Our Big Girl!

Our Emma is getting so big!

The other day she was in the bathroom for quite awhile. We called in to see if she was okay, and she assured us that she was. When she finally came out we asked her what she was doing in there that took so long.

"I was reading a magazine," she said. Oh, of course!

She is also experiencing big girl things without having the big girl vocabulary to tell us about it. For example, recently she came into the living room expressing a sense of discomfort.

"These panties," she said, "they keep going up into my bottom." Ah, it's a wedgie. And it's going to be an ongoing problem, poor dear.

Jump On It!

Last week my sister and I took our kids to Jump On It! in Lindon, Utah. It's a warehouse full of trampolines. Trampolines everywhere! They can jump and bounce and get all their energy out. Well, some of it out. Here's Emma on one of the trampolines.

Here's my nephew heading to one of the baskets they hang about 20 feet high on the wall.

Here's Molly being ADORABLE! She tried one of the trampolines for about 5 seconds. Walking is hard enough when you are 14 months old.

They also had a few bouncing toys set up. Here are the cousins resting at the top of the slide.

Great fun!

Our Search In Picture Form

Just in case things do not work out with the house we want, we put an offer on a house on a street called Felicidad. It means happiness ;) The house is a standard rambler, but it has an unbelievable kitchen.

Isn't that great! It has drawers upon drawers upon drawers. So much better than the two drawers I had in my townhouse!

We're still waiting to hear back from the bank on the Esperanza house.This is the one we want. We like it because it's done. The fence is in. The basement is finished. The landscaping is done. The neighborhood is established. Done. We need to replace carpet and they stripped it from everything to the fridge to the light switches, but, as my brother-in-law Brett says, it has good bones.

So while we're waiting, this weekend we looked at two houses. I was really excited about the one below. Doesn't it look nice? It's new construction, it has a different shape, a different look, and it was IN BUDGET. I was so excited. And then we walked in. Ugh. The master bedroom is to the right. There is no division between the bedroom and the bathroom. It's all just an L shaped room. So your bed would be two feet from your bathtub. And the area between the kitchen and the kitchen island was about 18 inches. Garry could walk inbetween but just barely. And where the kitchen ended, the "laundry room" began -- but it was not a room. It was just at the end of the kitchen. No door. No walls. No divisions. Just kitchen cabinet. And washer & dryer. It was ridiculous. Forgive me, Sarah Palin, but when I saw the master suite I exclaimed "This is retarded." I was disappointed. And then we walked across the street to this beauty.

Isn't she pretty?? Her price (she's so pretty she has to be a girl) has come way way down. She's actually just about $30,000 more than any of the above. But she needs window coverings, a basement put in, a fence, a yard. . .she gets pretty expensive pretty fast. But she was lovely.

I know that Garry is getting stressed out about all of this because he was started snoring again. Never a good thing. And I know I am getting stressed out because my eye twitch has come back -- right eye this time, though. I guess the left one needed a break.

A Visit With Eddie

Have I mentioned how much the girls have missed their friends?? Luckily they saw Chiler and Xander over the Christmas break and this week they were able to see Eddie who was visiting his grandma. They met up at the Classic Family Fun Center to bounce and explore the "jungle". Great fun!

The Long Awaited Pictures

Here's Emma! Our new little gymnast. The gym is very serious. Every lesson she practices tumbling, beam, bars, and they work on three different trampolines. Oh, and they even jump on the vault launcher. Too cute. Macey! She loves her dance class. She loves ballet. She loves tap. She just loves it all!

One More Step

One of the things the girls miss most about Maryland is their dance class. They were really enjoying it, especially Macey, but they had to stop at the end of November.

This week we signed the girls up for dance (Macey) and gymnastics (Emma) at the Black Diamond Gym. Black Diamond was a really well known studio in Park City but in September they opened a new gym in South Jordan.

Macey was so excited! She got dressed by herself and found her ballet and tap shoes in the closet. All two hours before it was time to go.

After her 45 minute lesson, she skipped down the hall and said "That was AWESOME".

Pictures will be posted as soon as Garry downloads them to the computer. (Hint, hint).

So What You're Saying Is. . .

Do not think that it escapes my irony meter that after two years of HATING how small my townhouse was that for the last two and a half months we have been living in much, much, much smaller quarters.

I get it.

And I have often wondered if maybe we have struggled to find a house (we have two offers in to the bank on two different houses. and we might put an offer on ANOTHER house this week. surely something will come through???) so that I will learn to be grateful for what I have.

I am grateful to have my dining room table. I am so glad to have the girls' dressers back. Remember the hotel where we had three drawers? Total. We have really large closets here, which is great. And I have a soaker tub. How fun is that? So I get it. And I'm grateful.

The problem with small spaces is that small messes in small places make big messes. I know that the girls feel like they are constantly cleaning up but I have tried to be more diligent about getting things cleaned up before Garry gets home because the other day he asked me:

"What are you going to do when you have a house to clean?"

In other words, if you can't take care of this place, we're in a world of hurt if we do get a house.

Which is not accurate. Small messes in small places make big messes. If we do get the house I'll have thousands of feet to disperse the mess, and it'll look fabulous everyday.

Well, here's hopin'.