The Move

One thing to say.

Blair has the best boss.

His boss and his boss's son, Kord, were the only ones that helped us move. They let us use their trucks and their enclosed trailer and spent hours packing it up and then hauling it into our new house in one of the biggest snow storms of the season.

So thank you to them. 

Also, I got really sick the day before. Like, can't-get-up-without-falling-down sick. Blair's boss, once again he's a great guy, let him come home after lunch and then Blair and Reagan gave me a priesthood blessing. I wasn't completely better, but I felt so much better then I did before and was able to get some packing done.

Here are some pictures of the day we loaded up:

Deegan found the Christmas wrapping paper while I was trying to catch up from being sick the day before. It doesn't look so bad in the picture but I was so frustrated when I found this.  Haha its kind of humorous to look back and see what made me so mad... 

Here's the stack of boxes in our closet.

Sorry about it being blurry all these pics are from my phone, but this was a stack of boxes in the corner of our room.

The bathroom was the very first room that I got all loaded up. And silly little me started to cry and I just didn't want to leave. Then I remembered that it was the same way with our apartment in Twin.  I had to keep telling myself change is good and this change is fabulous.

Here are the pictures of when we got there:

Our Bedroom

Ellie's bedrrom

The Living Room

...aaaaannnnddd, the kitchen

Yes, the kitchen was the worst. Yikes! You can tell why I didn't really enjoy the first few weeks at all because this is the way it was. And we knew we were going to be redoing the kitchen soon so we didn't put much of the food away because we didn't see the point in packing and unpacking twice. So, that part was miserable and every time I look at this picture I am grateful for how far we've come.

Well that's the move and I didn't even take picture of the basement. But the basement was a dumping ground so it was a whole lot worse than anywhere else. I'll let you use your imagination.

Now you all just need to come over and visit so you can be amazed by our progress =D

Deegan found the wrapping paper on moving

In the words of Deegan, "We Don't Live There Anymore"

I want Deegan to be able to know where he spent two years of his life and I want Ellie to be able to see what she came home from the hospital to. 

I wanted to record this with all their stuff still in there, but I didn't want them to remember the mess. =) so this is an after video.

If you don't want to watch this, I won't be offended. There is no need for you to waste two minutes of your time if you've already seen where we lived. But feel free to watch it if you must ;)

I hope we are able to look back at this footage and have memories come flooding back to us. 

I haven't died...yet

I haven't been around for awhile, but we are still ALIVE!

We haven't got much done in April, but in March we really kicked our butts into gear and started a lot of projects that really didn't get finished. Yes, I am one of those people.

• We unpacked most everything, but there is at least one box still in every room (except the bathroom)
• We painted Ellie's room, and started to decorate but didn't finish.
• We painted the Living Room (our room that is most complete) and I built some gallery shelves for picture frames. A big booyah for me since it was my first solo building project.
• We redid our kitchen (cabinets, floor, and paint) but still have got to finish the cupboards and put the baseboards up.
  

And that was all in about 3 weeks time. The fourth weekend in March we had a family birthday party for Deegan who turned 3.

Now we are burned out. And I haven't done one ounce of heavy-duty housework in the month of April and to be truthful I haven't done much of the light housework either.

But I start school back up again in a week-and-a-half.  I am going to be going to Western Governors University (an online school) to finish my BA in Interdisciplinary Studies.  Woot, Woot! In laman's terms, I'm gonna be an elementary school teacher. I'm feeling a non-natal sense of nesting with that so who knows, I might just get some stuff accomplished.  And it helps that Blair gets tomorrow off for Good Friday so maybe we can tag team with kids and work. 

On a tangent, is Good Friday a made up holiday so people can get work off or is it really a holiday? ...This is the first year that we've had a decent enough job to even know that the 'holiday' existed...

A few more things and I'll get to posting some stuff about the move.

I'm done coaching the Stepps. Super sad because I love doing it and the girls are amazing, but I need to make sure that I have my priorities in line and my family and school need to come before that.

I just got put in as Laurel advisor in my new ward.  I was in YW in my last ward, but wasn't required to teach on Sunday or go on Wednesday so it'll be fun for me to embrace a new experience.

I also want to give a big shout out to my two new followers, Nancy and Chris. I love that I DOUBLED my followers ;) 

One more quick thing

I just have to post this picture. 

It cracks me up.

I think that Deegan may spend too much time going to dance class with his mom...

What do you think?

haha, I went into Deegan's room to find Woody in the splits.

Ah, man. Having kids is a blast.

'til death do us part...

...or at least until 2041.

Thats right, as of today we have a mortgage until February 2041!

Haha, exciting right?! 

Very.

But 2041... ugh, with that perspective on it, I think that 'overwhelming' might be a more suitable word. 'Crazy' might be a perfect match, but 'excited' we are.

I guess that the last picture didn't work so hopefully this one's a success. 

And since you waited so patiently, I may even throw, in a few bonus pictures. Yes two followers, these are for you! (I'm probably going to keep this whole 2 followers thing going until I get more. THIS IS MY SUBTLE HINT TO THOSE WHO AREN'T FOLLOWERS) 

haha just kidding, I love you all no matter what.

Here is our bedroom

And this is Miss Ellie's bedroom

Here is our one and only bath (the biggest setback of the house, but trust us, it was worth the trade-off)

You'll have to come back for more,

but I thought you might want an update on the kids.

They are growing so much! Eloise can almost sit by herself and army crawls. She's just about got the actual process of crawling down.

When did my little girl get so big? I haven't given her permission to grow up.

And the Deeg-man. Well what can be said about Deegan except that he's is already 3 (even though his birthday isn't for another month) He has become 'defiant deegan'. 

And I KNOW that I didn't give him permission.

So anyway, that's our life for the month of January and February

Oh and just fyi, the Stepps are doing great. We've competed well at two competitions and we have two more to go... way to go girls!!!

It's Competition Season

I have been horrible about blogging this month, but in my defense, it is competition season for the Stepperettes. This means that we have at least 2 performances a week and sometimes three plus extra practices on the weekends.  That alone doesn't sound like too much but throw it in the mix with everything else we do on a day-to-day basis and POW, I'm one exhausted person. 

And on top of that we are buying a house. You'll have to wait for detailed information on that, but here's a sneak preview...

We will be closing around the middle of next month! 

So if you don't hear from us for a while, we are probably dancing, packing, and cleaning like crazy! I'm still going to try to make good on my new year's resolution though, so help me by keeping me on my toes and telling me when I need to post again! 

The Trip Back

I don't ever want to have to drive through Nevada at night during in the middle of the winter again. (Talk about setting yourself up for some scary show where your car breaks down, there's no cell phone service, and every one gets murdered! haha, okay it wasn't THAT bad). So Christmas night we got all packed up so we could leave first thing the next morning. 

So on the day after Christmas we left this...

And headed back to the promised land of Idaho.

We had big plans.

Too big of plans really. We were a bit too ambitious. 

We wanted to stop at the Hoover Dam, at the strip in Vegas, and stop and see the lights at Temple Square.

Well after we turned the wrong way on the interstate and put ourselves behind the 40 minutes that it would've taken us to get to the Hoover Dam, we x-ed that one out.

Then Blair was on the phone and we missed the exit to the strip.  Turning around in Vegas with screaming kids? ...na, we passed on that one too.

Then after going from Arizona, into California, into Nevada, back into Arizona and finally into southern Utah, our kids had had it. 

We decided that no matter, what we needed to get out and release some energy. So although we'd only packed for Arizona weather, when we reached the Salt Lake Valley we said, "This is the place". 

With thin jackets and bottled up energy we got out to appreciate the beautiful lights. 

It was worth it. 

I haven't been since I was in high school and I forgot just how amazing they are.

Deegan refused to look for any picture. I guess it was his way of telling us how mad at us he was for keeping him in his car seat for that long =)

The only time we got him to look was when another person was taking the picture because he was curious.

Out of all the different displays, this one was my favorite. So serene. So beautiful. Lovely.

Christmas Day

Well Santa came! Can you believe that?! Rotten kids and all. There must be a pretty low standard to get coal. Haha, just kidding my kids are angels...all the time =)

 

Deegan got Woody and Ellie got a baby fairy doll

By the look on his face, I think that Deegan was probably expecting something else! but he has had a lot of fun with the little guy. And look at that girl's hair! Yikes! =) Sure, the curls are cute and all, but they are unmanageable...

Deegan dove right in to opening every present that was wrapped in Cars and Auntie Ann helped little El-Belle with hers.

Yep, Auntie Ann ripped while Ellie ate ;)

We had Ann's name this year so we bought her this jacket

Everyone got a jacket or a coat of some kind except me, but no complaining here because I got some boots I've been wanting for a while now.

Deegan loves to cook more than anything else in the world.

He is a very well rounded boy.

This is him and Woody having a picnic.

Daddy scared to get out of the warm hot tub, but Deegan was brave and eventually got his daddy into the pool.

Christmas Eve

Blair's parents flocked south for the month of December and invited us to come visit them. We decided to go over Christmas so we spent the normally cold holiday in warm Lake Havasu City, Arizona. It was beautiful and warm, which was exactly the break we needed, but we didn't get to do the kind of things we would normally do for an Idaho Christmas like sled and drink hot chocolate.  Not to fret, though. We had a 'plethora' of things we could've done (If you're not quite sure what that means, you haven't seen the 'Even Stevens' episode and are really missing out) but we Blair and I were hesitant to take on anything too much because of our kids. So we decided to go bowling. It was so much fun to bowl with Blair's family.

Annie and I couldn't get over how funny the 'form' photos were. So brace yourself. You are in for a real treat....

Yes, my camera is amazing. There isn't a camera that can blur photos quite like mine can.  You should all go buy one =)

And of course, Ellie was cheerin' us on behind the scenes! 

The London Bridge

On our way into town, we passed a street sign named "London Bridge Road". 

Blair: That's the real London Bridge, you know.

Bethany: Whatever! Didn't the London Bridge like fall down or something?

Blair: Nope. It's the real London Bridge

Bethany: You're not going to fool me this time. You think you know everything...

Haha, we know we are complete dorks. 

Even though I'm pretty sure he didn't know at that moment that it really was the real London Bridge it turned out that he was right.

I guess in like the '60s some guy that bought Lake Havasu like a millenium ago bought the bridge from London because it couldn't hold up with all the traffic that it was getting daily. Between the purchase, the shipping, and putting the jig-saw puzzle back together it is said that it cost him around 7 million.  Holy crap, right?! If I had seven million dollars laying around I probably wouldn't buy a bridge, but I don't own a city or a lake either so it must've been pocket change to the ol' geazer. Anyway, a couple centuries later we were able to enjoy it on Christmas Eve.  Here are the shots.

Christmas Eve Night

So then we went back to the house to open presents, make cookies for Santa Clause, and soak in the hot tub.

BTW, where are my son's pants???