Instagram Fun

via Instagram http://ift.tt/28W1NjV We loved our Bear Lake Vacation! It was so great to be with some of our Poss family and to hang with all the Spence's too. So much fun, the perfect diversion from all the work we need to do still at home. ❤️

Instagram Fun

via Instagram http://ift.tt/28Kup3D We are loving Bear Lake!

Instagram Fun

via Instagram http://ift.tt/28JrWoy Spence family reunion has been long over due. Sure do love hanging with all these fine people.

Instagram Fun

via Instagram http://ift.tt/1XyjWt6 My Father and my Husband are two of the hardest working men I know. They both teach and love in righteousness and want the very best for their children. Matt has been working day and night to finish our house, then my Dad came up and worked just as hard. I love them both and am so happy to be surrounded by such great men. Happy Father's Day.

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via Instagram http://ift.tt/1PA8pBW It's tradition now to get pulled over on the way to Utah...😂

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via Instagram http://ift.tt/1UsCokL Never would have thought that fixing household plumbing would come as a welcome break to painting. Painting, so much painting. #fixerupper #mybackhurts

Instagram Fun

via Instagram http://ift.tt/1rhoGWa Happy 7th Birthday to the child who made me a mother. Glad he chose to stay here with us after his rocky labor and delivery. He has a sensitive, caring and witty personality. He is fiercely protective of his baby sister and loves apples, watermelon, math, Legos, strawberry shortcake, swimming and smashed potatoes. He wants to be a mechanical engineer when he grows up and I tell him he is right on track, Mr. Smarty pants. He's my very favorite boy and he is having a wonderful day with is new Lego set and national geographic books.

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via Instagram http://ift.tt/1XbbCPT Maylee and Emma LOVED Singers Company! Can't wait for next session. @julitavistaunet @happymayflower

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via Instagram http://ift.tt/1r7Hgjl Ty's Birthday Pool party was a blast. It was a perfect hot day and the pool was just right. We are so thankful that Ty had tons of friends to invite while we live in Medford and that my parents were gracious hosts. He had a great day.

Instagram Fun

via Instagram http://ift.tt/24lF8Sg It's the pool life. She could chill like that all.day.long. ☀️☀️☀️

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via Instagram http://ift.tt/1Pda2uu Happy Memorial Day.

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via Instagram http://ift.tt/256Q0FN Here is our closing packet... We just signed for our home loan. We are thrilled! The kids and I will stay in Medford with my parents for a few more weeks so Ty can finish the school year and so Matt can get some work on the home done. After so many tears, struggles and prayers we are so happy to be together as a family in our very own home soon. #familiesareforever #fixerupper

Instagram Fun

via Instagram http://ift.tt/22bXaXv It was her turn to pick out the Sunday movie. She added Carmel corn to her requests and I acquiesced. I love my Maylee Girl.

Mother's Day

I am failing miserably at the single parenting thing. I was mom-zilla this morning. I was expecting the whole breakfast in bed after sleeping in, children fed bathed and ready, a cute picture outside with me and the kids before church an uplifting church day then home from church to relax and enjoy my family while reading cute little surveys the kids took about me. No bum wiping, no snotty noses, no whining, no peanut butter sandwiches or meals to prepare and clean up. 

Half way through sacrament meeting I was on the edge of tears I was so underwhelmed.

Matt fell asleep watching a movie last night and slept the whole night on the couch. One of my favorite things is waking up to see Matt there. It hasn't happened a lot these last few months. Instead, all the kids woke me up early after they ate handfuls of chocolate Matt left out from the night before. I waited for breakfast... Nothing came so I got out of bed and started getting the kids for church. I woke Matt up and he said "oh, I slept on the couch." He got the kids dressed I did the rest. Ty gave me the picture he made special at school for me, Matt got me a blender (which I liked) I asked Matt to take a picture of the kids and I before church, he was late getting ready the kids were a whiny mess (turns out they didn't eat any breakfast) we were so late there was no time for a picture, I didn't want one anyway since I was yelling at my kids to get in the car. We were late to church (which I super hate being late) then we sat down in the wrong spot my kids start acting up we finally move spots then Emma tried to escape, pulled on my skirt and ripped it. Matt leans over and says "Are you having a hard day?" I about ripped his face off and started crying at the same time. 

That's when I had a heart to heart with myself and realized that Mother's Day shouldn't be a day off for me, it should be a day that I try my hardest to be the best mom I can be. My kids are never going to give me a day off, but I don't want a day off. I really just want to push pause because all too soon Mother's day will be a couple phone calls or a gift or two in the mail. It won't be hand drawn crayon masterpieces or cut out pictures and hearts carefully glued to construction paper. It won't be dandilion bouquets and begging to share the candy bar I got after sacrament meeting. 

I decided if I want a nice Mother's Day I need to make it that way. 

Poor Matt fell victim to another one of my unrealistic expectations that he didn't know about then crashed and burned. I told him about it, probably not as nicely as I should have. Poor guy was blindsided. He left this afternoon walking on eggs shells still I think. I am sad that's how I acted while he was here. Our time together is so limited and I was a brat. I don't know when we'll be together again. Probably just shy of three weeks is my guess. 

Next year I need to be better at Mother's Day. For now though, tally ho with the single parenting. I snuggled each one of my kids putting them to bed tonight. I didn't lose my cool as normal and cherished the never ending requests for last hugs and kisses and back scratches. 

Tomorrow is another day, another day for my 4 little loves to call me mom. 

Instagram Fun

via Instagram http://ift.tt/1s1YkZn 10 years, we've been married TEN years. I love my guy to the moon and back. I am so happy we could be together today. Happy Anniversary love.

Instagram Fun

via Instagram http://ift.tt/1ryka6b Motherhood is... Holding back and letting go. It's holding back the tears when my baby rounds the corner beaming happy having put her pants on all by herself. She is growing up and won't stay a baby forever. It's letting go when my 3 year old daughter decides to not be potty trained any more after 6 months and putting a diaper back on her feeling like i'm a failure. It's holding back my inner mamma bear when my son goes to a new school half way through the school year and I want to tell all the kids to be nice and not tease the new kid. It's letting go of my personal space that my 5 year old can't understand and so she's constantly caressing my face or cuddling my side. It's holding back the crazy swing of emotions and letting go of every notion I had of a what a perfect Mom should be. I triumph and I fail everyday and regardless of what happens my kids still say every night. "I love you mommy" and my heart soars. It's holding back and letting go, Motherhood. #acmotheringphotocontest2016

Instagram Fun

via Instagram http://ift.tt/1W4oqrj This is what it looks like when your parents FaceTime to see how you are doing alone with your kids, while they are in Italy. #iwasntthatupset #justafunnyscreenshot

Sunday Musings

Here's the thing, I actually thought about bearing my testimony today. I felt like my heart is so full and so many crazy things are happening right now and I needed to list a few things that are grounding me through this downpour of life. 

I thought about sharing how I just let go with my irritation of our landlord. I don't feel like he treated us fairly at all. We didn't get a dime of our deposit back, even though me and a few of my friends went through every room with a soapy bucket, sponge, magic eraser and touch up paint. We scrubbed, vaccuumed, and sanitized. The place was sterile and our landlord said and I quote "the place was trashed"  I still don't necessarily like our landlord, but my blood doesn't boil anymore at the thought of him. It took a month or so but I am fine with it now. I have prayed hard about it and my feelings are gone. As I thought about that this morning the first person who bore testimony talked about that. 

Then I thought about how I should talk about my family. I have a friend who is in a very similar place to us, or will be come August. She is desperately trying to find a place to live for a few months while they find another rental, or figure out what to do. Her dad lives 5 miles from her in a 5 bedroom ranch house on five acres. It's just him living there and he said no way to them living with him. I am so lucky that my parents are willing to let us live with them. I am so lucky that they have space and are nice (even though I know it must not be easy having 4 kids so young here, I mean the sticky factor went up 100%) they help me with the kids all the time and I am so grateful for them. 

Then two people got up and bore testimony about how thankful they are for eternal families and what a wonderful thing it is to be part of a happy loving family.  

Then I thought more about how I should just simply go up and say that I am a child of God, and that alone has got me through a lot this year. That I know he hears my prayers and through the spirit I can know what He wants me to be and what I can do to help His children (and my children) here on Earth. The whole house process has been so frustrating, but with the help of the spirit we've been able to do what we feel Heavenly Father wants us to do. 

Then a gentleman got up and literally sang the first two lines of the song "I am a Child of God" 

Then I thought I didn't need to go into any details that are happening I can just get up and tell the congregation that I know the Jesus Christ is my Savior. That he bled for me and I have a testimony of the atonement. That I am thankful for it every day and I can repent and try again. 

Wouldn't you know it, the next gal that got up said it short and sweet. 

So finally, after literally every testimony that I heard (I was tending 4 children this whole time) I thought I am just going to go up and say a big 'ole AMEN to every else's words and how thankful I was for the gospel of Jesus Christ and the fellow saints that attend church each week. There were only a few moments left, I started to stand up when a dear gal beat me up to the stand and said EXACTLY that. 

I don't know if it was what was supposed to happen today, but everyone said exactly what was on my mind and in my heart, when I said Amen today I really really meant it. 

I am kind of glad I didn't get up because my heart fills so fast it leaks out my eye balls and all I do is cry. I am an ugly crier too. 

I am so glad I attended church today, that I could feel of the spirit, be renewed in my faith and just have a good spiritual uplift for three hours. 

I loved it, great way to start my week. 

Whoopsies

Yesterday was a whoopsies day. 

Somehow a free code I made for a friend to get free bug bands was released to someone. It wasn't by my friend, so I don't know if it was on my listing (which would be my fault for setting it up incorrectly) or if an e-mail was hacked? Regardless 109 units of my Bug bands were given away for free using the code. In 2 hours they were all gone. I called Amazon, I e-mailed  Amazon. Matt called. We begged them to stop the orders, cancel the orders to salvage what was left, but nope. All of it was shipped yesterday and today. 

Not only does that put me out of stock (new order will come in a couple weeks) but I lose my first page ranking since I am out of stock AND as part of selling on Amazon they take a percentage of your profit. So I had to pay Amazon for 109 units to be shipped. 

I cried, I got angry, I wanted to yell and scream at everyone! There goes the money I wanted to use for new tile in the laundry room, or new paint on the trim! I was little teensy bit grouchy, but after about 3 hours I knew I couldn't do anything, so I just let it go. It's out of my control. I prayed about it, and I stopped wrestling and let it go. 

See? I guess I still need to work on resilience. That word keeps coming up almost every day! 

I was able to step back though and see what I really have and what really matters. When all is said and done, it doesn't matter that I lost a bunch of money "giving away" 1/5 of my inventory. What will matter is how I treated other people. 

I can be thankful for what I do have. I have a wonderful family (both immediate and extended) that I get to be with forever. We are all healthy and safe and happy. Those are the big important things. 

Just gotta take deep breaths (not so many I pass out) take a nap, eat some chocolate and smile. 

Being a grown up is hard. 

The story of the house

We are under contract and closing soon on a house in Camas Washington. If you want to see the pictures let me know and i'll send you the link to it. 

Here is the story.

Matt has loved this house for quite some time. The owners had been trying to sell it since last June (for a ridiculous price). In October, they moved and bought a home in CO and stopped making payments on the Camas Home. It turned to a short sale last February, with a foreclosure date of April 29 2016. 

In December, squatters found the home vacant and moved in for a short period of time. Because of their blatant disregard for other peoples property the house was trashed. Broken Dishwasher, Holes in the walls, damage to flooring, they ripped down the garage door, took the front of a drawer off, put stuff down the disposal, shattered the shower door, just a bunch of senseless cosmetic damage. Because of this, we've had the home appraised and inspected and it is structurally sound, no problems with plumbing or electrical. It's just a lot of clean up. 

We went to see it the first week of March, we had looked at quite a few homes when I saw this one on the list. We were looking for a good deal, and this one had always been WAY out of our price range. Even now, it's more than what I wanted to pay. We feel though that for only 15k more it's worth that since the home will be valued for a ton more once were done fixing it up. The other homes we felt like didn't have a whole lot of equity in them down the road, that they may be over priced. 

When we walked through it, it was dusk and a rainy day, since the electricity had been shut off we used our cell phone flashlights. It's a rambler and it was the perfect open floor plan for our family.  We decided to offer that night with the seller paying all the closing costs. I didn't think anything would happen since it's a short sale and those don't work out. But as luck would have it, none of the other offers we made on the other houses were accepted so to us it was like, "well, I guess we'll wait and see on the short sale." The first week of April we had Seller and Bank acceptance of our offer (including them paying the closing costs which we feel like was extra lucky). The foreclosure was postponed pending a closing date before the 23rd of May. I still wasn't sure about the home until we had all the inspections and appraisals done. Now I am feeling better about it. I KNOW it'll be a TON of work, time and money to get everything up to my standards. 

The tricky part is we can not get a regular loan on the home. No one will lend for a fixer upper. So we've had to get a special loan called a 203k Streamline loan to include paying a contractor to fix certain things to get the home up to FHA standards. That has been a very frustrating process because 90% of the things we're paying a contractor to do, we can do ourselves and it would cost a ton less saving on labor. So we're having the contractor do the bare bones get in and get out so we can start our stuff. Over the next couple years we plan on re-doing the flooring, painting the whole thing inside and out, re-landscaping some in both the back and the front, beefing up the exterior a little etc etc. We'll probably be comfortable by Christmas (real wood burning fireplace can't wait to cozy up to that with the kids on Christmas Eve) but have all our plans complete in about 2 years. 

The part we love about the home is the huge master closet and bathroom. All of the homes we'd walked through up to that point had the Master bath as the smallest bathroom. Also, we love the yard! It's about 2/3 acre with a smaller front yard, so the back yard is huge. We want to eventually do a fire pit, a man cave (shed) for Matt, we want to add a built in BBQ. The sky is the limits with the home and that's what we love. It can be as basic or as nice as we want it to be and can really be a forever home for us. Will it be? Who knows, what I do know is that this is where God wants us.  He has answered all our prayers and provided a way for us to be back together as a family soon. We are really looking forward to that time. You know what they say, absence makes the heart grow fonder. 

Instagram Fun

via Instagram http://ift.tt/1XQ6eyS I helped out in Maylee's Sunday school class today. We talked about things that we can do to make Jesus and Heavenly Father happy or sad. Maylee said "when my mommy is grouchy" my companion teacher said, "That does make Jesus sad when Moms are grouchy, Maylee what can you do to make your Mommy happy?" Maylee's friend Charlotte interjects, "you can clean your room!" Charlotte knows how's to make this mom happy. It was a lovely day at church today. #HisDay

Instagram Fun

via Instagram http://ift.tt/1qIl3sn Weekends with my main squeeze in town make me happy. The kids are thrilled to see Daddy too. Our closing date can't come soon enough. #familiesareforever #bettertogether

Jamaica Picture Dump

Trouble is, when you have two cameras is it's difficult to post a blog, it becomes disjointed. So, a bunch of pictures out of order will have to do.

 This was the pool at the resort where we stayed. We were worried since the forecast said rainy the whole time we were there. It hardly rained, only when Matt and Preston attempted to go golfing. HA! That was a fun story. They golfed in a downpour the first 9 holes then decided to stop and not continue the rest of the course. About 5 minutes later the rain stopped. They had to sit for 2 hours and wait at the course for the bus to come pick them up. Suzanne and I booked our other excursions and read our books on the beach while we waited for Matt and Preston.

 We we to Mystic Mountain the first day. The scenery was really pretty. The workers there reminded us this was 700 ft above sea level so it was quite a climb. 700 ft. pfft.

The Bobsled was really fun. Matt and I went together and Preston and Suzanne went together.

 At the end one had a chance to swim in the pool above the bay. It was really pretty but we didn't swim, we didnt really have time plus Matt was a little hangry at that point.

 The next day we went on the Dunn's River Falls Shopping tour. They took us to a small market to buy a few handmade things, then they took us to a duty free shopping plaza. I was on the hunt for vanilla for my mom. I didn't find any white vanilla. I could find caramel color, and dark, but no white. That is what my mom wanted. I told the tour guide "Lady D' about it, she called me vanilla the rest of the day and even had the bus driver stop off at the grocery store in town (like where she goes grocery shopping) to buy white (more like clear) vanilla. We found some, it was only 2 dollars. At all the tourist shops it was between $7-11. That reminds me. Jamaica isn't cheap. They practically chase you down and BEG for tips, for anything and everything.   When we went to Guatemala everything was really cheap, like under 5 bucks. Here everything was $20 and you had to talk them down. Well Matt feels bad for the people there so he didn't haggle very much. So I had to tell myself it was $5 for the item and the rest was to charity.

We went to Konoko Falls and Gardens. It was really pretty there. We had a tour guide there that rushed up through everything. I wish I could have taken a little more time, but it was okay.

There was a funny part where almost every flower show pointed out she said was related to the Banana Family. She would say, "This is the bird of paradise flower, red orange and yellow, it's used in floral arrangements and is a member of the banana family." So for the next few days we'd point to a random something and tell eachother it was a member of the banana family.

 The view from the courtyard was lovely!

 Our last stop was the Dunns River Falls. We thought we were booking on a day where there weren't any cruise lines... uhhh nope. It was crazy busy. It was a touristy thing, you know those things you just have to do once but I would never do again. The falls were completely cemented over so it wasn't "natural". We all got a good laugh about it. We were supposed to hold hands all the way up. Of course Matt is a rebel and let go right away and kind of blazed his own trail in the very back of the line.

 It was still pretty fun though, being with Suzanne, Matt and Preston always make something fun.

 Matt and Preston were doing 'sexy' waterfall photos. HAHA

 All these pictures were taken with Kelly and Nate's waterproof camera. It was so nice to carry it around to all our excursions and not worry about our other cameras getting wet. Matt even took it underwater to see if it worked. Yep, it works.

So there are the first bit of pictures. There are more i'll post soon.

Instagram Fun

via Instagram http://ift.tt/1VmUCpm Sun soaking and missing our babies. #10yearsofus

Instagram Fun

via Instagram http://ift.tt/22pTrnR The bobsled team. #10yearsofus #twinforlife #wowmetravel

Instagram Fun

via Instagram http://ift.tt/1Mqr1bF On our way to bobsled and zip line. #10yearsofus #twinforlife #wowmetravel

Instagram Fun

via Instagram http://ift.tt/1YnJgPm Celebrating #nationalsiblingsday with my favorite twin sister, reading on the beach in Jamaica while our husbands paddle board and kayak their hearts out. #SFgiants #twinforlife

Instagram Fun

via Instagram http://ift.tt/22kSkpk We made it to Jamaica! Time to celebrate. #10yearsofus

Instagram Fun

via Instagram http://ift.tt/1MlLb6w Next stop, Jamaica! (Okay, next stop Minnesota but then after that Jamaica) #10yearsofus

Instagram Fun

via Instagram http://ift.tt/1WfHG3H The girls and I took a field trip to visit Grandpa's work. They instinctively did the same thing I did when I was a child. They walked in the huge building then younger two shrieked like Pterodactyls to hear what it sounded like then ran down the hallway to Grandpas office. Talk about a throwback. #medfordlife