Closing Day

Today we signed the closing papers and sold our house on 25th Street -- almost exactly 15-years after we bought it.  What a perfect place for us to start our family and meet so many amazing friends.  We could have never predicted the way the story would go.  We thought we would flip it within a year or two.  I'm glad it worked out this way instead.

Right after we closed, our friends called and invited us to spend New Year's Eve with them at their cabin.  So . . . it was pretty much the best day ever.

In other news -- we have finally resolved the bedroom situation with Sophie.  

Three years ago, when we first moved into this house, we made a plan to someday finish two bedrooms downstairs.  One for the boys and one for Sophie.  Now, it turns out we will finish three bedrooms downstairs so the boys can each have their own.  But, I digress.

When this plan was first presented to Sophie, she fought it tooth and nail.  We assured her that as she got older, she would appreciate having her own room and the added coolness factor of being downstairs.  She was sure she would not.  In desperation, Brian promised her any bedroom she wanted.  After he agreed to install hardwood floors and paint the walls whatever color she chose, she agreed that she would someday move downstairs. 

Three years have passed and she is chomping at the bit to get her own room and be downstairs -- no bribery needed.  But, the promise still stands.  And, it has stirred up so much drama in our lives.

She insisted that Brian paint all four walls in bold neon stripes, six different colors, with white stripes between each color.  Brian, bless him, tried all sorts of compromises, but she would not budge on this point.  She had other demands, like a custom bed.  And, the desire for hardwood floors stood firm.  

Back and forth and back and forth we have gone on the paint issue until Brian had an idea.  He told her to pick a bedspread and we would work out a paint color from there.  After a painful meander through a few hundred bedspreads on the internet (she hated all of them), we found the ONE.  It has bold neon stripes of color separated by white stripes.  When I agreed to buy this bedspread, she said, "You can paint the room any color you want.  I don't care."  

Just. Like. That.

There were some complications to work out for the hardwood floor.  But, Brian ordered the materials today.

I'm still not sure about the bed.  Does anyone have a loft bed they are not using?  

I am so relieved that everything is falling into place.  I have a feeling 2015 is going to be our luckiest year yet and the beginning of the luckiest times of our lives.  

Christmas 2014

The Thursday before Christmas, my mom, dad, Katie and I saw Sophie perform with her junior high choir.  It was fun and they sang carols with the audience at the end.  That night Katie also lost her first tooth!  I can't believe it.  My baby is growing up.

The Friday before Christmas, the whole family got to go to a Voicemale concert at Weber State.  They talked about how they have been together for twenty years.  Twenty years!  And, I first saw them perform at Utah State at some sort of LDS Institue event twenty years ago.  Who knows?  Maybe that was their first performance.  Anyways, I will always remember those guys blasting onto the stage with so much energy.  I could not believe they were making all of the instrument noises WITH THEIR MOUTHS.  It was the first time I had seen anything like it and I loved them.

Twenty years later, I finally got to go with my whole family to see them perform and it was a night we will not forget.  My kids keep repeating the jokes (instagramps, snapchaps, "It always gets quiet after I say what I do for a living," and, "He's no longer the primary chorister, now he is the secondary chorister") and talking about the different songs they enjoyed.  There were many highlights of the evening.  One of them was the rubber ducky song.  We got to see our friend John sing while dodging hundreds of rubber duckies being thrown on-stage.  Say what!?

Another highlight for me was "O Holy Night."  They performed it so beautifully and it is one of my favorite Christmas songs.  I took a moment to look up and down the row at my family and think about how perfect my life was right in that moment.

After that, our Christmas vacation was in full-swing.

Saturday started with a 7 a.m. soccer game for Isaac.  Then we headed to our church for a pancake breakfast with Santa.  After that, we drove to Bountiful for a family Christmas party at Brian's parents' house.

There was good food, sugar cookies to frost and gift exchanges.  My sister-in-law made pillows for our living room couch.  She got the colors perfect!  They are so fun -- one has the state of Utah with a heart over Ogden and the other has China with a heart over Tianjin.  I would never have thought of doing that.  I love homemade things and appreciate the talents other people have.  Brian's mom made necklaces for the females and the grandson's got new ties.  Brian got a gift card that will come in handy with our home improvement projects.

Then, we went home to change into fancy clothes for a third Christmas party (we decided to skip Ian's 5:30 p.m. soccer game, or things would have been seriously insane).  This year, our ward got a little crazy with the Christmas celebrating.  The pancake breakfast was a fun event, but the planning committee also put together an elegant evening dinner later the same day.

The Sunday before Christmas, the junior primary performed the Nativity.  Isaac was a shepherd and Katie was the cutest Mary I've ever seen.  After church, we went to dinner at my mom's  house.  She made a delicious roast and she bought peppermint bark from Costco that I couldn't keep my hands off of.

The Monday before Christmas, Sophie performed with her choir at a fundraising event.  My very favorite teacher at my kids' elementary school lost her daughter to cancer in November.  Her daughter was the mom to five young kids.  It is so very sad and reminds me of all I have to be grateful for.  We attended a fundraising event a year and a half ago to help raise money for her medical bills.  This time, the event was to raise money for the kids.

After that, the whole family went to a neighbor's house for hot chocolate.  I love their "neighbor gift" tradition.  They choose a night to serve hot chocolate to anyone who wants to come over (they offer several flavors and lots of different toppings).  And, everyone who comes brings food to be donated to the food bank.  What a great idea!

This year, like every year, I was dreading the task of getting my neighbor gifts together because 1) I always have trouble thinking of what to do and 2) it's always one more thing at such a busy and expensive time of year.  But, then, I remembered how much I actually love giving neighbor gifts.  It's that one time of year when you have a chance to get out and say "Thank You" to all those people who make your life wonderful in big and small ways by being part of your tiny neighborhood community.

So, on the Tuesday before Christmas, I finally stopped putting it off and ordered bags of red and green popcorn from my favorite popcorn supplier.  On the Wednesday before Christmas (Christmas Eve), the kids and I went around delivering popcorn and, as always, it was SO MUCH FUN!  We even stopped by at the home of the neighbors we had on 25th Street (we always do).  There was Claire, sitting in his front room, wearing his suspenders and plaid shirt like he always does.  I love that guy!  Who knows when it will be our last time to see him and his wife Bonnie and their daughter Connie--who taught Sophie and Ian in the 4th grade before she retired.

That night, we had molcajete from a favorite Mexican restaurant.  Brian said, "Maybe eating molcajete on Christmas Eve should be our tradition."  And, it made us all think about how we sat on the hardwood floor of our 25th Street house eating molcajete with my parents after an utterly exhausting day of moving out three years ago.  And, that made me think about how Brian and I sat on that same hardwood floor right after it had dried from being refinished, eating our wedding cake from the freezer on our 1-year-anniversary almost fifteen years ago.  And, that made me think about how we wrote up the offer to buy the house on 25th Street on Christmas Eve fifteen years ago.  So, it seems fitting that we would find out on this Christmas Eve that our closing date has officially been set for Monday, December 29th.  Hooray, hooray, hooray!!!

Christmas morning came.  Somehow, it came.  The kids all opened their Christmas jammies the night before.  As a wiser mom than I was in the past, I sent them all to bed early and told them not to come into our room until 7 a.m.  I was so far behind on everything this year, it seemed.  But, in the end, all of the presents were wrapped and looking magical under the glowing tree.  The stockings were stuffed full of boxes of cold cereal (Brian's family tradition), candy, and little gifts.  Somehow, despite being so far behind, we pulled off Christmas 2014.

Sophie got the iPod 5 she has been begging us for.

Ian got a laser pointer, a Wii game, a soccer ball, a basket ball, an air soft gun, and some other random gifts since we couldn't think of one big gift for him this year.

Isaac got a motorized scooter that we was determined to save his money for (since, I don't know how many years it would have taken him to save for it). He also got some fun games.

Katie did not get the frozen castle she asked Santa for at the last minute -- where did that random request come from?  She must have heard the other kids at school talking about it or something.  But, sigh of relief, she didn't mention it and, instead, said it was the bestest Christmas ever.  She got a blonde, blue-eyed ice-skating doll named Katelyn, or Kate for short.  She got frozen themed jewelry and a frozen themed watch and a new scooter since her pink scooter broke.

The older kids got ski lessons again--starting in January.  When we went to my mom's house later, the family got season passes to Lagoon again like last year.  And, the kids all got soft blankets to snuggle in.  My mom put out a big spread of food for lunch and we watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.  I don't think I will ever get tired of that show.

Then, we headed to Bountiful to visit with Brian's family and eat more food.

It was an amazing day.  And, I haven't even written the part about the weather.  We have had the most beautiful weather.  Warm and sunny.  I know every time I say how much I have loved it, someone is ready to chastise me for not thinking about our desert climate and the drought.  But, I LOVED IT.  Seriously, I enjoyed every minute of it.  I can't control things like droughts.  But, I can appreciate the heck out of a gorgeous day of sunshine in December.

When I ran errands on the 23rd and 24th, I didn't even wear a jacket--that is how nice it has been.  Meanwhile, my kids have been itching for a good snowfall.  Every day they are talking about how much they want it to snow.  Then, they started saying it wouldn't be a good Christmas without snow.  So, sometime in the night while we were sleeping, the snow started to fall.  It fell, and fell and just dumped about 10-inches all over everything!  It was one of those magical snowstorms.  And, it was on Christmas!  I think it was the best white Christmas ever.

Wiring

Every time I watch Brian wire something, I can't believe it.  How can he possibly know how to do that?  It seems so complicated and so critical -- like if one thing goes wrong, will our house burn down?

When he wired our first house -- it was built in 1916 and he re-wired the entire thing -- I was pretty worried about the burning the house down part.  But, it all went beautifully!  And, saved us tons of money.

He is at the point in our basement where he has been wiring lights and plugs for all of the new rooms.  Since the entire basement is gutted, he also wanted to re-wire the upstairs while he has access to everything.

It has felt like things have really slowed down on the basement because 1) Brian has had to spend some of his time doing actual work for money instead of going 100 MPH on our basement every day and 2) there is not near as much visual change from running wires as there is from knocking down a wall (or, putting a new one back up).

Still, I know this wiring phase is important.  I can't believe how handy this husband of mine is.  When we moved in, he completely replaced all of the plumbing in the house.  Now, he is doing the same for the old wiring -- this house is much newer than our last one, it was built in 1949.

Things are still moving ahead to close on the sale of our old house by the end of the month.  Crossing my fingers for so many reasons -- not the least of which is that we really need to sell the house in 2014 for tax purposes.  The closing is scheduled for the 29th.  So close to the end of the year!  But, I have a good feeling it will all work out.

Sophie had a choir concert tonight.  It was lovely.  She looked so beautiful.  Ian played piano in someone's home while the relief society ladies took a tour last week.  They are both so talented and growing up so much.

I can't believe Christmas is less than a week away.  The weather has been gorgeous!  It doesn't even feel like winter (knock on wood).  I have loved every extra day of sunshine.

Bathrooms

Our home has two bathrooms.  It is a pretty big home for just two.  One of them is the master bath -- built in an era when "master bath" had a completely different meaning than it does today.  It is accessible from the master bedroom.  It is small, with a tiny shower, a toilet and a pedestal sink.  Not one single cabinet for storage.  And, most shocking of all, not one single outlet.  For this reason, it is Brian's bathroom and a back-up bathroom when the other one is occupied.

The other bathroom is the one that I, all four kids, and house-guests use.  It is larger than the bathroom in our old house.  There is beautiful tile work, a roomy oval tub with a shower, toilet and, of course outlets.  I really like this bathroom and there is just one problem.  The vanity.  It's obvious that when some of the previous owners -- there were two or three sets of owners between the original owners of the house and us, one of those owners ran a tile company and tiled the heck out of this place -- tiled the bathroom, they purchased what appears to be a nice vanity.  It's pretty to look at.  It has cabinets in the front and drawers down the sides.  But, here is the problem.  It's poorly made.

As soon as we moved in, three of the four drawers broke and became unusable and the cabinet doors fell off.  Brian has fixed the drawers and put the doors back on several times.  But, every time, they break again within days.  For most of the three years we have lived here, we've only been able to use one drawer for storage and it doesn't look super classy to have the doors missing from the front of your vanity when guests come over.

A good friend of ours is a master cabinet builder.  He does such beautiful, one-of-a-kind work.  We got a bid on the vanity soon after we moved in and, let's just say, there was no way we could afford him.  But, thanks to my husband being so talented, he was able to do a few drywall jobs for this friend over the past year and instead of getting paid for his work, he said, "Let's just do a trade."  Now that we are moving full-speed ahead on remodel projects, we are finally ready to tear out this vanity and get a new one!  Our friend brought his lovely wife and six kids over last night to take measurements and eat cookies.

I just want to say that I am SO excited to have a piece of his work in our home.  He is expensive, yes, but the quality of his work speaks for itself.  I don't know if we will be able to afford him for future projects (like the downstairs bathroom we are building?).  That remains to be seen.  But, at least we will have this one little gem of fine craftsmanship in our home for decades to come.

Tis the Season

It has been an eventful few days and a great kick-off to the Christmas season.

I loved that the kids had an entire week off from school for Thanksgiving.  It was such a nice break from the regular routine.  It was kind of sad to go back yesterday.  But, I keep thinking that it's only three weeks and then they will have a break for two weeks--hooray!

We got the Christmas tree up and all of our decorations.  This year, I put the lights on and then I let the four kids just go for it.  When they were done hanging the decorations, I didn't move or adjust even one.  I didn't even feel like I wanted to.  I think someday I will miss this time when one branch has like seven green ornaments on it and another branch has five red ornaments all lumped together.  It's nice to have my kids decorate the tree.

It's nice to sit in the living room together after the sun goes down and look at the colorful lights on our tree.  And, I love driving around town with the kids, seeing all the different lights and decoration.

On Friday, the Egyptian Theater had a free screening of The Polar Express.  I took my girls.  There was a drawing for a bunch of board games and a bicycle.  I had a feeling we were going to win that bicycle.  I'm feeling lucky I guess.  We didn't win.  But, we still had a great time.

It is a fun movie to see on the big screen with all of the roller coaster effects.

After the movie, we walked over to Christmas Tree Jubilee to see all of the elaborate trees that are decorated and auctioned for charity.  How would it be to buy one of those amazing trees?

Friday night, Brian and I dined at Rooster's in downtown Ogden.  It was nice to have a date night.  We celebrated by getting dinner + appetizers + dessert and their homemade rootbeer.  It was a lot of food to eat the day after Thanksgiving.  But, it was so yummy!

Saturday night, Brian and I took the kids to an electric parade and lighting of Christmas Village.  We hadn't been to this event in about 10 years, and I guess it has really grown in popularity.  The newspaper article said there were more than 10,000 people in attendance.  It seemed like way more than 10,000!  

The parade was awesome.  We got hot chocolate and cinnamon rolls at Karen's Cafe.  Even Sophie said she had a great time when it was over.  Fun for our whole family. 

We came home in a happy, festive mood and watched Elf together.  I forgot how funny that movie is.  

Then, I thought, "Well, we've already watched two Christmas movies and visited Christmas Village and it isn't even December 1.  I guess we can just sit back and relax until Christmas now."

Because it was so crowded, we only saw a few of the houses at Christmas Village.  So, tonight my mom and I took Katie and Isaac back.  Sophie and Ian are going with the young women/young men tomorrow night.

Never have I seen anyone so excited for Christmas Village!  Katie and Isaac ran from house to house just squealing with happiness and shouting all of the things they saw in each one.  They had crazy high energy.  At one point, they kept rolling down a grassy hill and running back up over and over.  We were there for two whole hours.  The weather was nice too, so it was a really fun night.

Brian has been going full throttle on our basement every day from the time he wakes up until he goes to bed.  After he finished Ian's room, he demolished every inch of the rest of the basement.  He took down every wall and even ripped all of the sheetrock off the outer walls.  Today, he framed in a room for Sophie and wired a bunch of lights.  I can't wait to see it all come together!  What a fun Christmas this is for us.

New Space

A good friend of mine is a real estate agent who sells new homes. One day she made the comment to me that, even though new homes are pricey, the money evens out when you consider how much you are going to sink into making your existing home the home you want.

I was eyeball deep in re-model projects when she said that, and it rang true. It is easy to sink $20K+ into even the most basic changes, even when you are providing all of the labor yourself! Sometimes, it feels like all of our time and expendable income will be going into this house for the next twenty years (and way more than $20K).

So, when we put our other home on the market in August, I had a great idea. Why not sell both of our houses and use the equity to build a new house?

My friend was kind enough to walk us through her models. I fell in love with the Pleasant View development--such a gorgeous panoramic view of the mountains!

Here is what I learned.

#1 New homes are way pricier than I was expecting. We were looking at a minimum of $300K for a smaller home on a smaller lot.

#2  Everything I loved about the model was an upgrade and the upgrades are 2-4x's what they would cost to DIY. As we would go through the home and the agent would say, for example, "That door in the walk-out basement is a $4K upgrade." Brian would say, "What!? I could easily do that myself for $1-$2K." And, pretty soon we had a list almost as long as my current list of all the changes and upgrades Brian would be making to our hypothetical new home. It kind of defeated the purpose. I was dreaming of what we would do with all of our newly discovered free time!

#3  Maybe it was just this particular builder, but I had a really hard time finding a floor plan that I liked. The houses we looked at all had an amazing great room and 3 bedrooms upstairs plus a full basement. The house that had the square footage I wanted had two 10x10 bedrooms and the master seemed a little on the small side. The great room also seemed just a tad squishy. When we moved to the next model up, the two bedrooms were 12x12 (nice), the master was just right and the great room was perfect. But, the basement was massive and the overall home was way too big. Three more bedrooms downstairs in both models. What are we going to do with six bedrooms? Ideally, we would have had the smaller plan with one bedroom eliminated to make the other rooms bigger. But, there was really no way to make that work.

#4  I was surprised by two things that got me really excited when I looked at the new houses. First, when I saw all of those bedrooms and imagined my kids in their own spaces, I couldn't stop thinking about how much they would love that. Second, I was overcome with visions when I entered a giant pantry that ran the whole length of a kitchen (behind a super cool secret door too). I loved that pantry! (BTW-a $4K upgrade).

This exercise taught me a couple of things. First, I had a renewed sense of gratitude for my current home. Second, I decided that we should make an effort to give our kids their own bedrooms. We were planning to make the boys share a downstairs bedroom and convert the one they shared upstairs into an office (it has a window, but no closet, so it isn't technically a bedroom anyways). That meant Ian couldn't have the Queen size bed he'd had his eye on.

Third, I realized just how badly I wanted and needed a bigger storage space and that helped propel our thinking into the idea to expand the basement square footage for this purpose. I am excited for all of our plans for the basement, but, oddly, I might be the most excited about the storage room.

The thing that really sealed the deal about not getting a new home was when Brian rattled off the list of things he would insist on doing to our current home before we could sell it. I was thinking, "If we got all of that done, I would want to stay!" Haha.

Now, we've started on that long list. I hope it won't be too, too long before we've made a lot of headway.

On an unrelated topic, Katie just brought me this note she found that she made for me in preschool last Mother's Day.  It says:

The thing my mother likes best is:  ME!!!
My mom is 60 feet tall and weighs 80 pounds
While I'm at school my mom:  Works (never was that more true than last year!)
Her favorite color is:  Pink, purple and turquoise (actually these are Katie's favorite colors)
Her favorite food is:  Soup (this is funny because Katie has declared that she hates 'soup'--kind of a broad category, but if I tell her we are having any kind of soup, she automatically dismisses it. She thinks I love soup and she once said a prayer with the words, "I'm thankful that we can like soup when we grow up.")
The best thing she cooks for me is:  Ramen noodles (how she loves these! I have to buy them infrequently or she would beg to eat them every day)
My mother says this to me the most:  "I love you."
If I had a million dollars I would buy my mom:  New keys (when I questioned her about this, she said she would buy me another set since I always lose mine-priceless!).

Nicholson Thanksgiving

Oh how I love Thanksgiving!

We switch off every other year celebrating with Brian's family and my family.  Two years ago, when it was suppose to be our year with Brian's family, his parents were on their mission in the Philippines.  We ended up eating in a restaurant.  And, halfway through the meal, we realized our two youngest kids were coming down with something and had fevers. 

But, this year, our traditions with the Nicholsons were back in full force.  

Brian is the oldest of nine children.  Most of his siblings have children on their own.  There are 30-something grandchildren.  So, it's quite a grand affair. 

We met at his parents house where they had several tables set up in their living room on their new bamboo floors. 

There was so much food!  Turkey, ham, rolls, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, candied yams, Dutch oven potatoes, brussel sprouts, green bean casserole (from my sister-in-law's garden!), salads, special drinks and more.  Then, there were oodles of pies.  I ate so much food.  All of it was delicious.

After the meal, we sat around and visited with each other while the kids went crazy with a game involving marbles.  Brian's mom and sisters all had knitting and sewing projects to work on.  We watched football and Chicken Run.  Katie and Kaylee swung on Grandma and Grandpa's tree swing.  The weather was gorgeous -- almost 60-degrees.

Now we have officially kicked off the Christmas season.  I don't love winter, but I do love this time of year.