Understatement of the Century

Life has been so crazy with the move out, the move in, end of school, house projects, visitors, and business trips, that I have neglected to shout from the rooftops about my Mr. finishing up his MBA degree!  Words cannot express how proud I am of that guy.  For almost the past two years he has worked full time at Honeywell and was a full time student as well.  Many said he was too young/didn't have enough work experience to be accepted into such a competitive program.  And yet, my determined Mr. rocked the GMAT and started classes in the Fall.  

He had classes on Tuesdays, Thursdays and lots of Saturdays. On Tuesdays and Thursdays he wouldn't get home until 11. And would still wake up to go to work across town the next morning. Saturdays went from 8-5 and Sundays were no rest since most of that time, he was involved with busy callings.

When he finished classes, we went out for dinner (please excuse my Lasik psycho eyes)

It was a small celebration for such a huge accomplishment.  Due to some business trips he had, he didn't walk in graduation.  Wish we could have had all our family here and made it a huge deal.  He deserves a parade for working so hard and knowing what he needs to do so that he can best provide for his family.  What a wonderful man! Congratulations, Michael! Love you!

Closing Time

We closed on our Avondale house this week.  Our first home is officially sold. I will admit it feels nice to only own one house again.  This week felt like I was living like a hobo in the partially empty Avondale house, a pack rat in our unpacked, painting, chaos, Ahwatukee house. (And I was partially living in the car.) Lesson learned: I dislike moving.

It was really hard to clean out our first home.  It was a good house full of great memories (and way too much stuff) It's where we welcomed our Baby Girl and where we started our AZ adventures.  I'm glad I was too stressed to get things out and cleaned to be emotional but it was weird to see someone else's car parked in my garage.

We had fun making it our home. This was our front entry.  I loved all the arches.

This was off the front hall.  It led to our "sitting room," laundry room, 1/2 bathroom, and coat closet.

This was our open family room.  We put in the canned lights in the room which made the lighting a million times better.

This was our kitchen/dining room. I'm going to miss that big pantry.  Every bedroom in this house had nice walk-in closets. Those are going to be extremely missed.

I liked that the raised counter hid my sink so you couldn't immediately see my dirty dishes. :)

 Laila's room was my favorite.

She loved it too.

This is the only pic I can find of our master right now...

I'm going to have to see if I have any other pictures of the other two bedrooms and how the master bedroom just kept going.  It was way too big.

In the "new" house, we've already encountered a few minor situations that we certainly did not have to deal with in our new build in Avondale so we can't help but miss our "old" house.  But we both still feel like it was the right thing to do for our little family.  So we are excited to see our new adventures unfold...

Birthday Love

SO... I'm 27.  I don't know why, but 27 hit me hard.  I'm kind of excited to turn 30.  I don't know if that's just my brain creating an exciting milestone since there aren't any after you turn 21, but 27 just makes me feel old.  I know I'm crazy- and old- but I'm also extremely blessed with amazing family members and friends that remember me and make me feel special.

About a week before my birthday, I got LASIK done. I feel so blessed that I could get it done.  It's definitely one of the most freaky deaky things I have ever done.  As I was sitting there watching my eyes get laser-ed and watching the Dr put my flap back in place, I kept thinking I cannot believe this is even possible! Technology is an amazing thing.  I could go on and on about the blessing of vision and how such a crazy procedure is almost no big deal for these Drs.  But I need to carry on.  That first night I felt like I had been turned into a vampire because my eyes burned, light her, my eyes were red, I'm super white etc.  I was super attractive with red eyes.  But no more glasses!

The day of my birthday, we got the keys to the our new house! My friend, Elizabeth, gave me the hook ups to a bunch of restaurants that give free birthday meals so we celebrated at Black Angus that night.  I love being with my husband and baby.  Life is good when I'm with those two.

Breakfast & Roses

 Just laughing at some of Kelly's jokes...

Dinner

 Kisses... Muah!

After dinner, our wonderful Browns brought over a surprise birthday cake and ice cream.  And Michael picked up his dad from the airport.  He came to town to help up us pretty up the new house!

Friday we headed over to the new house and started painting!

Clearly, Laila and Mason were huge helpers.

Saturday, we packed up most of our material belongings into this truck...

 How did we get so much stuff?!  We felt really blessed that we had wonderful ward members helping us load and then new ward members helping us unload.  We are so lucky.

Then we got back to work painting.... BAH!  But you can see what a transformation it can be.  The "Revere Pewter" on the left is new.  The tan on the right is old.  I'm very excited to get back to the new house and finish up some painting and projects.

This is the living room with a bunch of our stuff and the new paint!

Saturday we also broke in the new pool with Jen and Mason.  After being hot and sweaty packing and unpacking and painting, I'm pretty dang excited about owning a pool!  Hallelujah!

I joked with Michael that after giving me vision and a new house, he's going to have a tough time topping this birthday!  But knowing him, he probably will figure something out... I'm a lucky girl!

Here's to being 27~