3 of a Kind

On Monday we went for our 19 week ultrasound to find out if Baby #3 is a boy or girl.   I have never been the type to say in a sweet, blissful voice "I don't care either way."  I am sorry but I hate when people say that.  You always have preference, even if it is a very slight one.

With Claire I was so sure she was a boy that the thought of her being a girl never crossed my mind.  We laugh now when we remember my phone call to my mom, sobbing uncontrollably, "It's a girl!"  I cried for 2 days over the fact that we weren't having a boy first,  I wanted a girl no doubt, just not first.

With Joy we didn't find out her gender until she was born and after what happened with Will I was just so happy to have a live baby it didn't matter and was thrilled to give her a meaningful name for that season of our lives. I also was glad she was a girl because I felt it would have been flippant if she was a boy like "Oh well, one died but this one replaces him"

With Baby #3 we took the process of gender swaying very seriously.  We put every trick in the book together to "sway" the probability of getting a boy.  (God helps those who help themselves right?) Like all the others, I got pregnant the first try and we anxiously sat back to see the results.  I prepared myself for the possibility of another girl but the the finality of the ultrasound was disappointing.  No more hoping or speculating, this was it.  A girl -  Another girl.  When Claire asked what it was during the U/S I told her and she and I held back tears as she said "But I wanted a boy baby!"

For some reason it makes the pain of losing Will resurface.  Will we ever get our boy?  Of course Josh assures me he is just as happy with little girls and we take comfort in the fact that we did all we could on our end, this is obviously what God has in store for us.  We also laugh because now there is no question that we will try for a 4th (and possibly 5th).  Maybe we just can't have boys, maybe they are unhealthy or something.  Maybe the baby that I miscarried at 6 weeks was a boy too?  If that's the case then I am perfectly fine with all healthy and live girls.  I always pray that we will never know the pain of losing another child.  Maybe this is God's way of answering that prayer? If so then I am grateful.

So at any rate, our house is only going to get pinker and frillier for the next couple of years. We don't have to buy anything for this new baby - especially since it will be born the same time of year as Claire and Joy so all of their clothes will fit her.  I am growing more accustomed to the idea of 3 girls and am getting more excited everyday.  We love Baby#3 very much and we hope and pray she arrives alive and healthy.

So Long Farwell - Except on Sundays and Wednesdays.....

Things I will  miss about our Laveen house:

1.  Being so close to church. Especially for Josh's sake.  He will still be at church just as much and of course the girls and I will drive out for events and Sundays and Wednesdays.

Things I will not miss about our Laveen house

1. The drive to anything else we do: Seriously nothing is out here!  Family, stores that carry non-pesticide laden or gmo filled foods, Joann, Claire's Parks and Rec classes (we tried the Phoenix ones once - no thank you!) the list goes on and on.  Not to mention that since Claire is starting kindergarten this year and we need to find a home school group.  None exist in Laveen but there are dozens in the east valley area, not to mention EVAC.

2. The 30 minute drive to the ghetto (Maryvale) each month (or more) for my prenatal appointments and the average 2 hour wait each time I go.

3.  The Fry's in Laveen is atrocious.  There are only certain times of day that I dare go in that place.  Usually morning to as late as 2pm and it'll be okay, but after that (and especially at night)  it is so crowded and noisy and the produce is totally picked over.  I have waited in looooooong lines by going at night.  People out here have no idea what personal space means.   I am also bitter towards it because they remodeled and put in a sushi bar.  I cannot even explain how stupid that is. Walmart or Safeway are the only other choices.  Safeway is too expensive and Walmart out here is 10 times worse than the average Walmart.  (Last time I went it seemed to be "take your child to Walmart in their pajamas" day.  How silly of me to get my children dressed to go out in public.)

4. Stairs:  When we bought this house I was convinced that we had to have stairs.  I always wanted a two-story growing up but we never had one.  I had some over-romanticized idea of stairs and how wonderful they would be.  NEVER again.  I guess they were okay pre-child, but not only do I run up and down them 8 times just to get ready to go somewhere,  they are also a constant worry with toddlers.  Joy still can't be trusted on them by herself, so if sister goes up, we all go up (as Joy can't stand to be left out of anything cool that Claire is doing).  The baby gates that have been permanent fixtures on the top and bottom of said stairs are also going to be bid a "good riddance"  I don't know what I'm going to do when I don't have to climb over one several times a day.

5. The backyard.  It is so tiny.  Seriously, most people have bedrooms that are larger.  It's our fault it looks so terrible we pretty much don't go out there which just makes the house itself seem that much small when your kids can't even go out and play.  The neighbors are always watching as we are surrounded by two-stories and since we are so close you can hear everything the other is saying. It is not a private place at all.  It was REALLY bad when the people next store had a trampoline and a group of little boys that would go over and use it every day.  They moved out luckily.

6. Flies are a huge problem for us.  All spring and summer we have an unreasonable amount of flies in our backyard.  We have tried everything to get rid of them but you can hardly stand to be out there cause you'll look down and there'll be 7 on your leg.   It is terrible.

7. Black widows, the other reason we aren't out there a lot is because once the weather gets nice and the fly population dies down, the black widows come.   Seriously I think it could be called an infestation.  The whole neighborhood has them and they are BIG.  We spray them when we find them but another just moves in immediately. Last spider season, Joy followed me out back and almost sat down on one that was crouching right under the back doorstep.  Everytime the girls go outside we have to do a "bad bug check" and make sure the coast is clear.

8. Pigeons.  Oh how I hate pigeons.  Enough said.

9.  Cow smell.  I'm not talking about the occasional farmy-ness of the manure wafting through the air.  That is okay... and constant.  What is nearly unbearable is the rancid, putrid stench that plagues the neighborhood every night at dusk and hangs in a thick, choking, cloud until about 11pm.  It's literally chokes you and you can taste it.  We can't even keep our windows open at night when the weather is nice because it is so bad.

10.  HOA.  I can't wait to not have an HOA.  We knew we hated them but every neighborhood that was building had one.  There's nothing quite like paying $62.48 a month so you can have your car towed when you park it in front of your house. (twice)

11.  Our house is a cell phone dead zone.  If I am talking to someone on the phone I have to stand in a certain spot by the back door in order to get 1 bar.  My favorite is when I'm on hold for a long long time and as soon as someone finally answers, my phone drops the call and has no bars. This has happened more times than I can count and I have to save my phone calls for Mondays when I am not at home.

Well, as you can see I'm not sorry to be moving. When we first moved out here it was full of promise - All the new building going on and the hope of the freeway going through and young families moving in.  Since the housing bubble burst all that's left are vacant houses and brand new buildings that  have stood empty for years, waiting for a business to move in.

I could not be happier and more ready to move!

A Joy Post

 Little Joy is getting bigger...but is still little.  She is 18 months, weighs 19 lbs and is 30.5 inches tall.  She is desperately lacking in the hair department and until just recently was sporting quite the mullet.  We changed her official hairdo to pig tails which helps her to looks not so unfortunate.

 She loves her sister but hates to share.  She just started saying "mine" when she picks up a toy.  She talks a lot but her vocabulary mostly consists of bah's and di's.  The scary thing is how well we understand her depending on the intonation or pronunciation of the "di". When you ask her something if she wants something and she does, then her little face lights up with a smile and she claps her hands.  She does know all of the animal sounds and can say them pretty well.  She and Claire like to run around the house and laugh and squeal at the top of their lungs.  When something is hysterical, she bends forward at the waist and rests her hands on her thighs and laughs a hearty laugh.

She is a total mamma's girl and doesn't like strangers.  She will not stand to be left in the nursery at church.  I don't mind though, she is my precious love bug and we enjoy our outings alone together when sister is at Cubbies.

She loves to read books, play with sister, and eat....as long as it is something she likes.  She eats more than Claire and often times more than me. We aren't sure where it goes because she is not putting any weight on her body. 

We are bummed because her cloth diapers were leaking every time she went potty.It became a problem when we would run to the store for 30 minutes and before we got back in the car her pants were soaked.  I decided to go with disposables but they were leaking through at an alarming rate.   I realized it was because she was in a size 2, and although they fit her bottom, her amount of potty was just too much for a small size 2.  We switched to size 3 and haven't had anymore problems.  As soon as we move and get settled, I will potty train her.  I hope she is as easy as Claire was.

20 Days and Counting

Yesterday, we had a busy day at the Boston house.  We were all relieved to drive up and see the color of the stucco.  We had chosen green because every other house on the street is a boring beige and the only other choice was blue which after seeing a few blue stuccoed buildings we decided that blue only looks good on houses with siding..  We were so nervous that it would look either pukey, or too dark, or too light and celery-ish.    It came out exactly as we imagined it and we are so happy with it.



It will look awesome once the trim is white with a dark charcoal roof and shutters.

 The back.  My dad added that little window last week in the laundry room.  I love it, a laundry room always needs a window.

I also like the stucco texture.  It is not all rough with huge scrape marks.  It is a sandpaper look. It is made with elastomeric and should never crack, chip or fade.  We'll see.


Oh, the back wall we stuccoed beige.  It looks lovely as well.


The tile guys did a good portion of the job but were not quite done yet.



Josh painted the first coat of the master, put doors on the kitchen cabinets and started changing out electrical outlets.

 

While my dad worked on baseboards.

 They are much needed but a what a pain in the neck.


My mom and I worked on a bunch of little things; more wall repair/retexturing, painting baseboards and closet shelves measuring windows for the blinds and window casing etc.

Back at our house I have been good about packing at least 4 boxes each day.  As soon as the tile guys get all their stuff out of the garage, we'll start taking things over so moving day will not be so monstrous.

We are moving!

Wow, it has been awhile since I've done an update on my parents' flip house.  A lot has been happening - although chances are you will be thinking.  "Man, what is taking them so long?!?!" Well, the reason it is taking so long is because my dad has to do 90% of the work and he already has a full-time job and his own business, which is a part-time job so he only gets to work on the house on weekends. 

We are suddenly in a time crunch as something is finally happening with the sale of our house and the people buying it are moving in the end of February.  Our move out date is February 23rd.  So yeah,  the Boston house needs to be liveable in less than one month which equals 4 work days.

As I mentioned previously, the kitchen ceiling was very very low so we wanted to raise it up to average people height. 

So, down the old ceiling came, along with a bunch of insulation, and a couple of dead birds.  But it is important to note that throughout all of this demolition, we have not seen even one scorpion, dead or alive.

There were huge electrical wiring issues and my dad rerouted the water heater pipes so much to my and my mom's dismay, some wall repair was in our future.

Look how nice and high the ceiling is now!

Oh my word, what a ton of work this room was, patching and scraping and sanding and texturing.  Seriously it took 5 weekends.  Plus many weekdays of my mom going out by herself and working on it.

 

My mom is a pro at texturing.

The cabinets are all in now (not quite in this picture)  they still need doors and shelves though.  We are super excited because this week, the entire house is being tiled and the granite counter tops will be going in next week along with the appliances.  Then the kitchen will be done! (Except for cosmetic things like backsplash tiling and that sort of thing.  That will get done after we move in)

The whole house got new windows.  The play room had a major window remodel.

Before:  See how the windows covered with the curtain ( there are two side by side for some dumb reason) are shorter than the other ones?  Ugh! I hated that, it looked so weird.  So my dad made it so there is one window on one wall and one window on the other wall - and they are both the same height.

After:  Well... in progress.

 Sigh, that was a lot of wall repair too.  

It's pretty much done now,  I just don't have a picture.

The sliding glass door has been replaced with french doors.

 

In the backyard, Bryan started cutting down the palm trees to remove them,  

However, we have been unsuccessful at getting the stumps/roots out and because of our new deadline we have left them as they are not important right now.  We are leaving the backyard alone and will work on it sometime before it gets too hot.

The block wall surrounding the backyard needed repairs and we wanted to raise it up one more block so it would be a normal sized wall.  (we had professionals do this) then they stuccoed over the wall and we decided to have them stucco the house as well.  What a pain it would have been to have to sand and patch every little hole in the house siding and then paint it!  The crew is coming back this week so put the final coat on both the wall and the house.  The final coat will have the color we chose actually mixed into the stucco so it will never need to be painted and if it chips or anything it is all one color so gray won't show through.  It should last forever.

 I am excited to see how it looks finished with the color. The color we chose and the existing green trim will clash terribly until we have a chance to repaint the trim.

Josh had to dig out the former dog run before the guys could finish the wall.

 

 Joy was a big helper.

Before we move in we will have one bathroom functioning.  My mom just finished tiling the tub surround in the girl's bathroom.  The day that I was able to help, we got the ceiling and almost the back wall done. 

Not bad! 

As you can see we have a ways to go to get the house ready.  Thankfully the major things, carpet, tile, countertops and stucco will all be done by someone else and everything we have left to do is small stuff.  We mostly have to work on a little more painting, installing doors, ceiling fans/lights, electrical outlets, switches etc.  Luxuries like baseboards, window trim and a second bathroom will have to come after we move in.

I am so excited about our move!  I have so much work to do in our house though, it is a little overwhelming.  I need to start packing.  We have so much more stuff now that we have kids than we did when just Josh and I moved into this house.

 The next 24 days are sure to be a whirlwind!

Our Snow Day

 The month of January is quickly coming to a close and I realize I haven't made a post yet this year! Yikes! We are preparing for many exciting and big changes coming up VERY soon so free time has been a little harder to find lately.  I will post hopefully in the next day or two about our big move in less than a month. (Yes! We are finally moving to the Boston house!)  But I'll get to that later.  

Right after the new year, Josh went out of town with a group to build homes in Mexico so I went to my parents' house as usual.   While I was there, we all drove up to their house in Flagstaff to play in the snow.  It's a good thing we did too, seeing as it was the only weekend of snow this winter. 

Ugh,  I hate the snow, I hate it with a burning passion.  I can not stand to be cold and have an extremely low tolerance to it.  I decided this happened to me when I went on a Magic Mountain trip one year with our homsechool group.   It was one of those turn around trips and it rained the entire day with temperatures in the low 50's.  All of the rides were closed and there was no where to go to get out of it.  Yep,  ever since then my body shuts down and I am incapacitated at any temperature below 70 degrees. 

 Luckily for me, my older brother Steve came up with us.  Phew, I knew Uncle Didi would play with the girls in the snow. 

 

Claire doesn't remember snow since the only time we took her, she was Joy's age.  She LOVED it.

 

 Joy was not a big fan and wanted to be carried everywhere.

While we were there, my dad needed to cut down a large, dead pine tree before it fell down on the house.

So that kept him and Buddy busy for quite a while, but they finished and no one got killed.

After many warm up breaks in the warm, cozy house (where I resided most of the day) and lunch by the fire, we took a walk to the park.  It was interesting to play on the playground while it was covered in snow.

Didi built Claire a snow fortress,

there were snow ball fights,

sledding,

snow angels,

and more sledding.

No snowmen though, the snow was so loose and powdery it wouldn't stick together.

We had a good time in the snow and I am glad it is only a once a year ordeal.

 

December at a Glance

I had every intention of blogging MORE during December since we actually did fun things worth sharing but the busyness of the season got the best of me so here are a few snap shots of some of the things we did. 

The day we got home from the Polar Express, we got our Christmas Tree. 

 

 It helped soften the blow of having to leave for Claire.  Our children are still completely helpless when it comes to decorating a tree.  There is no understanding of ornament weight versus tree branch strength.

Claire and I made a gingerbread house the cheater way - out of the Wilton Pre-baked, pre-cut gingerbread kit.   I got it last year for $2.50 when it was 75% off. 

It came with candy and everything so it was cheaper and MUCH less frustrating than making one from scratch. 

 I hate gingerbread anyway so I was glad to not have to deal with it and Claire got to do the fun part.

 

We had 3 different fundraisers to attend to help raise money for the Mexico mission trip next week,  the first one was at the one and only Scooptacular,  

the next week there was one at Jersey Mike's and just before Christmas was the "bash".

Mid December Josh went to Oklahoma for a couple of days to drive home with one of his former youth so I went to my mom's where the girls enjoyed the fall leaves (finally)

 And had leaf wars with Uncle Buddy.

 Uncle Buddy took them for walks around the neighborhood at night to look at Christmas lights.

 A couple of days before Christmas we finally had our chance to see Santa.  We weren't going to even try putting Joy on his lap but when she saw sister with Santa she wanted to go too.  We were shocked.  She is getting more sociable in her old age.

Earlier this month my Grandpa passed away due to lung cancer.  His lovely wife, Grandma Sheila, came out to spend Christmas with us.  Claire didn't remember her since she was 1 year old last time we were together but Claire instantly became her best friend. 

As usual Christmas Eve was spent at our house with my family. 

We had our Mexican tamale feast, Josh preached at our church's candlelight service and then we came back to our house to open gifts.

 Cousins!   T.J. Is a little concerned when Claire is holding him.

 Sisters.

 In his spare time, Uncle Buddy crochets hat for people.  He made one for Claire and one for Joy.  Very cute.

Santa came and brought the girls each there own puppy that I don't have to clean up after and doesn't mind getting forgotten in the corner for days at a time.  They are quite popular right now.

 We spent Christmas morning at home with just our family and then went to Josh's parents' house for the rest of the day.  We ate, opened gifts.... the favorite was this pretend camping set.  It kept them busy all day holding plastic food over the fabric flickering flame.

 

That night we had a real fire to roast smores and just hung out.  It was a fun relaxing time.

The day after, Josh had to work and get ready for his upcoming Mexico trip so we went back to my mom's house to spend the day with Sheila before she went back home to Nevada.

By the time we got home that night the girls were exhausted and in dire need of a good night's sleep and a day at home with nothing to do. 

Claire is pretty sad that Christmas is over (and so am I) but now onto the New Year and the exciting changes that will hopefully take place for our family in 2013.