Birthday week

We meet rain or shine to workout with my workout group, FiA. This Saturday it was very wet snowing and windy and so cold, but we rocked it. 

We went to the aquarium to celebrate Spencer's birthday and my mom and sister and family came along. So fun. We went to In N Out afterward, which is always tasty. 

The aquarium was really nice. Lots of cool stuff there. We pretty well wore the kids out. 

I made a double decker chocolate cake with chocolate ice cream for Spencer and my birthday. It was so tasty. 

He's the big ten! This last decade has fairly flown by. Can't believe he's that old already. He's such a fun kid. 

Sunday night my sister and her family came over and we played Killer Bunnies and Cover Your Assets and ate some really amazing homemade donuts my in-laws made. So, so good. It's really fun to live near family. And Bill's face in this picture is the best. Haha!

Chloe has really come into her own this last month on drawing. She's writing a ton, beginning to read, and draws all the time. She's drawn all over the inside of this box, and much like her sister Genevieve at this age, she draws way more detailed than I would expect. It's really awesome to watch her skills develop. 

January is my favorite month

Chloe helped me pick out the backing for this quilt for my friend. We picked a minky pattern and it is so beautiful on the back of this lovely quilt. Back story, a dear friend of mine from South Carolina lost her mom to breast cancer last year. She had been in the process of making this quilt when she passed and my friend reached out to me late last year wondering if I might be able to finish it for her. Sight unseen I agreed without a second thought. Of course I could do that for her! Well she sent me the quilt and I discovered that it was this double wedding ring quilt, which is a REALLY hard quilt pattern! Everything is cut on the bias so it pulls very strangely. Sewing curves in quilting is a rather advanced skill. It was a bit daunting but I consulted my trusty Google and found a lady that did a tutorial that was incredibly helpful. And of course I have my mother-in-law here too and she's one expert quilter, has been doing it for 30 plus years, so she helped so much. 

Well I finished this beauty last night. I quilted it with a bubbly ring sort of design and I really love how it turned out. 

I'm going to go shopping today to find some matching hot pink fabric so that color will pop and put the binding on and get it in the mail to my friend. I'm really proud of this project. 

We haven't gotten out much lately, what with Covid and all. We just got comfy at home and don't do a lot. But Saturday I decided we needed some fresh air and sunshine, so I got the kids away from their screens and took them to this super fun park in South Jordan. They had a blast. 

Chloe and Genevieve wanted me to take pictures of their hair after Grandma did it yesterday. She actually did a really beautiful side braid on Genevieve, but that had come out by the evening and she did a bun instead and Genevieve liked that too. 

I have a lovely group of ladies that I workout with on Saturdays and on Sunday afternoons we take a walk. This week we hiked up one of the mountains in Herriman to drop off our FiA rock at this little rock garden on the trail. Super fun and I dearly love these ladies. 

January is my favorite month. It's my birthday, my anniversary, and Spencer's birthday. I know most people just think January is in the depths of winter and depressing, but I've always loved it. Bill and the kids convinced me to open up my birthday gift early. He got me this foot massager and goodness, it is lovely. I'm using it as I type this post. Pretty sure we're going to wear this thing out from use. Haha! He did good. We went out to dinner and did some shopping Saturday night to celebrate our anniversary. 12 years strong and happy as ever to have married such an amazing guy. 

I got this hand massage gun last week too for some hand therapy after the one my therapist recommended ended up kind of cheap and junky. Turns out this one is total overkill for hand massage, but holy cow, so great for massaging literally anything else. I'm sure we'll also wear this thing out from use. It's wonderful. 

New Year's

 We had a low-key New Year's Eve and Day. But my kids all did stay up until midnight for the first time this year. Well, except for Chloe, who conked out at 11:30 PM as you can see in the picture. We watched Napoleon Dynamite and laughed and laughed and laughed and we rang our outdoor dinner bell like crazy at midnight and watched some pretty great fireworks that were being set off all over the valley. I got a 4.75 mile run in New Year's Eve to end the year and a 5K with Bill in on New Year's Day that we signed up for a month or so ago. It feels so good to be running strong again. That's always a moving target and right now running is going well and that's so very nice. I'm grateful to have weathered 2020 and very hopeful for a great 2021.

Goal level unlocked

Well, we've finally done it. We are buying a home! Specifically a townhome in Bluffdale right off the freeway in a cute little new neighborhood there. I wrote last week about the model we had picked and were so excited about. Well, the weekend after we put our name on the list for the Buckingham plan, knowing it had a waiting list and we wouldn't get to sign until March, my head sort of exploded. I was trying to figure out where everything would fit and it started to feel like there wasn't enough room. I really loved the floor plan and the price, but it suddenly started to feel too small. It hit me that Monday that I'd forgotten about our treadmill and there was literally nowhere in the house to put it. That was the nail in the coffin on the Buckingham plan. We just needed a bit more space for our crew and possessions.

Thankfully, on our first tour we had walked through the Enclave townhomes and we liked them generally but set them aside because they were more pricey and we loved the Buckingham. So I started looking back at those floor plans, chatted extensively with Bill and some other family members, ended up touring Enclave again, and we decided to change floor plans. We picked the Stanford, which is 500 sq. ft. larger than the Buckingham, has four bedrooms, an unfinished basement, a small back patio, and feels ever so nice. It is also $30,000 more to start, but over the weekend the plans all went up $7,000 so the Buckingham started to feel not as cheap anyway. 

I met with the sales person on Wednesday and got on the list for the Stanford. Then Christmas came and we enjoyed that and Monday she got back in touch with me. Turns out the Stanford was available now to sign, so I wouldn't have to go through any more price increases and we could move in a couple months earlier as opposed to starting build in March. Huzzah! The kids will be able to start at their new school at the beginning of next school year and we may have moved in already or will be soon thereafter.

It's working out so incredibly well. Yesterday we met with our realtor and the salesperson and picked our structural upgrades and put down our earnest money. We signed all the paperwork last night and today I uploaded all the paperwork for our loan application. It's all falling into place so easily. It feels so wonderful to finally be moving forward on this. 2020 was a year of huge upheaval for my family and I really wasn't sure how we were going to land. It has ended up working out ever so well. Long-term I don't know if we'll stay in Utah, but for now we plan to be here and being able to buy a home is a fulfillment of a long-term goal that still felt very far away in Washington. I never would have expected to be at this point six months ago when we were still happily plugging away at our life in Washington. The process was rough, but there have been so many blessings. 

This is the link to the floorpan.

https://www.woodsidehomes.com/utah/floorplan-enclave-at-day-ranch-stanford-dre--1166-7537

And this floorpan is very similar except the upstairs fourth bedroom is a loft in this one. But it has a virtual tour if you're into that sort of thing. Which I totally am, so that's why I'm sharing, hahaha. 

https://www.woodsidehomes.com/utah/Floorplan-Enclave-at-Day-Ranch-Harvard-DRE-1166-7538

House and car and hiking

 It's been a busy weekend. My SIL tipped me off to a new builder in Bluffdale that I hadn't heard about previously. I checked out their website. It looked promising. I drove over there on Friday. I liked the feel of the area. I setup some appointments and Bill and I and our realtor toured the models on Saturday and that solidified our decision. We put our names down on the wait list to build! We're third on the list, so ours won't start being built until March and they estimate eight months to build. So we'll be here at Bill's parents' house for longer than we thought, but we're just super excited to have found a place. This is the one we picked.

https://www.woodsidehomes.com/utah/floorplan-regency-at-day-ranch-buckingham-drr-1165-7437

I snapped this picture from the model home as we left on Saturday. Such a beautiful view! 

We also decided practically on a whim to solve our one-car dilemma we've had since we sold our old one in Seattle and never bought a new one, but then moved here and had home buying priorities and paying off debt wishes. So we wanted to buy a car but were torn how much to spend and what to get. Bill's sister and BIL bought a new to them car and my FIL took it down to them this weekend. They planned to get rid of their old car, and we decided it would work great for us as a stop gap while we have other things we're focused on, so we're buying it and expect it'll work for us for a few more years hopefully until we're more interested in doing a good car search. Woot! A house and a car in one weekend! And both at prices that work really well for us. Feels really good! 

We took the kids hiking up to a little mountain near our house in Herriman. It was beautiful! Snowy enough to be fun, not enough to make it miserable. We did a little over three miles with the kids. It was an exercise heavy day for me. I ran three miles in the morning, then went to my hour-long FiA exercise group, then did this three-mile hike. Then started the process to buy a townhome, lol. It was a GREAT day. 

A few pictures from the hike.

House Hunting

 I didn't do much this week except look for houses. It's kind of time consuming, haha! I've looked at a ton of houses. None of them made me want to jump on them and put on offer on one. But it's okay. We have some time, so we don't need to stress about getting just any house. Hopefully one will come along soon that we really do want though.

I did make these tastes this weekend. Cranberry tarts. 

And last night I got started on my friend's quilt after it sat in my project pile for at least a couple months. This is a big quilt and it's going to be really pretty. Curves are complicated, so that's why I waited so long, but I found some good techniques and it's coming along nicely.

December

 I love this time of year. I love shopping for gifts and listening to Christmas music and making treats. I love the focus on Christ. I love family time. Even in Covid era, it's still turning out to be a wonderful month. 

We went ice skating this week with friends at our local splash pad turned ice ribbon. It was delightful. 

Bill got his professional work photos back. This is one of them. I love them! 

I also spent the week getting pre-approved for home loans and driving around areas of interest. It was a good start to our finding a home process. This month is shaping up to be a great one.