We Are All Moved In!!!!

I can't believe its been so long since I posted :(

We had a VERY busy June, VERY busy! We moved in late May to our new home.  Its crazy to think its been almost two months.  We absolutely LOVE it here!!!!

The house is not all "fancied" up... but its getting there.

The view as you walk in the front door....  Open Great Room

View into the kitchen.

  

View from the kitchen into the Living Room.  You can see the Mud/Laundry Room as well. 

I LOVE how the colors have all worked together.  It was scary to pick things and only having my imagination to put these things together.  Dave had to trust me that this was all going to work out... and it did!  

We feel SO blessed! 

House Update - NOT so BOOOORING

Another House Update.  This time, its fun and drama free! WOOOHOOO!  This is reason so celebrate.  Picture overload :)

Once the framing got started, we saw tons of progress day after day.  The basement went up SUPER fast.  It took them two weeks to frame the entire house!  We can tell where things will go and the feel of "the lot" has now become real.  We no longer call it "the lot", its our "HOUSE".  It really felt like this was never going to happen.  Its awesome!!!!!

This is our first picture together IN the house.  It was taken on Dave's Bday.  

Only the basement was done at this point.  No stairs yet. 

It was great and slightly emotional to be in OUR HOUSE :) LOVE IT!!!!

Tomi was here and she got a quick glimpse of what the house will sortta look like.  

It was AWESOME to have her here! It was a super short time (more on that on another post).  

Here we are, the three of us, together! :)

You could sit and watch the house come up!  It was pretty awesome to go up the several times a day, dropping off or picking up the kids, and see the progress being made :) 

The upstairs seemed to take a little longer, but not really.  It was still super fast. 

Again, it was pretty crazy to see it go up so fast.  

 This is a view from the "kitchen" into the house, 

you can see some of our rooms towards the back :)

This day was pretty cool.  We have stairs! 

This made it feel like the two floors were finally connected. 

Yay! Roof trusses!!!! The house taking shape...

This week we got our roof, almost done... 

Today we got doors!  The front door, garage door into the house, 

deck door and basement door out to the backyard.  

A LOT has been getting done inside the house.  Plumbing has been put it, we have bathtubs, and showers, rough plumbing in the bathrooms and for the appliances. HVAC has been put threw all sorts of little crevasses. Electrical has been wired and strung all over the place.

LOTS of decisions have been made.  I have picked out the exterior colors, doors, lighting, cabinets, counter tops and lots of little layout things that we were unsure of.  Its been GREAT!

Next week I will be picking out fixtures, flooring, interior colors and finalizing a bunch of little things.  We've had great subs working on the house and that is a cherry on top. 

There is still long way to go, but the light at the end of the tunnel is getting much closer!!!! We are happy and SO looking forward to the next month+ to get in our home.  It will be a year, in June, since we sold our old house.  We never thought this would take this long, but it will be worth it in the end :)

LIFE IS GOOD!!!!

House Update - BOOOORING!

This will be a boring, slightly dramatic, picture-less post. 


Late December we had a call from the bank that we would be doing the construction draws differently than we had been.  (RED FLAG goes UP).

1st week in January a Sub Contrator calls and says, she ONLY wants to send me the invoice and wants nothing to do with our Contractor. (RED FLAG goes UP HIGH).

2nd week in January, I start asking LOTS and LOTS of questions.  The bank answers and then I start calling EVERYONE that has EVER worked in our lot.  Long story short we found out that nobody was being paid from our contractor, BUT, he was taking our money.

Things got from bad to worse, EVERYDAY in January.  It was an extremely difficult month.  It was lonely and depressing and faith-trying.  I took matters upon my hands and while calling and finding things out we also found out that our contractor hadn't paid our permit, didn't have a contractors license for part of our building process, had bounced checks and simply would not do what we asked him to do. He was SHADY, to say the least. 

We started to find out or better yet, make sure that the work that had been done in our home was in fact inspected and passed by the city.  Late January we found out that he had put everything 2feet TOO LOW!  Meaning the footing and foundation was TOO LOW! This was extremely hard blow as the cost to fix this BIG mistake is very costly.  We quickly got a second opinion on things and contacted another contractor (two other contractors) and they spent more hours in one week with us than we had spent since we had started this process with our contractor.  Needless to say, we had gotten screwed. 

Do to legal reasons we had to wait an additional two LONG weeks to be able to sign with another contractor.  We did the work ourselves in the mean time and raised the footing and foundation two more feet (this after talking to our [fantastic] architect and engineer, extensively!)

We started the actual building process at the beginning of November and should be in our home by now, had everything gone smoothly.  HOWEVER, so many good things have come since then. 

We have new FABULOUS contractors.  Nothing but complete honesty and transparency with them, something we had not had with the previous dude.  They helped us solve the "mystery" of what was going on and how to handle it. 

Where is the house now?

We have foundation at the appropriate height, we have a garage floor, we have a porch floor, bonus (unexpected) cold storage, we have some plumbing, basement sub floor and a HUGE storage room under the garage.  We also have a lot of geofoam under our driveway, this is to alleviate some of the pressure dirt would have had on the foundation wall that had to be extended. 

We also have new contractors, a new appreciation for people that have never met us, yet they felt for us and our situation and helped us just because they are real and kind. We have also learned a lot.  We have become stronger and closer together.  We have a bigger appreciation for what we have and the INNUMERABLE blessings we have received despite the "trials" we have had. 

We continue to feel that this is what Heavenly Father wanted for us and for our family.  Everything had worked out perfectly when we started this process and we had faith that this was what we were supposed to do.  We continue to trust that the Lord is guiding us through this and continues to bless us.  We see His hands in our lives daily and we are grateful beyond words!

We see a little light at the end of the tunnel.  Its little but we see it!!!

House Update

The house is coming a long.  Slow (for me), but sure! 

The footings and foundation walls are UP!  SOOOO FUN to see it and walking around IN the "house" is awesome!  The next couple of weeks should be VERY exciting as the framing goes up.  Dave has been doing some time lapses (with help from our super cute neighbor boy), I am sure we will have a cool video of it going up super fast, one day :)

We are still on schedule to move in mid-end of February.  THAT IS SOOOOOO SOON!!!!!!!!!!!

Footings getting some cement :)

Foundation Forms going up....

Foundation WALLS!!!!!!!! 

The "square" seen at the far end of the picture is the (for now) 

storage room under the garage.  its HUGE! 

Right where the tractor thing is is where the downstairs family room will be. 

In this picture you can see part of the future view, my mom's window 

and part of the kids bedroom on the far side of the "house" :) 

"inside" the house!!!!!!!!!  I just walked down there TODAY and it feels like home.  

I realize that sounds crazy, but it does.  I wear my excitement on my sleeve, Dave does not.  

But MY excitment is enough for the both of us :)

In the above picture I am standing in the corner of "Mylo's Room".  Its pretty crazy to stand inside and feel a little bit of what the house will eventually look like and where things will be placed.  THIS IS  A DREAM COMING TRUE!!!!!!

House Update- woooohoooo!

The building process is not as fun as I had expected.  The waiting sucks, to put it mildly :) I have not patience.  It feels like we are on a roller coaster ride with lots of ups and downs and we JUST started!  When we started this way back in May, when we put the house of for sale and sold it, Dave and I told each other that we would not let the house stuff get between us and that we would not let it get us down.  We have been good about that.  Dave picks me up when I am down and that makes this process easier. 

After what seemed like eternity to get the permits, we finally got them, on Leah's b-day.  THEN, we were waiting on something else, i dont even remember what it was.  THEN, we had some changes with our contractor.  We loved him for day one and for some personal issues, which I will not be discussing, our builder could not do this anymore.  After some talk with him we feel blessed that his brother is taking over.  We love Justin and I am grateful he was part of our lives this year.  He is a great GREAT guy!  It was our pleasure to have done business with him.  His brother, Dave (side note: do not name your child Dave, EVER!  its over used!) is moving things along wonderfully and we feel blessed with the unwanted change, but can see God's hand through this time. 

SO, we have been digging for two weeks.  Really it has just been three days, in a two week period.  We had to wait on some survey on the lot.  Bountiful is not an easy city to build on, but it will be SO worth it in the end. 

This first photo is from the front east corner of the lot.  This is a beautiful sight to us!!! :) 

This second photo is from about halfway down on the south side of the lot.  You can see how deep it drops down.  VERY EXCITING to us!!!

The house will be a rambler style home.  The main floor will be where most of the living is done.  There will be a walk-out basement.  The yard is quite large, but it has a big incline before the flat part.  Dave has some big plans for the yard, for example, making sure the kids can snowboard down the hill in the winter.  I say, go for it!

We have yet to make decision on the paint color, but I think we have everything else pretty much figured out.  Dave is not picky and is pretty much leaving it up to me to pick things out.  We are still a ways away from having to finalize those decisions, but I am SO looking forward to it!!!

We pray for no major storms for this next week, after that I think we will be in the clear.  Our builder says we will be in no later than February 15, 2012.  I know that sounds "optimistic" to some, but now that the ball is rolling we should have no problems getting there.  Its starting that is the hard part. 

We cant believe this is really happening!!!! WOOOOHOOOOO!!!!!

FHE: Visiting the Lot

We feel extremely blessed to have the oportunity to build our dream house.  God has blessed us so much and we cannot deny his hand in all of this.

We FINALLY signed our lives away and we have a lot to build on and the process will be long, but fun! (right?) For FHE we had snow cones and then we went up to see our new purchase. We are excited to see the progress of this and I am sure we will have lots of FHE's like this.

This Shaved Ice place is YUMMY!!!!  (in the RiteAid parking lot)

 This picture of Dave is....um... not flattering, but it makes me laugh. 

 This is the view from the southeast corner of lot, looking toward the north.  As you can see the lot slops down pretty drastically.  We have met our neighbors to the east and the south.  Very nice people.  We look forward to really being their neighbors. 

This picture was taken the following morning.  The lighting was not good in the evening for a family shot.  Behind us we have a view of the Great Salt Lake and infront of us we can see the top third of the temple.  There are TONS of trees surrounding our lot and it really frames the view perfectly.  We will have some great sunsets out the upper deck. 

We are waiting on permits, still. We are hoping that this week the digging will begin.  We will be filming a lot of this process. 

On a side note:  When I was young and would come to visit my aunt and uncle, I always knew I would settle here in Utah.  Utah feels like home to me.  When we started looking for a home, seven years ago, Bountiful was my top choice.  Dave was ok with Bountiful, but would have rather staying in Salt Lake area.  Once we found our house on 1700South, we (Dave finally joined me) with what Bountiful had to offer.  Then our dreams were to move up the hill a little.  When we started our search for our perfect house, it became clear that building would be the best thing for us to do.  Here we are (almost) living our dreams!  We feel so blessed to have this blessing.  Everything has fallen into place.  My dreams, as a young girl, are coming true. I feel humbled by these events that have unfolded in our life. 

I can't say this enough... I CANNOT WAIT!  (i'm giddy with excitement!!!!)

Trevino Update

The above picture has nothing to do with this post... but its so cute!  

I HAD to include it. 

This post really deserves pictures and lots of details, but this will have to do for now :) 

So we have MOVED and CLOSED on our old house!!!!  

The original plan was to move and close by the 28th of June.  But once we realized that finding an appt close by and one that would be available in the tie frame we were hoping for AND one that would let us have four kids in a two bedroom, was simply proving to be harder than we had anticipated.  We found a GREAT apt. about one mile from the house and it was available right away.  It has TONS of storage, so we didn't need to rent a storage unit (bonus).  

I started packing on Monday (6/6).  Tomi (who was in town for Abuela's Surgery), helped me pack all day Tuesday.  Thank you Tomatitoooo!!!  Wednesday Maricela helped me pack ALL day.  Thank you Mariiiiii!!!!!!!  The plan was to move on that Saturday, but something came over Mari and I and with the help of Amy (who watched Leah and Mylo for THREE days straight!), Tomi and Abuela (who watched Otis) and Tiffany (who watched Mylo, Milli and Roslyn), we were able to move all the boxes, beds and bedding, kitchen stuff and more on Thursday!!!!!!!!!!  Dave and Heston helped us with the big stuff that evening.  And since Thursday (6/9) we have been in our comfy 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath temporary home.  

Friday of that same week, Dave, Marcos and Heston moved the big shelves, desks, appliances to Trevino's garage.  Saturday we spent the day cleaning and then we were FINISHED!!!!!  

Not sure what we would have done with out our family and friends.  We were able to finish in what seemed record time.  

I will be calling on these "movers" in a few months when the house is finally finished  :)  Hopefully they answer their phone ;)  

It really has been a crazy few weeks.  There has been much to do with the house, church responsibilities, abuela's surgery, Tomi's visit and the daily stuff that needs to get done.  

The kids have been doing pretty good. They really miss having a yard and friends close by.  They miss their toys, which are mostly put away.  BUT, we are trying to have fun @ Cherry Hill, Park Days, and the occasional sleepover.  

As for what is happening with our new home... We have yet to close on the lot.  The plans are finished and we are waiting on a few things.  But we are optimistic that we will start diggin' in two weeks.  (already a week behind schedule... boo!)

Everyone tells us to plan to move in LATE... thx!  Heard it once and really don't need to hear it again.  BUT, we would appreciate any prayers in our behalf that may be out there.  Heaven knows we could use some prayers so we might get through this chapter in our lives with very few gray hairs.  :)  I know I will loose half my hair through this process and it makes me sad... I just hope it grows back.  :D  

I hope to get the apt looking nice enough for some pics soon and I will post them... hopefully sooner rather than later.   

House UDPATE: SHOCKING!

So we put our house up for sale LAST friday.  Monday we had two showings.  Tuesday we had an offer for VERY close to our asking price.  We countered.  On Wednesday they countered back we accepted and now we are done with showing the house and praying everything will fall in to place.  We close on June 28, Otis b-day. 

We are excited and shocked!  We never thought it would be this fast.  We have said from the beginning (back in January, when we started thinking about doing this) that IF the Lord wanted us to move then things would work in our favor.  And it has.  We have put our trust in Him and we can see his hands in our lives SO clearly!!! 

We are still cautious about this as we know there are times that things fall through.  But, we continue to pray things work out. 

NOW... we need to find a place to rent for the next 6 months while we build our new home (after we find a lot :)).  PLEASE, if you know of any one that is in this business, please send them our way! 


YAY!!!!

For Reals- No Joke!

Our house is on the market.  AAAAHHHHH!!!! 


This was a long time coming.  SO, if you know of anyone that would like to buy a cute little house, please send them our way. 


AND for your browsing pleasure click HERE to check it out   :)

If you find it in your heart to say a little prayer in our behalf, we would appreciate it.


Where are we going?  Not sure yet.  We are hoping to stay in Bountiful, cause we love it here! 

New Doors!!!!

BEFORE....

AFTER....

This has been a long time coming.  I am SOOOO glad it is done!!!  I think it looks SO much better than the old door.  I just need to add some pretty seasonal decor and it will be prefect.  It was worth the wait. 

We had help with the paint and the installation, thanks to some great neighbors :) 

We also painted the side door.  I like it a lot better.  It feels nice to have that little bit of change to the house.  Now all I want is some shutters on the front window and some landscaping in the front and the back and I think that will do :)

Big Girl Bed... and more

Monday, Abuela, Mylo, Milli and I took off to IKEA to get Milli's new bedroom stuff. It was, of course very fun. We got her a big girl bed, mattress, mattress pad, sheets, pillows, duvet and a very bright duvet cover and some wall decorations. That night we put it all together and moved her old bed (crib) to what will soon be "The Boys Room". (I still need to move her name down a bit... its too high where it is right now). She has done SOOO well in her big girl bed and she loves it. She loves the bed time routine and naps have still been wonderful. She just loves her bed... yay for us!

Wednesday, Maricela and I spent the better part of our day organizing ALL of the girl clothes we have in this house. We took EVERYTHING out of Milli's very crowded closet and re-organized EVERYTHING. There is no way I would have accomplished so much without her. The kids watched themselves and were pretty good. It feels so SO good to be this organized. I can't wait to finish the boys room now... next week :)

Dave and his "helper" putting the new bed together. Poor Mylo has a huuuuge mess in his room right now as things are slowly getting to were they should be. Monday, I also got a dresser for the boys that fits PERFECTLY in their closet. Pictures will soon follow once that is all done.

Leah was not left out of the adventure of this past crazy Monday. She wanted new bedding (not really new just a different one). I did get her new curtains that will match whatever is on her bed. I think that she took this picture since there is a bear out of place and I would have made sure everything was in its place before taking this picture :)

It feels REALLY nice to get organized and feel like this house is still ok for now...

Hard work pays off

I hated my laundry room. It is the first thing you see when you go down the stairs. Dave and I have thought this space to be the biggest waste of space ever. Its a big area and all we do is walk through it and see how ugly it is. Well, not anymore!

I had a vision in mind and after a lot of hard work it totally paid off. It feels so wonderful and I can't wait to get to use it as I have in visioned. I started Tuesday night and finished Friday night. There are a lot of steps involved in this make over. First sanding the cupboards, then taping, then priming with a beautiful grey (that was a hard stage to be in), then the black, then the black again, then distressing to give it the look and feel I wanted to achieve, then the stain and finally the lacquer. THEN the never ending walls and more walls and loads and loads of corners and silicone caulk and cutting the new sewing/crafting desk and then paint some more and LOTS of touching up.

There was NO way that I could have done this on my own. I had lots and lots of help. Starting with Quinny, who loaned me the electric sander (a huge time saver and arm saver as well), Rosi, who convinced me to start while she was here, Manuelita who helped keep some order in the kitchen, then Amy who is very detailed and very good at painting the walls and herself, Sidney who brought lots of laughter and a lot of wall painting skills with her as well, my wonderful mother who watched the kids while we painted and finally my friend from way back Dane (Larsen) the carpenter, who totally hooked me up with my new sewing/crafting desk area all for a couple dozen cookies and some items compliments of Dave. I feel like I owe all my helpers a HUGE thank you and a back rub for all their work as well. I couldn't have done it with out them.

Here is the after. I just love it! All I need now is a new comfy chair and a cute crafty vinyl saying to go above my sewing desk. Any suggestions as to what the saying should say? I need something cute and fun up there. It turned out exactly like I wanted and pictured it. I would love to get my counter tops refinished and change the carpet, but for now I don't feel like I could ask for anything more. I just LOOOOOVE IT!