Spinning Spinning Spinning

Quinn and I are exhausted! Ever had so many to do's on your list that your head is spinning spinning spinning and the very thought of writing them down in some sort of workable list makes you want to cry? We have had two particularly swamped work weeks in a row and on top of it all {ARE YOU READY FOR THIS} we are in the middle of buying a house. I cannot believe it! Needless to say, we've been super stressed. Q has taken an extra weekend on call and I think work is naturally more busy and crazy for him because one of the main guys quit in January and they aren't hiring anyone new. This is always a high-pressure crunch time for me because the clog competition and end-of-level testing is right around the corner. This year my students are particularly chatty and I have the greatest stratification I have ever seen so I've got my work cut out. Add to this Annie deciding to get bigger and change right before our eyes. I can tell she needs to eat real food but she won't and she requires some serious sleep training and schedule adjustment but I haven't had the time or energy to do it. Her long bought of sickness sent us backwards a few steps and I don't have all my ducks in a row to really work with her. Quinn is super anxious about Annie's progress- I'm more laissez-faire. If she's happy and it's working for me, I'm super fine with the midnight to 9 am sleep schedule. Alas, Q's anxiety may be stressing me more than Annie's progress so I guess it's time to dedicate myself to getting Annie going. Admission: She's not quite able to sit on her own yet because we never put her down. Just so you know, I'm chalking that up to a good thing.

She is an absolute dream. We still fight over who gets to hold her.

Yep, you guessed it: This is another of my dresses. It was hand crocheted for me 30 years ago and it's my favorite dress of all time. The work is immaculate. When Annie wears this dress to church the Relief Society ladies can't get enough of it.

A few weeks ago Annie discovered the joy of playing the piano. Now she sings whenever Ydnic starts playing. Meggie also made this amazing orange cake worth documenting and remember forever, I keep begging her to make it again but she says it's too much work. We told her she was wife-worthy after a cake like this and she should send a picture to Braden on his mission in Brazil to show him she has killer domestic skills now.

How sad:

It happened. Annie did something amazing while I was at work.
Isn't it awful?! She started holding her own bottle.
Q sent me this picture from his phone while I was teaching
and I told my students they had to be good that day or I might cry.
The good/bad news is that I have decided to teach school again next year.
Word out on the street is that my job is safe, which is a blessing,
but still- it's work. It's away from Annie.
Q and I were talking a few nights ago about how awful it was
for me to go back to school for that 2nd degree
and how wretched those first few years of teaching middle school were
...and how worth it, TOTALLY worth it, it was and is.
I'm finally to the point where I can show up a few minutes before class
and leave right after the bell rings.
Now- if I could just figure a way to get out of grading essays.

And about that house:

My amazing artist and architect brother painted this rendering of what it will be, someday, after we've put in a million hours and found some extra money somewhere. It's a foreclosure so there will be a TON of work on it. We bought for space, built-in-equity, and location. Yep, we learned our lesson big time with our last real estate mistake. We are completely and totally lucky to have gotten this place. We will never make a ton of $$$ or be rich so we had to get a deal, but THIS (says our realtor and everyone we have come bid the house) is a SCREAMIN' deal! Foreclosures are quite competitive, and we still have to jump through hoops to secure the deal. Thank heavens for THE BEST REAL ESTATE AGENT EVER! Seriously, if you are buying in SGU, you need her. We wouldn't have even stood a chance of getting it with anyone else.

The skinny is: We were not planning on buying for another year but... short version: here it is. We can't pass up a deal like this nor will we find another one this good. I cannot believe the peace of mind I feel about this place and that, for the next 30 years, I get to wake up thinking about what an AMAZING deal we got and what a brilliant VALUE we purchased. We truly made our money stretch as far as it possibly could. I'm so proud we were able to work hard and save and make this happen for ourselves. Anyhow, expect dramatic before-and-afters but don't expect them until July. Yep, it's a piece of work. We will close on March 4th but our goal for move-in is by Annie's first birthday. I cannot wait. We are going to have thee biggest party! Finally, a legitimate reason for my HGTV addiction. I already have so many plans for the renovation (Q is groaning about it -as well he should be, he has to do the hard stuff, poor guy- I'm afraid of power tools).

A few stats:
5 bedrooms 3 bathrooms
huge bonus room in basement
library/office
wood burning fireplace
mature pomegranate, pistachio, and pecan trees in the orchard
awesome back porch
Dixie REA (cheap utilities)
central vac
breakfast nook
secluded back yard
horrible master bathroom
3 shares of irrigation water
secret passageway to my parents' house
all the room we will ever need
...
seriously 6-months worth of renovations

I just look at the holes in the walls and the filth and the ugly curb appeal
and thank my lucky stars for it because it means we got the house for the price we could afford!

Egg-cellant!

Annie's vote: If she has to swallow it, she hates it.

2 Magical Numbers

Today Annie and I went for a little WALK...

A little walk with 1 very VERY BIG destination...





A big destination with 2 extremely MAGICAL NUMBERS...

And those numbers are: .70 and 3,600.

I can not NOT absolutely NOT believe it! We did it! With 5 very intense years of digging our condo out of debt and saving every last penny and never spending a dime of my paycheck and taking second jobs and living in weird places and enlisting the BEST most shark-like pouncer of a veteran real estate agent with a will and a way and some serious praying and a heap of LUCK and a 15 day investor inhibitor and some lady at the bank named Neda who held back the 10 other BETTER offers and a misspelled name debacle and horrible wretched days of waiting waiting waiting...

We have a dream of a foreclosure under contract!

Wanna know why THIS is the one?

.70 acres!
3,600 sq/ft!

Here is the MASSIVE back yard:
I took a pic from the furthest point of the fence in the back yard but this is only half of the property.

It is INSANELY competitive to get foreclosures where we live. And I do mean INSANE!

(Below) This view is from the PERFECT back porch looking out on our future base ball diamond
(which will be possible because we have 3 irrigation water shares with the property).

It's a miracle.

...a miracle with a finished basement.

Food Food fabulous Food

What 1 thing would you grab if a fire hit your house?
Just this week I was telling Q's friend that I know exactly what I would grab in case of a fire and I only had time for Annie and one other thing before the rest of it went up in flames. It would, without doubt, be my amazing camera and lenses. And if I don't have time for all my lenses, I would pick my fabulous portrait lens. I use my Nikon Dslr EVERY single day without fail. It follows me wherever I go and makes my photos look like I almost know what I am doing. It shoots fast so it's a cinch to capture endlessly moving babies and it has all sorts of cool tricks [that I don't know how to use]. I bought it a few years back in anticipation of Annie and it is completely worth the investment.
Annie likes to steal Q's hat off his head and try it on.

Too bad she is sick AGAIN! Ug. The doc looked at me like
I am a crazy paranoid mom who keeps bringing their baby
to the hospital and should just chill and accept that it's another virus.
Obviously the doc hasn't observed Quinn in endless panic mode.
I was POSITIVE it was an ear infection. Nope.
She said there are 6 very strong viruses circulating this year
and to keep Annie out of public until April. Oi.

I waited almost 7 months to give Annie anything other than ...do I have to say it out loud?... I want everything she eats to be deliberate and 100% healthy so no rice cereal for her no matter how many times the Doc recommends it. Her first food is avocado and so far she has tried day old farm grown egg yolks (boiled- no whites because they are an allergen), bananas, and apple. She likes to suck on the apple slices but the rest of it she hates. Annie refuses to eat. Fine with me as long as I can keep her going on the other. I'll just keep offering things to her until it clicks and she eats food on her terms. Our next step is sweet potatoes and then sprouted millet from Azure Standard (my rice cereal substitute).

She couldn't believe I was actually letting her hold and keep the apple slice! I wish she could keep hold of the slippy avocado slices as well as the apple. Anyone recognize this bib from our clogging Canada trip way back in the '90's?
It was Meg's.



Technically, this [below] is the first food for Annie.
She detested the swallowing part but loved the mess.
Naturally I took about 1000 photos.

In addition to smiling for photos, Annie will sing on cue. Anytime we sit with her at the piano, she starts singing.
She's also figured out how to play along by hitting the keys.

Matt, Ash, & Lailee were down for a while. It was the best.
I wish they lived here permanently but I'll settle for SLC considering
their jobs could take them anywhere.

Annie is sitting up now. It's terrific. She's gifted.

And there's something else in the works which has me sick with nerves.
I'm positively dying in anticipation. Can't sleep. Can't think of anything else.
We should know on Monday.