Happy Belated Paczki day!

I love paczkis and I haven't had one in years. So this year I indulged myself and bought my two favorite flavors, raspberry and cream cheese. I thuroughly enjoyed making myself fat while eating about 5 over the last two days. I know that's pretty bad, but sometimes you just have to live a little. These were the first paczkis for Jaxson. He wasn't as thrilled as me. In fact, he started to eat one, thought it was too messy, asked for a fork to finish with and then ended up not finishing anyway because it was getting all over his clothes. He's such a weird kid. He usually doesn't care about being messy.

The Good & The Bad

THE GOOD: I made an appointment to get my taxes done for free on campus next Friday! I am so happy about this because last year I ended up paying almost $100 to get my taxes filed. Once I get my tax return I will be joining a gym, I need to get more exercise.

THE BAD: I had a midterm to take on Saturday, but I completely spaced it. I knew that I was forgetting something, but I couldn't remember what. Luckily I was able to take it yesterday but I had to pay a late fee. Grrrrrr! At least I am pretty sure that I did well on it.

Randomness

We had a surprise visitor during Sacrament Meeting today. Elder Cook, yes the General Authority, decided to spend sacrament meeting with us. It really was a surprise for all, the Bishop didn't even know Elder Cook would be coming today until his morning meetings. He bore his testimony at the end of the meeting. Only crazy, random things like this happen in Utah. It was a pleasant surprise and a great privilege to have heard from Elder Cook today.

On Friday evening I went to a show, all by myself, called Living Legends. The show consisted of dances from different nationalities such as Mexican, Native American, Polynesian, and others. It was amazing, despite going by myself. I was really wanting to see this show and it I also have a friend that performs with the Living Legends group. Tara, my friend, is Native American and she does a pretty amazing dace that involves hoops that she puts all over her body and makes different shapes with them. Anyway, the point is that it was a very good show. A bonus to going to the show was the enjoyable sight of Polynesian men.

Starting on the 3rd of March I will be spending a month in a 4th grade classroom. I am looking forward to this so that I can get a better idea of what grade I want to teach. I am just a bit stressed because there are so many more lessons that we are required to teach, as opposed to last semester. Despite all the work that will need to be done I can't wait to get started. We have to drive through Provo Canyon in order to get to Midway to the elementary school. I am already hoping that there will be one day that the weather is so bad they close the canyon so that I can have a day off. Pathetic I know, but this is how I feel. I am ready to get this semester done and over with.

Just to let you know, the link to my blog does work now. I am posting on my blog but I will try to copy and paste to this blog.

Happy Belated Birthday

I know that these birthday wishes are overdue and I have thought often about making a video to sing you all a birthday song. I went to go make the video but the site that I used is no longer available and I don't know where else to go. So here it is in writing instead. "Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday dear Charlie, Hillary, Alexis, Merrit, and Jaxson! Happy birthday to you!" I hope all of you had wonderful birthdays. Love you all!

Bro. Douglas from the Howell ward, the guy who fixed the electical stuff, came and fixed the furnace today and installed a new hot water heater. The furnace is working great. He couldn't try the heater though because there is a iron filter on the water pump that brings the water in from the well and it's missing a part. Without that part the water just flows all over the floor when you turn it on. So we have to find the missing part and replace it so we can turn the water on and try the water heater. I just hope that there are no other leaks in any other water pipes (I'm counting on leaks, but hoping I'm wrong!). I have become addicted to the DIY network, especially the program they have called Sweat Equity. It's hard to watch them do all these cool things with their spaces and not want to do the same for mine. I'm just trying to take their ideas and adapt them to our house. It's so fun adding sweat equity to our home. It's going to be so great when we're finished. I'm going to try to go to the house tomorrow to check on the furnace and I'll try to take some more updated pictures to post.

Jaxson was so excited for his birthday. He's been asking if it's his birthday everyday, several times a day, for a couple of weeks now. He wanted me to make him a red car cake. I tried my best, but the frosting didn't turn out as red as I had hoped. He was also anxious to get out of his "baby" car seat and into Makayla's booster seat. She has been using one with a back on it that we have given to Jaxson now (he's such a big boy) and we have a booster with out a back for her to use until she is 8 (that's the law now). To make matters worse, Charlie put Jaxson in the front seat, in his new booster, on his birthday. Now Jaxson thinks he gets to ride there all the time and continues to ask me to let him. I have to keep telling him it was just for his birthday and he isn't going to be able to sit in the front very much. He doesn't seem to hear me though because he keeps on asking :). It's so much nicer to get him in and out of the car now that he's in a booster. What freedom I have now.

P.S. Mom told me that Les's wrestling team won districts. Congrats to you guys! Charlie's team didn't win districts. They are up in Traverse City this weekend for Individual districts. They were only able to seat six of their team. I know this sounds bad, but I really hope none of them go on passed districts. I'm ready for Charlie to have more time to work on our house, and be at home.

We are officially, officially new home owners

On Friday, our realtor emailed us to let us know that she had received the closing papers from the seller. See the seller didn't come to our closing and also didn't provide us with the signed deed at closing. We had to "close in escrow" which means we signed all our closing papers and then had to send them off to the seller to be evaluated and signed before they would send the deed. But our mortgage company wouldn't release the money to them until they sent the deed. So the mortgage was held in an escrow account until that happened, thus it was called "closing in escrow." Our realtor said that this kind of situation is happening more and more with foreclosure homes. Now we have all the necessary paperwork signed by both parties and we are the official owners. That means I go tomorrow to file our homestead exemption paperwork with the township for our property taxes.

We have begun the long process of working on the house too. The electrician, Bro. Douglas and sons, came and fixed all the electrical work last week. He couldn't get the furnace going but thinks we can just buy new parts for it to fix it and not have to buy a whole new unit. That will have us about $1000. My brother, Kurt, and his wife, Heather, came to help begin the demo portion of the work. They came on Saturday and we were actually able to get a lot accomplished. We stripped most of the wall paper in the house. There is still that ugly floral wallpaper in the dining room left but that's about it. We also had the kids tear down some drop ceiling tiles out of all the bedrooms upstairs. They thought that was fun. We bagged it all up and took it out to the garage. There was some junk in the basement we got moved into the garage. Then today Charlie and I went back and he took out the cabinets in the kitchen and I squeegeed what was left of the water in the basement to the sump pump. We were glad Charlie took down the cabinets because we found some mold behind some of them that are located under the upstairs bathroom. That means something up there had been leaking so we will need to figure out where from. It's a good thing we were planning on pretty much gutting the upstairs bathroom anyway. We have our start, there is still a long way to go, but we've started. We hope to be able to have it all finished by the end of April. That just means Charlie will start to go over there everyday after work once wrestling is finished. I was looking forward to having him home earlier, but it looks like I'll have to wait a little longer for that (although, it's definitely worth the wait to have our house finished).

We are home owners again!

We were finally able to close on our house on Friday, after so much frustration and work. It will pay off though. It was such a nice birthday present. To top it off, my mom and dad took Charlie and I out to dinner and it was great. I had a really good time. So our first step to fixing the house is to get the skunk out of the basement and then the electrician is coming tomorrow to restring the electric in the basement so we can have power to check the furnace and for power tools and such. We went this weekend to tarp the one part of the roof that was so bad that it started to leak into the house. Yes, we had to do some of it yesterday and break the Sabbath, but Charlie is so busy during the days of the week that we wouldn't have been able to finish it any other way. We are happy it's done now because we have rain in the forcast this week. The roof will have to wait until next month to be fixed. We just didn't want anymore water in the house while we wait. We can't move in until all the work it finished, per our rehab loan rules, so we plan to go as fast as we can. It looks like we will have until April to stay where we are. The redemption period will be up on March 8th and then we will have 30 days after that to be out. We are hoping to get that 30 days extended, but we aren't holding our breath. The realtor who will be listing the house once the redemption period is finished told me that the bank who owns the house doesn't usually let people stay in the house once the redemption period is over. We can't officially ask for permission until the redemption period is over, so we will know more by March. Either way, I'd like to have the work on our new house finished by the first of April just to be on the safe side. We are all pretty excited. I had to pick the kids up from school on Friday so we could make it to the closing on time. We told the kids that I had to pick them up so we could go get my birthday present. So when I picked them up Makayla said to me, "So are you going to see what we get for you?" Because it's suppose to be a surprise, right? I told her that I had to. She asked why they couldn't wrap it so I wouldn't see. I told her that the present was too big to wrap. She said that that was impossible and I replied that the present was as big as a house. She said that was impossible. So I told her it was a house and she got the biggest smile on her face and exclaimed, "We got the house!" Our kids have been waiting for forever to buy that house. In fact, Jaxson said almost everyday to me, "I want to buy the big house." And I'd have to reply that we were trying to. Yesterday as we were leaving, after we had tarped the roof, he started to whine that he wanted to buy the house and we tried to explain to him that we had finally. But I think it's just been so long that we haven't been able to that he just doesn't understand that that has changed now. Yeah for us! Thanks for all your prayers and thoughts on our behalf. We know it helped.

WE HAVE A HOUSE

A price was agreed a pond this morning on the house located at 1225 River Rd, Fairmont WV!! Chuck will start all the necessary paper work on Monday. The house sets empty so hopefully we can get moved soon. We want to thank everyone who have been praying for us.

GOOD NEWS!!

I just waned to let every one now that Ed and I are getting married. We are going to get married at the Howell building on June 20th. The wedding will be out side by the fire pit and the resection will be in the building. We are going to have a baroque so it will be late lunch kinda thing. Every one that is reading this is welcome to come.

GOOD N

At it again

Hope that this link works http://ncwv.fnismls.com/publink/LeftFrame.aspx?GUID=65b37902-a1a4-4c41-a56d-874f119023cc&Report=Yes&f=l#nogo House 10064087 This is the house that Dad looked at last night and fell in love with it. (That is if men fall in love with houses) He told me that the attic has high ceilings and that it could be made into two bed rooms with out and trouble. Needs some new flooring in some rooms but nothing that NEEDS to be done. Good neighborhood, on a dead end road, double lot, good resale value and he just kept going on about it. I told him to make an offer and he will tonight. So maybe we'll get a home run this time up to bat.