Another girl to add to the mix!

My brother Ryan and his wife Angela had a baby girl on Monday the 22nd. They named her Harlee Raine (pronounced rain). She was 9 lbs 6 oz. and 21 in. long. She came a few days past her due date. She is a beautiful little baby. Love those cheeks!  It looks like she will only be in newborn clothes for a few days! Congrats!

Alan is 41!

Alan turned 41 on March 20th. March is an endless birthday month for our family. Zach will be the big 18 on Sunday. Alan spent the morning tinkering around outside while I prepared a noon meal to have with the kids and Jane and Leon. We enjoyed watching him open a few presents and the four youngest girls put a lot of thought in to some nice poems and letters for him. That evening Alan and I went to a movie. Pretty low key but that is the way he likes it.

Rachel Is 11!

Rachel turned 11 on March 12th. She has been looking forward to her birthday for quite some time now. Rachel started the day with breakfast in bed before school and she even got to open up a few presents. A couple of her good friends came over that evening to spend the night and celebrate her birthday with her. We took them to see "Alice in Wonderland" that evening. It was a pretty cute show but Alice in Wonderland has never been a favorite of mine. Rachel had a great time with her friends and family but the day went by too quickly. She is excited her birthday falls on a Saturday next year where she can be pampered the whole day. The last picture of Rachel is her grabbing her hair so she didn't get to close to the flames. We tease her about burning the ends of hair around her face from the candles last year. She still doesn't think that it is funny.

Rachel is getting so big. We did measurements on the wall the other day and Rachel is the tallest girl at 11 so far and also the skinniest. I think that she will be our tallest daughter. It will be interesting to see what happens. Allison and Abigail seems to be growing at the same rate that Melissa and Hannah did. Zach is officially 6 ft 1 1/4 in. Yeah!

Rachel has become the number one babysitter for us this year. She is excited for school to get over and summer to begin. We are trying to talk her into doing swim team this summer. She has mastered doing her own hair for the most part now! (Yes!) Rachel is going to get her ears pierced after she finishes with a four week volleyball course. She is excited about that. She loves listening to music on her IPod and has accumulated about $35 dollars in iTune gift cards that she needs to figure out how to use. Rachel does well in her grade and has been in the top two for accelerated reading points this year. Her teacher never says anything bad about her and loves having her in class. She loves to read and chat with her friends on the internet. She has a beautiful smile and we are so lucky to be her parents. We love you, Rachel!

Hello from Idaho

Spring has sprung here in Idaho! I love to see the tulips popping through the ground, reaching for the sun! We have gotten a lot of outside clean-up done at our home the past two weeks. It is exciting to think of planting a garden soon but in the same breath it is a bit overwhelming too! I am so excited to see how Leon's garden boxes work for him this year. It is definitely something that I want to do at our next house. I certainly want to simplify my life at our next place - less weeds and less grass!
Our hunt for some good land in Jerome has been so frustrating. I wish that we could look outside the box but then our kids would probably have a heart attack if we did. We were leaning towards a 4.22 acre parcel but have been having 2nd thoughts about it lately. It really is too much land for us and we plan to make our next house our last. Do we really want to manage that much acreage when we are older???? We are looking at some acre parcels (2) in a subdivision up the road from our home. There are some advantages to a paved road in front of your home and pressurized irrigation. We shall see - too many decisions and sleepless nights.
One good thing that has happened is that we have narrowed down who we want to build our home. We are still waiting on a bid from Westec before we make the final decision. A guy from Preston, ID who has built the same style of home before is in the lead. We would have liked to keep it local but money talks! I have decided that we could keep getting bids forever and ever and ever.
We haven't had any takers on our home yet. We are going to give it another month to try and sell by ourselves. The 6% the Realtor takes off the top is a lot of money! Things are not moving very fast around here. We are trying to stay positive and not get discouraged. With spring here and green grass people are more eager to move. Everything seems to take time and a lot of it!
The latest from our kids is that Melissa went on her first date with Ethan Wheatley. It was to a Valentine's dance. We spent hours in the mall looking for a long enough and modest dress for her to wear. We honestly went through every store and the last store we ended up in was Sears - just for kicks. I really don't like to go into Sears because everything is so old and honestly smells old in there. But we went in there just to see and we found a cute dress there that was even on clearance! We were excited and it looked so cute on her. Here she is with her group. She is going to the Prom on April 10th with Tom Crozier. We found a beautiful, modest, sea-foam colored dress on our last visit to Logan.
Melissa is also getting ready for district speech in April. I listened to part of her speech today on the effects of bad language and it is really good. She definitely gets her writing skills from her dad!

Zach also went to the dance with Aubrey Callen. The boys in this picture are all of Zach's closest friends and the girls had so much fun with them that they talked about all going again with them to the Prom.

You may be asking yourself who the guy is in the back - Adam Sandler's. He made a special appearance at our high school. No actually the photo's were being taken in one of their favorite teacher's room and they grabbed his cut out and the Call of Duty head to be in the picture with them.

Abigail recently did a book report in her class about Florance Nightingale. She had to dress up like her person and it took a lot of time and step by step instructions (with photos) to make that nurse's hat. She looked so cute.

Rachel performed in a dance with 3 other classes in her grade recently. I think that it is cool that they are teaching young kids dances that even I don't know how to do. She thinks that she wants to join a dance group next year. It is hard to believe that she will be going to middle school next year. I am getting so old.

Hannah has been keeping us busy running to and from Twin twice a week for club volleyball practice. We have been doing this since Jan. on Mondays and Tuesdays. Too bad Melissa and Hannah's practice couldn't be at the same time! Hannah just started track and is very pooped after practice. I told her she should have been running over spring break - but no-o-o-o!
I can't believe that we will be registering Allison for kindergarten soon. She is ready to go but I still need to get those dreaded shots! Hopefully we can get the teacher we want for kindergarten. We shall see.... I can't believe that I will be approaching the time in my life that all my kids will be in school. O.k. I am really feeling old now.

Home for Sale

We are putting our home up for sale via Twin Falls newspaper with a link to this blog spot. http://jeromehomeforsale.blogspot.com/ We can't wait to get started on building our dream home. We should know for sure this week about the property! Love it!

A New Adventure

Alan and I had try to be somewhat quiet about our decision to build a new home but the cat is out of the bag so I thought that I would answer a few common questions.
The most asked and very annoying question is why. I could list a whole host of answers to that one such as no stairs, everything on the main level, having a garage that enters the house, having a room big enough for large family gatherings, having a master bathroom, etc... but I have decided to respond simply with it is something we have always wanted to do and now is a good time to do it. It really irritates me when people try to make me feel bad or guilty about something we are excited about.
We have been looking and looking for some land to build on for about 4 months now. Nothing really has interested us and we really didn't care to awfully much about what ward we ended up in. We did want to be out in the country but didn't want to be tied into any subdivision with covenants and restrictions. We basically wanted a couple of acres out in the middle of nothing. Our real estate agent kept telling us about this property that might come available and would make a great building spot. It took so long for their agent and the people selling it to hook up that we had basically given up. The mystery land finally became available and it was 4.22 acres in the corner a field and the price was right! We were very excited and made an offer that was accepted. Our Realtor is trying to work out some legal issues now and then we will be able to find out some questions about the land concerning water, tapping into the city sewer line, drilling some test holes to see if we can build a basement, etc. Everything seems to moving along and we should be able to close on the land in a couple of weeks. It really is a great spot (300 S. 200 E.) and has everything that we were looking for. It would put us in the 3rd ward.
We haven't officially selected a builder yet but we are leaning towards one from Kimberly. We know several people who have been burned with bad general contractors so we have checked around and talked to some people that have recently had a home built by this person. We really like him because he can basically do it all and doesn't allow his subs to do average work or cut corners.
We had house plans that we already liked and then he modified them a bit to suit or needs. We are excited to get started. We visited some places in Boise this past weekend that were recommended by some people in our ward and it was quite exciting. I have spent many nights lying awake thinking of different things.
This home will be a great place to finishing raising our family and then a wonderful place for our children to return home to visit with their families. Below are the latest plans for our new home but we have taken out the closets in the entry way and moved things around in the kitchen and make the office a large pantry upstairs (Glen's suggestion) even though we have a cold pantry downstairs. One of the bedrooms upstairs will be the new office. We are hoping to make the basement a walk-out but it will all depend on how much $$$ it will be to build up the foundation etc. It is all on two levels.

 

 Upstairs

  

Downstairs

 

The house will look similar to this from the outside with different colors and we are going to use a combination of brick, siding and stucco. The windows up top are for looks only.

So there you have it. We would love any suggestions that you may have! Thanks for your love and support!

Allie's Metal Mouth

On Monday Alan and I took Allison into Sawtooth Surgery Center for a complete overhaul on her teeth. It was something that I was anxious to get over with and worried about how she would do being put under. We arrived at 9:30 a.m. and was escorted into room 2. As we were waiting for our turn, there was another little kid crying across the hall. We tried to distract Allie with the T.V. so that she wouldn't be anymore scared that she already was. As I sat there listening to this kid cry I told Alan that I thought it sounded a lot like True. (We knew Laura was taking Acoya and True in that morning also to get there tonsils out.) A short time later a nurse came and said that she understood we were related to the Leavitt's across the hall and wondered if we would come sit with True while Laura attended to Acoya since she was by herself. (Very brave in my opinion).
A male nurse came to take Allison back for her procedure and he had to pry her from my arms. I felt so bad for her and wondered why I just couldn't go back with her until they put the gas over her nose. I was a little bit weepy after she left because I knew that she was so scared.
While Allie was in surgery we went and visited with True and Acoya across the hall. It was a nice distraction for us while Allie was in surgery. Acoya was so gracious and smiley even in pain! True kept taking sips of apple juice and spooning a crushed up Popsicle in his mouth. We even got to see True's tonsils. Pretty yucky! We knew an anesthesiologist there (Bob Kinghorn) that went and checked on Allie for us during her surgery and came back to report that she was doing great.
An hour and a half later they carried Allie back to us crying and put her in my arms. She was a little bit groggy and kept yelling "take it out, take it out." She was referring to the IV in her foot. I had to wrap my arms around her hands to keep her from ripping it out on her own until the nurse could come and remove it safely.
The nurse and the doctor came back in to talk to us at different times and Allie would say "get her out of here, make him leave, go away....." It really was quite tender. She didn't want anything to do with them and couldn't wait to get out of there.
The doctor told us that he had to pull two teeth and put spacers in their place (one is up in her gums in the very back) and do a couple of mini root canals, clean out and fill some cavities and put silver caps on all but two teeth in the back. Wow! I asked him why her teeth were so different from her siblings and he said that it could be related to being nursed longer than normal (19 months) and she did had some bad acid reflux for the first year of her life. He really didn't know and could only guess why they were so rotten. The good thing is that all of these teeth will fall out eventually!
She was pretty sore for a few days but she seems to be back to normal now. She can't eat sticky candy (tootsie rolls, laffy taffy, etc), caramel corn etc. She is really good at rinsing out her mouth after she eats and we brush twice everyday. I am waiting to floss until her gums heal some more. The Dentist also recommended that she rinse with a anti-cavity rinse after brushing since we have no fluoride in our water. Who knew her teeth were so bad? Obviously not us!
Other news....Alan left Tuesday for a farm show in Tulure, CA and should arrive home late tonight. We miss him when he is gone. I stayed up until 12:30 last night reading taking advantage of not having him next to me tossing and turning because my lamp is on. It was quite a treat but I knew I would end up regretting it the next day.
We have been busy here getting Melissa ready for the "Sweetheart's Dance" on Sat. This is her first girl/boy date and dance! We spent 4 hours in the mall yesterday trying on every dress in the mall (O.k. not every dress but it felt like it). I had Rachel, Abby and Allie with me and they were quite the troopers as we went from store to store. Rachel reported that we took over 5,000 steps according to her IPod. We ended up seeing a lot of cute dresses but very few of them were long enough! We ended up finding a purple dress in our last store and decided it was the one! Yea! It was fun but exhausting. Zach is also going but he doesn't need my help. The thought of going to the mall with me is not his idea of a good time so he is on his own to find his black shirt, pants and shoes! Good times.