Who Knew?

Who knew I would be so sad to move? Who knew I would even be sad to be moving into my FIRST house? Today it really hit me for the first time.

We have lived in this apartment for over a year which is a long time for us. We have moved too many times (which has made this loan process even more complicated). We love our friends. We love our ward. We love our callings. We love our landlords. We love our commutes. So why are we moving? 

I am thrilled to have more space. We have never had more than a 1 bedroom apartment, so it will definitely take some getting used to. I can't even begin to describe my feelings about having a 2 car garage. 

Something we are both really looking forward to is not being asked immediately, "so how long do you plan on being in the ward?" We have been asked this question far too much. We bought a house, so we will be there indefinitely! Wohoooo. Maybe I can finally get rid of the spare moving boxes we keep on hand.

Maybe it hit me so hard today because someone else is moving into our current place and we had to work out the date/details. We don't want to be replaced. Or maybe I should have waited even longer to start packing? I have been far too excited to move and have been holding myself back. I hate living in messes. This morning I woke up to an empty bookshelf and no pictures on the walls.

If you ever want to be talked out of buying a house, I strongly recommend trying to get a loan. This process has been a nightmare. Every time I check my phone these days I have a new message involving the loan and some unknown document I'm missing. 

Let me give you my two cents: NEVER GET RID OF ANYTHING! I wish I had kept more. Who knew my organization and neatness would come back to haunt me? I have been tracking down all types of information from former employers. Trying to come up with the 6 addresses we have lived at over the past 3 years was also a fun chore. It will all be worth it though, right?

Don't even get me started on leaving some of our closest friends. We keep telling them that we are worth the drive and still want to see them frequently, but we know it won't be the same. Who in the ward will we be able to gossip about now?

We feel good about the house and have driven by it far too many times to admit. Last time the current owner was outside and recognized me, so that will slow our drive-bys down for a bit. I'll be the first to admit that our first house isn't perfect, but it is far better than we ever could have imagined. Check it out for yourself:

Time to get back to reality now and my reality includes: packing, ordering a refrigerator, calling a plumber, and deep cleaning to get our deposit back. 

We're Buying a House!

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. 

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: 

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!

Cutting it Close

Luckily it is leap year because otherwise I would have failed my "blogging twice a month" goal. This month has been so busy and I feel like I can hardly keep up.

This past week I was so overwhelmed by the kindness shown to me for my birthday. I have had a hard few weeks dealing with lots at work and such. My birthday was the perfect pick-me-up.

My students were very sweet to me on my birthday. They kept trying to "secretly" plan when to sing to me and burst into song several times throughout the day. (I only let them sing once though.) A couple of students even brought me gifts which was so nice (necklace, lotion, a pie, etc). I got several cards and my students tried and succeeded at making me feel loved.

Andrew was very impressive with his gift giving this year which isn't new. He was very thoughtful with the gifts he got me. He got me a new watch after watching mine break in half recently. Andrew also got me a pizza stone and I can't wait to use it TONIGHT! I have always wanted one. I hope it's as good as people claim. My favorite gift was probably my blog made into a book though. 

The whole purpose of blogging for me is so I can avoid scrapbooking. Scrapbooking to me is very time consuming and something I don't want to do right now. Maybe later on in life I will be interested, but for now I have no desire. (You should have seen me last week in a scrapbooking store. It was a low point and involved 4 separate purchases and 4 products not doing what they were supposed to. I ended up leaving VERY frustrated). Blogging is my way of "documenting" our life and what goes on. Andrew made a book of every one of my posts from 2014 and there were a lot. He spent over TWENTY hours doing this for me. What a man.

One of my best friends brought me swig sugar cookies for my birthday. Our landlords left me happy birthday cupcakes on the counter. I got several texts from friends and family. The posts on my Facebook wall made me realize maybe I actually do like Facebook? Andrew took me to Cold Stone to get the concoction that I'm addicted to. We had pizza. (enough said.) To top it all off, we had a family dinner to celebrate both my birthday as well as Andrew's. We are struggling to eat all the goodies and treats I was showered with.

My birthday came at the perfect time this year. This week has already been so much better. Now if only birthdays came semi-annually...

Month of Celebrations

February is kind of a whirlwind around our home. There is always so much to celebrate. February 14th--Valentine's Day. February 20th-- Andrew's birthday. February 25th-- My birthday. All attempts to maintain a budget during this month go out the window. 

So many places do birthday deals and we look forward to using these deals. We usually hit Red Robin twice during our birthday month. (Once for each of us) Besides, we can't redeem our free birthday burgers on the same visit, so we are kind of forced to go twice. :) We went to Red Robin over the weekend and I'm still dreaming about the campfire sauce. 

I'm still feeling Tucanos. We went this afternoon because they have a free birthday meal as well. After doing some research we figured out that entrees only cost $15.99 during lunch hours, so that is when we went.

Very satisfied with his Brazilian Limeade 

Why didn't we take pictures before eating? Food coma.

We were lucky Valentine's Day was on a Sunday because we couldn't go out. Instead, I made chicken enchiladas (Andrew's request) and rice. We also spent the afternoon making sugar cookies together. These can be quite time consuming and I ended up having to remake the frosting which prolonged the process. The end result was heavenly though. Sour cream does wonders.

Now that our birthday meals are taken care of, we can relax. It has been a busy month. I survived round 2 of parent teacher conferences by the skin of my teeth. No matter how prepared I am for conferences, I don't know that I will ever be fully mentally or emotionally prepared for the 2 fourteen hour days. No more parent teacher conferences this school year. That deserves a celebration in and of itself! I don't think the timing was coincidental, but I was recognized during an assembly for all my hard work as a teacher. I was surprised and embarrassed to come stand and hear nice things read about me, but the free Cafe Rio was worth it. And who doesn't like to hear compliments? (The card is currently on my fridge and may never come down.)

This season we have enjoyed going to the BYU men's volleyball games with my family. It makes the games more fun to know someone on the team and my cousin Jake Langlois is so fun to watch. We can't wait for the next game.

We'll start the budget again next month perhaps? Until then, do you think I can keep Andrew's presents a secret? I already blew one...