A much needed new toy

I think one of the (many) reasons why my blog has sucked so bad is that for quite a while, we have not had a camera. How can you blog about something exciting if you didn't even bother to take a picture of it!? I have NO IDEA what happened to our old camera... I'm blaming it's disappearance on the process of decluttering for home staging purposes!

Anyway, it was time to take the plunge and just buy a new camera already! We looked for a while and decided that we are fans of Nikon cameras, and ended up with the S3000. We got an OK deal on it on Memorial Day, so we were happy about that! So what do you do when you haven't had a camera for a while? Take ugly pictures of yourself in the car, of course!!! Here's a little sampling.

Ahhh, much better!

On one of Andy's first days of summer, he got to go to the dentist to get that tooth fixed! They had to shave it down and ended up putting a cap on top of it. I think it looks great and it was all for the bargain price of $180! Here's hoping he can manage to keep the rest of them whole from here on out!

See... much better!!

Awww, Man!!

On Wednesday I missed a phone call from Andy's teacher at school. I didn't listen to the message until after I saw Paul's text message saying, "The sooner you can get home the better. I have to take Andy to the dentist as close to 3:30 as possible."

Oh Crap!!

So I then listened to the message from his teacher letting me know that Andy had a pretty significant chip in his front tooth from when a baton was tossed at him and hit him in the mouth. Paul was there to take care of the dentist appointment where the doc put some kind of sealant on the tooth to cover the nerve endings. I took care of picking up Canon and Charlie and hanging out until Paul and Andy got back. This is what Andy looks like now:


We've got an appointment for the dentist to fill in the space in a couple weeks. Thankfully it will only be a couple hundred dollars instead of what I was fearing the cost would be! Until then, we get to look at this funny triangle tooth!

Best Mother's Day Gift Ever!

Yesterday was a wonderful Mother's Day for me and my family. I know it's fun to incite that awesome competition of how my mom is better than your mom, but I don't believe in doing that. I'm sure you have a lovely mother and I'm very happy for you! Instead, I would like to say that I am insanely blessed to be the daughter of Liz Anderson and the wife of the son of Rhyll Croshaw. I love both of these women beyond words. They add so much love and security to my life.

I also love mothers day because I'm very grateful for the chance I have in this life to be the mother of these three little cuties:

I love being a mother to these boys. They each present their challenges, but the joys far outweigh them. Each of them were extra sweet to me yesterday, including a stream of compliments from all of them at breakfast with Charlie looking at me and saying, "you're so cute, mommy." I just had to laugh. I say that to him all the time!

Anyway, I titled this post the best mothers day gift ever because of what we were able to accomplish with Charlie yesterday. I'm sure you care A LOT but guess how many times we had to change Charlie's underwear yesterday?!?! ZERO! Despite being at the Croshaw's all day yesterday (which includes a fair amount of parental neglect on my part... "go outside and play boys!") Charlie did all of his business in the potty multiple times. Looks like we may have gotten over that fear of pooping in the toilet. YAHOO!!! I'm feeling more and more confident that we've gotten through the worst of it! What a relief. And what a trip it is thinking that I may never have to purchase diapers again. Do you agree that this is a pretty impressive and expensive Mother's Day gift!? It makes the iTunes giftcards I got from Paul pale in comparison!

I hope you all had a great Mother's day honoring all the awesome women in our lives. I know I did.

What I've been up to.

I'm trying not to get annoyed with myself with how little blogging I've been doing lately. One of the fears I had when I started this blog was that at some point I would feel like it's one more thing or hobby that I would feel guilty about neglecting. So instead of getting annoyed or feeling guilt, I'm going to focus on being glad that there are a lot of great things going on that have kept me busy.

I'll start with a list of things I've been doing lately:
1. Running again. Paul's Aunt Dawn started talking last year about putting a family team together for the Ragnar Wasatch Back relay in June. Since Dawn lives in Minnesota, she asked me to be our team captain, which put me in charge of making sure we were registered on time and making the assignments for who would be which runner. The Wasatch Back (WB from here on out) is just like the Red Rock Relay. You can read my epistle about it by clicking that link. I'll admit that I'm nervous to do this again, mostly because I remember just how sore I was after the RRR. But there are some things that will make the WB better than the RRR. We are not an all woman team... in fact, in my van, we've got Paul, Spencer, and Luke (all seasoned triathletes and excellent runners). I'm relieved to have been able to pick one of the easier slots in our van!

Our team name is "The UFO- Unforgettable Family Outing" and the race is June 18-19th. I've got 6 weeks to kick it into gear to be more ready. For the last 2 weeks I've been following the recommended training schedule exactly. Today I'm supposed to do 2 25-minute runs, but I need to wait until Paul gets back from his 50 mile bike ride (He's got a 1/2 ironman in 5 weeks). So, I've been spending more time lately running and have a lot more to do!

2. Burning Out. I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO ready for school to be out. Thankfully, I've only got about 3 weeks left. This school year has had DRAMA written all over it. There is always drama and politics in any working environment, but when you times that by 3 for the different schools I work with, it can get old really quick. I've learned a LOT this school year from picking up an employee and REALLY learning how to run a business, but I'm ready to scale back and spend more time with the boys.

3. Potty training Charlie. Ugh. This whole process has been so AGONIZING!!!! A couple weeks ago, we ran out of diapers and I decided I didn't want to go buy anymore. So, Charlie has been wearing underwear since then and I wish I could say that it's gone smoothly, but it's Charlie we're talking about here! Actually, he's done a very good job with staying dry! The problem we're having is getting him to go #2 in the toilet. He did it once and we got him a cool police car he picked out. But since then, no luck. We may have to put him in a diaper at night so we don't have to start each day with a cold bath. We've discovered he's a consistent morning pooper. Anyway, this process has been taking a lot of my mental energy lately!

Now I'll list some things that have been worrying us:
1. The stinking housing market!! The first week it was listed, we had 3 showings. Since then... ZERO. I haven't even bothered to keep my house super clean because nothing is happening. The initial showings we had were very positive and they really liked the house, but there is so much out there right now. I actually shouldn't say that we're worrying about this, but it's been a bit frustrating. For this summer, Paul will likely be renting some office space with a colleague so he's not stuck here at the house with me and the kids trying to get all his work done. So, I've asked the realtor to switch the for sale sign in our yard to one less imposing. The big sign obviously isn't helping!

2. CONSTRUCTION!! Somewhere in the last few months, I must have offended the construction gods, because there are road closures and orange barrels everywhere I turn these days. The cul-de-sac we live on isn't under construction, but the road you HAVE TO drive on to get to our road is completely torn up right now and will be until fall. This may have something to do with the zero action we're seeing with the house for sale, but that's not my main frustration with it.

3. Medical bills. Canon's emergency appendectomy was the first time we've needed to actually use our health insurance since Paul changed employment last year. Turns out our plan is GARBAGE and we get to pay for the whole thing! Good times!

4. ADD. I think Andy's got it and Paul and I aren't quite on the same page on what we need to do about that. Any advice?

5. Summer clothes. I'm up about 10 pounds from where I was a year ago when we went on the cruise. Life has been very delicious since Thanksgiving! All the summer clothes I bought last year are 1.5 sizes smaller than I am right now, so I'm getting back to following the weight watchers plan. If I can really focus on my food for the next 6 weeks, I'm hoping I can get back down to below 150 by the race in June. Then I can also be skinny again for the family pictures we'll be taking at the reunion at the end of June. I may use this blog as an accountability source for the next 2 months! Hope you don't mind.

There... I've updated the blog!

Okay, here's the scoop

After spending a grueling day trying to figure out our taxes (procrastinating anyone?), I thought I'd grab the laptop, turn on the GLEE episode I've been all geeked about watching for a week, and finally fill in the gaps from my last post about moving.

Since January, my posts have been few and far between because we've been doing a lot of sprucing up around here. We've painted the entire upstairs... a job that desperately needed to be done 4.5 years ago when we moved in. We've also figured out how to decorate a wall or two, find drain pipes under concrete and walls, put in a bathtub/toilet/sink/flooring/etc. and overall make this place look downright cute in some places! Come to think of it, all of these things would have been nice to have done 4 years ago! It's been a lot of work, but it's also been great to know that none of these tasks were IMPOSSIBLE! With some incredible help from our brother-in-law, Jason, and hiring out some key plumbing and drywall work (for a killer deal on both) it has come together quite nicely.

But yes, we are trying to sell, because right now is a really great time to upgrade your house if you can. Since Paul changed jobs over a year ago, he's been working from home and has needed a home office space. So he's been functioning in the back of the family room downstairs. I also run my speech therapy business from home, and while that doesn't take a TON of space, my stampin' up! demonstratorship does. So, we're going to see if we can sell this place and hopefully break even. We're not in a position where we need to short sale the house, but we also don't have a ton of wiggle room on the price. But thankfully, we're not desperate to sell either. Though it's sexy to be looking at some nicer homes with more space, we love our house, love our neighborhood, and love our ward. So if we don't get any viable offers, we'll stay... and maybe finish off the 4th bedroom.

As for where we're going? Hopefully not far. Our boys attend a charter school that we've liked really well so far. It would be great to still have quick access to the school, so we're looking for homes here in Springville, Mapleton, and Spanish Fork. We want to stay close. We love this area.

So do you want to see it?! Here are some pics.
We'll start with the front room/first impression:

Next, onto the kitchen:

Now the bedrooms upstairs:

The TWO bathrooms we now have!: (for the record, this is the first time in my 10.5 years of marriage that we've had more than one toilet at our house... it's wonderful!)

Here's the boys' bedroom downstairs:

And finally, the family room/office - (aka: the part of the house we hope buyers will overlook after being impressed with the rest of the house!):


So, this is what we've been up to... and what I WILL be up to for who knows how long. In the first week, we've had 3 showings, 2 of which were to the same people. We've gotten great feedback so far, so we're hopeful, but trying to stay chill about the whole thing. Send us your "happy showing" thoughts and your "happy offer" thoughts, and while we're at it, your "happy help-Diana-somehow-keep-the-house-clean-like-we-don't-live-here" thoughts... cuz we could sure use a lot of those!

For Sale

It's official. This morning we finally put our house officially on the market. More details to come later. In the meantime... pray for us!