Salt Lake, Snow and lots of updated pictures of our house!

I mentioned in my last post that my uncle had passed away and that led to us taking a little, short trip to Utah.  While we didn't have time to see very many people, it was nice to be able to go to the funeral and then enjoy a nice dinner later that evening.  We decided to go see the lights and eat at the Cheesecake Factory...it was a good choice.  And I'm sorry to those who we didn't get a chance to see.  Next time we go, it will be under better circumstances and for longer!

A couple weeks ago we had a heavy fog, which mixed with freezing temperatures, turned to this:

One of the most beautiful things I have ever seen in nature.  Thank goodness I have a trusty i-phone to capture even a fraction of the beauty.

And lastly, I haven't posted pictures of our house since October.  It's been hard to hold back!  Part of me wanted to just post the beginning stages and then the finished product but, since this is our family journal, I sort of want to document with more pictures along the way.  Remember when our house looked like this?

 And then this...

 And we were pretty excited when we started to get walls like this:

And I can't describe how excited we were to start getting on our roof...

 Or how much we loved our dormers...

 And then it felt like it took forever to get a roof

 And then we were surprised how quickly they got around to prepping for siding

 And then they started our porch and our love for the house took a whole new level

 And then we were nervous to see how our white siding would turn out and we couldn't love it more.  Picture lots of shutters everywhere...which will still be a few weeks down the road

 Seriously, this picture does not do this porch justice.  I see future family pictures here, future barbecues, future family get togethers, future mini recitals with our french doors opening from our music room onto the front porch...really I can't stand how much I love this front porch area.

Love it.  I didn't know my heart could love a house so much.  Every little detail of this house has been through my mind over and over again.  So much so, that at times I feel like I'm barely holding onto sanity.

And this will be my view from our dormer window as I'm running on our treadmill or sitting on our window seat.  This house was built to heal my soul.

And for those interested, here's a tour of our inside:
This is the view as you walk in.  That half door is under our staircase and right before that, which you can't see in the picture, is a half bath.

 To the left is a formal dining room and a similar room is on the right which is a formal music room.  Both have french doors that open to the front porch.

 And then you walk back to the living room

Which is one big open area that also includes the kitchen on the left side.  The right side of this picture with the windows is where we'll have a little corner breakfast nook fitted to the space.

 And this is the entrance to our bedroom.  I haven't really gotten a good picture in there but our bedroom leads to a a closet for Jon and a walk-in closet for me, which leads to our bathroom.

 The view looking back toward the door.  Picture bead board in the entryway...that was a requirement and one of the first things I mentioned to our contractor who is so great to see the vision of everything.

Between the kitchen area and the formal dining room is this little hallway.  The left side is a butler's pantry and the right side leads to the laundry room which also leads to the garage.

And our stairs leading upstairs

  This is the top of the stairs.  I am reeeeaaaallly excited for this workout space.

 Bedroom #1.  The sheetrock is covering the dormer window but I'm excited for this cute bedroom with a window seat.

 And upstairs bedroom #2

 And this bathroom has no natural light so you can't really see into it, but that's the kid's bathroom.

 And upstairs bedroom #3, which will be Jon's office for now.

 And this is the play room space.  The sheet rock guys missed the memo, but that wall is actually going to have a little doorway so that the boys can run behind there and have their own little fort area.

And that's it!  I'm impressed, or flattered, if you were interested enough to make it this far.  This house is catered to us, so while we've heard some people makes comments on how they're not sure why we did certain things, we love it.  Completely love it.  And we count our blessings every single day that we can build this house.  Most days I'm pretty patient for the move in date(late March, early April), but some days, like today, I am so anxious and I can barely hold in my excitement.  I have organized every single little nook and corner in this house already and I'm excited to establish my own home and finally feel settled.  Thanks for taking a tour of our home. :)

Christmas, New Years and everything in between

Since it's been a little while, I'm just going to jump right in with our Christmas Eve.

Let me just say that Patrick looooves hanging out with his cousins.  Aiden does as well, but Patrick is definitely my social little man who is constantly asking to go hang out with various kids.  As soon as he sees a friend/cousin, mom is not in his thoughts and he runs off playing.  Aiden, on the other hand, will play for a while but still wants to come back to be held before going off to play again. 

Christmas Eve was spent with lots of family.  We did a lunch at the Blackburn home followed by a little Nativity production put on by the kids.

 Apparently Marcus does not like costumes so he's the only one not dressed up.  I sure hope these two are buds someday because they're pretty close in age and Aiden loves following Marcus around.

 I'd say we were a little more organized this year than last.  I think the girls are outnumbered by a lot...

 And a little family picture before heading home to open Christmas Eve presents at Grandma Clifford's house.
Since moving, we've only had a handful of nights where the boys have actually slept in their beds until 6:30AM(which is still way too early in my opinion), and Christmas was no different.  They were ready to get up and go by 4:30 but I made them go back to bed.  By 7:00, I re-woke them up for the festivities!

We were all definitely spoiled this year!  The boys have stayed occupied since Christmas with their toy horses, books, paint sets and every other toy they got.  This is a scene I see a lot; the boys sitting at their new little table with paper and some sort of art supplies.  Aiden just likes to make a mess but Patrick is quite obsessed with any type of art project.

And one last picture of cute, little Aiden dressed in his new Christmas coat.  We got quite a bit of snow that day so the boys got to get all bundled up to go outside.  Unfortunately it was also incredibly cold and Aiden lasted a whole minute.  Snow+Aiden=Meltdown.

And here is my only picture from New Year's Eve.  Sometimes I'm just so great at taking pictures.  But really, it was a nice night spent with a few friends and followed by coming home to play games for a little bit, eat some snacks and say cheers to the new year.

The next day, we went to hang out with cousins some more and bond over some bowling.  Gotta be honest, bowling's not really my thing.  I enjoy it...but I stink at it.  Or as Mike would say, it's just a given that I would lose. :)  Not much of a booster to their self-esteem if they beat me.  Those Blackburns take their bowling seriously!  I, other the other hand, can't even figure out what my body is doing enough to figure out how to get better.  Maybe someday........maybe.  I'll stick to running. 

 Again, Patrick loved bowling and doing everything his cousins were doing but Aiden mostly just wanted to ride on these motorcycles.

More selfies. :)

Today Patrick was asking to do everything under the sun besides stay inside.  He wanted to go to Charlie's house again, go play with cousins, play with random neighbor kids, go throw snowballs on our land, etc.  So after nap time, we enjoyed a little family sledding in my mom's back pasture.  And by family sledding, I mean Patrick and daddy sledding.  Aiden went on the sled once with Patrick, face planted in the snow and wouldn't leave my arms afterwards.  The smiling picture is before the face plant.  Patrick didn't care about the cold and would have stayed out all night.  Noticing a pattern with my kids?  I think they are opposites in every way possible.  

Goodbye to 2014.  Considering we've had some pretty rough years, 2014 felt like it was the start of an uphill.  For the first time in years, I actually wrote down some new resolutions for 2015, and while I'm always making little goals for myself, I love the idea of a new year with new accomplishments.  Really I have my whole year planned out, month by month, but I've come to learn that life never goes as planned.  2015 has already started with word that my Uncle Rod(my dad's only brother and sibling) passed away last night.  I know how my cousins are feeling.  I feel their pain and their sorrow  and sometimes like just sucks.  Excuse my language, but really, it's a hard thing always having to accept God's will.  Growing up, we didn't see my dad's family a lot but lately my uncle had started commenting on these little blog posts of mine and it meant a lot to me.  Not because it increased my number of facebook comments, but because I felt like a little piece of my dad was still here, paying attention to my life.  It might sound dumb, but it felt like another piece of my dad was stripped away again.  But mostly, I just feel empathy for people who are going through what we did just a short while ago.  Healing doesn't happen overnight and feelings stay fresh for awhile and the littlest thing brings everything back to the surface.  The more I endure through this life, the more grateful I am for the knowledge Joseph Smith restored to this earth.  It seems that each passing day gives me reason to be a more fervent defender of a man who, though not perfect, brought a knowledge to my life that has given me more peace than anything else.  

Happy New Year, everyone.