Bedtime

I thought that I'd document what bedtime looks like around here.  Each night we do a little bedtime routine called Scripture-Song-Prayer where we... well... read a scripture story, sing a primary song, and say bedtime prayers. After our routine we fit in as many books as possible before it really is time to go to sleep. Ideally five books but often only two books, and if Lydia gets her way, ten+ books.

It's one of my favorite times of the day for more than one reason: Dad's home (usually), quality family time, book reading, sweet kisses, asking Lydia about her day. Of course, there is also the flip-side: meltdowns, begging for more books, crying because the pillows are in the wrong order, trying to brush teeth quickly when all Lydia wants to do is "do it herself" and is taking forever, David and I laying on the floor while the kids whine/play wondering if we'll have the energy to make the final push and get them in bed. 

And then once the kids are asleep it's like a huge sigh of relief. (And our cue to head downstairs, grab some popcorn and turn on our netflix-show-of-the-week.)

Visiting (Morgan & Wyoming)

This week David had to travel to Kemmerer, WY for an auditing job. He really didn't want to have to go, considering our tiny baby boy is still so... new. I was a little/a lot nervous to be left alone with Austin and Lydia for the 5 days he would be gone and so I was more grateful than ever that my parents live so close and that we had arranged to be able to go and stay with them for the week. I'm still not feeling like I'm back into a routine and each day seems more like surviving than thriving, and adjusting is taking longer than I had hoped that it would.

We missed David terribly, but I was overcome with gratitude for my family. I have such a wonderful support system. Not only did my mom and dad welcome us with loving arms and help to take care of us, my little sister Jenna came down from Idaho to help and visit. I couldn't have done it without them. One of the first nights I was there, after I had put Lydia down for bed and finally gotten Austin to sleep, I laid my head down in my mother's lap and cried. She stroked my hair and rubbed my shoulders and let me cry about how hard it was. At that moment, after a terribly long day of having two little ones need me so much and feeling like I was coming up short at every turn, I needed nothing more than to go to my mother and have her hold me and tell me that everything was going to be all right. It was such a blessing to me, and when my baby started crying again - calling to me to come and comfort him - I thanked my sweet and wonderful mother for taking care of me once again. With every day that I am a mother, I grow more and more grateful for the time and effort and love that my mother shared with me when I was a little one. She was the one to care for me and comfort me in the middle of the night then, and here she was 27 years later doing the exact same thing. Through the following nights, she (and Jenna) helped to take care of Lydia while I held Austin and to hold Austin while I slept. What a huge blessing to me.

Also during the week, we decided to take a little day trip to Wyoming to visit my grandparents. My dad has wanted to get Lydia up on a tractor for months and months and the timing worked out for us to be able to go up there and let them meet Austin, let Lydia play with the tractors and cows, and to be able to visit with my grandparents. There is something special about seeing your own grandparents hold your baby. Lydia and Austin are lucky - they have seven living great-grandparents (although we only see five on a semi-regular basis).

After we visited for a while, my dad and grandpa took Lydia on and adventure around the ranch and I was able to sit and talk with my grandma. It was such a sweet and tender experience for me. You know, I don't know that I've ever gone to Wyoming to just talk to my grandparents. It makes me a little sad to admit that, but usually when we go to Grandma & Grandpa's house - it's for something. Branding, birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, etc... And there are usually lots of people hanging around. Also, I'm usually out with my dad, doing stuff on the ranch and helping out with whatever they need. It's not often that I stay behind in the house. But this day, I sat with my baby and just talked with my grandma. It was so wonderful and such a lovely, uplifting afternoon. 

We started talking about how quickly my labor and delivery had been with Austin, which led my grandma to start talking to me about her life. My grandma lives in a small town in the middle-of-nowhere Wyoming. The closest big city is Evanston about an hour away, and the closest real-big city is Ogden, UT - about 2 hours away. With her first baby, my Aunt Susan, she was in labor pretty comparable to Lydia - about 24 hours. With her second, my Aunt Wendy, she was in labor for days. She said that she went to the hospital two or three times over the course of several days and finally she just begged them to let her stay. With her third, my uncle Marti, she was in labor for a matter of hours. She had to beg my grandpa to pack up the older two girls and take her to the hospital. Understandably (after the previous labor taking so long and going to the hospital so many times), my grandpa wasn't in a terribly big hurry - although he did as she asked and made beds in the back of the truck for the girls and drove her to the hospital. She was rushed into the delivery room and the doctor delivered the baby before my grandpa even made it inside with the girls. My grandma told me how the doctor joked with her "Verla, you could have at least waited for me to get my white coat on." because she had delivered so quickly and she said how she still remembered the look on my grandpa's face when he entered the room with one girl in each arm. When she talked about the birth of my dad, she made me cry as she talked about how sweet he was and how much love he brought to their family. 

She then continued to tell me about how when my dad was a baby, he wasn't able to nurse very well and she ended up giving him formula for much of his infancy. But this formula was brownish in color and because they got their water from a well by their house, the water always had an orange hue. (It was safe to drink - it was just orange.) When my dad would spit-up it would stain his clothing terribly and she always struggled to keep it clean. They had running water in their house, but they didn't have a washing machine. In fact, they didn't have an indoor toilet either, but used an out-house about 20-30 feet from their home. To do the laundry, my grandma would pack up all of her children and go to the laundromat in town, until it burned down. After that she had to go to the laundromat in Evanston (about an hour away.) Finally, my grandpa bought her a washboard to use in her sink to wash the clothes at home. They lived in that house for seven years and then they built a new red-brick home right next to and eventually got a washer and dryer. As I listened to my grandma, I was was filled with admiration for the humble woman sharing her story with me. 

I'm a believer that everyone has their own "hard" in their lives, and just because someone else's hard is different than your own hard doesn't mean that it's still not... hard. But talking to my grandma definitely helped me put my own life into perspective. It's hard to not be sleeping, and to feel like you aren't giving enough attention to either of your children, and to not feel capable of staying up on the household tasks that just a few weeks ago were easy. But, not only do I have a washer and dryer of my own - it's set up in a beautiful laundry room with a window and counter. My baby may need to eat all the time, but he's a stellar nurser and even just a few weeks in - I feel like we've got it down. My toddler might want my attention all of the time, but she has plenty of things to play with and she absolutely knows that she is loved. I cried as talked to my grandma, because although her life and my life may seem SO so different - she expressed her love for her children and grandchildren in every word that she spoke. And that love spoke straight to my heart. I love my two little ones, and I love their daddy, and someday - God willing, I will sit in an old rocking chair and tell my granddaughter about how much I loved being a mother even through the hard times and hopefully give her hope that she, too, can overcome the hard things and enjoy her life as she raises a wonderful family. 

While mommy was talking Lydia was out adventuring on the ranch: 

Not only did Lydia get to ride on tractors, pet/ride the horses, and see the cows - but she also got to help grandpa feed the cats AND ride on the tire swing. As long as I can remember my grandma has always saved the scrap food to bring out to feed to the wild cats in the yard. As we were talking, she told me that she doesn't like to take the food out anymore because the cats basically swarm her at the door. She said that last week three of the cats got into the house before she could close the door and my grandpa had to hunt them down. We laughed as they described how grandpa had to put on gloves to pull one of the cats out from behind the computer by the tail and how one of them bit grandma on the toe (not a funny thing for grandma). I realize that's so random - but it's a story to record. 

This tree was our favorite place to play at Grandma and Grandpa's house growing up. Most of the branches were so steep that only the "older" kids could play on them - but we spent hours and hours and hours playing in the tree. Now almost all of the branches are so big and heavy that they are almost horizontal - and last year a bunch of the boys cut off our very favorite branch because it was almost on the ground and was starting to crush some of the farm equipment behind the tree. It's sad to see the tree get so old - but I still have hope that Lydia and Austin will be able to make memories in that tree as well. 

It was a wonderful to visit with my grandparents. I know that they didn't always have the easiest life and that their relationship had ups and downs, but to see them together now is so amazing. My grandpa takes such good care of my grandma and they love each other so much. They love the family that they have built together and I am grateful for their example to me. 

Before we left, Lydia found another of her favorite things - a trampoline. 

It wasn't the most ideal thing to have David have to leave for an Audit engagement so soon after Austin was born, but we survived (thanks in large part to my wonderful family). We are so glad to be home and will hopefully find a good routine for our new little family soon. 

We sprang a leak.

So...

Several weeks ago I was in desperate need of a nice hot shower. I had been playing with Lydia all day and hadn't been able to make it happen during her naptime. So around four o'clock I decided to bring Lydia in the bathroom with lots of little toys and attempt to shower while she was playing. It actually was fairly successful, although the last half of my shower consisted of me poking my head out of the shower door every 30 seconds or so while Lydia sat by the door and fussed. I felt pretty awesome that I had accomplished such a huge feat - showering while my baby was awake. I dried my hair and we headed downstairs to play. I turned on Pandora and we were dancing around to some song on "Toddler Radio" when I felt a drop on my arm. At first I thought that Lydia had spit up or something to that effect, but upon further inspection... I found this: 

The fairly large water spot on my rug led to the discovery of this:  

I immediately felt my stomach drop. A water leak in my brand new ceiling?!?! Really?

I grabbed a bowl to place under the leak and immediately called the warranty service center for McArthur homes. Ironically, I had just contacted them the previous day because we realized that we were missing an extra plug in our kitchen island that we had requested and paid for. They had just replied a few hours earlier with a very nice and professional response that they would be by on the following Monday to add that plug. (I'm pretty sure that my house heard me complaining about the plug and was like "Hey buddy, if you want to complain... I'll give you something to complain about.") Unfortunately it was JUST after five o'clock and they were gone for the day. I left a frantic message, and then called David.

Poor David. Earlier in the day he told me that he was going to have to work until 7 or 8, but when I called him he decided that he needed to come home to help. He had to work extra hard the next few days to make up for that lost time. But, it was a pretty serious concern! We'd only been in our house for less than a month and a half and already we were having water leaking through the ceiling.

I dug around in all of our piles of paperwork that we received from McArthur and found an emergency warranty number. No answer, but I left a message. Then I found something that said if it was a true emergency that we could call the plumbing company directly. At this point, the water had finally slowed to a stop. We were still concerned and so we called the plumbing company to see what they recommended. (Besides, what is a true emergency anyway?) They said we were probably okay now, and that they would send someone out in the morning. We were okay with that, and just avoided using any water in our bathroom for the rest of the night. (Thank goodness for two other bathrooms in this beautiful house.) The next morning I got a call from Glen @ McArthur, who said that he wanted to come and take a look before the plumbers stopped by. Apparently, they had a few other leaks in the last couple of months because of a faulty shower insert (or something like that) and he wanted to make sure that wasn't it before sending the plumbing guys over. He stopped by soon after and informed us that our shower insert was perfectly fine and that he would send the plumbers over asap.

This whole time, I was thinking that it must be an actual plumbing pipe, because the water leaking was actually about 8-10 feet away from the wall... a good distance away from where the shower was. But I thought it must be connected to the shower because it had started leaking after my shower. Glen gave us the go-ahead to use the toilet/sink - but asked us to avoid the shower until the plumbers could come look at it.

The plumber arrived the following afternoon. (Coincidentally, this was the same day that a refrigerator repairman came to fix the unbalanced freezer door/broken fridge door AND our landscaping crew built our retaining wall with large boulders and an awesome backhoe in our backyard.) He went upstairs and turned on the water in the shower for five minutes while we came down and waited to see if anything would happen. Nothing. He turned off the shower and made a small hole in the ceiling underneath the shower. Immediately, water started pouring from the hole. Pouring.

The water kept up a steady stream for an hour and twenty minutes. The plumber man was shocked. He kept repeating "I can't believe how much water is in there." Several times he remarked that he was amazed that our whole ceiling hadn't collapsed on us. Apparently there was a month and a half's worth of water that had been hanging out in our ceiling for weeks and weeks. The insulation that we placed in the ceiling acted like a giant sponge and held the water until it was too saturated to hold anymore, and then the water found a seam and started leaking out. 

Here he is just staring at the water. He was afraid to cut out the whole piece until the water stopped, but he cut several holes to help draining and he even brought in his wet-vac to suck the water out. I couldn't help but laugh at the whole situation. The plumber left a few times and every time he came back and said "It's still draining?", I couldn't help but laugh. It seems it was the only thing to do. What a mess. 

Finally- after several hours of draining, cutting, and removing the sheetrock and insulation - the plumber was able to get to the root of the problem. The drainpipe connected to the shower was cracked. If you look at this picture closely (click to zoom in) you can see a little piece of light from the upstairs. It was a hole about the size of a pea and was leaking water like crazy. I wish that I would have taken a picture of it after he got his tools and pulled it out. The crack went around more than 1/2 of the pipe, with a big chunk missing where the hole was. If you pulled the pieces apart it would leave a giant gaping mouth looking thing in the drain pipe. 

Luckily, after he found the problem - it was fairly easy to fix. He did his thing, cleaned up, and cleared out. Then he came back the next day to verify that the seal was holding and give us the okay to use the shower again. I was relieved that it had been so easy, and grateful that McArthur was covering the whole thing under our warranty. I would have been much more upset if we were paying for it. 

We basically lived with that gaping hole in the ceiling for the next two weeks. I was surprised when I couldn't find any pictures of it - but we really avoided spending much time in that room because it was pretty chaotic. The couches were both moved, the chaise was tucked into the corner by the tv and there were piles of sheets hanging around waiting for the next time they would need to be used. This was the best picture that shows a glimpse of the disarray. 

 

Luckily, Lydia is a happy baby and didn't seem to mind the fact that half the family room furniture was temporarily placed on the landing of the stairs leading to the basement, or that the room was arranged funny. It just gave her more room to crawl around. 

Finally, after everything was all dried out (we hope) - the sheetrocker came and made an even bigger hole. He cut out the space under the shower all the way down to where the leak made itself manifest. Then he placed new sheetrock to make our ceiling whole again. One thing that we thought was really cool: After he had cut the hole, he remarked that he hadn't been told that he needed to put insulation in the ceiling so he hadn't brought any. I told him that we had put the insulation in ourselves, but we didn't expect him to replace it. We had considered going and buying more so we could fill the area, but we decided it wasn't worth buying a whole package just for that little section. He seemed okay with that, but said that he was going to check and see if they had any extra. He came back a while later with several large pieces of insulation and stuck them up in the ceiling before he sheetrocked over the hole. I was so impressed and grateful! I must say - we weren't thrilled when we found a water leak in our brand new house, but McArthur has definitely taken care of us. Things like this happen - but it is the way that the workers treated us that have made the process so nice. They have all gone out of their way to be nice and accommodating. We are grateful for the insulation, even though we didn't expect it. 

After the sheetrock was put in, he taped and mudded it. Then, it was time for the texture to go up. I so wish I would have stayed downstairs to see how he did this. I will forever wonder that the process was. I was impressed that he made an effort to line up each piece of the texture with the surrounding areas. 

The texture was placed on a Thursday. The following Monday (almost three weeks after the initial leak) the painter came by and gave us a few good coats of our pretty "Grecian Ivory". 

Now I'm happy to announce that we are finally back in business. We moved our rug, tables, and lamps up from the stairway and put everything back into it's correct positions. With the blinds, I'd say it looks almost as good as new. If you look closely you can see the place where the hole was because the texture is slightly smaller in scale than the surrounding areas. I'm a little bummed about that, because I was hoping that you would be able to see anything. Oh well. I guess you can't live in a perfect home for long, something is always going to get damaged. And that's okay. It more important to me that my house feel cozy and lived in than perfect in every way. 

And that, my friends is the story of how we sprang a leak. It has been a crazy month: we worked with five different people for the leak in our ceiling, we had people over working on our rock wall and sprinkler system, an electrician came and put in that extra plug, a refrigerator repairman from RC Willey came and fixed our fridge doors, worked with a fence guy to get a bid for a fence, and we frantically had to go to Lowes one night before an impending rainstorm for a new black-rain-water-tube because the last rainstorm had come down our raingutters and had pooled around our neighbors foundation. And that is just the home repair stuff that we dealt with. But, even with all of that - we love our house and love being homeowners. 

Just cross your fingers that this is the last of our homeowner woes for the time being. Now that we've got that mess cleaned up - we are finally ready to start hanging things on our wall. Two months in... I'd say it's about time. Yay for normal living again!

Some things...

I've been working on this post since last Thursday, but just wasn't able to make it happen until this morning. Oh well. Here are some things we've been up to lately.  

(Warning, this is a pretty random post.)

--Unpacking! I'm sure that you are bored out of your mind reading about the process of getting into our house: the packing, the moving, the unpacking. But it's a pretty big deal to us. We love everything about our house, and still get excited each time we open up a box and figure out where its contents should belong in our new house. 

--We moved in on a Saturday and were excited to go to church the following day. It took us a really long time to fit in with our last ward and had a really hard time at first, so we were determined to be positive and outgoing. We checked LDS.org to make sure that we knew what ward time and building our ward met in. That morning, around eight o'clock I even had David check again just to make sure - because "If church starts at nine, we still have time to get ready." But no, lds.org assured us that eleven o'clock was our time. We arrived in the chapel five minutes early and had plenty of time to look around our ward. It was wonderful - we noticed that there was a good spread of age groups. Lots of young people, lots of older people, and lots of people in the middle. The speakers were a cute young couple who had recently moved from Utah State/Logan (it must be fate!) and their talks were amazing. After sacrament meeting, we chatted with the people behind us and felt so good that we were doing so awesome. I remember thinking "This is going to be perfect, I love this ward already!" We found the bishop and introduced ourselves, after a few minutes of chatting he told us that we seemed like a nice young couple but that unfortunately we were in the wrong ward. He graciously pointed us in the direction of our real bishops office. We were crestfallen! All that positive energy and putting ourselves out there to talk to other people for nothing. (I seriously had been thinking that we were going to love that ward - I guess the joke was on us!) We picked ourselves up and went and met our real bishop and his counselors. They were really nice and we were able to fill out the request for our records. 

(Side note about that: I may or may not have written on the records request sheet, under the section about previous callings/interests, that I would love to be the in charge of going around and taking everyones picture to put on LDS Tools. I'm constantly shocked that so few people have a picture loaded and I think it's just because people don't know how to do it. When we were ward missionaries (and new ward members) it was a constant source of frustration because we didn't know who people were.  I'm hoping that my little note inspires them to create a calling just for me! It probably wouldn't last super long, but a few people each week - plus being in charge of any new move-ins - it would be awesome. Plus, that way I would get to know everyone in the ward. I'm such a visual person sometimes and being able to see a name and a photographed face helps me so much. I don't know if I was too forward in basically asking for that calling. But I really hope it works out!)

This last week we made it to our ward. We were almost on time. (Lydia and I woke up a little under the weather, luckily after waking up at five she slept in until 8 - which gave me time to take a long hot bath.) We were afraid that they had already read our records in, but after a quick look at LDS tools - we were still definitely in our old ward, which ironically was just split and placed into an entirely different stake so we had to read through lots of names to make sure that it was our old ward. Lydia was a darling all through the meeting. She was pretty content to sit in her car seat (this never happens) and eat the puffs that we kept feeding her. I stepped out to blow my nose and when I came back David had pulled Lydia out of her seat. I grabbed a few more puffs to give to her as David whispered, "She isn't hungry anymore." I thought, "Thats fine... puffs aren't real food anyway" and placed a puff on David's shoulder for her to grab. Instead of grabbing for it, she knocked it off. I shook my head and smiled and handed her another puff which she grabbed and then proceeded to throw it onto the ground! I was shocked. David looked over at me and said, "I told you that she wasn't hungry anymore." Silly girl. I guess she really knows what she wants! (She had never done anything so deliberate like that before.)

Overall, our ward went really well. We met some really nice people, several of which live right on our street. David took Lydia during Relief Society and not only did I get to listen to a wonderful lesson about conversion. But I also was able to make a list of all of the names I could remember of the people that I had met. (Bonus, when I just dug through my purse to take a picture of the list I remembered that the teacher had handed out some Dove chocolates. I hadn't eaten mine because my nose was too stuffy and I didn't want to waste the deliciousness. I am now sucking on this beautiful little piece of chocolate and am being encouraged to "Remember the little pleasures in life.") 

I realize that this is kind of dorky. But honestly, I don't remember names well unless I can write them down and refer back to them a couple of times. I decided that I was just going to be dorky and remember the names then have to ask three times and then still not remember their name but not be able to ask anymore because I should already know it. I'm excited about the people that we have met though. I think this ward is going to be wonderful. It's always nerve wracking to jump into a new ward and not know anyone. It's even more so this time, because we know that we are going to be here for a long time. But the worst is over. We've been introduced and have committed to being outgoing for at least the first six months. I know that sounds lame, but we tend to be homebodies. But we are going to invite some people over for dessert or something and really put ourselves out there. Hopefully if we stretch way out of our comfort zone for the first six months, we will get to know people and be solidly built into the ward. 

This picture was not taken last Sunday. But it was taken on a Sunday. And you should be able to see how darling Lydia is in her pretty winter dress.  

Also, this picture. Because she is cute. 

Honestly, I'm thrilled about our house and where we are. But I am over-the-top grateful that I have good friends that live close by. My sweet friend Ashley and I still hang out frequently even though we aren't in the same ward anymore.  (Don't mind that i'm wearing the same shirt as in the picture above.) I mentioned above that we had kind of a hard time in our last ward, but making such a good friend made all of the other tears worth it. I wasn't very sad about leaving our apartment because as I knew that we would still be friends. Knowing that I have other friends close by (specifically Rebekah, Kaylee, Wendy, and Melissa) makes the transition to this new house even easier. Because I know that I can count on those friends no matter what. I feel so blessed to be surrounded by so many people, further away, and especially nearby.

(These pictures were taken on one of the more recent adventures with Ashley, Elsie, and Carson.)

Now this post is getting super long and rambly, but as I was loading the above pictures I couldn't resist adding these ones as well. Lydia is into everything lately. She loves to explore, knock things over, pull herself up on things, and pretty much anything else she can manage. The other day she was exploring the entertainment center at her Peaden grandparents when she got caught! I don't know if she tipped over or if she just tried to sit down, but either way I looked over and saw this:

I made sure that she was okay and then made a mad dash for my camera. It was so funny. She wasn't upset, just a little annoyed that she was stuck. I could barely stop laughing. It was just too cute. As soon as I let her loose, she just moved on crawling to the next thing and figuring out what mischief she could make there. It's such a fun stage to watch her move and explore, but also so sad. She tips over, slips, falls down, bumps her head (and arm and chest and face). Right now she is sporting a sad little mark on her cheek from bumping something and I just noticed that there is a little bruise right above it as well. I don't know if it's from the same thing, or from a different bump - but either way it breaks my heart to look at it. Poor girl. Luckily she is quite the little trooper and it doesn't seem to bother her and definitely doesn't stop her from exploring. 

I know that this post was pretty random - but I just wanted to jot some things down. We've been working on printing out our 2012 blog book and I absolutely LOVE reading about everything. It makes me want to be better at blogging, because I love to look back and remember. Here's to random little memories that bring about great big smiles! 

*Update: Right as I pushed "Publish" - the doorbell rang. It was our next-door neighbor, Katie, and she came bearing a plate of delicious banana or zucchini cake something-or-other with yummy yummy frosting.  Isn't that sweet of her? 

She was so nice and I am so happy to finally have met our "next-door" neighbor. We chatted for a little minute and I am even more excited about having this be our home, in this area, for a very long time.*