Sold!

In case you didn't know, we bought a house!!! Surprise! We moved to Orem on the east side of State Street. We bought a nice condo in a great neighborhood with a great ward full of great people. We live across the street from an elementary school and city park, and are equidistant from 3 different grocery stores! Our place is great and will allow us to grow while we are still here in Utah. We expect to be here probably anywhere between 3 and 6 more years. Todd has 5 more semesters of school, then he has to get some experience working as a nurse in the ICU before he can apply to CRNA schools. Since it can be hard to get a job in the ICU as a brand new nurse, it might take a while to get the required experience. And since I want to keep our kids pretty close together, we might have a few more before we leave! So while our 4 bedroom home currently has 2 unused bedrooms, I am pretty sure that it won't stay that way!

We love the new place. As we finish up our decorating we'll post some before and after pictures. We have made a few updates that have really helped us to love our new home and feel like it really is ours. Another plus is that our mortgage, insurance, HOA, and taxes is less then we probably would be paying for rent on a much smaller place and our "rent" can't get raised!

While there are many wonderful things about our beautiful abode, we have already experienced some of the pains of homeownership. We found a nice puddle of water about 4 days after we moved in, and it took more than 2 weeks to get the leak found and fixed. We figured out that the spot got wet when we used the kitchen sink, so we weren't able to do dishes for that entire time. Our kitchen was dirty and smelly and we couldn't do anything about it. We were glad that our home warranty covered all the work for a $60 project charge, but the plumber we were working with was terrible. He was rude, he wasn't prompt, he didn't call to let us know why he was late, he didn't ring the doorbell and then just left after 2 knocks, didn't bring everything with him to get the job done and had to come a total of 3 times to do everything. Then he left our dishwasher in pieces the last day and left without even saying anything to us. He also cut out holes in our wall downstairs for no reason as the leak was upstairs behind the dishwasher. Sorry if none of that was coherent but I am not happy and now face calling his company to see if I can complain about him and get someone different out here to help us put our dishwasher back together. And I am so bad at being confrontational and demanding things, but man this guy was ridiculous. Ok my soap box is done!

We still love our new house and look forward to sharing pictures!

Dread callings

So in the church we have a wonderful system. Everyone gets assigned a job, and they do it as a volunteer. No one is in the same job their whole life, we get to switch it up and do things that are more or less demanding, involve different people, and are more or less visible to those around us. I think most people in the church have callings that they dream of and ones that they dread. My parents both happen to currently have the opportunity to fulfill their dream callings. My mom in the library and my dad as gospel doctrine teacher. While it was very demanding, Todd and I very much enjoyed his role as 2nd counselor in the bishopric. So we were excited when we moved into our new ward to find out what we would get to do. So Wednesday night we went over to the church and found out...... dread callings. For both of us.

I never imagined that it would happen to us at the same time. Completely separate callings, and we would gladly trade with each other. Todd was called as Weblos leader. When he first heard it he didn't even know what it was. He was raised as a city boy, and was never a boy scout. And there are only 2 boys (we aren't sure what age group this is for....) He says he can't even tie a knot, let alone teach a couple of boys about boy scout stuff.

And for me? Choir director. Even sitting in relief society while they make assignments I am terrified that they will ask me to lead the music. There have even been a few times that I have gotten out of it by offering to say a prayer instead. I am AWFUL. I love to sing, I can follow notes pretty well, but I cannot keep the beat when I try and lead. I find myself leading 3/4 halfway through a 4/4 song, and sometimes don't even keep the beat. And how in the world am I supposed to figure out who needs help just by listening to the people singing? I don't know how to make a bunch of people sound good? I am pretty sure we will have a very sad sounding choir. And it's even worse because the ward hasn't had a choir in about 2 1/2 years. Of course I now have all these visions of them canceling the old choir because it was so bad and no one came and now I am pretty sure people will still not want to come.

Well, another day another challenge! At least I can feel lucky that my challenge is both me and my husband facing weaknesses, rather than something more terrible like Lila getting really sick or one of us losing our job. In reality I suppose our dread callings are blessings in that sense. They won't actually cause our lives any physical, financial or terribly emotional pain. Wish us luck!