Our New Home

Luke and I found this house in the middle of October. When we went to look at it the first time, the seller was at home and he came out and in a very strong Russian accent said, "What do you want?!" Our Realtor looked slightly taken aback, but introduced himself and us and asked him if we could see the house. The seller then said, "You want to see the house? Fine, come in." So, a little awkward, and in we went. Luke recognized the accent and immediately asked the man if he spoke Russian in Russian. And off they went. The man's cold, hard voice melted and he gave Luke a personal full tour of the house. It took an hour and a half.
There's a lot more to it than meets the eye. Of course the Yard is huge and fantastic, but the seller has 4 fruit trees lining one side of the house, a strawberry patch, blue berry bushes, raspberry bushes, grapes, and another berry bush that Luke didn't know the translation to. There are HUGE garden areas that I'm so excited about! The house itself has 4 beds and 2.5 bath. We closed on Friday Nov 22 and went and took a look at what was left in the house since the man had told us they'd be leaving things. They left us their formal dining set, a really nice coffee table, some curtains, some paintings, fully decorated bathrooms with baskets, etc., 2 extra party fridges in the garage, seeds that they plant in the yard, ALL their yard tools - lawn mower, weed eater, planters, rakes, axes, saws, everything you can possiblythink of to upkeep the yard. They left us a computer that's not half bad, etc. etc. etc. The list goes on and on.
The sellers were some of the sweetest, nicest people I have ever met. They were also extremely clean and meticulous about everything so the house is in fantastic condition. They were older - grandparents age and they even left little stuffed animals for our girls that they absolutely adored (which really helped in the whole buying/negotiations process.)
So here it is! Our new home for years to come. There's a LOT of parking so we'll be having a house warming party sometime in the near future! In all our haste we didn't get a picture of our incredible guest bathroom, so you will just have to come see it. Lets just say that there's a $5K bath/spa/sauna chamber in there that has neon blue lights, built in MP3 player, and you can even patch your phone into it. Thanks to all who helped and supported in making this happen for us. We feel incredibly blessed and are very humbled and grateful for this new WONDERFUL blessing.

A Child's Prayer

We've been teaching Lily how to say prayer for almost a year now. Mostly she says the prayers over the meals and they are very simple and always the same. Lately something has clicked and she has started praying for different things during our meal prayers. It started when we all had the flu and she started praying for us to feel better. Then she started praying that Lily and Arya will have good sleep. :) (Can you tell what Luke and I pray for all the time?) This morning's went like this:

Dear Heavenly Father, Thank thee for the food, please bless the food, please bless that Santa will bring Lily presents, bless that Santa will bring Arya presents, bless that Santa will bring Mommy presents, and bless that Santa will bring daddy presents, in the name of Jesus Christ Amen.

It's amazing how children connect things sometimes! It brought a smile to my face as I said AMEN!

Fall City Farms - Pumpkin Time!

Yesterday was one of the BEST days ever! Luke and I took the girls to Fall City Farms and had a superb time. They have hay rides, hay mazes, farm animals, fresh pressed apple juice, fresh made donuts, and of course, a pumpkin patch. It was the first time we took the girls to do something like this and they absolutely loved it. Lily use to be afraid of animals a year ago but this year she was in heaven. She wanted to pet everything! Arya, our fearless baby, had no problems either and also wanted to pet everything.

Luke and I both grabbed pretty big pumpkins and we have pretty big plans for them. Hopefully it'll pan out. We'll just have to see in a couple of weeks. I LOVE FALL! It's so beautiful and cozy. And now, it will forever be the time that we bought our FIRST HOUSE! More of that to come... :o).

Locks of Love

As some of you know, my hair grows like weeds. I have estimated that it grows approximately 8-10 inches a year. This makes it financially difficult to keep cute short hairstyles. A couple years ago I decided that I'll just grow my hair out and donate it to a company called "Locks of Love" that makes wigs for children who have lost all of their hair due to health reasons. This is the second time that I have done this over the last 3 years and it feels great! It also helps that a really fancy schmancy salon in downtown Bellevue called "7 Salon" cuts your hair for free when you donate to "Locks of Love."

Now, I have liked all the short hair cuts that I have ever gotten thus far (with the exception of when I was 3-4 and got a boy cut). It's always a shock and for some odd reason all the stylists I have ever had except for one have insisted on fluffing my hair up as much as possible and then have the hair curl under so that I look like a freakin' mushroom. Last night was no exception and all I could think of was, "wow, I look like the mushroom monster on Mario Brothers." This syndrome will pass as soon as I wash my hair and style it myself. But, I couldn't resist snapping a picture of it last night.

I Am a Child of God

Lily is really good at singing... at least we think so. :) She has been singing "I am a Child of God" from start to finish for a couple months now. Sometimes she sings it while she's playing with the piano and other times she likes to put on a performance. Arya pretty much enjoys doing whatever Lily is doing and has also picked up on a few songs from nursery and can follow along here and there. Today they put on a performance for Luke and I. It was so cute that we had to get a video of it!

Lily's Third Birthday

Lily's 3rd birthday was on June 23rd. She ended up having 3 different celebrations - once on her actual birthday with just eveyone in the household. She got her trike and a fish that day. Then we celebrated it again with Zeke's family when she actually got her birthday cake and a beautiful pink dress (that she couldn't stop twirling in) from them. Then again with Luke's brother's family when we had ice cream and she got a HUGE Disney Princess coloring book and some cute PJ's. Quite the birthday week. Hopefully the number of parties for her will not match how old she is every year. :)

We tried to get her to name her fish, but I don't think she understands the concept just yet. She named her fish - Fishy. :)

Camping Trip

Well, we had our very first family camping trip! It was actually Zeke and Maggie's first too. Zeke is not exactly a fan of camping, but with 3 boys, Maggie wanted him acclimated. So, she invited us along! The girls did better than I expected and since Luke and I really enjoy camping, there will definitely be more to come! We were at Ensign Ranch and everything was wonderful except for the hundreds and hundreds of mosquitos that were there. The girls got away without any bites... might have something to do with the fact that I was spraying them about every 45 minutes. Luke and I were not so lucky, but it wasn't too bad.

Here are some pictures - Enjoy!
They had a really nice FREE slip and slide and so we all went and had a GREAT time. Lily went down about 5-6 times. But after she got splashed in the face 3 times in a row she was done. Arya did about 3-4 but she screamed and cried every time. We're such nice parents. :)

From the Mouth of my soon-to-be 3 year old

Lily has become more and more aware of herself lately. She's always been a clean/neat freak about her appearance and her body in general but lately she's more into her clothing and picking out what she likes, etc. This morning when I handed her some clothes to put on, she picked up her shirt, examined it and said:

Lily: "Oh no!"
Me: "It's ok, it's just wrinkled, put it on."
Lily: "Wrinkled? Like you?"

I didn't think I was getting wrinkles yet!!!! After she got her clothes on, she then proceeded to say, "I'm going to go look at myself in the mirror." Oh boy! I didn't think that they start that young! I know that kids pick up on what we do and say, but I didn't think that I checked myself out in the mirror that often! Things you learn!

Family Time

Luke's little brother and sister came and visited Seattle over Memorial Day weekend and the weather was so nice that we went to the beach and had a bbq. She took some cute pictures of the girls and we had a lot of fun.

Here's Lily lookin' stylin' in Blythe's sunglasses. Sorry the pictures are small because I stole them off of her facebook.I love these pictures of Arya. She is literally always eating and we call her our little chunky monkey.

Beach Day

Well, it finally warmed up and yesterday it was about 70-72 degrees so Luke and I took the girls to Coulon Park with Zeke and Maggie's family. The girls were a little hesitant about the sand at first, but they had fun in the end. It was really nice since Coulon also has this really large playground so after some beach fun we went over to the playground for some extra fun.

Arya really wasn't so sure about the whole sand thing.

Zeke's little boy didn't have any problems with the sand. :)

Lily helping build a mote around Luke's castle.

The girls at the playground. I think that's the first time I've really seen Arya enjoy the swing, but who can resist daddy making funny faces at the same time.

Random Pictures

Just wanted to post a few pictures of our happenings:
This is Arya climbing from the little chair to the little table. She's quite the climber. I would've snapped a picture of her climbing on top of the toilet tank trying to get into the pedestal sink, but I didn't trust that I had enough time to grab my camera before she plummeted to the tile floor. She is definitely Luke's child. :)

Here's Arya smooching Aiden - Ron's youngest. Ron and Misty came up to see The Music Man and Aiden and Arya just smooched left and right. They were very, very cute.


Luke's Sister Marren who is a professsional hair and make-up artist was up visiting and helping with the remodeling of my mom's house. She did Lily's hair for church. I'd like to say it was for Easter, but it was just a regular Sunday and Marren had a lot of fun. She did such a GREAT job thta I just had to snap some pictures of it.

The Music Man

YAY! Well, the show was a success and there were so many people there this weekend that it was insane. On opening night about 15 minutes before theshow started, we had a packed gym and into the overflow. Then about 5 minutes after that the crew had to open up the chapel put seats in between the pews and people were sitting in the choir seats up on the pulpit! We had an estimated 550 on opening night, about 300 for the matinee and then about another 450-500 for the closing show!! It was SUCH a great time! My mom was so great at babysitting for Luke and I this week that I really didn't have to worry about my children at all and was just able to enjoy being in the orchestra. Here are pictures of the show. We do have video clips... but copy right laws are screaming in my head saying "DON'T POST ANYTHING!!" So, you all just have to come visit and watch it some time!