Hip hip hooray!!!

YOU MADE IT!!!!

Matt is DONE with medical school!!!!

No more school for him. 

Now he's just got a month and a half before reality sets in and he's working 80 hours a week for the next four years...but until then we'll enjoy it and celebrate!

That's 12 years of school (plus kindergarten, if that counts)
+4 years of undergrad at BYU (with a 2 yr mission break in between)
+4 more years of medical school at CASE.

What an awesome accomplishment! Way to go Matt! We all knew you could do it!

Lucky Me.

Aren't I lucky? 

I mean look at this hunk in the plaid vest. This was Matt at his senior prom...while I was graduating from the sixth grade-weird! haha.

Anyway, I just want to say what a great husband I have.

Last weekend Matt watched Luke for me while I went over night on a girls trip to Pittsburgh for TOFW (pics soon to come). While I was gone, he cleaned our "new" chairs we bought (not an easy task), sanded down two other chairs we just got, deeped cleaned the vaccuum (if you haven't ever done this, you should, it makes a huge difference!) and did the laundry. Him and Luke could only talk to each other using their nick names they came up with Bob & Scooter (matt & luke), he played with him, took him outside, ate graham crackers dipped in milk and was just a great dad!  The next morning, he let me sleep in and even made me pancakes with strawberries for breakfast! 

That's only a tiny glimpse at what a great guy he is.

Matt I'm so proud of all your amazing accomplishments. You are so good to me and Luke. You are so caring for everyone else and you will make a great doctor, very soon! 

Thank you for being absolutely wonderful! 

We love you so much!

We're slowly creating an....

All boys indoor soccer team.

That's right, we're having another BOY!

We're so thankful that he looks healthy & perfect.

His little profile looks just Luke's, when we had Luke's scan. Below, if you can't tell, are his feet. None of the pictures were great, but these were the best.

Even though we I really wanted a girl, deep down I think that I knew all along that we would have a boy, I just never wanted to admit it. We are really happy & really excited!!

Luke will have a little buddy.

We'll save oodles of money by not buying all new stuff.

And only three more boys to go to get Matt his very own soccer team....just kidding (I hope). 

The down side is that we have absolutely NO idea what we're going to name him, but we have plenty of time to figure that out. Boy names are hard, so if you have any good ideas send them my way!

An update and a busy month ahead!

Many of our friends and family want us to keep them updated about the house on our blog. I haven't up until now because we weren't a 100% sure on everything with the house (and I didn't want to curse ourselves!) But now that things are coming together, I will keep ya'll posted...

And things are coming together great with the house, it looks like, at this point, we'll still be closing on May 19th (1 month!)-unless something unexpected comes up. We had the inspection & it went relatively well, considering it's 69 years old (whoa, that sounds really old huh). There were only a couple of bigger things that we'll eventually have to get fixed. We had the appraisal & now we are just waiting on our mortgage approval, so we can move on to home insurance, the title & everything. There is SO much work (& money) that goes into buying a home, I am not sure why people do it....but we're going to do it too. :)  That said, we're still VERY excited, still very much in love & we drive by it almost every day.

This Wednesday we find out what we're having!!! Everyone thinks I'm having a girl & I do too...but I'm really trying not to get my hopes up. We'll see! It will be so fun to know, so I can get started on new baby projects. And I will be happy if it's a boy too.
As far as the pregnancy goes, I feel pretty good. I am starting to feel more like I am at the half way point (19 weeks) and getting bigger and more uncomfortable, but I know I am only going to get bigger! And it hasn't helped that I've already been having a load of braxton hicks contractions...that are uncomfortable, sometimes painful, and no fun. The baby has been kicking like crazy. Matt felt it for the first time two weeks ago, that was exciting. It's fun to know that there is actually something in there!


This weekend I'm heading out of town on a little girls trip to Pittsburgh with five of my friends. We're going to the Time Out for Women Conference. So excited!

Matt just started his VERY LAST rotation while in medical school. It's two weeks long, so the end of next week he'll officially be done! Go Matt!!!

In two weeks we're taking a graduation vacation to Williamsburgh, Virginia for a week!

A few days after we get back, his parents are coming for graduation & we are so excited to see them! We miss our family!

Then Matt graduates!!!!

And then only three days later, we close on our house!!!

That's that. We are so excited. It all seems so far away, but I know it will come quickly...I think it's because I'm just really anxious to find out what we're having! Once I get past that, it will all fly by.

Stay tuned.

Happy Birthday

Wednesday the 14th we celebrated Matt's 28th birthday!

The night before we had dinner at Red Robbin (our favorite!!!). They sang to Matt (Luke thought it was for him), gave him an ice cream and he even got to see Red (the big bird, which I have never even seen there before. Luke was terrified of him.)

The day of the birthday, Matt worked most of the day and scheduled a meeting that night (he said he forgot it was his birthday...who just forgets?)
Luke and I wrote "Happy Birthday" all over the sidewalk outside. We put a banner up and blew up some balloons (Luke's request).
Even though Matt is 28, he's still a boy at heart. He requested pizza for dinner and a Funfetti cake with blue frosting and colorful candles. He likes to keep his birthday celebrations small, so that's what we did. Just wait Matt, your 30 year will not be so small.

 The cake-I definitely did not inherit my mothers amazing, professional cake decorating skills...

Luke loves birthdays, he said "Happy Birthday Daddy" for about three days straight.

The funny thing is, this boy is not a candy-sugar-chocolate-holic, like a lot of kids. We'll give him some of whatever we're having for dessert and he'll be good with 2 maybe 3 bites. It's kind of nice. He's just not a big fan of all the sugar I guess. So, even though he looks like he's going to poke the cake, he was actually pointing and saying, "turn dem on mom," referring to the candles.

Happy Birthday Matt (daddy)!!!!

Of course Luke needed a turn to blow out a candle.

As far as gifts went, Matt got a pair of crocs for the OR (wahoo) a very old copy of the book, "How To Win Friends and Influence People" and sounds like he'll be getting a house too....I think that's pretty good.

We hope you had a great birthday!
We love you so much!!!

Sleeping Tarzan

Lately, as many of you know, Luke has been falling asleep in odd places. We get a kick out of it. Every night it's a new place, occasionally, he's actually sleeping in his bed. 

And everyday we're reminded that he's two years old. Sadly, our sweet little boy (who is still very sweet and polite most of the time) is learning how to hit, kick, push, spit, talk back...so we're trying to learn how to take on these new challenges in parenting...any tips???
You'll see what I mean when I say Tarzan.

So, here's the latest.

Last Sunday we stayed after church for a baptism and dinner. It's always a very long day for Luke when we're at church from 12:00-5:00, or later. The only way we could get him to stop throwing temper tantrums and running away from us and hiding in rooms around the church, was bribing him with a brownie (see, we need some parenting tips!). Notice the brownie around his lips? 

Also, his latest thing is to take his socks off and wear them on his hands....

That night...

Since this little guy will no longer stay in a crib and since we are moving next month we haven't bought him a "big boy bed" yet, so we just leave his mattress on the rug...and no we don't put it in the middle of his floor.

Tonight...Tarzan emerges..

We have to treat his room like a big crib, so there are no fun toys in his room and if they are they are up high. We want to eliminate any distractions we can so this little guy will fall asleep. Apparently, we should remove all the furniture too.

Notice the ugly, mustard yellow desk? Matt grabbed that off free cycle. It's patiently waiting for me to refurbish it....I'll get around to it, sometime.

Oh Luke, we love you. You are very creative and get into everything and anything. 

What will you do next?

Easter Weekend Catch Up

For Easter weekend, we took off Thursday night and drove the six hour drive to Washington DC to spend the weekend with Dave & Meg.  We did lots of fun things and had a blast.

Some of the fun things we did were:
The Cherry Blossom Festival
The Amish Market (highly recommended!)
Played at a State Park (Lake Scenica?)
Easter Egg Hunt
Gyros
Family pictures (for both families)
Enjoyed 70+ degree weather
Also got to see Charlie there!
Watch General Conference or "the prophet movie" according to Luke
Watched movies, ate good food and just had fun!

Here are some pictures from the weekend.

The Easter baskets, for Matt and Luke.

Every Saturday before Easter my family has a family tradition where we get together for Easter brunch. We eat delicious breakfast foods, play games and have an Easter egg hunt. I have had to miss it for the past four years, but every year we throw a little of it in wherever we are. We usually just make this YUMMY strawberry stuffed french toast. If you want the recipe, go here!

The boys with their baskets.

We took the Metro to downtown DC on the busiest cherry blossom day of the year, the day the blossoms are at their peak. It was insanely busy! But, it was fun and hot! It was over 80 degrees. Sorry for all my Utahn's that had five inches of snow....  The blossoms were beautiful!!!

On Saturday Charlie (who lives in Phoenix), our brother-in-law, came up from VA where he was working for a few weeks to join us for the weekend. It was fun to see him!
Here are some pictures from the beautiful lake where we had our Easter egg hunt.

The tough guys.

After playing games and eating candy we walked down to the lake and our crazy kids jumped (well, walked) right in. Don't worry, we're all good parents and we were watching them, it was really shallow.

I switched my camera into black and white, just for fun and we got some cute pictures of these kiddies.

And while we were there we updated our family photos. Every time we get together Meg takes ours and I take theirs. Here's a tidbit, more soon to come.

Thanks for hosting us again Dave & Meg. We had so much fun and can't wait to see you guys again!

Growing

Spring is a great time of year. Everything starts to grow and become colorful. It's a nice change from the cold, dark winter. It's like a breath of fresh air (literally).

Matt "borrowed" some flowers from our backyard and put them in our window box. It's so fun watching them (try to) grow outside our kitchen window. These pictures are a few weeks old, now all the trees in the background are in bloom...so pretty!

For those of you who've seen my photography blog, some of these pictures are repeats.
We took these a few weeks ago outside our friends house.

This boy is a goof.

And is so cute. He loves to wear these old cowboy boots that his aunty gave him.

And this is really the most recent belly picture. You know when you're having your picture taken, but you feel pretty dumb so you do something silly and then get serious and smile or whatever? Well, this was that "I feel dumb, so I'll act dumb" first picture, but I thought both of our faces were pretty funny, so I used it.

17 weeks.
And yes, I am growing quickly.

We find out what we're having in less than two weeks! Yippee!

Happy Spring!

Home?

This post is mainly for our parents and family, it was just a lot easier to post these pictures instead of sending a million emails with pictures attached.

We've now looked at close to thirty houses and are getting worn out!

It's a fun, exciting, tiring and a stressful process...but mostly exciting. 

 

After looking at all of them we still thought we liked the first one we saw the best (the one on a previous post), but as we were pulling up to the very last one on the list, both our jaws dropped. It was love at first sight-seriously. We love the brick look, but found that most of these lovely, old, charming houses were out of our price range.Then we thought,"well, it's probably not that nice on the inside," but we were wrong. We love it far more than any of the houses we've seen. 

So today, we made an offer. And now we play yet another waiting game...hopefully it turns out well.

Let me warn you that there are a lot of pictures!

And I posted them in the order that we walked through the home, so I hope it makes sense.

The lovely living room. We love the dark wood floors.

And the dining room off to the right.

I'm pretty sure my favorite room in the house is the kitchen with the matching stainless steel appliances and granite counter tops.

I must admit I also like the bonus in the kitchen, the plasma tv, but I'm afraid Luke might like it more.

By the back door is the (very, very small) half bath, but very cute.

Then we have the finished basement, a huge plus for us.

Through the door way is the other half of the basement, not finished with the heater, washer and dryer and all that.

I'm no fan of these scary-looking washer & dryer basements that all these old houses have, but there is plenty of storage space down there & very bright lights.

This is coming up from the basement. To the left is the backdoor and then the half bath ahead, right there are a few more stairs into the kitchen and living room.

The cute front door from the inside.

On the way up the stairs is a cedar closet.

The not-so-pretty bathroom, that I am excited to update at some point. Believe it or not, but it's not nearly as bad as our bathroom. It has two outlets (ours has none), its much bigger (ours is so small your knees hit the tub when you sit on the toilet) and the tile looks a little better (ours is peach and black).
 Gotta love these old houses. This one has a separate tub and shower.

Bedroom 1, would be Luke's room. Off the side is the deck, above the back porch. I love the paint color, the whole house is freshly painted.

The little balcony.

A view of the smaller sized backyard, but enough for us.

 

This picture is just because I wanted a pic of the slate roof.

Bedroom 2, would be the nursery. I love the built in shelves.

Don't love the outlet thing along the wall, but that can be covered by furniture or something.

Love the master bedroom. It's big, love the big windows and double closets!

On to the third floor.
Matt likes it.

Big open stair way, nicely carpeted.

Another huge plus is the finished attic. Its bigger than a lot that we've seen.

On the way down...love the stairs and wood floor.

As we were walking out and as I was admiring the kitchen again, I realize the cool fifth burner on the stove! Sweet.

The backdoor through the dining room.

We love the charming little porch off the back.

There are only three big things we are going to change with this house. 1-fix the hobbit garage. 2-get central air and 3-put in a fence.  It's door frame is so short (Matt is 5"9'), but the inside is like normal.

I love the pathway up to the door.

And the big tree in the front.

Are you in love?
We are.