OUT of the old, INto the new

We moved last week. Moving is EX-HAUST-ING. I’m still recovering, so oopsie if this post isn’t very well-written or exciting! We moved most of our stuff to an apartment across town (less than a mile away) on Thursday, June 23rd. Thank GOODNESS for GOOD friends and loving family members who helped us out.

The last few weeks we were living in this little yellow house, it got a new roof. That’s the old roof laying in the yard.

Here’s Jay sitting on the front porch for one last time. Even though the list of things we won’t miss about this house is much longer than the list of things we will miss, we’ll still miss it! Here are the top 5 things we’ll miss about living at 303 Cedar Street:

1. Having a whole entire house all to ourselves
2. My beloved laundry room, complete with washer and dryer (our new place has coin-op laundry in the basement).
3. The big, shady front porch with the  honeysuckle trellis on one side
4. The central A/C!!!!! (it was only hot enough to use it for one week while we lived there, and then we moved to a place with just a wall-unit A/C. sigh).
5. Living 5 blocks away from Safeway
6. ok, there’s one more—the fenced back yard!

*I would say we’ll miss living less than a block from good ole Eastside park, but our new place is only a block from Westside park! So we’re set.

Jay and Rose resting on the porch together. 
Just for fun, here are the top 5 things we won’t miss about that house:

1. The low, midget-sized kitchen counters
2. Having to pour a cup of water into the toilet to get everything to flush
3. Taking care of the weedy, lumpy-bumpy yard
4. SWEEPING (the house is 75% hard floors, and our vacuum doesn’t clean hard floors)
5. The tilted stovetop and smelly oven.
6. ok, since I did 6 on the other top 5 list, here’s one more: the neighbor’s bi-monthly yard sales and the other neighbors’ blaring mariachi music. [oops, that’s 7].

Those are some tired faces, and they didn’t even have to pack anything! Jay AND Rose had doctor check-ups the day we moved (Rose’s 4-month and Jay’s 2-year check-up). Both got shots. Maybe that’s why they looked sort of zombie-ish at the end of the day. The car seats were one of the last things we moved (since we used the car to ferry a lot of our stuff across town). After a very long day, all Jay wanted to do was sit on the porch in his car seat. So I put Rose in there with him. It was a risky move, and Jay actually did end up dropping her right after I took this picture. (Don’t worry, I lunged forward and caught her)

And now for a brief Rose-and-Jay intermission:

Rose is getting so big! At the doctor last week (age 4 1/2 months), she weighed 15-lbs 15-oz, and was almost 26 inches long! That’s nearly a pound heavier than Jay was at that age, and he was the same height! Rose is in the 85th percentile. What a change after Jay’s slim little babyhood. I love it when Rose stretches her little legs out straight like she is in this picture. It makes her look so tall.

As for Jay, he now weighs 28 lbs and he’s still just a hair under 3 feet tall. I wonder if he’ll always be a foot taller than his little sister? He was such a macho man at the doctor—when the nurse gave him his one shot, he didn’t even cry! Now he doesn’t need any more shots till kindergarten. Yippeeeeeee!

Ok, back to to The Move:

Our new mansion! We only live in 1/5th of it, but we can pretend. Our door is the first one on the ground level, and we have our own parking space! No more street parking for us.

The Front Door. Notice: no yard whatsoever to take care of. Not even bushes. I may need to plant myself a flower in a pot or something to experience some greenery each day.

Are you ready for some boring, confusing inside pictures? We obviously haven’t finished unpacking and organizing everything, but here’s how it looks today. This is the family room.

Looking the other way in the family room. You can see into the kitchen, and the front door is on the right.

The “playroom” behind the couch. Have I mentioned that this place is a lot smaller than our old house? Luckily each apartment comes with a big storage closet in the basement.

La cocina. It’s such a treat to have a dishwasher that actually CLEANS dishes! I was stoked about getting our first dishwasher when we moved into our last place, but I quickly realized that that dishwasher didn’t really do much washing. This one does!

We had to sacrifice one of our bookshelves to use as a pantry. It’s already a challenge to keep Jay from mangling the food (he squishes the granola bars), but at least we have food and a place to keep it! Also: the stove/oven unit is beautiful. I adore it. It’s clean and the temperature is precise. SO nice. The kitchen is always my favorite room in a house, since I spend so much time there. The bathroom is right around the corner on the right…

The bathroom is HUGE! I can spread my 6-foot wingspan arms out and twirl in it! It took us 3 days to find our shower rod, and 5 days to find the shower curtain hooks. So the first few times we showered here, we suspended the curtain with rubber bands from the window and that towel hook with the ducky towel on it. Very saggy. But it worked! The shower head is LOW—the water hits me just below the collar bone. So our kind, very thoughtful landlord has provided a shower head extender. Now we just need to find some tools to install it…

I’ll keep this picture small because it’s boring. It’s the view from the bathroom door, down the hall to our bedroom (that’s the door to the family room on the left). The kids’ room is on the right behind that pile of boxes.

Jay’s and Rose’s room. I snuck in during naptime today to take this picture. Like the diaper-box shelves I installed in the closet?

Last but not least, the “master” bedroom! This is the biggest bedroom we’ve ever had. It feels so nice. We fit a bookshelf AND a desk in there!

Another view of our bedroom. Yes we still have that awful partially-purple desk. But hey—it was free, so don’t judge.

If you’re anything like me, all of those pictures don’t really tell you a whole lot about this place. So I went the extra mile and took a video of our apartment.

Well done—now you know all about our  new home on Avenue G. As a reward, here are a few cuties for your enjoyment:

Jay loves playing with Rose. He also loves playing with the granola bars that he can now reach. So he shared some of them with Rose.

We walked to the store today—the grocery store we’re closest to now (Grandview Market) is a whole 11 minute walk from our home. It feels longer in the blazing sunshine.

Rose brought her purse to the store. (isn’t that the cutest little toy? It  has a mirror and a key dangling off of it, but you can’t see them in this picture).

Well, this is what you get when I neglect the blog for over a week—a big endless pile of pictures. Now you’re up to date on our life (sadly no news on the job hunt front, except for 3-4 rejection letters and a rejection post card were mailed this week).

As a reward for doing this long blog post, I think I’ll go have a piece of fresh, soft bread with butter and blackberry honey on top. Adios, folks!

2-in-1

Sunday was Father’s Day AND my Mom’s 50th birthday this year! We were all together briefly for breakfast at the hotel before everyone went their separate ways to travel home. It was nice to be able to say “Happy Father’s Day!” and “Happy Birthday!” to my parents in person for once. Since the hotel had a continental breakfast, I used it to “make” breakfast in bed for Jeff’s Father’s Day surprise. It was great! Jay climbed up and started mooching bites of Jeff’s food, so I went back and got him a plate. So the boys ate breakfast in bed together. It was cute.

Mom and Dad, graciously sharing their special day with each other.

I just had to share this fun little idea: For my Dad’s card this year, I embellished an idea I found online, and concocted a homemade Google search. I just looked at what a real Google search looks like and typed up one of my own in Microsoft Word. Voila, Google search for world’s best dad: Charley Brown! [This is a picture of it on my computer screen, so it’s kind of hard to see.]

My sweet, sneaky sister Em got Mom a birthday cake and we had it for breakfast! We sang a quiet round of Happy Birthday, and then Mom pretended to blow out the candles because we had no matches (plus I don’t think fire was allowed in the hotel lobby). We each had a very thin sliver—carrot cake with all that frosting is very overwhelming before 8am.

Then we all said goodbye. Jay loved his cousins this time around. Finally! He kept giving Steve and Dan big hugs. We only got one blurry picture of the love.

It was 0ff to the airport for us. On our trip out to Utah, we crammed both kids into the single stroller to traverse the miles of the Salt Lake airport. We were too preoccupied to get a picture then, so when our flight was delayed and we had extra time on our way home, I piled them into the stroller again for a picture. They make a pretty cute load, don’t you think?

Jay was copying Rose. She sprouted her first tooth on our trip, so her hands were almost always in her mouth. Jay did the same thing—every time we were out of town, he grew a new tooth. It’s her bottom right canine tooth! Random. Rose has been Miss Droolyface for the past few weeks, so I knew it was coming, but the tooth waited to appear till we were away from home. [Sorry, there’s not a chance of me getting a picture of that tiny white speck in her mouth!]

Well, our tired bodies are now HOME and happy to be here…until later this week when we have to move into our new apartment…

Mr. and Mrs. Brown

We had a happy happy happy happy happy happy happy happy, superb day in our family this weekend! Now I have another beautiful sister. It’s impressive that one family can even HOLD this many good-looking people! But we pull it off rather well, I think.

Aren’t they just so perfect together?

On Saturday (June 18th), my brother Brad married his gorgeous sweetheart, Dani, in the Salt Lake Temple. We flew down for a whirlwind 2 day wedding extravaganza. It all started on Friday night with a lovely family dinner and culminated on Saturday with Dani and Brad’s sealing and wedding reception. It’s hard to find words to describe the joyous HAPPY feelings swirling around inside me when I saw my brother sealed for time and all eternity. I held in the tears with difficulty, but I’m glad I did because then I could fully appreciate the whole scene without annoying blurry- blotchy, obscured vision. I basked in the glow of the joyful, happy couple in the peaceful temple. It was all just SO HAPPY! JOYFUL! SPLENDID! The English language is NOT equipped to describe temple weddings.

The Schapps had a bunch of family/friends over for an amazing night-before-wedding-FEAST on Friday night. Never has beef been so delectable. Too bad it was a secret family recipe for beef teriyaki. I haven’t felt that FULL since I was 9 months pregnant! YUM.

Dani has such good taste (look who she married, after all!), and all the décor was very well done. This is “the high table” of parents and THE COUPLE of honor.

There were toasts. (that’s Martinelli’s, I promise).

[can you see the GLOW radiating from their faces? it’s like looking into the sun!]

They also showed a sweet slide show of pictures from Brad’s and Dani’s lives. So darling. (Their kids are going to be adorable). This is one of the pictures that was in the slide show. Did I mention the tear-fountain bubbling below the surface? It threatened to spill over at this point. My little brother!

And now on to the BIG DAY! All morning before the wedding, Jeff, Mom, and I were kind of stressing about what to do with 3 little boys and one little girl while we were in the temple for the sealing. When we got to the temple, we discovered a convenient children's room in the waiting area. We commissioned my sister Mel and our cousing Caralyn to keep the kiddies corralled in there for the hour we were gone. They were SO sweet to take on the challenge of 4 overtired children under the age of 4 during naptime. They totally ROCKED.

The most amazing part was how Caralyn NEVER GOT TIRED of those little boys (and Rose)! She played with them ALL DAY, even after the one-hour sentence of doom was over. What a sweetie!

While we were waiting for the bride and groom to appear after the marriage, we took a few sister pictures. They are wearing high heels and I am not. But I still win the height contest.

And another sister picture—my Mom, and her sisters, Stefani and Elizabeth. They are so much fun. I really really wanted to go do a temple session with Aunt Stefani, Uncle Bruce, and Kyle, but I just couldn’t leave Rose for all that time PLUS Brad and Dani’s sealing. That was the 4th time I’ve been to Salt Lake City and haven’t managed to go through that temple! I’m dying to go in it! So Stefani, Kyle, and I made a goal to go to that temple together some day in the future. It WILL happen!

All the cousins that were there (except Brad and Dani, of course): Me, Brooke, Kyle, Mel, Em, and Caralyn. Since all of these pictures were taken on Em’s camera, we didn’t get a BIG GROUP picture with Brad and Dani, since we were IN that big group picture. Oh well, big group pictures are crowded.

Fresh out of the Temple. I love how Brad is looking at her.

Also love this one.

Wedding dress = license to kiss in public. A LOT! I love people in love.

In-laws: Brad got some good ones. Dani got some good ones too!

Brothers! Kyle went through the temple the day before the wedding so he could BE THERE. It was special to have 4/5 of us Brown kids in the temple all at once. Man I love my familia.

Jay got more and more TIRED and touchy as the evening progressed, and eventually Jeff took him back to the hotel early before the reception was over.

Rose was pretty good. She got a bit overwhelmed at the end of the reception, but the good thing about young babies is they succumb to sleep a lot faster than toddlers! I have fed Rose in so many public places now: airports, restaurants, family gatherings, etc. Not my favorite, but you’ve gotta do what you’ve got to do! Nothing like a good nursing cover. I still wish she’d take a bottle, though. Oh well.

The reception was beautiful. The cake was DIVINE: there were 4 kinds, one per layer: carrot cake, spice cake, chocolate, and…ummm…one other kind that I don’t remember. Yum, though!

The best part of any wedding reception: the cake smear!

Brad and I did our traditional swing dance. We learned ONE move (the pretzel) at a church activity about 10 years ago. Ever since then, when a swing song plays, we do our move over and over really fast, and we look like pros.

Brad is 6’7’’. I’m 6 feet tall. There are a LOT of arms when we swing dance, and we really SWING—he’s strong!! I was swooshing and wooshing all over the place! We only danced about 30 seconds this time, because we’re pretty rusty and there wasn’t much space, and now that he’s married, Brad has a much more graceful woman in his life to dance with. Plus Utah’s high altitude kills me. It was great swinging with Brad again even for a short time, though! The last time we did that was at MY wedding, for goodness sakes.

Congratulations again to Mr. and Mrs. Brown! Love you guys.