Utah! Hiking the Y

We drove to UT in a fury.  We're so excited for Edward and Kayla's wedding and an Archibald reunion. We haven't seen family in a long time and hardly anyone has met Frederick yet. Probably what led us to drive the 29 hour trip in a day and a half was that Chris' brother and his family were driving from TX to UT at the same time and by following their progress on our iphone app, we could try and time our arrival to match theirs as close as possible. The kids were champs, although Frederick was not very happy for the last 5 hours and I had to switch Chris - driving some curvy ravine roads in the dark because I couldn't handle his crying very well anymore. 

We met my sister and her kids at the base of the Y the morning after we arrived in Utah.  Thom, Brittany, their kids and Grandpa Archibald all came too.  Between us all we had 11 kids under the age of 10 and therefor didn't really plan on hiking the whole thing. 

But we made it!! All the way to the top! Crazy awesome. I couldn't believe that Gwen walked the whole way by herself.  Charlie and Alec practically ran up. No one even complained until handful of switchbacks from the top.  Grandpa saved the day with his camelback.

 "Grandpa, I'm thirsty!!"

 "Nice to meet you, Thirsty."  

Chris was very surprised at how hard it was for him. He's still on some heart medication that prevents his heart from working too hard so as to allow it time to heal properly from those harsh chemotherapy drugs. He's supposed to take it for a whole year. He had to stop at every switchback and rest for a good 5-10 min. We all waited at the top for him and were so proud and happy to see him come over that last crest.  Way to go, Chris! Also, we were excited to see he still had his backpack which had all of our family's water and fruit snacks for the kids. :) 

Charlie was pretty daring on the Y. He liked to walk up it and slide down it on his bum with his arms swinging by his side like he was walking down the sidewalk. Alec was always careful to keep a hand on the Y for stability and support. Gwen stayed close to me and Freddy enjoyed a little milk with a view. 

First Day of School!

**Sorry its been a while! This post has been waiting as a draft all this time! I guess I forgot to actually post it**

Gwen's first day of preschool! She was so brave and excited until we were 2 feet from her classroom door. Then she sucked on her fingers and buried her head into my side. It took some extra time coaxing her to become engaged with some toys, but it happened and I was able to leave her smiling. 

Two days later the boys had their first day of school: Alec in 2nd grade and Charlie in Kindergarten. Both were a little nervous but easily went into their classrooms. (Maybe it helped that we were a few minutes late and there was no time to make a scene) Next year, I hope to be able to transition them with some more time and even snap a few pictures with their teacher. My mom always did that with us, although I sort of remember not really like having to pose for a picture with a complete stranger in a strange environment. In these pictures Charlie is holding his kinder mat, since Kindergarten is all day and they have a nap time. I remembered that he could bring a special blanket the night before the first day and I so wanted to make him a new special blanket. He loves having new things.  So I stayed up a little late throwing one together. It has footballs on one side and basketballs on the other with a yellow trim and his initials CA on one side. I had to make a matching pillow too, honestly, I had no choice. 

The first day of Kindergarten was just too big to pass up and I tried to at least take a picture of Charlie at his table, but he really didn't want to look at the camera or do anything that would draw the attention of his classmates/teacher. Cute kid. 

Alec didn't want to ride the bus, but I was waiting for almost 2 hours in carpool every day to pick them up.  We decided to at least try the bus for the second week of school. I wrote a note to each of the boys' teachers explaining it and Charlie's teacher was especially sympathetic towards my request of helping Charlie feel comfortable on the bus. She walked him to the bus herself and left a message for me on my phone to say he got on safely.  The bus driver mentioned to her that he wasn't able to turn around at our house and asked Charlie's teacher to tell me to meet them 'at the fork.' Well, we don't have a fork anywhere near our house so I took my best guess and waited for the bus. Chris actually followed the bus from the school. We wanted to know where on the route our house was and he wanted to make sure the boys made it home safe. He lost the bus when it pulled down a dirt driveway and so he just drove home. Seeing him pull up without the bus in sight made me nervous but it all worked out ok as it showed up within a minute or so. We had a special snack of donuts and popcorn waiting for the brave boys on the bus.  

Inside the house

The walk to the front door. 

The front door and entry way:

A panoramic of the entry way, complete doorway on the left is a 1/2 bath, then up the stairs to the living room and the double doors on the right are a closet.

A panoramic of the Living room, the doorway in the right of the picture leads to the family room. 

The Master bedroom.

Master bathroom, there are two separate little walk in closets behind the camera. 

The blury picture two above is the loft/library off of the living room. Immediately above is the dining room, and below is the kitchen with the breakfast nook on the right side.

Above is the 1 car garage that is right off the kitchen, and below is the family room with the little windowy thing to the kitchen on the left and the open doorway to the living room (you can even see the little railing and starcase in the far distance to the library/nook, and then the french doors take you out to the back deck and the staircase on the far right goes up to the landing and kids' bedrooms.

Below is the biggest of the 3 kids bedrooms.

The small pink kid bedroom

Another small bedroom.

The small upstairs bathroom inbetween the kids' bedrooms.

Batgirl Gwen

We were helping a friend pack up her house for a move to Florida and she gave us a batgirl costume her daughter had already outgrown. Gwen looooves it. She has some awesome intense facial expressions and poses to go with it. I love this girl! 

Pinewood derby

Our branch put on a family pinewood derby. It was a lot if fun. Anyone could make and enter a car. So Chris got kits at the local hardware store and he excitedly took a night to help the kids design their cars. Alec wanted to do the same design as the car on the box of his kit, Charlie and Gwen both picked out a little matchbox car they thought looked cool and tried to copy that. A day it two later I helped the kids paint their cars. 

We had a potluck at the derby and everyone had a blast...especially the dads. They spent a good portion of the night getting everything the right weight and fixing wheels etc. the kids loved watching their cars go down the ramp...since it was held up mainly with stacked hymn books I'm surprised it never fell down! 

Home owners!

We bought a house! I kept a pretty close eye on the market ever since we moved here 9 months ago. Surprisingly, Starkville has some of the highest property prices in the state of Mississippi, so despite being in the middle of no where, the housing market isn't as low as you would think.  We contacted a realtor and met up at a promising looking house way back in September, but with Chris' chemo rounds and stem cell transplant we had to focus our thoughts and energy elsewhere. Once things were a bit settled (meaning that once Chris finished his radiation treatment, once he got his class set up, once I could see the light at the end of the I-just-had-a-baby tunnel, once we felt we had a good idea about hospital bills from Chris' treatments) we got our finances in order and approached our realtor again to begin the house in earnest. We were looking for a new, 4+ bedroom, 2+ bathroom house with some kind of play/bonus room on a large pretty lot in a nice neighborhood and in the city school district. It didn't take long to realize that we wouldn't be able to get everything we wanted. We had to compromise somewhere. I emailed our realtor a bunch of options I wanted to check out and he scheduled appointments for us at those and a few other ones across 2 days. 

We looked at 4 or 5 houses the first day. Most were new and in good neighborhoods. I fell in love with the inside of one of them...new, vaulted, open, bonus room...but it was at the top top of our price range and although it had a cool salt water pool, it was a small backyard with hardly any playable grass space and it no trees and the neighbors were SUPER close. 

The first house of the second day of searching was one Chris had picked out and was most excited to see. I had disregarded it in my searches because I thought it was out of the school district boundaries but after some research we found out it was just barely IN them! Our realtor warned us that people either love this house or hate it because it has some quirky character with little staircases and levels all over the place and unique features. As we drove out to the property the neighborhood looked PERFECT, the yard had SO MUCH potential, but the house looked old and we braced ourselves for a dumpy inside. Lo and behold, it wasn't too bad inside!  In fact, it has been really well kept and smelled nice.  We fell in love with all the levels and the unique layout and nooks but from the very beginning our minds raced with possible renovation ideas. With a little creativity figured out a way to address any concerns or dislikes with the inside...but tackling a renovation in a new town, for the first time, was nerve racking and price-wise we had NO clue what to expect.  At all the other houses we saw that day, we kept comparing them to the first property of the day and the neighborhood/location and yard just could not be beat. The newer homes we saw just seemed so ordinary and boxy, and the other yards (even some 3 acres ones) seemed so square and flat and not exciting. 

After some more thinking and prayers over the weekend we felt best about putting on offer on that first house of the second search day. By Monday we were in contact with our realtor and sent in an offer.  It took about a week but we settled on a price, about $6,000 less than the asking price and set the closing date for just over a month out. But before things were completely finalized, we did bring a friend of ours who is an architect over to the house to look at it and discuss with him our renovation ideas as a sanity check to make sure they were possible.  He said it looked do-able and even said he had a contractor guy he thought would be good. While we waited to close, we immediately set out to find a contractor and get renovation plans drawn up. 

We celebrated closing with a donut and ice cream party on the driveway.

In the end we had to compromise a new, ready to move in house, for the location and yard.  Because it was at the low end of our price range, we could afford to do fairly extensive renovations before we even came close to the price of one of the other new homes we liked, like the one with the salt water swimming pool....but then we would also have those beautiful 3 acres!

Oh! and there is a guest house, so....visitors welcome!!! (DISCLAIMER:  we need to renovate it first, and that's not going to happen until we renovate the main house)

Tornado!!!

We had a little scare on Monday, April 28 with tornados. The school sent out an email with a storm warning and asked us to keep an eye on our inboxes as they'll let us know if they will release the students early.  I had been planning on driving out to a neighboring town, Eupora, to visit a friend's store but the 30 min one way commute made me second guess and call Chris to double check. The storm wasn't set to hit us hard until 4:00pm so we agreed that if I could go and get back by 2:30 or so, I'd be safe. So we went and I enjoyed seeing more new places in our new state. The sky was starting to look ominous as I headed back and my mom called to see if I had heard about the weather and if I was OK. I got to Alec's school a bit early and good thing too, because they did release the kids early with hardly any warning. I was in constant contact with Chris, through texting and he was planning on meeting us at home right away. The campus shut down early for the storm but the traffic getting out of campus was sooooo bad that Chris ended up parking his car in a random staff parking lot and walking home. 

We were all together by 3:00pm and turned on the local news to track the storm. So far, our county wasn't impacted yet, but they were showing footage and pictures from Tupelo (about an hour north) where a Tornado had come through and caused a bunch of damage. We had just been in Tupelo the previous two days for our Stake Conference so it was weird` to think we were just there. (Actually our drive up to Sunday morning's session of Stake Conference was the WORST rain/thunder storm I remember ever being in..crazy weather)

We had previously  planned on where our "safe place" would be in our home and started making preparations to camp out in it.  Its the craft/game closet in our dining room. Its on the lowest level, with no windows or outside walls...and its not very big. Also the doors would easily pop off the track with the slightest pressure. We had to take out some bins and things to make room for all the pillows and blankets. I made a quick dinner and we ate it with the news blasting in the next room. Europa had a tornado touch down near by, but its trajectory was just north of Starkville...then another one touched down in Lousiville, 20 min south of Starkville..but again its trajectory just missed us. Our County did get a Tornado Warning and we hid in the closet for about 45 min. I peeked outside before we went in and saw some debris flying high in the sky above our house. In the closet, it got HOT and stuffy and crampy, and trying to bounce Frederick with zero room to take a step was not fun. In the middle of it, we peeked out the doors and could see a BLACK sky and heard somethings hit our house with a couple loud pings and thwaks. After a while I couldn't take being in there any longer and broke out. Happily we heard the weather guy say that Starkville was in the clear. 

Our branch was asked to help with Tornado clean up in Tupelo the following Saturday and Chris went to help.