Insert Happy Dance Here

After spending many hours looking at homes, writing offers and waiting to hear from banks, it looks like all of our hard work looking for a house is finally about to pay off. We finally have an accepted offer! Alan found this little town home kind of by "accident". It's a bank-owned home in his hometown of Sherwood, about a mile away from his parent's house.



It's not our dream home by any stretch of the imagination, but it's in our price range and has the things that are most important to us: 3 bdrms, 2.1 baths, decent sized living room, small yard, good community, and good schools. I took all of these pictures during the inspection the other night. The appraisal is scheduled for tomorrow. Alan and I are still a little hesitant about getting too excited yet. We've had so many let-downs during this 7-month process. I think we'll be ready to really celebrate after we see the appraisal report.


Living room:
I much prefer carpet to laminate so we'll be looking for a large area rug and some serious new paint.



Close up of the hideous paint. You thought the walls were on fire, didn't you? You know the paint is really bad when your inspector takes a picture of it to post on his face book.



Back of living room/kitchen:
Not sure what's going on with those little alcoves. There's a good-sized closet under the stairs though.



Kitchen:
Small, but a whole lot bigger than what I have now!





Spencer's room:
Apparently the previous owners were Mickey Mouse fanatics. A wall border in a kid's room is totally fine, but I draw the line at Mickey Mouse door mats, porch light covers, garden lanterns and stepping stones! I would have thought that someone so in love with Mickey would have taken all of their precious memorabilia with them, but I guess they wanted to share the love with us! Some lucky Disney lover is going to find a treasure trove at Goodwill soon.



Master:
Has a great walk-in closet and deck, but a lamo bathroom.



Back view of the house:



Backyard:
It needs quite a bit of work, but I'm SO excited to plant a real garden and fix it all up. I actually think I'll really enjoy the yard work. The blue tarp is covering some plywood that a swimming pool used to sit on. I'm not too disappointed that the previous owners took the pool with them since it's warm enough to use one about 1 week of the year in Portland. That area will be my garden.


The close date is set for March 24th, but we're really hoping to close a little earlier since my parents and Michelle will be visiting us then. We need to do major cleaning and painting before we can move in and I'm getting stressed about choosing paint colors. I've never gotten to paint my walls before and I don't really know where to start, so pass on any advice you have!

6 months later...

In other good news, Spencer had a final check-up for his broken leg this morning and passed with flying colors! They took x-rays again and determined that his leg-length discrepancy is less than a pencil line width. Everything else about his leg looks and feels just about perfect. I think Spencer's gross motor skills are still a little behind where a typcial 22-month-old should be, but he's making progress and I'm sure he will catch up eventually. We are so blessed with excellent medical care in this country and so blessed that the break wasn't worse than it was.

Then (July 2009)



Now (Jan 2010)


Spencer was SOOO good during the exam and the long wait and I'm attributing it to the book we got at the library last week about Elmo visiting the doctor's office. I think I seriously underestimate Spencer's ability to understand what's going on around him and often don't explain what's happening. He is always much more calm and happy I explain and reassure him. Something to remember for sure!

Good friends, good times

Last weekend, the three of us drove up to Seattle to visit some of our good friends. We know Glen and Rachel from our single days at BYU. They got married just a few months after we did and live just south of Seattle now. Alan and I had a good time catching up with them and Spencer was in heaven with all of their kids' toys! It was a fast trip, but a nice, little break from home. Glen and Rachel have worked super hard to finish/remodel their home, so they had a really nice place for us to stay.

They took us to this awesome park near their home on Saturday afternoon. Spencer was running too fast to get many good pics, but here are a few anyway.



Spencer's first try at throwing a frisbee.



Getting ready to throw the frisbee to Caleb (4).


Spencer needs to become a little more aggressive if he's ever going to play Ultimate Frisbee. Grace (2) was about to steal it. :)


Thank you, Thank you, Thank you Glen and Rachel! We had a great time and you were wonderful hosts!

Random Fun

Here are a few of the fun things we've been up to lately:

Last Saturday, we saw a break in the rain and headed to the park. Spencer is finally able to walk up stairs with the help of a rail and is quite proud of the accomplishment. This particular park has a mini-playground that's just his size.




He was a lot more brave on the slides that I expected him to be. This was a little one, but he went down most of the bigger ones too. It helped that everything was slightly damp so his jeans stuck to the plastic and slowed him down. :)





Spencer's new favorite thing to do is to play blocks and trucks in his windowsill. We make roads and tunnels for the trucks and he plays there for a good portion of every day. I took this picture because there was some rare sunlight shining through.





Spencer got to run his first 5k race yesterday. And, he was the first baby across the finish line! I pushed him and he turned out to be a great running buddy. He loved the police men directing traffic at all of the intersections. We ran a lot faster than I thought we would and finished in just under 25 minutes (which is faster than my very first 5k in 2001 where I was ashamed that I got beat by moms with jogging strollers!) Alan didn't quite get a personal record, but still did very well with 19:40.

Soaking up the Sun

Today was such a beautiful, sunny day in so many ways. The sun was coming through my bedroom window while Spencer was taking a nap, so I sat in right in front of it to soak up as much as I could while I read my scriptures.

When he woke up, Spencer and I took a lovely walk with our jogging stroller and saw lots of yellow buses and blue cars. We also came across the first tiny flowers of the year poking their heads through the dirt. All of the trees and bushes have buds. Isn't it too early for that? I'm loving this El Nino year - it means warmer weather for Portland.

I spent the evening cleaning up the house and dancing to the Boogie Woogie song on our keyboard with Spencer. His favorite move is still the chicken dance even though I've been working hard to expand his repertoire. After Spencer goes to bed in a few minutes, Alan will "happily" endure the movie I got at the library today - Confessions of a Shopaholic - while we eat popcorn.

Everything is so much better when it's sunny.

A.C. Gilbert Discovery Village

Because I was about to go crazy from being trapped in our apartment last week and because the library had a free pass, we drove down to Salem to check out the A.C. Gilbert Discovery Village. I had never heard of it, but it's a hands-on children's museum dedicated to the man who invented erector sets and a ton of other toys. A lot of the exhibits were above Spencer's level, but we still had a fun time playing and just doing something different.


The bubble room. I think Alan had more fun than Spencer did. :)







Spencer's first tea party in the China room. He loves playing with dishes.




Giving the giant panda bear a lovie.





Going shopping in the tiny grocery store.





His favorite part of the whole museum was this train table. He played there for about 30 minutes and cried when we made him leave.