may 2016

At smith's they hide Leo in the store. If the kids find him they get to pick a prize out of the treasure chest. Usually we don't find him. But Bryleigh had gone to the store with her friend Mayer, and they found him. So when she went with me the next day we found him again. They move him to a new spot every week. 

Ella is a true little kitty hunter. She loves playing with bugs! There was a bee in the house, that she had fun playing with!

I asked Hannah to pick up a dryer sheet and put it in the garbage for me. I was in the other room.
She said, the garbage? When I came into the room, I find all the sheets in the garbage! We laughed
so hard. She's like, what? She thought I said the sheets, not the dryer sheet. 

Bethany exploring the temple grounds with her friends, the beehives! She loves young womens!

Bethany's 6th grade class had a reunion. She had so much fun with these people! 

I love living by the mountains! It's all super green right now from all the rain we had gotten. Bryleigh loves walking to preschool!

Dog sitting scout. They are both curled up!

Scout got to go for a car ride with us. He was still smiling on cue!

Having ice cream with chocolate syrup. When we were done, Rylan spilled on his shirt. It spelled up. So funny!

Bryleigh on her date with Da. They went to Chili's, where Bryleigh ordered dessert! Then went and saw zootopia. They really liked the movie!

Bryleigh being silly with Ella!

At pack meeting this month, they had a police officer come and talk to the boys. They were going to bring their dog also, but he got called out on a job. The boys got to try on the big heavy jacket. I was at Hannah's school awards ceremony, so I missed out!

b & h performances

Bethany took a theater class at school, she loves acting! They had a performance of what they worked on during school. 

Hannah's music teacher had a concert. Hannah loves singing and really enjoyed it! 

As part of the concert, the teacher had a group of kids that wanted to participate in a couple dances. Of course Hannah wanted to do that too.  So she danced to two songs and then sang a song with her class. They sang Man in the mirror. They performed at Northridge Highschool. 

Hannah's spelling bee and end of year awards

Hannah qualified to participate in her school spelling bee again this year. Each class does a spelling bee in their rooms, and the top 3 get to participate in the school spelling bee. Hannah took 1st in her classroom. She did really good at the school spelling bee and we were so proud of her!

Hannah has the best teachers at Leadership Learning Academy. They are the reason she stayed at that school for her 5th grade year. The boys went back to Adam's and Bethany onto Jr. High. So she was flying solo at LLA. Her teachers are so caring and just love their students!

At the end of each school year the teachers hold a 6th grade graduation and they do awards for the 4th and 5th graders. Her teachers always have such nice things to say about Hannah. 

One of the things she was excited about during 5th grade, is she got to be on the newsletter team. She loves writing and was super excited to get to write articles for her school newspaper!

Mrs. Ullman, her writing teacher. She was her homeroom teacher for 4th grade. 

{Me in the backround! I got to organize the refreshments for the graduation. Cookies and drinks.}

Mrs. Fonua, her reading teacher and homeroom teacher for 5th grade. I got to work with her all year being her class captain. She is an awesome lady!

Mrs. Baker, her math teacher. She was Bethany's homeroom teacher for her 5th and 6th grade. She is awesome and gives the best hugs. She is a bronco's fan, so we give her a hard time about that!

Hannah decided to make the move back to Adam's for her 6th grade year. It was kind of a rough year with friends. Her best friend Lexi, started being friends with other people and leaving Hannah out. There were some other kids that would say inappropriate things, that really bothered Hannah. I think overall, she kind of got tired of being in the same class with the same kids for too many years. She was tired of the school and the stations. She was ready for a change. I thought she would of been sad on the last day of school, but I think she was relived that it was over. I saw a huge change in her mood after school was over. The situation was really wearing on her, more than I realized. I'm glad she was in tune with what was good for her and was able to make the change. Plus, I don't mind having to take and pick her up from school. That was the worst part for me! 

kids sports {spring}

May is one of our busiest months of the year. We have all the end of school things going on.  We also have way too many sports going on! Rylan plays baseball. He is loving it, and it getting so much better at it. He had a great coach this year, and I think he understands the game a little better. He also plays soccer, so he does double duty when they overlap for a few weeks. 

Dallen loves playing soccer. He is very agressive and is not scared to go in and get the ball. He has very good feet and eye contact and is good at dribbling the ball down. He made several goals throughout the year. He was super excited to be on a yellow team!! His favorite!

Kyle coached Rylan's team the year before, and also took the referee training that year. So he ref'ed Dallen's games that they were in charge of supplying a ref. It's not his favorite thing to do, but is willing to help!

I'm not sure where the rest of his team is!

Hannah does track in the spring. She is such a good natural runner. She is a distance runner and does the 1600 race. Last year she did the 800 race also, but didn't like it as much. So she just did the one race this year. She decided this year that she doesn't like track that much. She enjoys cross country more than track. So we will see what she does next year. I kind of hope she does spring softball! Then cross country in the summer. We will see!

Bethany plays softball. She plays on a team, Nitro, that plays year round. They sign up for different leagues and tournaments throughout the year. In May they started a league in Layton. The summer will be full of tournaments. She loves it and loves the game! She plays 2nd base and right field. She has improved so much over the last year. It's fun to watch her. She has also become great at bunting!

the move

We moved to our new house in May. It all happened so fast, it was crazy! There were many times that we were wondering what were we doing! But it all worked out and we are loving our new place.

This all started, when we were talking about in a few years maybe we would find a new house with a basement apartment for my mom to live in. Then there was a house that came up for sale in our neighborhood and our same ward. So we decided to explore our options and figured out that we could possibly sell our house and buy this other one. We looked at the house, and it was ok. The main floor had been update, but the upstairs needed a lot of work. We were left thinking about it, but I wasn't sold. A couple days later we were driving around the neighborhood and saw "our house" with a sign in the yard. We gave the address to our agent Dave, but he couldn't find the house on mls anywhere. I went back to the house and got the agents name and number for him. The house wasn't listed on mls yet, and the owners were not wanting to even show the house yet. Somehow Dave got us an appointment for later in the week. 

When we went to look at the house, the owner's son was there and let us in. I think we were really stood up, but the son was unexpectedly there and let us walk through the house. We loved it! It had pretty much everything we wanted in our new house. We put an offer on the house with a condition that our house would sell. They countered us with an offer that included another condition that they could find a place. 

We were excited and moved onto phase 2,  selling our home. We were surprised when our house sold in 2 weeks! It was a horrible, stressful two weeks, but at least it was over fast! The owners of the new house, had not yet found a place to move to. We gave them a couple weeks and were patient. But at some point we needed them to commit to a move date or work with us a little, or we were going to be homeless waiting for them to find a new place. They were unwilling to budge with us, so we retracted our offer on the house. 

The 1st house that we looked at in our neighborhood that I was not in love with was still on the market. So we went and looked at the house again. It was still not perfect, but was looking like it was our best option at this point. We decided that we would have to make it work. We were going to have to completely remodel the upstairs, and add on over the garage. There were things on the main floor that I would of wanted to change also. It was going to be a huge undertaking, but we were in a bind. We weren't able to unsell our house, even though that was what I wanted to do. I didn't want to move anymore! I really liked our house, and was really just moving to have space for my mom. It was a little depressing and unsettling. 

About 2 weeks before we were suppose to move into our option #2 house, we got a phone call from our agent Dave, saying that the owners of option #1 house found a new place and were wondering if we were still interested in buying their house. We talked it over for about a minute before we called back our agent and said YES! It was a whirlwind of emotions! But all the stress and depression left as soon as I knew that we could have our first choice house! We felt super bad canceling our contract with house #2, but the owner had been a little jerky with us about some things we wanted fixed from the inspection we had done on the house. So in a way, we felt like oh well, That's what you get! 

So, we were able to go back under contract on house #1 and because we had already started the process with our mortgage guy, we were able to get closed on it pretty fast! 

It was a crazy, crazy process and few months. It also started some pretty fun rumors within our ward. Since both houses we had put offers on, were still within our ward boundary's. People were so confused on where we were moving to. It got a little old, and I got a little frustrated that people had to talk and gossip about it all. But I guess that's what happens. 

At some point during this whole process we wanted to celebrate selling our home. We really wanted to drop everything and take a spontaneous trip to Disneyland! We were so, so close to doing it, but the kids had different obligations that we felt were too important for them to miss. So we decided to just go to dinner, but even that was a chore. May is probably one of the busiest months of the year for us. We had to schedule in going to dinner, or it wasn't going to happen. 

The kids were such good troopers throughout all of it. Having to leave last minute for showings, helping speed clean for a showing, and not knowing where we were going to move to! They were a little confused on what house we were buying too. They were supportive and went with the flow!

This was close to moving day. The tv was already taken down. Rylan found the remote and was trying to turn on the tv, while he was looking the other way. He forgot that it was already down. We got a good laugh! I didn't take any pictures of moving day, we were too busy moving! We are glad that it all worked out and that it is all over! Now onto the unpacking and remodeling the basement kitchen! Fun times!