A Wizardly Birthday

Aubrie read all seven Harry Potter books last year, and has been completely enthralled with all things Harry Potter. So, when it worked out we would have an extra day in Orlando, and that day also happened to be her 9th birthday, we decided to splurge and have me take her to Universal Studios Orlando to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. What a fun day for both of us!

Aubrie LOVES her birthday parties, so it was a little difficult for her to give up the idea of having an actual party, but because we just moved and raced to unpack and repack for this vacation, it was a welcome break for hosting a celebration.

My favorite part of the day was sharing a "Butterbeer" in "Three Broomsticks." The Butterbeer was so sweet and delicious! We loved it! Parts of HP world were so realistic, I totally felt like I had jumped inside the book. Three Broomsticks was impressive. Unfortunately, I didn't take too many pics of it.

The Hogwarts Castle is definitely impressive inside and out. Aubrie actually was a little scared of the ride inside of it though. Not because of the motion, but because of the creepy things right in your face. She's never been a big fan of anything of that sort -- did I ever tell you of her first trip to Disneyland at age 2, first ride, Snow White's Scary Ride? The rest of the day was shot after the witch jumped right in her face around the first corner of her first ride ever. #worstparentsever. Anyhoo, we have only let Aubrie watch the first HP movie, so nearly all the images of the stories have only been created by her reading and not put there by the movies. I think that's the biggest reason why the castle was unsettling to her.

Aubrie's favorite part of the day was choosing a wand and other HP paraphanelia with her birthday money from Grandma. We spent a LOT of time in those gift shops! I don't know where she gets her shopping genes from...

Who's wand should I choose... Ginny Weasley or Hermione Granger?

I like the color of this one, but the feel of this one...

And the winner is? Ginny Weasley!

The shops were just so fun. I can't even recall the name of this one, but Aubrie could tell you every detail of those books!

This train conductor stood at the Hogwart's Express. 

Even though I was actually pretty underwhelmed by Harry Potter World, Aubrie and I have always loved to have Mommy/daughter time, so this was extra special for both of us. After the craziness of the past weeks, it was nice to be together and share these memories and celebrate my growing girl!

Nine things about Aubrie at age 9:

1. Loves to read. She takes books to the next level. Her inferencing of characters is amazing. She ponders and makes connections that are so deep and thought provoking.

2. Loves to write. I'm a terrible mom at suppressing her skills because she wants to write all the time; but, she spells better than most adults, and her writing is so beautiful that I feel like she doesn't need to practice it all day long (like she wants) but should be practicing math, piano, etc. So ironic that I do this to her since my passion is writing too.

3. Is empathetic. Aubrie has amazing friend-shipping and problem-solving skills. She feels her piano music deeper. I imagine there aren't a lot of kids her age that genuinely want to know the ups and downs of her mother's day. What a sweetie.

4. Aubrie's hair is long. Her super thick hair is growing and growing in hopes of cutting and donating it (soon, hopefully).

5. She LOVES to dance. She has always loved all her extra-curricular activities, but this year she's coming to realize that dance might be her favorite activity. She's a beautiful and hard working ballerina.

6. Aubrie's piano work ethic is paying off. The music she is playing is beautiful throughout our home.

7. She loves to do plays with her friends, play Legos, American Girl Dolls, play Harry Potter, ride bikes, explore the 'forest' in the backyard, and play games.

8. Aubrie is a great helper. She has really grown up in the past year and has become a huge help to me around the house and with her siblings.

9. She is a saver. She has well over a $100 to her name from saving nearly all the money she has ever received. Nothing wrong with wanting to save rather than spend.

The Cruise Movie - Trailer

A little preview of the cruise ship trip we will posting about over the next week.

Super Heroes

 Life isn't easy for a super hero when you are surrounded by lace and frill.
 However, Kyler is a good sport.

Although, every once in a while Teyah gets into a super hero mood and joins her little brother as a side kick.

Boom! Pow!

Kyler's super hero name should be Kyler the Smiler because he is always happy!

Kyler's outfit matches his new bat mobile from Papa and Grammy.

Christmas

Although this Christmas season was filled with every day anxiety of moving, we did take time out as much as we could to make it a fun and memorable Christmas. About a week before Christmas, we let the kids open up a special early present that contained a play house. It took a minute for the kids to realize that the big gift this year would be a new house that would come in just a few weeks.

We experienced quite the Who-vilation at our church Christmas party as our kids got to meet the real live Grinch (our stake President). Santa also made an appearance and fortunately the Grinch did not ruin the celebration.

On Christmas Eve, our focus was on the birth of our Savior as the kids reenacted the nativity, dressing as Mary, a shepard boy and an angel.

On Christmas morning, there were plenty of smiles to go around as Santa had delivered the goods to our good little boy and girls.

The girls were also thrilled that Aunt Lauren had been delivered to our house on Christmas Eve.

The kids had prepared special gifts for her.

Ellie had worked hard on her first sewing project (a pillowcase) and was giddy to give it Lauren on Chrismas day.

Ellie was so proud and happy to make something special for her Auntie.

Kyler spent much of the morning sporting his batman suit and toting a little Batman to go with it.

After we opened all the presents, we took the girls down to the basement for one last present from their Papa and Grammy....new bikes for everyone! This is the first time any of our kids have had new bikes as their bikes had always come second hand. They were ecstatic!

As we had our first "brown Christmas" in quite some time with temps in the 50s, the kids were able to go right outside to ride their bikes around the neighborhood. It was the perfect Christmas for bikes because they actually were able to ride them quite a bit this winter! Thanks Papa and Grammy!

Playing Naughty and Nice

Aubrie has continued to love ballet and this December was excited for Level 2A because that meant she could be a rat in the Nutcracker production.

You would never know that these two were as cute as could be by those nasty costumes! 

In fact, before the show, part of their duties are to show the younger dancers that they are just in fact cute little girls so the pre-ballet mice are not frightened! 

The red-lighted eyes look pretty cool on stage; it's no wonder those tiny dancers are scared! 

The way schedules work things seem to always fall at the same time, and on this day, Aubrie was a scary, dancing rat by morning and a sweet singing mama bear by afternoon!

Whenever you ask Aubrie what she wants to be when she grows up, without hesitation, she responds, "an actress."  Last year she performed in her first play at school and set a goal for herself that she would earn a speaking part in the third grade musical. In fact, at the beginning of the school year, her 'hope and dream' for the year was to earn a speaking part in the school musical. After a year of a lot of 'drama' around the house, she landed that coveted speaking part.

She was selected to be the "Mama Bear" in a play called "Three of a Kind" about fairy tale creatures that come in three's.

She shined bright on both the dancing and musical stage, and ate up the spotlight. I think we have a budding star on our hands!

Christmas season Kickoff

Even though our big move was happening in just a few weeks, we still tried to allow our family to have an enjoyable Christmas. This was especially important to us since the previous Christmas we had cut most our traditions because of the house being on the market.

Kyler was especially impressed with the gingerbread house -- apparently it was so irresistible that he snuck several stale gumdrops. 

Aubrie was all about concentrating to create perfection.

Teyah, however, was all about the hot cocoa.

Kyler appreciated all the decorations we pulled out to display. He especially loved the light up town hall and the polar express train.

There were plenty of pink doll ornaments to decorate the Christmas tree with.

  

 Kyler especially liked these fancy boots! What else would you do with something that looks like a sock?

He thought he was hot stuff as he strutted around in the stockings. 

I think Kyler has a new favorite holiday

Kyler's Day out with Daddy

On Kyler's 2nd birthday, Dave took the day off work to take him on their first ever "boys day out." As Kyler usually spends his day doing what the girls want to do, it was a rare chance for Kyler to be in charge of what to do.

Dave took him to the Children's Museum where he got a chance to drive the bus....

 do a little bit of shopping....

Practice some kung fu moves on foam blocks...

...and do some rodeo riding on the queen ant. The boys had fun together!

The reason why this Christmas picture never made it out

We had good intentions of sending a Christmas picture/card out this year. But it didn't happen because we got the greatest Christmas present ever, which meant only the minimum happened. Sorry this is the looooong version of this story, written for my own record keeping.

In July of 2010, we realized we needed to consider refinancing our home because the rates were at historical lows. Also, we were coming up on 7 years of living in our house, which meant our rate would be adjusting soon. We gathered research and talked about how much longer we planned to be in the area, how long we thought we'd live comfortably in our present home, etc.

We loved our house, but the part I had issues with is our location. Our house was located 15-20 minutes from everything. For some things, that was a huge blessing, such as the airport, temple, Mall of America, Dave's work, etc. But, for others it was a huge pain: the kid's school, doctors, Wal-Mart, Target, dentist, basically any store, etc. As the kids have been getting older, I have been spending a crazy amount of time in the car and have spent hours killing time at Target, waiting for the next thing, without enough time to drive home and back. It was clear to me, that I wanted to try to sell our house and move closer rather than refinance. We contacted some agents to see how much our house might be worth. We figured we would lose on our house, gain on the one we bought, but win on the rates. So, we worked hard and listed our house in September of 2010.

The 'For Sale' sign was there through four seasons

We looked at houses and picked all sorts of beautiful homes that would suit us well. But, the selling business didn't go so well. We had plenty of showings and worked hard to make each one immaculate and perfect. The months passed, and we had the cleanest house in the world, but our hopes dimmed. We knew the market was tough, but we never thought it would drag out the way it did.

Showings became our way of life, where we weren't really living in our house. The Christmas tree was not in the 'right' spot, and we allowed only limited decorations; we had very little company over because who knew if we'd have a showing and we'd have to cancel; all the family pictures had been taken down; we eliminated all the small trash cans in the house, etc....it affected every part of our life. We had a showing on Easter Sunday and on Halloween. A showing on a Sunday afternoon with zero notice, while our kids were napping. They just approached our house and wanted to see it. We had early morning and late night showings. Once we had a 7 a.m. showing that they never showed up for! We think the poor market, overload of foreclosures near us, our timing, our price range, and the new construction down the street were the biggest problems with selling our house.

We often questioned if we were doing the wrong thing, but the more we unattached ourselves from the house, the more difficult it was to change that mindset and decide we were going to stay. So we pressed onward. During this time, we fell in love with a house that had been on the market for years and was listed as a short sale. I'm not sure why we even looked at it in the first place, because the price was so far off what we could afford. We had been told that short sale's can take months and months and they are easy to cancel the transaction, so we thought we had nothing to lose, so we made an incredibly low offer on it.

The other agent didn't even acknowledge our offer nor send it into the bank. We were discouraged. Soon, someone else actually offered on it, and that did go to the bank. All along, I had a feeling that offer would fall through and couldn't stop feeling like this house was right for us -- which actually made no sense because it was so far out of our range. But the offer eventually did fall through. And then somebody else offered, but same story. It had been nearly a year since our first offer (with a tumbling housing market in the meantime) so we tried again with our exact same extremely low-ball offer. Again, the agent didn't send it to the bank.

What Kyler looked like the weekend we put our house
up for sale (9 months)

Around this time, we realized in order to sell our house, we needed a reality check and asked our realtor to find out what our existing house might actually be worth, since it was not selling at our listing price. The agent came back with a very low price -- which was a reality check at how much the market had dropped in those 11 months. With the listing agent of our 'dream home' not acknowledging our offer and this blow of our house being worth so little, it was too much for me to take.

Frustrated, defeated, and confused, we turned to prayer for guidance. For some reason, the answer to my prayers was that we needed to take our house off the market and everything would work out with the 'Dream' house. It made no sense because the Dream house was listed about $75,000 above what we could possibly pay for it, and our house was worth at least $25,000 less than we were hoping to sell it for. So, tearfully, we took the house off the market and tried to live in our home again and move forward.

This is what Kyler looked like when we finally moved into
our house (2 years old)! 

Each time I was in the neighborhood of the 'Dream Home', I would drive by it. Not long after our latest low-ball offer, I drove by and saw it had been taken off the market. We tried to analyze our way through that one, but didn't understand why a house that had been listed for sale for two years as a short sale would just go off the market if it didn't sell and didn't go into foreclosure. About four weeks after that, I drove by and noticed a new "For Sale" sign, listed with a new agent. I got a glimmer of hope, and called the agent directly, telling her that we wanted to buy it but could only afford so much. She said she recommended us making the offer because she looks at things differently and welcomes low-ball offers because it helps the sellers know what price the bank is willing to take, because they usually counter the low offer. She said she would consider submitting it. So, we called our agent and tried one more time. A few days later, we heard the sellers signed it and it went to the bank!!! This is what I wanted more than anything because the bank was who we would be negotiating with, so getting it to the negotiator was huge!

Around this time, we learned about a management company that handles the stress of renting a property, and we were considering renting our house. Even with the offer into the bank, we didn't re-list our house.

We had worked hard over the years to make our house our own, but after
showing it for so long, we were so detached and ready to move on.

Weeks and weeks passed, not hearing much. Soon we learned the house was about to have the Sheriff's Sale, which would send it into foreclosure (But the bank wouldn't own it for another 6 months from the sale). The other agent was able to push off the sale with our offer at the bank.

We figured the bank would either accept our offer, reject it, or counter so high that it wasn't even a temptation because we knew we couldn't afford it. Well, just before Thanksgiving, I got a call that they countered our offer, and it was so close!! It felt like the worst thing that could happen because it was close enough that I thought we'd always regret it if we didn't take it, but far enough away from what we could afford where we wouldn't even be able to afford to buy appliances for our house (appliances and this house is a whole other story). My agent said banks "never" take counter offers with short sales and this bank won't pay closing costs. She seemed to think it was their counter price or nothing. We finally decided to go against our agent's advice, take the risk, and counter the bank.

The Christmas tree, decorations, and presents were boxed up before we 

went to bed on Dec. 25!

We waited on pins and needles, and after Thanksgiving, we got the call that they accepted it!!! We had 30 days to close, which meant we were moving January 4. I'm sure others can appreciate the fact that we had 30 days to pack and move our entire house, all the while celebrating Christmas and doing all the December concerts, recitals, parties, etc. Thankfully, my sister Lauren came for a couple weeks and worked so hard. The other concern was how we were going to move in sub-zero temps and piles and piles of snow that Minnesota is known for during that time of year.

Our first winter in our first MN house. We had many great memories,
and even added two new babies to our family in that home. Although, we
never anticipated staying there that long (6 1/2 years) as it had been the
longest we had lived anywhere since we had been married.

But moving day came, and we had the warmest, driest winter and the sun was shining, nobody wore coats, and there was zero snow on the ground!! This is unheard of for January 7 in Minnesota.

The long awaited 'Dream Home'

The other stress was two days after we moved, Dave started his crazy busy traveling schedule and 10 days after the move we flew out for a pre-scheduled Disney Cruise with all of my family. For about 3-4 weeks straight, Dave and I went to bed no earlier than 2:30 a.m. and were up by 7 a.m. the next day. I worked so hard and fast that I didn't take time to eat and lost 15 pounds! Yikes! This moving process was one of the more physically demanding times I have ever endured.

But, while we were on our cruise, we found renters for our house and all the loose ends and unknowns, were finally coming together.

Looking out our living room window. One of my favorite features of our new
home is the windows/view. 

This was a very long test of patience and one of those, that we kept thinking and hoping that we would be able to tell the story in this way someday! We feel so blessed and grateful for the way things worked out. We hope our children can someday forgive us for putting them through showing the house for that long! But, they are so excited to live across the street from the neighborhood pool and park, that I think they have gotten over it! We know that prayers are heard, and we are not forgotten by the Lord ... even though at times it may feel that way. This house story was a lesson of prayer, patience, long-suffering, with an ending of great blessings and joy.