Finally our house.

I have been really excited to post pictures of our new house, even though it is far from being all put together. New carpeting will be installed in a few weeks, we have yet to build the pantry, no painting has been done, and there are still lots of boxes to be unpacked. Despite all of that, we are really excited to be living here.

Where to start? Here is the front of the house.

As you walk into the front entry, this is the view of the living room.

This is the opposite side of the living room. Originally we thought we would put carpeting down in this room, but once we got here we realized it will be nice. Especially with it being a heavy traffic area.

Going back to where you first walk in, to your left is a small hallway where you will see the guest bedroom, the girls bedroom, the bathroom, and the coat/game and toy closet. This is what our soon to be guest room looks like now. At the moment it is our "catch all" room. Please excuse the disaster.

Right next to that room is the girl's bedroom. The bedrooms in this house are quite a bit smaller than our last house, so I am feeling this room is kind of crowded. We might be getting bunk beds, but that is a ways down the road. I am still undecided on how I want to decorate their room. I have never painted or done anything fun, so we will see how it turns out eventually.

Here is one angle of the room....

then the other.

Here is the girl's bathroom. The night we walked into our house for the first time, I immediately told Corky that I wanted to have the sliding shower doors taken off. It makes it a little difficult to bathe little kids with it, and more importantly the cute shower curtain that we have used for a couple of years would go to waste. We couldn't let that happen. Without having to ask him, that was the first "honey-do" that Corky did the next morning. Here is before.

then after!

Now here we have the office/craft room. It didn't look too bad at one point but then we had to shuffle a bunch of stuff around and now this is how it currently sits as we wait for a few more things to get done.

On to the dining room. I love how open it is right now, but it will be changing soon. On that bare wall in the back, that is where we will have the pantry built. You can see in the following picture that on top of the wall is potting shelf. We will build the pantry to be symmetrical to that, molding and all. We think it will look nice. Besides, I don't know how much longer I can go without having a pantry. You can only cram so much into a cupboard.
another angle.

As much as I am over my apple-themed kitchen that I have had for almost 5 years, I don't know what else I would do and I don't want a completely bare kitchen....so the apples stay for now. I don't mind them as much anymore, or maybe it is just that I am excited for my new kitchen.


Here is our master bedroom. What I love most is that I don't have to zigzag between my bed and furniture to get to the bathroom.

And finally, the master bathroom. Why is that the bathrooms always get finished off before anything else? In my case, because they are the smallest and less work. You spend hardly any time in them but walk away feeling like you have accomplished at least something.



And I think that is about it. Our carpet has been ordered and will go into each of the bedrooms. The backyard isn't anything to die for but it isn't nearly as small as I thought it was. It has no grass or landscape of any kind. other than weeds, random rose bushes, and what we think is an apricot tree. (our neighbor Bob at least thinks that is what it is)

Sorry for all the pictures but thanks for looking. We are excited and feel very fortunate to live here. Things worked out for us perfectly and we look forward to being here for a long time.

Goodbye "stuff"! See you soon!

This was April 1st. Gracey insisted on eating her lunch on the front porch so that she could maintain her front row seat to the moving truck and the movers!




Here she is saying goodbye to our stuff, trusting us when we tell her that she will see her princess dress-up treasure chest at the new house! (which I still haven't found in all my unpacking...no worries though. Still have about 25 more boxes to go through!)

There we were....

An almost empty house only filled with boxes and moving supplies. This was Monday, March 31st. The movers had packed up all the things for the day, waiting for the following day to load the truck. Not much else to do since we didn't have computer, tv, toys, or books....so its only natural to make use with what you have.

Corky and Emily found the dolly quite amusing! Also, doing acrobatics off of the empty entertainment center!

Sundays at Ft. Irwin.

All the things I wanted to do and talk about at Ft. Irwin, I saved until the very end. Very typical of me. The most rewarding and by far my favorite thing about living there was our branch. It was small, but not really small. I am pretty sure it qualifies to be an actual ward but we don't have a church building to call our own. The church owns some property just outside the military property, about 20 minutes away, but apparently, and it hasn't been comfirmed or denied, but tortoises have more rights than people and so there has been lots of problems getting it finally built. Anyway, so the branch has made do with what is provided by the military installation. While it has its trials, it is one of the many things that made the branch so unique.

Come along with me as I guide you through an LDS Sunday service.

We first start out at the Blackhorse chapel. It is a non denominational chapel that has about 20 rows. This is where we hold our sacrament meeting services. The children in this room outnumber the adults by a lot. Just when I felt my children were by far the worst behaving children in the room, I would look around and think to myself "Its like WWF in here!" All the parents seemed to be wrestling their little ones! It was so much fun and I will always miss the buzz that could be heard in the middle of the meeting of so many children.

After sacrament meeting, everyone gets into their cars and drives to the Catholic chapel where primary is held. We do our best to make this large activity room look like an LDS primary room!

After sharing/music time, the children then walk next door to this building. It is called the Family Ministry building. It is designated for the teaching of children of any faith. The walls are always scattered with pictures from children who are there in the middle of the week that are learning bible stories and coloring pictures about Jesus, Noah's Ark, Moses, Easter, etc. This building is also where we would have enrichment meetings most of the time.


While the children are in primary, the adults go to this building where Sunday school is held. There are some small classrooms that are in the back of a small bank. Sunday school is usually crowded when the men and women are combined (like I really know, I have been in Primary for how long?) But then they split for priesthood and relief society lessons, those classrooms are just the right size.


And here are a couple of pictures of just a few of the people that we love and will miss so much there.

This is Corky and the rest of the branch presidency. I had to literally track down a couple of them before they went home so I could get this picture! They are all good sports! Left to right Ben C. (ward clerk), Mark A. (branch president), Corky (2nd counselor), Eric S. (1st counselor)

This is me with a couple of my friends that worked in the primary with me. From left to right. Alisa Y., Me, Lori C., Mindy L., Kelly S., Carey A.

This branch will forever hold a special place in my heart.

Hello from Kingman.

So we are here. Our internet isn't set up in our house yet so I am at the library right now and time is limited. But a couple of quick things.

The library here is AWESOME! We have been here at least 4 times this week, looking at books and playing with puzzles. The story time is so much fun for thekids. Maybe because I am only used to Ft. Irwin's tiny library, but this one is great!

We were in our house for 4 days maybe when Gracey was playing around and sliced her forehead, right above her left eyebrow. Yep, it required stitches. Can someone please tell me this accident prone phases of hers will be over soon.

We love our house. We were both nervous since we only saw it once and didn't pay much attention to it. Now being in it, Corky and I both wonder why it didn't strike us as being "the house" in the first place.

We have eaten out more this week than we had in the past 12 months!! Gross.

And that is about all I have time for now! I can't wait to have internet at my house so that I can post pictures!! I have some from Ft. Irwin that I want to post and some new ones. So stay tuned my peeps!

Conversations worth noting.

Today, like everyday, I asked Gracey how her day was at school. Today she told me this story, I thought it was worth recording!

"Mom, today Ms. Tina said 'Come here, Grace.' and I said, 'Ms. Tina, it's not Gwace, it's Gwacey." and then I thought 'whateber!'"

When did my 3 year old become such a big girl?

Another story from tonight as we drove home from the bowling alley, Corky was telling Gracey that tomorrow a really big truck was going to come and load our things. He described the truck as being bigger than her head. She said "no, my head is small!" After a few seconds of Corky trying to explain that that is what he meant, I jumped in and told them both to "drop it." Gracey started crying and when we asked her what the matter was she replied "I don't want to drop my head!"

We can't help but smile.