The good, the bad, and the ugly

We finally closed on our house today!! Hooray!! So we now have a house and we are starting to move things in. In fact, I am sitting in the house waiting for a truck load of stuff to arrive so I can start moving in! This moving bit has been quite a roller coaster. The mold is gone from our house now, but as I was starting to pull stuff out of my parent's garage I am finding that we are going to have to throw out some of our stuff that has gotten moldy from sitting in a warm, humid, dark garage for the past two months. The most upsetting thing so far is the couch. I am still trying to research to see if we can salvage it, or if we just have to junk it. So I will have to give an update later to let you all know the extent of the damage. So the good, the bad, and the mold is the ugly. I am greatly missing the desert at this point in time. Gotta help move!

Kendall's First Engineering Job

Kendall's first engineering job turned out to be a great success. He didn't get paid for it, but I think he had fun and Avri and Talmage and even Mercedes will be able to enjoy it for years to come.
This is the sandbox that he made for Avri's birthday. Unfortunately, it still doesn't have any sand in it because we don't have a porch to put it on yet. But he designed and built the entire thing. He made it so that it has seats all the way around (not just on the corners) and he made the seats with the slits in them so that the sand can fall back into the sandbox instead of outside of the sandbox. We'll have to let you all know if the idea works as well as we are hoping. Avri was very excited about it once she figured out what it was. She even got into it with her sand toys and pretended that there was sand. She was building all sorts of things.

Avri's 3rd Birthday!

Now for some pictures. Avri had a great birthday! We went to the ward breakfast, then went to Wildlife Prairie Park (like a zoo, only the animals are in their natural habitats). We got to ride the train...

and feed the chickens... (that kinda hurts!)

and the goat...

In the afternoon we went to a barbeque at one of our friends' houses from the ward. We ate cake and ice cream and opened presents. Then we went to watch fireworks with my family and some other ward members. So it was a day full of fun and we were all VERY tired by the end of it.

Closing Woes

For anyone who has ever had any problems with closing on a house: I'M SORRY!! This has been a long and tedious process. Yes, we were supposed to close on July 3rd, and No, we still have not closed and it is not looking like it will be too soon. Our newest estimated closing date is July 31st! Almost one month after we were supposed to be in. At our house inspection they found some mold under the stairs, so the seller had to fix the problem and retest. The results came back that the toxic mold is gone (Yay!) but the other mold that is in all homes is still quite a bit higher than we want it, so now he is hiring a contractor to come in and figure out the problem and fix it. They are bringing in "mold dogs" which are like drug dogs; they sniff out any mold and then they fix it. That way they won't miss any problem spots, which is a good thing. So the closing could get moved up if everything is a really easy fix, or it could get moved back even further if the problem is way bigger than we thought, but I think that 3 more weeks should do the trick. Now to solve the problem of living in the living room for 3 more weeks with clothes that are too small for my children -- that's another problem to be dealt with at a different time.

New Callings

Yes, Kendall and I have new callings. I only have one, but Kendall has two now. They called both Kendall and I to be on the activities committee, which we are both way excited about. They called us the week before the 4th of July, so we have already done our first activity which was a ward breakfast.

This last Sunday they also gave Kendall the calling of Scout Master. I had no idea what a big and busy calling that one is! It is the equivalent of Young Men's President, and that is who he will be working closely with. He is nervous about the calling since he hasn't done anything with the scouts since he was in the program. They really don't have anything set up for scouts in this ward, so he has his work cut out for him. But he is excited about working with the boys and things. I, on the other hand, will be missing him since he will be gone for a great deal of weekends on scout campouts. But I think that it will be a good calling for him, and he will do great in there.