Landscaping

This past weekend Tyler and his younger brother Justin worked on
our landscaping and took our ever evolving yard a step closer to
being a front yard we like. We still have to plant flowers and "HOA"
approved plants and then we'll fill in some areas with bark or mulch
to finish it off. Thanks for the help Justin. Here are pics of the first
3 stages, stage 4 to come soon...............hopefully!

Christmas... Random...

Kissey kissey

Pappa and toad muggling aka snuggling :)

Pappa and Crew

Gingerbread houses.... What we thought would be a fun family activity, well it wasn't not for our family anyway.... lets just say kids eating all the candy, frosting EVERYWHERE, and perfectionist parents not a great mix!

I love both of these pictures with grandpas hat on the kids... They are both pulling kind of cute funny faces!

Grace was so helpful feeding the dog..... Cat food :)

Crew was busy eating the dirt out of any plant he could find!

Slackers of the Blog....What we've been up to.

Well once again it's been too long since we've updated our blog so here
it goes.


We had our good friends Adam and Andrea and their little cutie
pie Amelia up for a weekend just before Thanksgiving. We went
to the Christmas tree lighting ceremony at the Anthem Outlets.
They had a concert with Dueling Pianos, Choo Choo Soul (Grace's Favorite)
and a new, amazing singer Savannah Outen. It was a great weekend
with the Jardon's and we can't wait til we have another one.


For Thanksgiving Tyler's whole family came out and spent the week
at our place. Spencer and Carly came up and Grandma Sally even made
the trip with Ty's parents. We had so much fun and of course ate way
too much food. We played lots of games, watched alot of movies and
just enjoyed hanging out with everyone. And we'll excuse Kristy and Brett
since he had business to take care of putting the Utes in their place that
Saturday.

After Thanksgiving we went and found this beauty of a Christmas tree
at a local lot. We brought it home and got it all decorated, kids under 2
provide unbelievably good help puttingup ornaments. It finally brought
the Christmas spirit to our home in snowless Arizona. We also put lights
up on our house and have really enjoyed that. Our neighborhood has
more houses decorated than any neighborhood we've ever lived in. It
must be the warmer weather that gets everyone out and willing to put
lights up. It has really made this season fun driving home at night with
the kids and slowly winding through Anthem looking at all of the lights.


http://allijphotography.com/blog/?p=84

Last we went and had our family Christmas pictures taken so we can
send out our Christmas cards this year. Alli does such an amazing job.
so that's what we've been up to. Next week I head out to Wyoming to
spend two weeks with my family for Christmas. Ty will fly out the
following week to join us. Grace has loved Christmas this year and is
hooked on Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer and Santa Clause is coming
to town. It has been so much fun seeing her excitement and we can't
wait til Christmas morning when she gets to see what Santa brought her.

A Little Update

Well it's been awhile since we've posted anything so here is a
quick update on what we've been up to. We're still doing little
projects around the house but we've settled in. We have great
neighbors and love our neighborhood. This weekend my sister
and I had a girls weekend with both of our youngest kids, Crew
and Lor's baby girl Bella. Tyler took Grace to Albuquerque, NM
with his brother Spencer to have a weekend with his family and
watch the BYU UNM game. About a week ago Tyler and I started
our biggest project, antiquing our kitchen cabinets. Lor and I
worked all weekend trying to get things finished. We didn't quite
make it but we are VERY close. Thanks for ALL your hard work
Lor, you are AWESOME! Anyway here are some pics from the weekend.


The cabinets before we started. We'll post pics when were done.

Gracie and grandpa watching the game.

Gracie loved watching the cheerleaders and all the action from right up front.

Grace, dad, and Cosmo the cougar. And yes Tyler has a

moustache. He's doing the Movember thing and growing

a moustache to raise awareness about men's prostate

and testicular cancer. I guess it's some big thing, if you

haven't heard about it check out http://www.movember.com/.

Goodthing it's for a good cause!!

Finally Moved In.

Well we are finally in our house, we've been here for a week now and loving our new place. Even though we went through a nightmare of a lender things worked out in the end and we are just grateful to have our own home. Thanks to all of our good friends who helped us move (Tyler S., Kyle, Troy, Kevin) couldn't have done it without you. And a HUGE thanks to Tyler's mom Debbie, sorry your visit was such a laborious trip but we seriously appreciate everything you did to help. Our first weekend here was spent unpacking boxes, getting organized and landscaping. Tyler had to go to town on the front yard because everything was overgrown. Above is the before and after pictures. And don't worry the pretty red flower bush (bogainvillea) it will be back shortly. I know my mom will be shocked we cut "that pretty thing" down. Anyway, things are going good and we are still working on little projects here and there and will have more pictures soon. Bye for now.

Recent photos of my favorites :) I love my kiddos :)

Here a few pics of the kids... Dont mind the mess in all the pics. We have been in the process of moving now for the past..... I dont know month ;) Anyway Enjoy our kids they are the best!!!

Pack your stuff your mov...you're mo... you're... not going anywhere!

Well this weekend we were supposed to be moving into our brand new house. Exciting times right? Not so much, not in the circus land we live in. Here's the events of the last week and why we are not moving into our lovely little casa bonita this weekend as planned. After being conditionally approved for our loan a week and a half ago, we turned in all of the final conditional paperwork the bank required for final approval and closing. We were told once that was done we would be off to sign final documents, close the loan, get our keys and move into our house early the next week. So we finish that Friday and are told everything good to go and start our planning that weekend for next week's move. Monday I get a phone call saying the bank is 3 to 4 days behind and won't get to us until Thursday or Friday. Great, awesome, couldn't be better. So after waiting all week Thursday rolls around and I get a phone call saying the bank won't accept our most recent bank statments that show we have the money to close this loan. Supposedly we printed them online. Little do they know I went into Wells Fargo had them printed out and faxed directly to my mortgage broker. So now I'm told I have to get these same statements printed out again but this time notarized by the bank. SERIOUSLY? Since you can't argue withe the bank lending you your money I go and get a notarized printout of the exact same account snapshot and fax it over to my broker. All this with two kids while my wife is at work, not a good task for dads to try, very easy for a mother, I know. Good thing for banks and their jar of freaking dum dum suckers. So the bank faxes over the new "notarrized" statements, I call our broker, she says she got em and everything should be done tomorrow, this was the only thing the bank needed. So today rolls around and were hopeful that we will be able to sign. What fools we are. I get a call about 11:30am from my realtor this time. He is saying that the bank now wants us to sign a new contract dated 5 days later than the original contract. Realtor sends us new contracts, we both sign those, send them back. They say they will send them to the seller have him sign them and send them to our broker who will send them to the bank and then "we are good to go." it's 9:21pm right now and after two unreturned, unasnswered calls to my realtor 3 unanswered, unreturned calls to our mortgage broker we don't have a clue what is going on or where things stand with the bank and our house. I swear buying a house is fun and worth the effort, really I do???????????????????????? If something doesn't happen next week you might be reading about alot more than two angry "hoping to be" homeowners. So there you go, my happy little update for the week!