Life.

Sometimes it is good just to get online and TYPE. It has been a whirlwind 3 months and it's not going to settle down until the new year.
Since we found out I was pregnant in August, we knew I'd be down and out for a little while. Little did we realize how emotional I would be this time around. I was never this bad with Colton, but with this pregnancy my ups and downs have been hard for our whole family, and it's been going on from the very beginning. It is so hard to logically understand why people are doing things, or logically brush things off, but emotionally hold on to words and actions that hurt my feelings, that make me cry at the literal drop of a hat. I have never felt so out of control! Luckily I've hit 15 weeks and have been physically feeling a bit better. I've thrown up regularly with this baby, when with Colton it was more a devastating 24 hour dizziness and nausea. It's been such a different experience already.
I've been feeling kicks and flutters for a few weeks now, and am so excited to find out if it's a boy or a girl in just 3 weeks, and hopefully with the morning sickness subsiding a little I can emotionally get a little more under control too!
A month after we found out our family was growing, we decided to start looking for houses. We knew it would be hard, since the housing market in Salt Lake is CRAZY, homes are expensive and selling hours after hitting the market, but we are both so ready to move. Our temporary basement apartment has worked well enough in the interim, but having a crazy-active 15 month old in a place that is stuffed with our stuff, and can get into something that is harmful to him in pretty much every square foot of the apartment has been quite a challenge for me since he started walking almost 6 months ago! He just needs room to BE and run and play, and I need room to shut away things he shouldn't get into. We looked at tons and tons of listings online and everything was yucky or overpriced. I was really discouraged, and we looked seriously into building new. I fell in love with a floorplan, but Jared and I HATED the tiny yard and communal driveway that accompanied the new builds. So we looked and looked at existing homes. We went and saw several in person and they were all terrible. These gems included a homeless squater in one garage, a smoking Indian man cooking curry in another, a house whose addition on the back still showed the original siding of the home on one entire wall, one who's backyard was literally feet from the back of a brightly lit shipping warehouse, and one who shared a backyard with both a refinery and the Front Runner train. There was just NOTHING. That's when we FINALLY went to a home in West Bountiful which I had found in the MLS listings. It was big, and had a big yard, and was in a great location. BUT it was a split level, which I really thought I would hate. That was on my list of NOOO's
We walked in though, and I had to smile, it was so...nice! The outside needs a little love, but the kitchen and main bathroom have been recently remodeled and are beautiful. I immediately pictured our growing family in the home and knew that it would work for us for a long time. Then we looked outside and fell in love, several huge trees shade the backyard, and it is 1/4 acre of beautiful grass. There's SPACE and it's fenced! My kids can play and explore back there and I can watch them from the kitchen window. With 5 bedrooms both kids can have their own rooms plus we can have both a designated office and guestroom, which is important with our family living so far away. The house isn't perfect, but we fell in love, and put in an offer and went under contract the next day. We are set to close the same day we find out the gender of the baby, November 23rd. Then we have a lot of work to do that week, since we are painting all the bedrooms (the sellers are big Utah Utes fans...think firetruck RED in three bedrooms), and will be replacing all the carpet right after. Then Jared is going to build us a huge master closet and a vanity area for me to get ready in, so we will kind of wait to fully move in until that is all finished. We are so excited for this adventure. It has been such a different experience since our first house was brand new, nothing was wrong with it and escrow was a piece of cake. This house was built in 1970 and has quite a few things that need repairing, but we were finally able to finangle the sellers to repair almost everything, which will be a huge relief. We are so ready! Here are just a few pictures. Iwill definitely be getting some when we move in as before pictures too

We are also getting so excited to go to Denver for Skyler's homecoming. We head out there on December 2nd, and Skyler gets in the next day from Brazil. He thinks we aren't coming too! So the surprise will be so fun. We found out we were pregnant with Colton a week after Skyler left on his mission, so he REALLY has never met him. I am so excited for Colton to fall in love with Uncle Sky, and it will be so fun since Skyler will be going to BYU-I in January, he will be able to come down and visit us often, and we will have room for him to stay with us!
So many fun things to look forward to. Now that I'm caught up I will really try to stay on top of our goings on!