things work out

I can't sleep... if I'm going to be awake I should be watching Eclipse! ANY WAY

So once I announced to the world that we were packing up and moving AGAIN, I began to get scared. I know that fear is not always the appropriate motivation to not do something, but I was thinking people probably thought we were lunatics for picking up and leaving without any real plan. Some people's reaction was simply "again?"
Originally we wanted to clean the place up really well and get rid of most of our stuff so we could stage it and take cute pictures once our new camera got here (Ryan recently ordered us a new point and shoot since ours died.)
I decided to just list the place using the pictures of our place that I have posted on my facebook just to see if we could generate any interest. I listed it at a price that I knew was higher than what some of our neighbors were paying and I didn't think anyone would be looking for a place at the end of June.
To my surprise, within 24 hours the ad had 75 views. I had two people e-mail and express interest and one person call me.
When I spoke with the girl who called she wanted to come over with her husband in an hour. I cleaned as fast as I could but it certainly wasn't spotless.
The couple came over again later that night after looking at other places and asking a few more questions they said they'd really like to stay here.
...that was almost too easy!
They have no furniture and are excited that we are willing to leave some of ours. (This is awesome for us because we don't have to move and find somewhere to store our big bulky stuff. and don't worry we are getting a fairly large deposit just in case something happens.) They want to move in ASAP. The benefit of renting it out over selling is that we get to build equity with someone else's money! Also it is nice to know that if things don't go as planned (as far as buying a new place after saving money at my moms) we will still have a backup plan here in Springville.
I'm excited that they are a cute young LDS couple. They've only been married for 7 months.
What she said to me that really put me at ease, is that she felt good about the place just by looking at the pictures and after coming over she still felt really good about it. They thought we seemed nice and they felt the place was within their price range. Sometimes we forget that everything we do is not always about us. While this move will certainly have it's benefits for us, it's good to know that maybe it's the right thing for someone else too.

Moving

Ryan and I have been throwing around the idea of moving for a while now. We'd like to sell or rent out our condo and move in with my mom for a while. There are many pros and cons to the idea but after some thought we've decided to make the move during Ryan's one week break from school which begins on July 5th. If we attempt to move while he is in school I think his head would explode, so this is really our only opportunity.

The why...
With Ryan and I both in school and neither of us working full time for almost a year now, we have a pretty small savings account these days.We'd really like to save enough money to be able to afford a down payment on a place with at least one more room since we will have two kids soon. A larger car would be nice too. We'd also like to be closer to Ryan's work. Commuting gets old. We'd like to be closer to family. With Ryan's mom now in Draper and my mom in Riverton they are right by each other. I've driven up to that area for various reasons so many times recently, I practically live there already. As silly as it may seem, construction is another reason to leave. Pretty much all of I-15 between here and the Salt Lake area is just a disaster. Stupid construction stimulus has provided enough funding to keep all of I-15 in shambles. We are always guessing what is going to be the best way to get home because we have been in several situations where the whole freeway is down to one lane and we aren't moving.This will also make it possible for us to stage our house for sale without all of our clutter and toddler messes. We are excited about the prospect of getting Kaylee on a better sleep system. If we aren't in a condo we have a few more options as far as sleep training goes. I'm also happy I will have my mom to keep me company while Ryan finishes school. He's a crazy man and has to do work, school, eat, sleep, repeat sort of thing or else he fails classes and that's no fun!

The bad news...
WE AVE TO PACK AND MOVE... EWWWWWWWWWWW! I hate moving. We will miss this place. It's ours and it's been "home" for most of our marriage. We have friends here and we like our ward. Another sad thing is I will have to commute down to Provo to finish up school. We also don't have any buyers or renters right now. We aren't sure we can get a good price out of this place. I'll have to commute to my midwife appointments in Orem. We'll be invading my mom's home with a newborn (although we won't be the first.) We won't have a reams right behind us with amazing produce prices! (seriously will be missed)

Goodbye Springville. We've really had some good times here!
Hello Riverton. I can't wait to make new friends and have new experiences.

Happy Belated Fathers Day

I don't consider myself to be very sentimental. I'm not the type to write a blog on father's day that says "my dad was awesome because..."
My sister said someone asked her if we do anything special to remember my dad on Fathers Day and we kind of laughed about it. We might think abut him and he could come up in conversation but it's not our style to make a big production of it.
That being said, I just watched this video and felt inspired to take a short moment to remember my dad.



Here is my dad with baby Chase

I often wish he was here to give his opinion and insights. I wish I could watch him interact with his grandbabies. I wish Ryan could meet him- I really think they would get along well.
I'm grateful to have had him to teach me so much. I'm grateful for the love he gave to us kids and my mom.
I really love my dad and I am so happy I get to see him again someday!

The BirthFamilyMoon

So the entire Norton/Hightower clan took a family trip together which doubled as Laurie's Bday and Laurie and Jeff's honeymoon. Hence Jeff dubbed it the BirthFamilyMoon.

Everything kicked off with a beautiful wedding day on the 5th.

From there things got a little crazy... we were supposed to take off for Mexico the next day but because the wedding pushed back our departure date, the airlines were having a hard time figuring out how to get all 15 of us to Cancun. After having our flight delayed several times and several days we finally decided to just go do something as a family. All 15 of us packed into 3 cars and started driving to CA without a plan... no hotel no real destination other than a beach.

Things were pretty squishy! Oh and we had to take potty breaks for me...

We stayed at G&G Pullan's in Vegas for a night and then got back to our adventures.
One car made a pit stop for new tires in Vegas to prevent a blow out on the freeway but we all got to a hotel that was booked shortly before our arrival on Wednesday night.

This is the lobby of The Portofino Hotel. They had lemon lime cucumber water in here that I should have taken a picture of because I was obsessed with it!

When we got there we ate pizza and had pool time and then went to bed in prep of day one on the beach.


The hotel let us borrow bikes to ride to the beach and to the pier. (The hotel was on the water but right in the port so we couldn't actually get in the water without biking to the beach.)

This was the view from our balcony complete with barking seals out on that dock.

We spent Thursday and Friday on the beach. There was football throwing, ultimate frisbee, beach volleyball (which I actually played!), boogie boarding (which I also attempted but was being rocked by the tide), wave playing, sand burials, and of course sun bathing and sunscreening (I of course still got burned.)

I also taught Cassie and Jessica how to hunt for sand crabs. :)


We had dinner at The Cheesecake Factory and Johnny Rockets and dessert at Yogurtland.




Our last day of adventures consisted of a trip to Disneyland/CA Adventure. Chelsie went to their World of Color premier in exchange for free tickets and two guides for us. Guides are Disney employees whose main job is to help you know where t go and then take you to the front of all the lines... it was AWESOME!



And of course we had to see the new World of Color Show... It was pretty dang cool!

learning to speak

Today I took Kaylee to the pediatrician. I was worried she might have an ear infection because she was waking in the middle of the night crying and one time even said OWE when she woke up and has been playing with her ear. Thankfully he said her ears looked fine.
I did a well baby check and she is pretty normal on all fronts. She even managed to gain enough weight to actually be on the charts. She's in like the 8th percentile for weight. (Although he still wants me to give her butter and ice cream.)

When the Dr. asked me how many words she knows I told him I hadn't ever counted. I was positive she spoke more than the required 10 he was hoping for but as I drove home I tried to count them and was surprised the list was longer than I was thinking.

I'm not trying to brag because I know some kids her age say more than her and some say less and it's all normal. I just wanted to write these all down so that next time someone asks me if she's talking I can say yes! Also I think these kinds of things are important to remember. Here is what Ryan and I could come up with...
-Mama (&Stacey)
-Dada (&Ryan... it's pretty funny when she yells it)
-cat (&meow)
-doggie (&woof)
-shoe
-sock
-fish
-duck
-apple
-cheese
-ball
-bubble
-Elmo (over and over and over)
- 1,2,3,8 (She actually recognizes 8's and points them out)
-A,B (all letters are A's and B's)
-eye
-nose
-mouth (although it sounds more like meoo)
-baby (said when referring to children, dolls and my belly)
-Thank You (for EVERYTHING)
-Hey, NO
-help
-let's go
-sit
-poo poo
-ready set go
-light
-yeah
-all done
-toe
-bear (kind of)
-hi, hello
-bu bye

So as you can see she actually knows over 40 words. If I think of more I'll add them.