I have been dreaming of buying a house for as long as I can remember. In fact, when I was young, I played "Ivory Homes" with my sister. We pretended to be real estate agents and even had Ivory Homes booklets. My personal favorite model was the "Savonna" because it was a rambler with the master on the main floor. Just last weekend, my parents moved into an Ivory Home. Much to my dismay, they didn't end up in the Savonna model, but their home is still beautiful.
After watching numerous episodes of "House Hunters" and growing up with a mother who is obsessed with real estate, I know what I want. We have tried to be realistic with our wish-list and don't want to be the nightmare first homebuyers you see on T.V. You may think this is funny, but our number 1 priority is a 2 car garage. No garage=DEALBREAKER. We just escaped Rexburg and now live in snowy Utah and have scraped enough windshields for a lifetime. I can't wait until next winter when I get to sleep in longer because I don't have to go scrape my car for 15 minutes.
Our number 2 priority is that the home must have at least 2 bathrooms. I don't want to share our bathroom with our future kids or guests. I want to be able to get by without cleaning my bathroom every time company comes over. Our bathroom doesn't even have to have 2 sinks. It just needs to exist. :)
These were the 2 things we told our real estate agent. After hunting with us I think he realized quickly that there are plenty of other things we want. However, our top 2 priorities are dealbreakers whereas no island in the kitchen, or a weird paint color can be easily fixed. I'm sorry, but building on a garage usually drastically changes the physical appearance of any house (for the worse).
After our first excursion looking at homes, I came home with a severe headache, took IB profun, and had a nap. One of the homes we really liked and considered putting in an offer, but we couldn't get over the neighborhood it was in.
We are so excited for this next step. It has been stressful though. What should our budget be? When do we want to move? How much of a commute can I live with? I feel like a real grownup. I am 23, but I have never felt more like a grownup than I do now.
Off to go grown-up-- aka: pay bills, make dinner, call the loan guy, etc. Oh and maybe I'll watch an episode of house hunters.
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
Saturday, March 12, 2016
Organization
With this warm weather and spring in the air I have had such an itch to clean out our entire house. I haven't made it that far (yet), but I have been given some puzzling looks. Andrew: "What happened? I went to the bathroom and when I came out the entire closet was dumped out." My response was something like, "This has been driving me crazy! I want to be able to open the closet without things falling on top of me." Andrew: "Jenna, we just cleaned this closet out 3 weeks ago..."
I'm excited to dedicate some time to cleaning out everything! Right now I'm scrambling to find time to go to the gym, so I'll need to wait a few months.
I wish I had been more organized last time I was the lds primary chorister! I had this calling in 2014 and thrived in it. When I got this calling again in November of 2015 I was excited because I already knew so many fun activities I could do with the kids. Well, I remembered a select few, but many of the activities I forgot. I didn't even think to write down what I was doing every week, so I could look back at it later.
Maybe because I'm a teacher constantly writing lesson plans, this time around in this calling I have been very on-top of writing down what I do EVERY week. I will admit that sometimes this gets tedious. I sometimes feel like all I do is plan. That is my career and now it is how I spend my weekends. I think I'm pretty good at planning, but every now and then a break is nice. I'll get 2 weeks off of planning within the next month for the Provo temple dedication and general conference. I also will have a week off a school for spring break which seems so close, yet so far away.
At the beginning of each month, I make a chart in word planning out the entire month of singing time. This chart basically includes the date and the songs we will sing. No, I do not plan the activities for the entire month. That would be so overwhelming and take forever. I leave a space in my chart to later write in the weekly plans for games and activities. I keep all of these in sheet protectors in the back of my primary chorister binder. Here are a couple of examples:
I'm excited to dedicate some time to cleaning out everything! Right now I'm scrambling to find time to go to the gym, so I'll need to wait a few months.
I wish I had been more organized last time I was the lds primary chorister! I had this calling in 2014 and thrived in it. When I got this calling again in November of 2015 I was excited because I already knew so many fun activities I could do with the kids. Well, I remembered a select few, but many of the activities I forgot. I didn't even think to write down what I was doing every week, so I could look back at it later.
Maybe because I'm a teacher constantly writing lesson plans, this time around in this calling I have been very on-top of writing down what I do EVERY week. I will admit that sometimes this gets tedious. I sometimes feel like all I do is plan. That is my career and now it is how I spend my weekends. I think I'm pretty good at planning, but every now and then a break is nice. I'll get 2 weeks off of planning within the next month for the Provo temple dedication and general conference. I also will have a week off a school for spring break which seems so close, yet so far away.
At the beginning of each month, I make a chart in word planning out the entire month of singing time. This chart basically includes the date and the songs we will sing. No, I do not plan the activities for the entire month. That would be so overwhelming and take forever. I leave a space in my chart to later write in the weekly plans for games and activities. I keep all of these in sheet protectors in the back of my primary chorister binder. Here are a couple of examples:
Sometimes people think I'm really creative and then I tell them how grateful I am for the internet. With Pinterest, Sugardoodle, and the LDS primary chorister Facebook group, I have plenty of resources. I'm glad I didn't have this calling 100 years ago!
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