can start playing though, she has to stick a blob of it on her forehead...not sure why, but she thinks it's funny.

What's more fun on a rainy day than taking all the pillows off of the couch? We had so much fun.

We love our little girl. It is so fun to watch her learn and grow. She is such a chatterbox and copies everything that we say. It's so fun (and sometimes scary) to listen to the things that come out of her mouth. I can't believe how fast she's growing up.

Hike

We went on a little hike on saturday up in the hills around Danville.It was a beautiful day with around 70 degree weather. Emma was a great little hiker and walked almost the whole time. The hills were green and beautiful. Emma loved seeing all the cows. Jon also found a frog which Emma repeatedly asked to hold. She held it several times and cried when it was time to let it go.
It was fun to hike as a family and enjoy the nice day.

Moving!

We just found out this morning that we got the duplex that we wanted! I am so excited. We are going to move March 1...2 more weeks. I've got to seriously get busy scouring craigslist and freecycle for furniture and other household things since we sold most of our stuff before coming here...it was all college apartment furniture and not worth hauling and storing. :)
I'm excited to have our own place again. I'm excited to pay our overpriced California rent (although it is less than what we thought we would have to pay). I'm excited to get to live in a place where nobody is above or below us, though we'll still share a kitchen and bedroom wall. It's a good feeling to be back on our feet and starting our lives in the real world.

House Hunters

We had a very successful house hunting day today. It was kind of fun to go look at some different apartments/duplexes/houses...and there were some really different ones. Like the "seperate in-law unit" that was really connected to the main house. We were walking through the apartment and I walked into a bedroom because the door was open. It was supposedly a 2 bedroom apartment and this was the 3rd bedroom I'd seen so I asked about it and the guy told me it was part of their house. Hmm...not sure how comfortable I'd be with that.
But the whole day felt like House Hunters (for those of you who have seen the show on HGTV). For those who haven't, they have a couple looking to buy a house go look at 3 houses and then they choose one to buy. So, we played our own little House Hunters game, picked our top three, and then very quickly narrowed it down to one...a cute little duplex in Burlingame, just south of San Francisco. I really want this duplex. It is the cutest house with a gorgeous kitchen (with a dishwasher!), a huge basement (I'm thinking play room), and our own brand new washer and dryer! So, we've turned in our application and hopefully it works out. If not, it was still fun to have our own little House Hunters day.

Week in Review

What a week! This has probably been one of the longest weeks of my life. It wasn't even bad, it just felt long. I was trying to remember yesterday how long ago Jon started work and I kept thinking it was 2 or 3 weeks ago. Then I realized that it really was just on Monday. After having him home all the time for the last month and a half, the days are so much longer now that he's gone 12 hours a day. But he loves his job and I am so grateful for that. He loves what he does and there are all sorts of fun perks to working there. It is so nice to have a husband who comes home happy because he loves what he does during the day. The only bummer is the commute...we really only live an hour from Dreamworks, but with traffic it takes 1 1/2-2 hours each way. I really want to move soon. It is so tempting to take our tax return that is supposed to pay off our credit card and use it to move out instead...but that is not an option. So, we'll do this for another month and enjoy not having to pay rent for now.
It has been a beautiful, warm, sunny week so me and Emma have been able to go outside a lot, which she loves, especially when the cats are outside. The longer I live here, the more determined I am to never live in a cold place again.

Somehow these were the ONLY pictures I got this week...I really need to be better. Anyway, it was just really funny because Emma had been doing puzzles and I ran upstairs for a minute. I came back down and she was sitting in the bucket of puppets. I don't know where she found the sunglasses but she managed to get them on right and she was having a conversation with the 2 barbies that she's holding.

She sat in the bucket for a long time playing with different toys. At one point she picked up the baby that's on the floor. She got one of the little barbies in her other hand and put it's head to the baby's mouth like a bottle. She was pretty proud of herself.