Free Mother's Day Card from Hallmark.

You can go to www.slickdeals.net and under Tuesday, April 28, a few posts down click on the link that says free card. You have to have (or make) a Hallmark account and then use the code from slickdeals to get your free card at checkout.

I love free stuff!

Happy Easter!

Tyler in his cute vest from Auntie Liz!

The Kids outside our house

Tyler and I

David and the girls

It was so wonderful to celebrate our first holiday in our home. We really enjoyed it. Back in August, when we first made the offer on this house, I didn't think Easter would be our first holiday here....Here we are, with so much work done, and yet a whole 1/2 acre of weeds outside our windows and it's April. I think our hard work has paid off. It is a nice feeling to want to be home and not go anywhere else. Victoria, for the longest time, did not like this house and said it was ugly. Now she says, Can we just go home Mommy?" It is true music to my ears. I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter.

Tyler's Flowbee Haircut

So, I have realized there are so many differences with having a boy vs. girls. One of the bigger ones for me is that boys need a boy haircut. With the girls, I just let their hair grow and barely cut it when they were small. With Tyler, I realize I can't do that. I didn't want to pay for a haircut and didn't want to do it myself...I don't trust myself that much. So, I decided to have my Dad, Tyler's Papa, but it with his Flowbee machine. Some of you may be wondering about this. Well in the early 90's, my dad bought a Flowbee, which is a long tube that connects to your vacuum, or central vac system and has cutting tools on the end of it to cut hair. I remember being young watching my dad cut his hair with this strange thing for the first time. We laughed and laughed. To this day, my dad still uses the Flowbee system to cut his hair. I didn't know if Tyler would do it, because it is loud and well just looks weird, but he didn't make a peep and I think he actually liked it. If you want to check it out, the website is http://www.flowbee.com/.

Well We Are In!

Our Front Door (still in the process of being painted)
Tyler in the guest bathroom...his new found joy

Our beautiful kitchen...sorry it's so messy, we are trying to unpack

My aunt Carla came over and painted this. This is my new saying

The dining room chairs my mom and I recovered with free fabric she got...It was fun and easy

My dining room

The awesome laundry room. David built this butcher block counter top with help from Shawn Isa and his brother in law John

Our hallway (we still need to paint the railing)

My bathtub....can't wait to take a bath in there...probably in a few weeks!

Our bathroom countertop and cabinet

Our new shower..

I can't believe I haven't posted anything since the beginning of February. I don't know what else to say, except for our lives have been out of control for the last three months. With David working 11 hours everyday, me trying to take care of three kids and play my harp on the weekends, and then working on the house every night until the wee hours of the morning, there hasn't been much time left to sleep, email, eat or do anything fun. But, after much hard work, blood (and the loss of my very own fingernail from slamming it in our new garage door), sweat, and MANY tears, and with the help of so many wonderful people, we are in our home. Hardly anything is unpacked and it is still chaos, but it is ours and we have slept there for three nights. We have no T.V., internet or any sense of organization, but it is beautiful and very much an improvement from what it was before. I am so sorry to those of you who I haven't talked to in so long, or seen for that matter. I hope now that we are in, life will slow down a little and maybe I can actually sleep for more than a few hours each night. It is just such a joy to put my kids to bed. My mom has been doing that for the last two months, so we could work everynight after dinner. I am so thankful to my parents (and my sister Jenna of course) for letting us live with them and for helping so much with our kids and one the house. My dad installed all the cabinets and did a beautiful job. Enjoy the pictures and if any of you are in Vista, let me know and you can come and take a look.

Tyler Has Changed

Tyler loves my mom's dishwasher
Look Mom, I can crawl now

He loves his bath and will stay in there for ever!

My boys!

Tyler at Sea World!

Many people have said they haven't seen any pictures of Tyler in a long time. Well, here he is at 8 1/2 months. He is 23 pounds, eats anything he can, has fully weened himself and loves his bottle, just started crawling and pulling up on furniture on Friday, finally sleeps through most nights, loves his sister's to make him laugh, loves to touch people's faces, gives great hugs, loves to be kissed, and the biggest thing I've noticed lately is that he has this look in his eyes of no fear, of curiosity and the longing to be crazy.....he just can't move that fast yet. I am enjoying this new crawling stage for as long as possible, because once he is faster...my calm days with Tyler are over.

Ode To The Isas

The kitchen window (compare last post with the pictures before)
The two blue colors in Tyler's new room

No more dark purle....just a pretty light pink

A new connected arch way doing into the family room

A wider arch way going into the dining room. And look, a new ceiling!

This past week we have made an imense amount of progress on the house....mostly due to a HUGE amount of help from our friend Shawn Isa, a member of our ward. His wife Julie has been so gracious to let him help us. I think David, Shawn and Percy (another guy from our ward helping out with the lights) worked on the house from 7am until midnight Saturday morning. Shawn then took his work crew over there yesterday and put in another full day for the drywall. As you can see from the pictures, a lot of progress has been made. Having so much help with this house has been truly a miracle and blessing, but very humbling at the same time. I think it is in our nature to want to help others, no problem, but when it comes to asking and accpeting help, it becomes really difficult. I think the biggest thing I have learned from this whole experience is that we are never to busy to help out someone else. These guys, our families, and friends have been answers to our prayers during this whole process....and if everyone wouldn't have been willing and wanted to follow that premonition to help the Hunts, then we would be stuck still praying for help. The point is, I have learned that when we feel inspiried to do something, to help someone, to call someone, to babysit their kids, we really just need to do it, because we may be the answer to someone else's prayers. It is through eachother, I believe, that the Lord truly works and without eachother, things wouldn't get done and many miracles would go unperformed.

So thank you for your support, your love, your calls, your emails and your prayers! We are making progress and it is amazing.

I am alive.....just barely!

Sitting on the mantle watching David work and giving Tyler a bottle. He has decided to wean himself this month......what timing
View from the mantle in the family room into the kitchen

Kitchen with torn out ceiling into the dining room

Kitchen Wall with no more yucky moldy cabinets

David and our friend Robert ripping out the old light box in the kitchen to raise up the ceiling

Demolition is a great way to take out your agression....David has punched many holes so far

Trying to demo red clay tile is a nightmare. It took my brother and David a really long time to do this!

We took out the 20 year old tub and got a great deal on a new one

The garage is filled with old cabinets, countertops and lots of tile

The girls don't want to keep a purple room...think we are going pink

So it has been a month since I posted last....and so much has happend. We did finally close escrow on January 28th. It was supposed to be on the 15th but because of the first time home buyer funds we were using from the county of San Diego...everything got delayed. We were very excited though to qualify for that program, which gave us enough to put down on the house and even be able to fix it up.

We have been staying at my parent's home, which has been great, but crazy. With my parents, sister, the dog, my grandparents who live in an apartment attached to my parent's home, my brother Cory who came home from Africa and needed a place to stay for a week, and my elderly grandmother that came and needed full care for a week, it is a FULL house! Living out of suitcases is not ideal, but great for the girls, because they only have so many options for clothes to year. I had to go shopping because I couldn't stand just wearing the same pair of jeans every day.

The girls are having a blast and don't understand why we aren't going to stay here forever.....and that brings us to the house. The reason why they want to stay at Mimi's forever is because they don't like the new house. They think it is ugly and that we should knock the whole thing down and start over.......so if you are wondering.....we are still going through a HUGE adjustment period with the girls.

What was going to start out as a few small housing projects has turned into a big remodel. We started demolition this last week...which was fun, tiring, painful, and hard all at the same time.We are so lucky to have so many people around us that have helped with plumbing, electrical, drywall, etc. The biggest bummer was that we now have to redo the bathrooms. When David pushed on the shower tile, and the tiles fell off and the drywall crumbled beneath them, we knew we couldn't shower there any more

The exciting thing is that this house (still with very vivid unpleasant memories of the people that used to live there) really feels like it is becomming a home.

I haven't really been able to even sit down and think. We have had so much to do, I feel like I am in survial mode....doing what is needed, just to get by.

I hope I can be better about new posts and the progress we are making on the house.