Moving Right Along

We drove by the house on Anna's birthday and saw a big cement truck!  They poured the footings for the house.





 



Today, we stopped by and saw the construction workers putting up the walls for the foundation.  The head guy said that we should have a foundation poured by tonight!  So exciting!

Anna is 2!

The Birthday Girl

 I can't believe that little baby Anna is 2!  She has gotten so big and grown up.  When we went to the doctor for her 2-year check-up, he said that she had moved from the 25th percentile to the 70th for height.  She if finally wearing clothes that are for her age-group (except for pants, because she has short legs).

Here's a close-up of her crown.

We had a fun day for her birthday.  I made her a birthday crown that she wore all day long.  After dinner, she opened up her presents.  She got a couple of books from Grandma & Grandpa and pajamas from Nana & Pop.  We got Anna a Fancy Nancy book, a couple pairs of pjs, a couple of pool noodles (for Dad & Anna to whack each other), and a membership to the zoo.  The membership is for me just as much as for Anna.

I made a strawberry shortcake and Anna asked for 'choc-ate ice cream'.  Afterwards, we went to the park, Anna's most favorite place to go.  She went down all the slides and on the swing several times before we could get her back in to the house for bed.  We read all the books that she got and put our tired little two year old down to sleep.

Cousins

Painting in the kitchen

Jared holds up one of his breadsticks.

 
We have had our nephews, Jared and Billy, over for the last couple of days (Wed-Fri) while their parents got away to celebrate their anniversary.  It has been a lot of fun and I've gotten a look at what our lives could be like in a few years.  I've learned that I'm going to need to be super organized or I'm not going to get anything done.

Painting seriously

Thursday was our only complete day together and unfortunately it rained for much of the morning.  So, we decided to find some indoor activities.   There was the usual playing with the toys and puzzles and watching Ratatouille.  We took a break from the toys and painted some pictures.  I have finger paint, but the kids all wanted to use brushes.  Jared said he was painting Mickey Mouse's Clubhouse.  Anna just smeared the paint and Billy tried to eat it.  In the afternoon, Jared and Anna helped me roll out our breadsticks for dinner.  It finally cleared up in the late afternoon, just in time for them to go out and play in the yard while I fixed the rest of dinner.

Anna ate all of her breadstick dough

 
Anna has loved having her cousins over.  She greeted them each morning with a "Good morning, Jared! Good morning, Billy!"  She has had to learn to be a little more generous with her toys.  She's not used to having to share.

Playing puzzles

I was pleasantly surprised when the kids all took a 2 1/2 hour nap yesterday all at the same time!  It was a life-saver for me.  I was able to clean up morning stuff and prep dinner, plus get a little down time for me.
Thanks, Ken and Kate for letting us watch your fun boys!

Permit-ted!

Anna's excited, too.

Our hole!

I got a call today from Brittany at Symphony Homes.  They are picking up our construction permit today and are staking out the plot!  I'm so excited to see something physical actually happening!  I think I may have to take a picture of the stakes.

The back hoe is ready for action.

**Update**
We took a walk to the lot and found not only stakes, but a hole!  Yay!

Groundbreaking

At our last meeting, the team said that they are expecting to get our building permit at least by the middle of next week.  So, we decided to have our own little groundbreaking on the plot before the big machines move in.  Here are a couple of pictures of it.

Final Design Meeting

Well, I think we are done designing the house.  We had our final meeting yesterday and signed off on all the decisions.  What that means, is that any changes we make from now on will cost $300 each!

We arrived with a couple of questions that were answered pretty quickly.  Then, Brittany had us look at our choices for colors and materials inside the house.  When she pulled out the exterior stuff, we decided we didn't like what we had chosen.  We ended up choosing a different exterior color and a new stone mix!  Luckily, we didn't make any changes to the inside, though Steve finally decided he likes the quartz I picked for the kitchen.

What took the most time was looking at all the plans, specs, and addendums.  Poor Brittany was kept busy running up and down the stairs changing and making copies every time something was changed or clarified.  She took pictures of all of our choices that we had to sign and we had to sign all the plans and papers.

We left the meeting feeling really good about everything.  Now, if we could just get our permit approved soon!

Easter Weekend

I'm a little behind in posting this, because I couldn't find my camera for about a week!  I finally found it in one of the little compartments in the car.  How it got there, I don't know.

Anyway...Easter weekend was fun.  Saturday was for most of the Easter Bunny stuff.  Anna came downstairs and got her Easter basket.  We got her some bubbles, egg-shaped chalk, an Easter bonnet, a 'My First Easter Story' book, and a chocolate bunny.  She was very excited about the bubbles and chalk.  We cleared the stuff from the basket and she looked around the downstairs for the eggs we had colored the day before.   So fun!  She kept running around saying, "Eggy!  Eggy!  Eggy!".

That morning was the ward Easter egg hunt.  We got to the church at 9am for breakfast.  Everyone was supposed to bring 10 filled plastic eggs for each child participating in the hunt.  The eggs were hidden while we ate.  Luckily, they made an area for the nursery kids to run around in without being bowled over by the big kids.  I must admit it was over in just a couple of minutes.  Anna had to sit down right then and start opening her eggs and eating the candy.  Silly girl.

Sunday was a lot quieter.  We read her Easter book in the morning, then went to church.  Anna loves nursery!  We had a nice Easter dinner later.  Ham, deviled eggs, corn, strawberry-spinach salad, rolls, and homemade carrot cake!  Yum!

Dying Easter Eggs

Today, Anna and I decided to get ready for Easter by dying Easter eggs.  I boiled some eggs, 4 white and 4 brown, and got 4 colors ready: green, yellow, orange, and rose.  Anna was so excited to get started.

I decided to do something I saw on Pinterest and put the eggs inside a whisk.  That made it a lot easier for Anna to dip the eggs in the dye.  She actually did all the dying herself.  We put the brown eggs in the dye to sit for a while because they are so dark.  It's amazing the difference in the colors between the different eggs.

The best part was decorating the eggs afterwards.  We used the beeswax crayons I had bought and drew on them.  Anna thought it was great and tried lots of different colors.  She is so excited to look for the eggs tomorrow when the Easter Bunny comes.

At our house, the Easter Bunny comes on Saturday so we can focus on Christ on Sunday.