Ames

So we've done it! We moved to Ames, IA, and are getting use to the town and excited for school to start.  We were lucky enough to find a lovely house to rent, and I knew that my mom would want to see pictures, and I would want them later on down the road :)

This is it. I love it (even though there are many things that have not been so good, but I'll save that for another post). I really do love it. It's big, all the main rooms are on one floor, and we don't have to worry about upsetting neighbors with crying or yelling kids. 

Our front room. The door in the top, left corner is the front door, the middle door goes to the bedrooms and the right door goes into the kitchen. Both the middle and right door have pocket doors that can be slid closed. The flooring is cork tile (the area rug is new especially for this house), and was horrid, but once again I'll focus only on the good for this post and do all the...not so good for another post. :)

Just off the living room is this little gem. We turned it into a computer/reading room. Yes it has a wood burning fire place!! I may be a wee bit ecstatically excited for Christmas and having a place to hang our stockings!! And it has awesome built in bookshelves!! Yippie!  

 I don't know how a picture of the dining room didn't get put in here, but right off the computer room is the dining room, it has our table and piano in it and a sliding back door that I'll talk more about in a minute. 

This is our kitchen (with Tony making dinner). Can you feel the 70's awesomeness!?! It's fantastic! It has more cupboard space then I know what to do with. Seriously we have empty cupboards and drawers. I'm sure they will get filled some time, but for now I have nothing to put in them. 

The boys room. It's big enough to have the slide attached to Liam's bed!! They are going crazy over it!! 

Emma's room. :)

Mine and Tony's room

Now on to some of my favorite things--

See that little door? It's in my linen closet. Guess what it is....

A laundry shoot!! Yippie!! The kids are all excited about putting their clothes down it, so all of our laundry goes downstairs and out of my way!! It's really made the house stay clean! And it's small enough that no children can be shoved down! Bonus!

My other favorite part prefaced by my not so favorite part. The landlord decided that now what a good time to till up the backyard, add better drainage and reseed. I'm grateful that the yard will be good, eventually, but I'm kinda bummed about losing our backyard. But the good part? Directly behind us we  have a Lutheran church (who also happens to be the people who own our house) and they told us our kids could play on this. 

 A built in playground. And playhouse. In our backyard. This picture is taken out my sliding back door I was talking about. I love it! Fox always asks to play at the park, and since I can send him out and watch him from my kitchen window, I say yes. :) Which is a big change from our previous place.

We also have a basement. But I don't want to talk about it right now. I'll post about it later, when it doesn't make me want to cry. :)

Things I love about our new house
-the playground
-you can hear the bell tower
-the library is Amazing!
-it's on a quiet street
-room!! tons of it!
-Separation of children at bedtime. I'm pretty sure Emma was the instigator of all the naughtiness at bedtime. Now they just go right to sleep. :)
-Windows! Light! Tons of it!
-The laundry shoot
-A dish washer
-A garage
-The fireplace

A sweet homecoming

The Sunday after Girls camp I was feeling funky. I don't know if it was the camp food, or being worn out, but I was not feeling well. Add to that BYC and a fireside, and by the end of the night I was done! I drove home tired, grumpy, and ready to just crawl in bed and shut out the world.

When I got home I found this note hanging on the door. 

(the bottom says- PS we cleaned up the room for you. We hope it makes "fel" better.)

Then I walked downstairs to find this fort made from all of our empty moving boxes with a whole bunch of hoodlums hiding inside. :) My family is the best and they did make me feel much better.

Another thing to add to my white-trashness

Occasionally we box-surf...on the grass...in the middle of summer...'cause we coo' like dat.

 OH, look at that baby!! 

You may think that, since we are moving, I let them use some boxes and nice stuff like that, but no. These boxes were found near (not in, I'm not that bad) the dumpsters. And yes, they slid clear down the hill. I thought they were quite ingenious for coming up with it. :)

And it fits in with all the other white trash stuff we've done to keep ourselves entertained. I should keep a list-
Walmart bag kite flying
Marshmallow men houses
Walmart bags as bibs
dumpster diving (multiple times)
And now box surfing
booyah

Girls Camp

Girls camp was last week. I only got to go up for the last few days, but I loved it. These are my girls! I love them! :) We had fun making bracelets, playing in water, chasing off scary, man-eating raccoons, rocking our skit, in which 1/3 of us (including me) talked in an accent just for the fun of it, and lots more. It was a great week with some of the best young women I've ever known :) 

Davenport

We're moving. Did you know? We originally came out to go to Palmer Chiropractic school, but after...a few different things...decided to change gears, and decided on PA (Physician's assistant) school. We are ridiculously excited, and feel really, really good about it. Unfortunately to get into a good PA school you have to go to a good undergraduate school, and our lovely Davenport only has a private school that costs...way too much money. So we are moving three hours away to Ames, Iowa, to attend the Iowa State University.  We are excited. We are sad. And mostly we are trying not to think about it too much. Too sad to be leaving out friends and D-port family. 

When we moved in, two years ago, I told my Mom I would post pictures of where we were living. I never did. My house was always too messy, or I was just lazy and didn't do it, but now that we are moving I realize just how much I want those pictures and my house will probably never be "picture perfect."

So please forgive the messes and piles and toys and junk. We are moving but, for now, we do live here. 

5229 Ripley Street

The computer/craft room

Mine and Tony's room

The kitchen

Living room (picture taken from the stairs)

Downstairs (door to the laundry room to the left)

The kids' room (yes that is Fox taking a nap in his bed...I couldn't wait, okay.)

 Our "fenced area"

The back door

It's been a good little house.

Things to remember

-We arrived to the surprise that only the kitchen and bathroom had light fixtures, we had to buy lamps for every other room in the house. 

-I loved waking up earlier than everybody else and sitting on the front steps to watch the squirrels and birds.

-There is no yard. The front is on a busy street and nothing in the back (except the "grass area" that is across the parking lot and between other houses) so Fox got to play a lot in the "fenced area." 

-So many windows and light in this house! I love it!

-We bought many window clings and put them on our sliding glass door so that the kids could tell which house was ours. They all look the same from the back. :)

-Laundry is a killer. Up and down two flights of stairs for each load.

-I love that the bedrooms are upstairs. It was so easy to keep the main level clean for when guest came over and then slowly work on the bedrooms through out the week.   

-One bathroom has carpet...bad plan.

-We have exactly three squares of counter space. We learned to be creative while making dinner! Like putting a cutting board on the sink.

-The dumpsters are a gold mine for furniture. We have collected a couch, wooden rocking horse, and beautiful bed frame from the dumpsters...

-At one time we had 5 members living on the same block as us. Their are only two of us left. Soon to be one :(

-We love the ward and people here. More than anything else that is what has made us so happy to live here.

Drive in Movie

Yesterday we went to the Drive in movie!! It was a blast! I remember going to them as a kid, but hadn't been to one in a long time. They were showing "Brave" and "The Avengers" and we were excited! We arrived early and got front row parking so the kids could swing on the swings and play in the grass and sandbox. They also had this cool train that we got to ride!

At dusk one of the coolest things I've ever seen happened. The drive in is in the middle of fields, in the middle of nowhere, and there were fireflies like I have never seen before! We see a few around our house each night, but this was hundreds of fireflies! So so cool!!

 Please pardon my crazy fascination with the fireflies (and all my goofy comments) but you can see the fireflies pretty good in this video. We had people around us calling them lightning bugs...what? Don't they know they are fireflies? Or is that some crazy thing I've learned from Utah? 

It was a good evening/early morning (we got home around 2:30 am)! 

Bows and Arrows, Rocks, and Lagoon

(Getting the last of the Utah Pictures out of the way so I can post other stuff :))

Grandpa helped Liam and Emma make bows and arrows. They got pretty dang good at shooting them too. 

Fox got new glasses while we were there. They ended up in all sorts of cool places. (like Tom's face and the back of Fox's head)

Liam sold rocks. He made enough to buy an Avengers ball.

My mom excellently said she would watch my kids while I did a girls day with some awesome friends! We went to Lagoon. It was a blast!! Seriously one of the highlights of the trip. 

(Pay no attention to my crazy smile and crinkly nose...my friends look good in this one ;))

We made Chantal ride the Rocket all by herself...well we went on one with her, but when she wanted to do it (another one) again, she was on her own. That's just how good of friends we are. But I took a picture of her...and won a stuffed animal while she was plummeting to her dead.