We are now a 2 car family!

 Maybe I should say we are a 1 car & 1 van family... haha! We are still fixing up our new house but hopefully we will be moving in the next month. With that move Shaun will be driving to work and the girls and I can't just sit home. We knew what we wanted and Shaun's brother found us a great deal!  I was hesitant because we don't NEED it yet...but this kind of deal doesn't just appear the minute you need it.

 Toyota Sienna 2013--So excited about those tinted windows, too!

 First Car selfie. :)

We moved the car seats over this weekend and the girls love it too! Although I don't love having a car payment we are happy to have a great vehicle to create many memories, every day fun and maybe even future road trips to Idaho and Utah...that is if we can handle the 28 hour drive. We are officially in the van club now! 

Pepsi Pops

We enjoyed a really fun evening listening to Mississippi symphony orchestra play and watching the amazing fire works at the end! It was located about an hour from us by a huge reservoir. It was so fun to see the boats coming in. We were invited by Shaun's co-worker, Rick, and his wife, Susan.

 

Rick is sitting to the left of Shaun with the hat on. 

Susan and I catching up! 

We didn't get home until 11PM! It was so late, but everyone had a great time. It was nice to take a break from working on the house and get out together as a family! 

our birdie houses

This spring has been SO much fun! A worker on the station made several bird houses and put them around. The girls and I LOVED watching the progress! Eggs, little babies, then big birds flying away. 
In one of the nests it was fun to see 3 eggs...then the next day there was 4 eggs, and it even got up to 5 eggs!



The bird houses have a side door that opens with a clear plastic panel so you can see inside. Every day we would go check on the eggs to see if they had cracked!   

 Kate always insisted on getting a peek too!




 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The eggs from one of the houses hatched and the little birdies just slept.

 

 A little while later (maybe a week or two) when went to check on the birds I opened the front of the house and they all flew out! It gave me quite the jump and thankfully I didn't have claire in my arms at that point! DeWit insisted that when we move to our new house we get to take a bird house with us! What an awesome guy!

 

We bought a house!

 

 If you've been following our blog you probably didn't expect to see a post about us buying a house....It was a plan we had for a few years down the road but here's how it unfolded. 

First of all, Shaun LOVES his job! It is really like a dream job! He really loves going to work everyday. We also really LOVE having him so close by! Who wouldn't want their best friend a stone's throw away EVERY DAY?

Well, down here we had to decide the best place was to raise our family. If we stayed in our current tiny town it would mean:

1- private school from K-12 at $4,000 a child per year plus any addition school program like music, soccer.

2-staying in our small Branch. We love the people but our children would never have anyone their age in the gospel.

3- No social outlets for me or the girls! When we go to the library, we am the only one there. 

4- Shaun would be SO close by and we wouldn't have to deal with commuting.

Well, Winter came in Mississippi and it was really rainy and wet. The only outings we had were running to the grocery store or the empty library. There are activities and things for kids to do in other cities but it's usually a 40 min drive one way. So by the time we would drive, play and come home the girls would fall asleep in the car on the way home and then the afternoon naps were shot. It just was too much to do all the time.

Anyway, during Claire's dance class the moms would talk a little. All of them are working moms so daytime get together were out. However, a sweet girl (around my age) I met is a realtor. I was telling Shaun how I just felt like I wasn't progressing in our town. Although I am surrounded by beauty my life needed more. The kids needed more.  Shaun has amazing co-workers that he gets to work with all day so he wasn't feeling it as much as I was.

So he said, let's just look at houses.... We decided that we were going to move to a city north west. The public schools are TOP in the state, it is only a 35 minute commute and it is by the stake center. We just felt like this was the place our family needed to be. The city is about 25,000 which is great. Our current town is 5,000. 

We looked at a lot of houses. we looked at old ones, new construction and everything in between. 

Mississippi likes to have the kitchen closed off. They don't like people seeing any signs of dishes, I guess. All of the homes we saw the kitchen was cut off from the living space. We knew we wanted open concept. One night Shaun was driving by this neighborhood looking for a lot. We were thinking at this point we were going to build. He drove by this house and said, I think we should look at it. We did and right when we walked in the front door we both said, this is our house. 

It is in a mature neighborhood. All of the homes have their own style and they are all well kept. We are on a very quiet street and It was just perfect...except for the closed off kitchen.  :) 

So, we bought a house at the end of April and we are renovating it before we move in. Shaun's doing a lot of the work (like we did in Ohio) but it's just a little trickier because he has to drive 30 minutes to work on it. But, on the other hand we don't have to live in the renovations with kids so it's worth it!

 

 The lovely forest green floor is coming out! It was laminate squares they glued down. Shaun has spent days trying to get the nasty glue off.

 Kate was even mad about the floor. :)

 Living room...This house has awesome built ins everywhere! This is the previous owners pictures...

Bye Bye green kitchen...and bye bye wall! 

As you can see we are making progress! We are hoping to move into the house by the end of June! 

 Last weekend we even had to buy a lawn mower. Our back yard will need some work down the road but it's all fenced in! The covered patio is AWESOME too! The girls just played and played while I mowed.

We have a little bit of a hill at the top! Shaun will have to put a tiered garden in or something but it's awesome because we can't see our neighbors and what they are doing! 
We are very exciting for the opportunities that this new city will bring for our family! The city feels "normal." We are grateful for the memories and the great experience it has been living on the station but we definitely are not country folk. :) 

We have already met our neighbors that are directly across the street! They are both retired and just the sweetest people. They already had Shaun over for dinner one night when we was working there. And another night they brought him a plate of food, "We wouldn't want you to starve."  They are so excited to have us move in and we are SO excited to have such sweet neighbors!!

More updates coming soon! 

Claire's first dance recital

This year we put Claire in a local dance class. All the local preschools are full day/every day! We are definitely not ready for that but we thought this would be a great opportunity for her to be around other kids her own age. We were right! 

 The first few weeks of dance she did not want to go. But as the weeks went on she got more comfortable with it and soon loved it!

 I thought she would be really stage fright when it came time for the recital but she did great!

 Shaun even brought flowers from the station! *Perk of daddy working with flowers*

 After she was so excited to see us and the friends that came to support us!

Shaun's co-worker, Rick (on far left) and his wife Susan (Far right) came and also the secretary Janie & her husband Robbie came. It was so nice to have support since our families live so far away! 
After we went and picked up some chocolate ice cream to celebrate Claire!