Living the Dream

Today marks our 11th day in our new house! It still feels unreal. Andrew and I keep waiting for the actual homeowners to come back from vacation and thank us for house siting, but it's not going to happen!

Some things I have loved so far:

• Parking in a GARAGE. It's so nice to have a dry car in the mornings. Andrew has been teasing me to no end about me forgetting we have a garage and trying to go out the front door to find the car. Oops.
• Not worrying about being too loud. I have played my keyboard at 10:00 PM at a normal volume without thinking about neighbors. I also don't tell Andrew to turn down the T.V constantly because I don't care if it's loud.
• Having no nap interruptions. I don't have anyone to blame anymore for being woken up when I randomly have the urge to nap at 2 PM on a Saturday.
• Having our own mailbox. Who knew I would love this so much? I have missed getting great coupons and deals. 
• Enjoying the neighborhood trail. We went for a run Saturday and it was so nice. I'll take it over a treadmill any day.
• Having friends over to our new place. We have so much room to entertain! 
• The million dollar view. The mountains are gorgeous. 

Some things that have been stressful:

• Our basement leaking water with the first big rain. (No it didn't flood and it could have been way worse, so we're very grateful.) Let me also note this was the day after we moved in. We spent Saturday putting concrete/soil in our backyard to prevent this from happening again.
• The thermostat NOT working. Saturday was rough because it was 84 degrees outside. Luckily it has cooled down and our new thermostat should arrive Thursday.
• Our toilet running every 5 minutes. After several efforts to fix this problem, we finally turned the toilet off in that bathroom. Hopefully this will be taken care of this weekend.
• The to-do list getting bigger and bigger and more and more money being spent. I keep reminding myself that this list is a gradual thing and all doesn't have to be done immediately. 

It's been an adjustment not to be able to just call the landlord when there is a problem, but I'll get used to it. Even though things haven't been stress free, I'm happy. Besides, we kind of signed ourselves up for more stress and responsibility by buying a house, right? 

I can't wait to make more memories in our new house and to be celebrating our 20th year in the place. 

I'm Going to Stick with this Twice a Month Bizz

Well, here we are on the last day of April and guess who is trying to think of something to blog about before tomorrow hits? Me!

I can't believe that I will be done with my first year of teaching in 4 weeks! This year has flown by and I will be so sad to see my students leave. I'm trying not to think about that part. They keep asking me if I'll cry... (I refuse to answer)

I'll even miss the select few who know how to enhance the biggest headaches. I love all of my students in different ways! I was talking with my class yesterday about how much I have learned from them. They were surprised that they have taught me. When asked what I have learned my  response was, "patience and kindness." I should have thought of a different way to say patience because their immediate reply was, "you have had to learn to deal with how annoying we are." I told them that wasn't the case at all.

I have become a better person because of my students. They have changed me. I have learned how to deal with situations I never thought I would encounter. I have also seen so much kindness. My students treat me like I'm a queen. I can't count how many thoughtful notes/poems/pictures I have found on my desk when I need them the most.

Kids are so honest. Sometimes more honest than I would like. I was asked earlier this year, "Mrs. Ditto, what happened right there to your face?" It's called acne. "Mrs. Ditto, I can tell you're really sick because your entire nose is bright red." Thanks for that. I thought my voice gave it away.

Something that has drastically changed about me this year is that I have learned Science! Science has always been my least favorite subject and I had to retake the science section of my teaching test. I recently got my results back from the test and I not only passed, but now Science is my highest score! Who knew this was even a possibility for me? This happened because I really had to dive in and learn the content I was teaching this year because I didn't know it. (But to be honest, who knows over 20 rock types and all the cloud names off the top of their heads?)

I'm so happy that I'll be at the same school next year because these students will still get to be a part of my life. If I were to go back to school again I would definitely choose the exact same major, despite how hard it can be. I can't wait to no longer be considered a "first year teacher" and to be done with new teacher cohort. I still have plenty to learn, but I have a little experience under my belt.

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!