December 2011 Recap

In December, we bought our first home and moved into it--right before Christmas. There were a lot of repairs we had to schedule (or complete ourselves) at the last minute in order for our short sale to close, not to mention Brandon working retail during the busiest shopping season of the year and traveling out of state for the holidays made this month THE craziest month our family has experienced in a long time. I am SO glad this time in our lives is safely behind us. 

Needless to say, we didn't take a lot of pictures of this time, but here

 are some of our house when it was staged to sell from the online ad: 

 Family room

 Master bedroom

 Kitchen

 Upstairs bathroom

 Front room

 Front room/great room, open into kitchen and dining

 Back yard

 Another view of master, into the hallway (two other bedrooms upstairs)

 View of kitchen and dining room from upstairs landing

 Front of the house

Our moving truck

The great hair-cutting escapade of December '11

Dec 1, 2011

Scott ran in, his "zeeeeh-zerz" hidden behind his back.

"Mommy, you cut Caleb's hair," he said, disapprovingly. Scott's been on a bit of a lying kick lately (imagination development, or so the experts call it), and I could guess the real culprit behind the hair-cutting.

Mug shot

You can kinda see how Scott only cut Caleb's curls on one side. I evened it out.

And now Caleb looks altogether too grown-up for his own good. And Scott is grounded from scissors.

November 2011 Recap

In November we had dinner at the Training Table (thanks to a gift certificate Brandon got for his birthday). 

 Scott (3 1/2) documented the occasion. Kid loves using the camera. 

Caleb (16 months) had some hard times. 

 I canned lots of grape juice, grape jelly, apple juice, and apple sauce. 

 Scott played football in the front yard of our rental with the neighborhood boys. 

 And he built something pretty impressive with the Duplos Caleb got for his birthday.

 Caleb ate some chocolate pudding. 

 And Scott could not be parted from his "Squeegie" hat, even in sleep. Under his head is his favorite toy, his bunny that he got for Easter from the Faraway Grandma. 

 We took many late afternoon walks on these sunny fall days. 

 The boys loved playing in my upside-down piano bench. 

 We went to the Living Planet Aquarium on free day. 

 The boys liked the computers the best (of course). 

 Brandon (and Uncle Eric) both worked at Apple at this time. Somehow, we only have pictures of Eric.

This month and the last month were also filled to the brim with looking at houses and making offers on them. In this real estate market, everything we looked at was a short sale, so many of the properties we offered on would never even see our offer until months later (and there would probably be many offers ahead of ours). But this month we put an offer on the house that would eventually become ours. I'll do a post on our home-buying experience and the link will be here where it's done.

October 2011 Recap

In October, Caleb (15 months) became a climber. He was especially adept at climbing up the jungle gym. 

 He was not so great at climbing down. 

 Scott (3 1/2) as "Squeegie" (Luigi) at the ward HalloweenCarnival. 

 Our family costume. I won best adult costume at the ward party. 

 I'm Princess Peach, Brandon as Mario, Caleb is Toad, and Scott is Luigi. 

 There was a freak snow storm while Brandon was out of town covering a boating event for Harris Publishing. I had to send him pictures. 

 But when he returned, he was able to experience the cold snap for himself, while he and his brothers attended BYU football games. 

 Brandon turned 29 and I made him a Shaun the Sheep cake (his favorite show at the time).