FIX IT UP!
So we have been busy fixing up the house and I wanted to post some before and after pictures. And just in case you find them boring. Here are some cute pictures of my kids.

Jensen doing "muscles."

Before: Awesome Orange wall! But a bit boring.After: I put green plants above the cabinets. They match the counter tops and look nice. By the way: I moved from a tiny apartment with no cabinet space to too much cabinet space. I have two whole bottom cabinets that the kids "hide" in because they are empty.
Before: Knobs were black didn't mach any other hardware in the house, and they were all bent and loose.
After: Dave installed these sturdy knobs that match and look SO much better.Before: Outdated chandelier.After: Dave, my electrician, installed a cute new chandelier that matches- The drape rods:)I bought storage shelves off of craigslist (I LOVE CRAIGSLIST) to the hide all the toys.
Painted Lily's pad purple and made drapes. Yes I know they are not even. I'm gonna fix that- sometime...

Painted Jensen's room an awesome blue and made drapes. We are going to decorate his room pirate- so it is supposed to be the ocean color:)
Didn't do much in the living room, but I love the couch cover my mom made for us.

I'm going to do something about the mismatched bookcases, just not sure what yet

What a fun Week!
My friend Sarah Sussman came and visited from Florida. It was really nice to hang out with her. I feel so blessed that Heavenly Father put us together as companions. I have been blessed for the last five years because of her and her friendship. I love you Sarah.

PLUS she helped take care of my kids while I painted and did some other stuff 'round the house. My kids loved her and Jensen demanded that she got things like milk for her instead of me. Funny kid.

Sarah also witnessed Lily making great strides in her pursuit of walking. She is zooming fast crawling around. Sarah caught Lily's first standing up without holding onto anything. I think she will be full on walking within the month.

After Sarah's visit we headed out to Utah. We are used to the 4 hour drive to Provo. The 11 hour drive was a bit of a shock to our systems.
We had our moments of happiness. Thank goodness for Dollar Tree toys.
Thesunglasses had a better effect on Lily :) We stopped by Dave's sister MaryBeth's house. Jensen loves playing with his cousins. They have a steep driveway and the boys had fun rolling trucks down the driveway.
Tiana put together an awesome Barbecue tribute for my dad for his birthday. We played charades with some of our favorite things about my Dad. Happy Birthday Dad!

We went floating down the Provo River. Jensen LOVED it. Even the cold water. And it was COLD!






Lily just played with the tubes. Crawling in and out and in and out again. She was so cute.

Pictures of the house!

This is our humble little house. I am having fun personalizing it and improving it. There is A LOT of work to do on your own house. There is always some project to do (or finish.) I love it!

We are on the corner of a little culda-sacThis is our family room. The whole lower level, family room kitchen and front room are hardwood floors. I painted over an overwhelming amount of green with tans and browns and...
ORANGE! I have always wanted an orange kitchen. It looks darker and deeper in real life. I love the orange. It makes me happy. I'm getting an area rug for our "conservatory" ,as Dave calls it, today. My mom is working furiously to make a couch slip cover, and I'm making drapes. See ALWAYS a project:)
This is our little backyard. It is recovering from the previous owners and their two big dogs. Dave has taken the yard on as his persona l mission. YEAH!

While the Husband is away the wife will Decorate....

This is Dave.....(Danica's husband and eye candy)....for those who don't know and also for those who don't know I'm in the "state of enchantment".....no I'm not staring longingly into the dark pools of eternity that is my wife's eyes....I'm in New Mexico. I have the great opportunity to do field work with my job and am currently in New Mexico measuring sections for my internship project. Now for the lay person measuring sections involves more than a measuring tape, I get to hike up steep, bug infested, cactus filled, pointy scrub brush covered slope, (your jealousy is building right?) hauling hammers, a pick, a ten pound pack filled with water and other supplies, (You are turning green now I can tell) to write in field notebooks descriptions of the rocks and how thick they are. I DEMAND YOU ENVY ME! I really am enjoying my time but while I'm in Raton New Mexico Danica is in Denver painting our new house. She will supply pictures shortly but on with the slide show.

This is what we climbed up.

This is The View I saw, luckily no Starr Jones.

This is what I avoided sitting on. On a geology hike I usually fall about 2 times. In Idaho it is the sharp volcanics to watch out for. In New Mexico it is the Cacti and Rattle Snakes.

Now for the Geology:

This is a rock covered with tons of clam burrows and poop.....or so I am told.

This is some of the coals we find in the area that are important to us to map and measure.

This is the 1950's StarGate we use to go from the office to the field and back again in seconds. Only problem is that we broke the flux capacitor.

Lastly a little artsy but hey its nice:

We have a house!

We closed on it yesterday. I am so excited I drove over last night after the kids went to sleep and started prepping the house for paint. I can't believe it! I will post pics soon.

Reaping the benefits of Summer

Swimming and Garage Saleing

Jensen LOVES the water. He dumps out his cup of drinking water on his tray and eats

everything done "super soggy." He loves our little backyard plastic pool (where, by the way, my phone took a swim). At the park there is a little water spout area- and he spends all of his time there. He can't get enough of being wet. So we have been swimming a lot. And my little pygmy boy loves it.


We met a good friend of mine Keri Allred (formerly known as McLeish) at the park with her two boys. What cuties! Jensen and her older son Matthew,played with cars and trains in the water. What could be better. Her younger son David and Lily kept trying to scare us by trying to join in the fun. Lily kept trying to crawl in, and David tenuously walked around and around the fountain. He fell in a couple times but recovered nicely:)
My mom and I have also had fun going around and buying up ALL of the toys we can find at garage sales. We have actually found some pretty good stuff. Jensen got some Thomas the train slippers that he wouldn't take off for days. Oh what fun.
We close on our house on MONDAY! I'm really excited. Next week will be filled with cleaning and painting and prep for the elders quorum to show up on Saturday and do the heavy lifting. I just can't believe it is finally here.

So how dorky is it when people dress alike. Honestly. People just look silly. I think it is highly ridiculous and NOT necessary.Until I became a parent. I sewed a skirt for myself this week. I had leftover fabric and, how completely absurd of me, I sewed a matching skirt for Lily. What can I say call it lingering effects of pregnancy, hormones, getting old, or just being weird. Don't tell anyone but I thought we were pretty cute:)
The quest for a house continues. We actually have a contract on a house on the other side of Highlands Ranch. If everything goes through we will close the first week of June. SO EXCITING!

Happy Birthday JJ!

Jensen is TWO! I can't believe it. My little man is two. I am so proud of him. He is doing so much better on using words and being nice to Lily. He dosen't throw too many tantrums and he is so much fun to play with and to hug. I love being a mom. I can't believe I've been at it for two years now. There is so many small everyday rewards that make it wonderful. I love when Jensen says "ow oh"-for Love you. I love it when he gives really big squeeze hugs and a lip smack kiss on my cheek. I loves his constant invention of new things to entertain himself ( most of the time in trade for my sanity but I love it none the less). I LOVE being a mom of a two year old!

We got our big boy a big wheel. Unfortunately his little legs need to grow a bit for him to pedal it by himself, but he loves pushing the buttons and when we push him on it.

Lily eating a chicken nugget at McDonald's. We went there for Jensen's b-day dinner so he could run around in the play area. Lily has, just this week, really started eating solid food. She had grabbed and stuffed two nuggets in her mouth so fast and was happily gumming away at them before we even noticed:)

Ode to a scared kid

We have been having fun here at my parents house in Colorado. I am actively looking for a house for us to rent from my parents -and then hopefully own when Dave gets a full time job. It is fun but exhausting. It is also kinda sad to get your hopes up for a house and then have the deal fall through. We've got our teeth on a pretty good house and I'm excited so we will see how it goes.

I love Colorado because there are so many fun things to do. The kids and I fill our days with trips to the rec center pool or to the cool new park right by my parents house. The other day we even found an awesome little 1860's farm/museum. AND IT WAS FREE! I was excited to go with Jensen because he is getting so good at naming his animals and making their sounds.

We got there (and of course the camera batteries died) but Jensen pretty much looked like this the whole time.

We didn't stay that long:)
We will try again soon. Hopefully he won't be as scared. Next time.

We also put our little climber into gymnastics. SO FUN! It is a parent tot class so I get to go around with him and do all the little activities. He loves it. Andi it helps home sleep better and he even behaves a bit more the rest of the week. So high five on gymnastics.



I got my hair cut really short and body wave permed. It is something I've wanted to do for a while but was always to chicken. I think it turned out pretty good and it is easy to take care of so- five points to me:) I'll post pics of my hairdo later.

So a lot of people have commented on how much Lily looks like me. I thought that was nice of everyone because she is so cute. I did a little digging out of the old photos and what do you know she kinda does look like me. Kinda erie.

This one is me at 9 months-

And Lily-

She has been pulling herself up to stand on pretty much anything. There are a couple of bumps on her head but other that that she is doin really well.

I haven't blogged in almost two weeks and I'm so behind! Graduation was great! I'm so proud of Dave it hasn't been the easiest thing supporitng a family while going to school full time but he did great and we are so excited to be done with school.

Dave's family came out to help him celebrate. It was SO nice. We love hanging out with Marybeth and her kids. All week we got to do fun stuff centered around the kids. We went to a huge ball/ tunnel play area. Honestly I think Dave's dad, Robert, had almost as much fun as the kids playing skee-ball.
Dave got to show off his geologoy knowledge when he took us all to the school's mineral museum.
We also hung out in the motel's pool. Jensen was fearless and kept jumping into the deepend without me.He also liked being thrown up in the air- see his feet:)

Lily started sitting up! And we went to a cute little dianasour museum where the kids got to brush around in the sand to find goodies. Way fun!

GRADUATION AND MOVING!

Today starts the mad dash to pack the entire house in two days. I just wanted to quickly say how proud I am of my husband and all his hard work. I am so thankful for him and his marathon run to finish school. Yeah for graduating!

I'll post again after we get settled in Colorado.

General Conference !

I love General Conference! I just wanted to take a minute to express how thankful I am. God lives and has a prophet, just like Moses and Abraham, on the earth. I am so thankful God gives us these wonderful men to lead us and to teach us. How can you not feel an intesnse love for a God that has given us men that are incredibly easy to love and to follow.

I loved Susan Tanner's talk on what she delights in. She quoted President Hinkley in saying how wonderful a society we would live in if parents treated thier children as if they were the gifts from our father in Heaven that they are. I told Dave "I need that Framed!" So when I get frustrated at my little gifts I will not want to wrap them up in a box with industrial strength packing tape. Instead, hopefully I will wrap them in a hug. It's something to work on :)

Oh and it snowed AGAIN! Isn't it supposed to be spring?

Forward Movement!


Lily has been slowly progressing toward farward movement in her crawling. She isn't speedy but she does get to where she wants to go - mostly in a rock and flop manner. Yeah for progress!

We got third place!
Thanks for all of you who voted!
http://liz.heiselt.org/blog/