My Mister K

I know I didn't come back the next day, but at least this is better than a year later. 

So I thought I would start the with the update on my children and have a post for each one. It is extremely tempting to start with the house, but that can wait for now. 

So I am going to start with Kaden, or as some may know him as Mr. K. Kaden turned 4 at the end of August the same weekend that we moved into the apartment. He is very fun to have around. He loves trains and cars and will either be playing with his cars or his trains at the apartment. I personally like him playing with his cars more because it doesn't take up as much space. The last time that I posted a real post he wasn't even two. So let's start there. I have taken a few photos with my ipad of him and I will post those now. Kaden has been my buddy for the most part during the school year. He loves to hang out with his mommy and I feel that I finally have a child that won't be overtaken by Jeff when he gets older, but we will see. We have had many trips together into Salt Lake with just us two and I even remember once going and test driving a car with just him. 

In November of 2012, the Sunday before Thanksgiving we were visiting Grandma and Grandpa VanShaar and we hear a fall from the front room and Kaden screaming that he hurt. As I walked, raced really, into the room to see if I could quiet him down because Jeff and his parent's were on the phone with Jeff's brother in Washington I knew that this was not just a minor injury. He was screaming at the top of his lungs over and over again and me hugging him didn't have him stop, still works today by the way. So Jeff came in to try to help and we thought that it was bad and we should take him to the emergency room. We buckled him in and he continued to scream in pain, but I was able to get him down to a small whimper by the time we got to the emergency room. To sum up the emergency room visit, we waited awhile to be seen, got an x-ray of his arm that he pointed to whenever asks what hurts, that found nothing and was sent home with a he probably sprained it.

We went back to our normal routine, the next day he fell off a chair and started to scream in pain again. He hardly used his one arm and every time that we picked him up he would be in pain. On Wednesday before we were heading up to my parent's for Thanksgiving Jeff and I decided to take him into InstaCare to see if they could figure out what was wrong, because he wasn't getting better and in fact seemed to be getting worse. This time they x-rayed his shoulder too and found that he had a broken collar bone. The break was clean h\through the bone and to tell you the truth it looked horrible. The suggested that we try not to move that arm/shoulder and we went up to see my family for Thanksgiving and told everyone to try not to pick him up too much because it had to be done in a special way as to not hurt him. 

That Monday that we returned I was able to get him in to see an orthopedic surgeon after getting scared by my cousin that it wouldn't heal correctly and he would probably need surgery. After talking to the doctor, that was not the case. Kaden just needed a brace and in the picture below you can see a picture that I took of him in his brace to hold his collar bone in the right place so it could heal correctly. We still had to be careful when picking him up, but he started to feel better because it kept him from using moving his collar bone too much. The brace was off before the end of the year and he was back to his normal happy self. As you can see from the next picture that was taken on Dec 30th.

It is fun to go over pictures when kids are younger to get a sense of how much they have grown. Kaden doesn't have that chubby of cheeks anymore. I miss those cheeks. 

In December of 2013, I put Kaden into an all day preschool so that I could go and officiate High School basketball games at 3:30 without scrambling to find a babysitter. Kaden didn't really like it at first, but he eventually stopped crying when I left him there. He never really liked being dropped off and complained but he stopped crying and that was good enough for me. He got to play with different toys, got meals and treats (not sure if he ate them, because he is such a picky eater), but always loved to be picked up. I liked being able to get things done around the house before heading to basketball without him trying to pull me away from everything. He also starting to learn more of his letters, numbers, shapes, and colors. 

When we moved to Herriman we had to find him another all-day preschool and since he didn't really love to go to his other one, I was determined to find one that was in someone's home. I ended up finding a lady that is wonderful. Kaden did have a hard time at the beginning, but I think it was mostly because it was new and different, but now he loves to go, except when his brother's are off track. He never cries anymore when we get to her door, in fact his new thing now is that he tries to beat Aiden, another boy there. It is fun to see how he has grown. She is also wonderful because she has started to introduce Kaden to different foods and she gets him to actually eat them. It is wonderful. Jeff and I have actually started to take some of the same things that she does and now Kaden is eating a lot better. 

We love having Kaden in our family and he loves all of us too. He makes us laugh with some of the things that he says. Sometimes he is a handful, but what child isn't. 

I coming back for real this time!!!!! Hopefully

Well I now over a year ago I said that I was back to tell you how our life is going. Well over a year later a lot has happened. I think that I will start with the biggest.

Almost 3 months ago, Jeff started a new job at a new company. After 10 years of working at Spillman he left and is now the Senior Manager, Development. He is in charge of a smaller group of people but he is also in charge of going and recruiting for the whole department though. He is having a good time learning a new company. Jeff thought that he wouldn't do as well when he went to a new company, but he has done great and feels really good. The weird thing is that even though he doesn't work at Spillman anymore he still gets to hear about it. Because in April I started working part time for the QA department at Spillman. I had never done QA before and I was nervous, but after 3 months I was doing great. In fact as of Thursday of last week, I got a promotion to Part-time QA Lead Tester. I make more money and am able to work more hours. I am in charge of training and mentoring the other part-time tester that started working there a month ago. I will also be in charge of the new hire that starts on Oct. 27. I love being there most of the time and it is nice to come home and vent to Jeff when things aren't going well and he understands. There are sometimes when he asks not to hear about it because they are doing things that aren't right and he gets angry. He is doing better about not getting himself worked up.

Another big thing that has happened is we are moving, well have moved. Jeff's new company AtTask is located in Lehi. Jeff did the commute back and forth for a week and barely got to spend time with us and have down time so we decided to move. We decided before that, but after that week Jeff found an apartment in Herriman for us to move in to. We are building a new house in Herriman and it is moving fast. We signed the papers on Aug 12th to finalize our side and they broke ground on our home on Sept. 22nd. As of Saturday our house has the roof, the outside doors and windows installed. They have worked on some of the plumbing and heating. The furnace has also been installed. The bath tub for the master bedroom is in the garage, but hasn't been set into the bathroom yet.

It should have been an exciting process since the beginning, but there has been drama with the sale of our house in Stansbury Park. The story is there was a couple that put an offer on our home a week before we moved. We felt very fortunate to get that before we moved. 2 weeks after we found out that they didn't qualify for the loan. When they put in their offer they had a pre-qualification letter that said they were, so we were kind of angry. After a few hours our angry turned to depression because we had to start over and because they backed out before they took the loan to underwriting we didn't get the earnest money that they put down. We negotiated and came up with a plan. We dropped the price to $250,000 (8,000 less than their offer) and they got a co-signer so they would qualify. We thought we had dodged a bullet and felt better. After a week we found out that the co-signer that they got hadn't paid their own mortgage for the last couple of months and so we were back at square one.

We officially dropped the price and put the house back on the market. If officially went on the market on Friday night, too late for that weekend showings. But the next weekend we had three. We hoped that one of them would make an offer, and by Thursday we found out that we did. They undershot our asking price and wanted us to pay all of their closing costs. Our agent was awesome and negotiated so that we got a better deal. With the problem before, we wanted to keep the house on the market, but the buyers didn't want to so the compromise was that the earnest money was non-refundable except for appraisal issues the date that the offer went into effect. They agreed. Jeff and I still didn't want to get excited so we were cautious and played it down to people that asked. This week we found out that our house passed the inspection and the appraisal except for the fact that the house doesn't have a railing off the front steps. The buyers said they would put it in so we are a go.

Jeff and I feel a lot better this weekend, especially after Jeff went one of the buyers and talked about the house. This weekend when we looked at the house we got excited for the process of building. I think that I will write another post about the house and one for each of the kids about how they doing. For now I think that I have written enough. I hope everyone is doing fine.

Time to start again

Well as I was looking over past posts, I thought that I need to get my act together and start posting about our lives again. I don't have any pictures yet. Let's face the fact that I hardly take any photos at all. I am going to rectify that situation in the next couple of months. But probably more like years.

Quick update:
Jeff is still working at Spillman and is loving that. I love how hard he works for us. This weekend we are going on an extended holiday vacation and my parents have been kind enough to watch our kids so it will be just us.

Last summer Jeff and I went to a basketball officiating camp where we both had a wonderful time. Half way through the camp the evaluators were telling Jeff that I should become a high school official. So after a couple of months of deciding if I could do it. I made the jump and became a high school official. So the last couple of months have been extremely busy for my family. There are some weeks where I am gone 5-6 days of the week officiating. I do love it and the money has been a nice little bonus. My chapter of the UHSAA officials voted me Rookie of the Year for this season. I was shocked and it made me feel that all of my hard work was not for nothing.

Another change that has come is that Jeff and I are no longer in the Primary. We got released when I got put in as the Relief Society Secretary. I am busier during the week, but I love organizing and making little handout so I am having a lot of fun. I am still in the stake and TCC Young Women sports, but I will be released at the end of the basketball season in the next couple of weeks from the Stake. Which will be nice because I am way to busy for it.

Dallin is now in the fourth grade and he is doing wonderfully. The first term he actually only got 1 C and the rest were As. This last term he pulled up the C to an A. He is really excited that he got all As. He finally doesn't fight us whenever he has to read for homework. The school signed them up for something Razkids and that has helped him read books.

Isaac is in first grade and he loves it as well. He isn't as social as Dallin, but he does have his moments when he bothers the kids next to him. He is a wonderful learner and can do math at a drop of a hat. He is a wonderful boy and will turn 8 this year. We hope that he chooses to be baptized. In the summer and the fall both of the boys chose to play soccer. In last spring both of them loved playing. Isaac more than Dallin. In fact Isaac scored a couple of goals. In the fall Isaac moved up to where he actually had to play positions and it wasn't as fun for him. We also didn't like that it took up all of the Saturdays in the Spring so that we couldn't go hiking.

Kaden is a joy. We still have a hard time not referring to him as a baby. In fact he calls himself baby. We are trying to break him of that, but it is just so cute when he calls himself a baby. He loves to play with balls and thinks that every ball is a soccer ball. He really liked to watch his older brothers play soccer. We got him his own tiny soccer ball and we would take it to the games and watch him kick it around on the side line.

The Sunday before Thanksgiving while we were visiting Jeff's parents, Kaden decided to play on the couch and he ended up breaking his collar bone. It was quite an adventure to get it diagnosed. It took 1 emergency room visit and an instacare visit to finally get it diagnosed. We then took him to a specialist after Thanksgiving and Kaden had to wear a brace for about a month. He was such a trooper. It was really sad to see him so miserable. There were a couple of days where Jeff and I just held him. We love that little man. He is all healed and back to his tricks of falling off the arm of the couch to the middle of couch. That boy will never learn.

Well I think I highlighted a couple of the best points. I know this was suppose to be quick but who can really make almost a year's worth of stuff into a paragraph. I will be back with more pictures and more explanations.

Easter!!!

I am a little slow getting these pictures up, but better late than never. One reason is we were asked on Easter Sunday if jff and I would give talks the next Sunday. So I spent the week after, researching, worried, and then writing my talk. I am glad to say that it is finished and hopefully I do not have to talk in sacrament meeting for years. 

Now it is on to the Easter festivities. The week before Easter Dallin and Isaac had spring break so everyone except Jeff headed up to Logan to spend some time with my family. The main reason is because this week jeff is doing a PMP training, and he needed that time to get ready for the training and get caught up with his new promotion.

Everyone had a lot of fun and the real party didn't start until Thursday when we had a craft day. My sister, Debra, picked out a couple of crafts for us to do and my mom, my sister Amanda, my sister Debra, and myself all took the afternoon and made some crafts. If you would like to see the pictures, I will blog about it on my crafting blog Splendid Failure Crafts.

On Friday, we went to the baby animal days that is put on at the Heritage Center in Wellsville. The kids had fun going and looking at the animals. I think Dallin had the most fun seeing the animals. We saw baby ducks, chicks, rabbits, ponies, pigs, lambs, cows, and even some baby bears. Kaden didn't really care for the animals, until he saw them in their pen. He loved them. There was also a white peacock on site and I have never seen one of them. I made a collage of the pictures.

On Saturday, there were a lot of stores running an Easter egg hunt. I wasn't planning on going to any that began at 8:30 in the morning, but Kaden woke me up at 7:30 on Saturday, so we went. The first place we went to was, Smith's Marketplace. Smith's was also serving donuts and juice so the kids and I also got some free breakfast while waiting for the hunt to start. First up was Kaden and I had to leave Dallin and Isaac by the cart, while I went to help him find eggs. He was a typical 18 month old, find the first thing and is just happy with that. I ended up helping him put the egg in the bag and finding 4 more eggs. At that point I was happy and we left to go see Dallin and Isaac.

Dallin and Isaac were in the same group so we went to their area. Dallin is not a fan of running to try and get candy in public, so I was giving him a pep talk. I told the boys that we should just try to get 1 egg and be happy. It turned out that it was inspiration, because both of the boys got just 1 egg. It was a mad house. But everything was great.

Smith's also had a egg decorating place, so we decorated some cookies and then back to the grandparents to wait for the next hunt. The next hunt was at the mall, and unfortunetly Dallin didn't want to participate, so he went and played on in the child area, while I waited in line with Kaden. Isaac had to stay in line by himself because Kaden and Isaac were hunting at the same time.  He did fine and got lots of candy. Kaden did better this time and even came away with a baloon. Everyone had fun.

Later that day everyone came over and we had egg olympics, and everyone had fun. the kids and I left after dinner that night for home. I was tired the next day and occupied with practising for the choir number the next day, that I didn't take any pictures of the boys playing with their toys and eating their candy. But it was a great week. I also made a collage of pictures for the Egg olympics.

February Activities

I noticed today that it has been over a month since I have updated the blog with what my family has been doing. So here we go.

Dallin- Has been playing basketball in two places. We signed him up for the Stansbury Stallions and for Jr. Jazz in Magna. He wasn't as excited about practice this year as he was last year, but I think it is because he would see that he wouldn't get to do some things that we were doing that night because he would have practice in Magna. He hated to go to the Stansbury Stallions this because it was for an hour and a half and was with over 100 people so he would have a lot of down time while the other people were getting their turn. But he had fun at the Jr. Jazz games and towards the end of the season he actually started to go after the ball.


Isaac- At the beginning of the month he started getting a fever of 103. I would then give him some medicine and it would work its magic and bring the temperature down and he would be fine for the rest of the day where the fever would stay around 99. The next morning it would start out at around 99 and then after lunch it would spike again to 103. I would give medicine and then he would be fine for the rest of the day. His body would have this pattern for around 10 days. At around day 5 I took him to the doctor and there was no infection that she could find. He even had to go get his blood drawn and pee in a cup for tests for different infections. All tests came back negative. At around day 8 when the fever roller coaster still hadn't gone away on its own, the doctor started him on antibiotics. He had the fever for the next couple of days, but it finally did break and not come back on February 13th. So he was able to go to his valentine's day party the next day. he was so excited. It was sad to see him so happy and playing in the morning and then after lunch he would lay down and stay that way for a couple of hours until the fever broke and then he would start to play a little bit. After the 10 days of fever though he wouldn't even start to play. We don't really know what was going on, but he is back to his old self now and we are happy to have our Isaac back.

Kaden- What can I say about our baby. Yes we still think of him as a baby even though he is 18 months old. Yesterday he went to nursery for the first time. Jeff went with him and he thought he would have to stay the whole time through the play with toys time, but Kaden was having so much fun playing with the toys, that Jeff left to come join me in Primary to help with your 10 yr old class. No one came and got us, and when we went and picked him up he was happy to see us. Jeff got to the room first and was calling Kaden's name, but he didn't drop his toy and come running until he saw me, and knew that it was time to leave. He is such a cute boy. This month Kaden figured out how to get his own cereal out of the bag, when I forget to shut the pantry door. I was making dinner one night and turned around to find him like in the picture to the left. It was so cute that I took the picture. He was such a sneak. We call him our a ruckus when he gets into our things, but he is such a cute ruckus that he makes us smile when we find out.

Parents- This year for valentine's day I thought I would give Jeff 14 days of valentines instead of just one. So it started with me leaving a note in his gym bag so when he went to play racquetball with some guys at his work he would know that I loved him. He found the note a little early and the snack that I left in there, but he loved the gesture. I would leave a note every day for him somewhere where he would find it. Sometimes I would leave one of his favorite snacks. By the end of 14 days, Jeff was starting to say that I was making him fat, but he loved all of the notes of love and kindness. Jeff ordered me flowers on valentine;s day and it was a new experience for both of us having flowers shipped through UPS. I don't think Jeff liked how it turned out and will not be buying flowers over the Internet again, but I loved the flowers and I felt very loved that day. I snapped a picture a couple of days after valentine's when the flowers looked their best. It was definitely a bouquet of flowers that got better over time. In fact they are still doing just fine sitting on my kitchen table. We also went out to sushi that weekend when we were up at my parents and we had a ball being out together. We need to do more of that.

Family Activities-I love doing things together as a family, especially when we got to a sporting event. This year Dallin became in love with the Jazz. He went to one game when they came back from the lockout, which was free for us because of Jr. Jazz, and he had fun and actually followed the game the whole time. So we planned to take everyone to a Jazz game this month as a reward for working on the basement. The day that I had planned to take everyone turned out to be on the only weekend that was perfect to go see my family over a couple of days. So i cancelled the Jazz game. The day before we left I thought about seeing if the Utah State basketball team had a game that we could replace the Jazz game with. It turned out that they did and I bought 4 tickets, which turned out to be a lot cheeper than going to the Jazz game. Everyone had a lot of fun at the game. You can see from the picture that I took with my phone, that Dallin is paying attention, Isaac is being his normal self when I pull out a camera, and Jeff he looks bored, but if I remember correctly the Aggies weren't doing the best at this time so he might be a little frustrated. Utah State didn't win, but we all had fun and I was able to tell the boys that I used to work here and be up in the media box and on the floor taking stats. It was a little sad, because I miss taking stats for Utah State. It was one of the happiest times that I had at college. We all had fun and that is a plus.

I had to share this last photo becuase Kaden is just too cute. He is funny in the fact that he will let you put something on his head and he will keep it there for awhile. He was in the bath and I put his vampire duck and an alligator toy on his head and he thought that was fun. He wold actually continue playing with the other toys and leave these toys on his head. We play a game with our kids where we put an animal on there head and then name their heads the animal with head, brain, or any other name for the head we can think of. So since I was able to get two animals on his head I named him ducky head alligator brain for this picture.

So we have all had fun enjoying our new basement this last month and Jeff and I can't believe how we ever lived without the basement being done. It took along time to finish, but now that it is done we love it. Next project will be our pantry shelves, and then it is on to my craft room where demolition will be involved. I can't wait to try my hand at breaking down a wall with a sledge hammer. It should be fun.

Basement is FINISHED!!!!

For the past 7 months Jeff and I have been working hard to finish our basement. On January 16th we finally finished our basement. We took our time and worked on the basement here and there on a weekend or two. Then in October we got serious about finishing the basement because our kids were starting to keep each other up at night. So we started working on the basement constantly on the weekend from that point on.

We mostly did all of the work ourselves. We hired out the plumbing because it would have taken forever for us to chisel into the concrete to move the drain for a shower, the toilet and as some of you might remember to add in one for our washer that we moved into my craft room. The drywall and mudding was also hired out because Jeff had tried to do some in his room before and he didn't like how it turned out. We also hired out the carpet laying. We ended up finding a really good deal on carpet and the labor at Factory Flooring Direct that is located here in Tooele County.

The drywall was completed on the Monday before Christmas and from then on all of the spare time that I had was spent on painting the basement. I had some fun painting, but by the end of the 3 weeks I never wanted to see a paint brush again.

We are all really happy with the results of our basement. I love the colors that were chosen by the kids and Jeff and I. My two favorite parts are the cabinets in the bathroom, that were made by our wonderful neighbor Tim whose family has a cabinetry business called Canyon Craft Cabinets, and the carpet. The carpet is really soft and comfortable. We now spend a lot of time in our basement because the whole family loves being down there.

This whole experience has been good. Now I want to finish my craft room and we have a lot of ideas on renovating our upstairs.

Here is the scrapbook page I made for the reveal: