Hunting Houses

I didn't post here last week because I hurt my ribs and couldn't sit at the desk long enough to type a blog up (don't worry, nothing serious, just painful).  However, Allan decided that this was a good excuse to purchase a wireless modem.  So we have officially gone wireless in our house.  Woohoo!  I'm not sure the injury was worth it, but I'll still take the wireless, I'm loving it!

The last two weeks have been busy for us. The first thing we did was jump into house hunting.  We weren't going to look into buying a house until next year, but we suddenly felt really good about doing it now.  I met with several realtors and between the two of us we looked at 9 houses but didn't like any of them enough to buy them.  However, the following week (last week) we looked at a house that we fell in love with and made an offer on Monday!  We know we're going to have to counter-offer back and forth a bit, but with any luck we'll have a house by the end of the year!

The house we want is a 4 bed 2 bath, it has a decent sized yard, a nice open kitchen/family room, and a formal living room, lots of storage, and a 2 car garage.  It was the model home for a new subdivision here and hasn't been lived in yet and it's been on the market for quite a while.  Hopefully it will be ours soon!  I would show pictures but we forgot our camera. :-/

We had a fun evening at the county fair a couple weekends ago.  Our favorite thing to do there is look at all of the children's art work.  My favorite drawing this year was "The Saxophone Fairy".  I wasn't aware that there was a fairy watching over saxophones, but I love fairies and saxophone music so what better combination can there be!  It really was a great drawing.  We also loved the poems the children wrote about a picture of sunflowers.  One of them said: My sunflower is "more fragile than dry wall and more beautiful than the mine".  Haha!  Allan and I had a good laugh out of that one!  Another of my favorites was My sunflower is "as interesting as dirt bikes", I have my doubts that he really meant that...  It was so fun to see what was on the kids minds the day they wrote those poems!  There were also some really sweet ones that said My sunflower is "as beautiful as my mom".  Awww.

We also saw this awesome cake:

For a treat Allan got me an elephant ear!  For those of you who aren't from around here elephant ears are Navajo fry bread.  I LOVE these!  My mom used to make them for us when my sisters and I were little.  I make them every now and then but I can't make them nearly as good as my mom or the amazing people around here.  I got honey on it and Allan, like the gentleman he is, carried it for me while we went to find a seat.  On our way he suddenly stopped and looked down to discover honey all over his belly and down his legs!  He was just embodying his sweetness ;)

Allan wanted a pumpkin pie shake from Dairy Queen for his treat that night so we stopped there on our way home.  They make a delicious shake!

Our ward has a Halloween tradition - they "Boo" people.  Someone starts by making a couple plates of treats and then leaves them on your doorstep with a sign that says "You've been booed".  It's a really fun tradition.  One of our sneaky friends booed us and we got some yummy treats!  They were delicious!  Thank you whoever you are!

For family night last week we made some of Grandma's famous sugar cookies so we could boo some people in return.  We had a lot of fun decorating (and eating) the cookies, I think they turned out pretty cute!  Allan took a plate to work for his coworkers to enjoy as well.  I have a lot of good memories of decorating sugar cookies when I was little, and I can't wait to do it with my kids one day.

The college here did "The Ark" this weekend.  It's a musical about  Noah's Ark.  I was expecting it to be super cheesy and it certainly didn't fail!  We laughed through almost the entire show.  The cast did really well too.  In this show the animals on Noah's ark are the audience.  At the beginning of the show the actors went around greeting people as hippos, zebra's, cows, and hyenas.  My favorite was when one of the actors found a man sitting all by himself.  The actor says to Noah "Weren't they supposed to come in pairs?"  Noah says yes and the actor say "Well, I think we're missing one of these."  (haha) Noah consults his list and says "No, just one unicorn."  Haha!  Gotta love the cheese!

Afterward, as per our tradition, we went and got frozen yogurt and then drove around the neighborhood we hope to live in soon.  It was a fun afternoon, and we really appreciated the time together.  Allan's been pretty busy lately and we've missed each other.

Allan also went on a boyscout camp out this weekend.  They hiked in 2 miles to an old plane crash, camped there, and then hiked out the next day.  Allan said it was quite the hike.  For a lot of it there wasn't any trail and they had to climb rocks and go through a lot of heavy brush and stuff to get there.  The boys were pretty tired afterward.  They all came out with some minor scrapes and bruises because of the brush, and Allan came home with a huge (and I mean HUGE) hole in his pants! (Just so you don't have to wonder, I ripped it on a tree branch while trying to squeeze between it a large rock. I guess that I just didn't go skinny enough.)

We had the primary program this week.  Before I tell you about that though I have to tell you about last Sundays practice for the Primary Program.  We had just finished going through the program and were about to go through it again.  The kids had a LOT of energy that day so Sister A (in the primary presidency) stood up and talked to the kids about how they should stand.  She told them that they needed to stand up tall with their hands by their sides, their chests out, their shoulders back, and they should be very, very still.  They all got ready, and then I got up to lead them in a song.  I'm leading and the kids are doing great, then one by one they start looking at me and giggling and slowly they start to loose their perfect singing stance.  Suddenly I realize that I am swaying and stepping side to side to the music, and my non-leading hand is definitely not by my side!  As nonchalantly as I could I stopped my little dance, put my hand by my side and tried to be the good example I was supposed to be.  They did really well after that.  It's amazing how well behaved they can be when I am well behaved!

So, this Sunday we did the real deal.  The kids did great!  They said their parts perfectly (there was only one sweet little boy who started to say a prayer instead of his part), remembered the words to the songs, and were amazingly well behaved.  I even made it to the 2nd to last song before I started swaying to the music. ;)
My favorite song that we did is Easter Hosanna.  The song is about Christ coming to the Nephites and the joy they expressed when they saw their resurrected Savior.  I didn't give enough time to the younger kids for them to learn the verses very well but they had the chorus down great.  So, we had the older kids sing the verses and then when the chorus came the little kids would pop out of their seats and sing "Hosanna!  Blessed be the name of the most High God!"  Those sweet kids sang those words with so much power and happiness.  It was really powerful. (Kami does a great job teaching them. She is great at getting them excited to sing and at helping them learn the words.)