Surprise Texas Trip

My sister and I had planned since Dec. to go to Texas for my mom's birthday since neither of us and our families were able to make it for Christmas. Then once the time came for seriously planning and setting dates and organizing both of us going we decided to surprise my mom for her birthday. The only person we told was my dad, because we needed someone to pick up my sister and her son from the airport and we wanted to be apart of birthday celebrations he had planned. None of our other siblings knew we were coming until just a few days before we got there so that they didn't make any plans because my moms birthday fell just a couple of days before Easter and some might plan to go out of town to see other family. The surprise was perfect. I wasn't there to see my moms reaction to when my sister and her son got there but I can only imagine it was something similar to the reaction she got once she saw my little family. Which my sister in law has those pictures. As soon as we pulled into town we went straight to my brothers house where we bathed the kids and got them ready for the day (apparently Autumn gets car sick after awhile and threw up twice when we were only a few hours away). When my mom and my sisters got to my brothers house we had Autumn open the door, and as soon as she opened the door Autumn said, "Hi Grandma!" I heard my mom gasp and Drew and I stepped out from behind the wall and told her happy birthday. She kept saying, "What are you doing here?" and "How did you get here?" She was truely surprised and never saw it coming. She had all 5 of her kids and all her grandkids together for her birthday. It was a lot of fun to spend her birthday with everyone and to do all the Easter festivities too. It's only my sister and I in AZ and all the rest of our family is in TX. So it was a lot of fun for everyone! Here are some pictures to highlight our trip.

Lots of fun and playing with Grandpa.

Painting Easter eggs. My sister in law found these awesome egg painting sticks at walmart, they look like Q-Tips and you break the top off and all the paint goes down into the other end and kids are able to paint and draw on the egg with them. Perfect for little kids.

The bigger kids painted eggs the more traditional way. :)

Here are the kids baskets and Easter outfits. I wasn't awake when the kids got up and went through their baskets so there is no pictures of the sheer joy they had.

We also went to the Dallas Zoo- my nieces preschool class was going and we got there late, which worked out great because some of the parents and kids who paid didn't show up so we all got to go in free, even though there was 5 extra people. This will get its own post later.

Autumn and her new BFF. She would ask to play with her whenever we weren't with her. She really loves her cousins.

We enjoyed lots of playing and all of Grandma's toys. Especially the shopping cart which Weston would climb into and sit in until someone pushed him around.

We went out to eat a lot. Here is Autumn  and my dad and sister when we met my dad for lunch at Pappadeaux's.

I don't have my moms pictures or my sister in laws yet. Otherwise I could post a ton more about what we did. That can be a later post. We had so much fun. I never thought that so many people could pull off a surprise like this, there were so many times when people almost let it slip and I know it had to be hard. It was hard enough for me. :)

Mommy Lessons

There are many new things I learned today.

1- Crayons are to be put away and only pulled out when Autumn is being supervised.

2- Don't cry over a $10 bag.

3- Correct my thinking whenever the thought comes to my mind that, "Autumn always ruins things when I try and do something nice for her." (and sadly, I have said this aloud many times too)

4- Toothpaste doesn't only get crayons off of walls, it also gets it out of fabric.

5- Dawn liquid dish detergent truely is the greatest at getting out grease.

6- Kids will be kids and I can't expect things to stay nice while mine are still young.

With that said, this is what happened.

I have constantly switched out "Sunday Bags" trying to find one that fits all my stuff in it and makes things easy to access. For me, the point in a "Sunday Bag" is to save me time before church. So instead of scrambling to put books, toys, snacks, stickers, and coloring books together in a bag ten minutes before we need to walk out the door I have a designated bag that always keep the same stuff in it. So on Sun. morning all I have to do is put snacks in it, and the kids like what's in the bag because it's not stuff they see everyday, they only get to play with it once a week. So I bought a new one, I usually wouldn't spend $10 a bag thats just going to get crumbs in the bottom of it and sit on the church floor but when I saw it I knew how much Autumn would love it, and I loved the simpleness to it. Many other bags I have rotated through had big lettering or bright colors. Once I saw this bag I realized how distracting those other bags can be. So I got it in the mail yesterday and after Autumns nap I showed it to her and she loved it and threw the straps over her shoulders and carried it around. When she went to bed last night I set it next to our other sunday bag to switch everything over. (This bag is similar in texture and size to a reusable grocery bag, which I am sure is what others would use it for. This bag is made with organic cotton and recycled stuff which helped convince my purchase.)

This morning I am playing with Weston in the den (because since getting back from vacation he wants to be in my lap at all time...he really missed me) and I left Autumn in the living room watching PBS cartoons. She is usually safe to leave alone in a room and I thought how nice it was that she was being so quiet and not demanding my attention like Weston was. That should have been a BIG red flag. I come out to the kitchen and she is saying over and over again, "Thank you mom. Thank you mom." And I see the bag and a lonely blue crayon sitting on it. Surprisingly I didn't get mad at her. I instantly took a pic on my phone and sent it in a text to a couple of trusted, experienced mommy friends asking how to get crayon out of cloth. It wasn't until I called my mom asking for her suggestions that I cried about it. It was brand new! It hadn't even been in my possession for 24 hours and said, "Whenever I do something nice for Autumn she ruins it."

All of the advice was good, but I decided to follow my moms advice and some advice off an email my friend sent me. I figured using 2 known solutions could be better than one. And viola! It worked and my bag looks brand new again.

Here is the bag:

Here is Autumn's wonderful artwork:

Here is toothpaste that was rubbed in (paste not gel- and white paste) and sat for 20 minutes. Then dish detergent was rubbed in w/a hot wet sponge and sat for 10 minutes:

Here it is after rinsing out the toothpaste and detergent:

You may still see a little blue tint, this pic was taken after the first rinse when I was shocked how it all came out. I scrubbed it under hot water for another minute and now it looks like it did when I got it yesterday.

Weston's Birthday Trip To Sedona

On Westons birthday we took a day trip up to Sedona, since his birthday fell on a Wed. we wanted something to do during the middle of week since his party wasn't until Fri. My mom was in town and she had never been up to Sedona and Drew and I couldn't wait to take her up there. It's so pretty.

Here's Weston and my mom:

Here is Drew and his "Little Buddy". Weston slept the whole time we had our picnic and woke up right before we were planning on heading up the canyon.

Autumn taking a break from running around:

Autumn played in this tree for about an hour.

We drove through this awesome canyon towards Flagstaff to come home and they still had plenty of snow on the ground. (This was on Jan. 13th, before the "Winter Blast" hit AZ) So we stopped. I was very curious as to how Autumn would like it, and she loved it. She cried for the snow the whole way home.

Weston didn't care for it much. (Don't worry about the lack of socks. He was only on the snow for about a half second, then he was in someones arms wrapped up.)

It was a great trip and a perfect way to celebrate Weston's birthday a couple of days before his party.

Drew's Student Loans

We recently found out the status of Drew's student loans. We have been anticipating this letter for 2 years, to know if we were forgiven of all his loan, part of it, or if we still owed all. Thankfully- all the state attorney generals came together and fought for the students, not just those with legal representation but ALL students who were enrolled at Silver State Helicopters at the time of the bankruptcy. We were grateful to find out that we were forgiven 75% of our loan and our interest rate has been greatly reduced. What a huge relief off our shoulders. There were conditions, like if you recieved 1 certification you were forgiven 60%, 2 certifications- 50% and so on...at the time Drew was trying to get his private pilot license we couldn't understand why he failed it (twice) and just 2 days after failing it (the second time) his school closed their doors. At the time we felt like we had gotten nothing out of his time and money spent at this school. (At least with a private license we figured he'd have something to show for all his work.) What a miracle to have had Drew not pass those, because now we owe less on his loans.

While the bankruptcy case was still going on, and the courts were undecided on a final decision, we decided to buy a house, taking our chances with what we would qualify for. (This is also the time I decided to start couponing, so we could cut back on all of our expenses.) We qualified for much more than we paid for our house but we knew in case we got hit with Drews loan, and owing all of it back we would need our payments to be at, or less than our rent was just to survive. We decided to look at homes outside of the city, in a much smaller city (considered rural) where we could get a bigger house for less money than the area where we were previously living. What a great blessing that has been as well. I truly feel like someone above is watching out for us, and because we bought a home (where our mortgage payments are less than our rent was) to prepare for the worst, we were given the best news. Ok- the best news would've been to be completely forgiven of his loan (like the students who took out loans through Citibank, but they only represented 100 students, Student Loan Express represented 1,000's) but we are completely satisfied with the end results.

I wanted everyone to know about this because people still ask us questions about it, and while you may still see it as not fair Drew did get about $30,000 worth of education (even though his loan was for $70,000) and we owe less than that now. So we are counting our blessings!

Christmas Eve

Christmas was pretty hectic this year. Especially considering we moved 3 days before Christmas...but luckily all worked out and everything was unpacked and put away for the big guy in red showed up. Can you imagine how much noise he would've made having to unpack his big red bag and tip toe around boxes?

On Christmas Eve we decided to do something different. In my family we always opened one present on Christmas Eve, and on Drews side they open pajamas every Christmas Eve...so we thought we should break the mold and do our own thing. So we opened ALL the presents on Christmas Eve. I LOVED it! Then there was extra space for Santa to leave his gifts and Christmas morning we could just open Santa presents. I really enjoyed our new "tradition."

I didn't put up and ornaments on my tree this year. Good thing it's prelit otherwise it would have no lights either. The big red bow is from the bow that was on our house when we got the keys to it. The BEST Christmas present ever!

Autumn was a lot of fun this year. She really didn't care what was under the wrapping paper. She just wanted to open it. She was a big help with unwrapping all the presents and getting them all out from under the tree.

Weston was more enthralled with the wrapping paper and bows. Luckily he has such a helpful big sister who helped him unwrap his gifts when he was going a little to slow for her liking!

The kids were spoiled by both sets of grandparents. They got lots of toys, games, and clothes. They made out pretty good. My favorite gifts...Cricut cartridges. I got many great gifts, none of which I got a picture of...just these. :)

After opening all the presents we had hot chocolate and watched A Charlie Brown Christmas. It was so nice spending Christmas Eve with just the 4 of us. I am loving having a family of my own that I can start new traditions with. And surprisingly, it was easier being away from my family than I expected. Obviously we missed them, and wished we could be together but it was really nice having it just be the 4 of us. My own little family, making our own traditions and memories.

Just a Little Lovin!

We had some friends come into town earlier this week. It was a lot of fun. I think the funnest part (aside from the fact that I have known Sara almost 10 years and we are still great friends, despite the fact she lives in WY, so it's always great to see her and her family) is watching our kids play together. Her son is 7 months younger than Autumn and her daughter is 1 month younger than Weston. The four of them were instant friends. Just see how Autumn and her new "friend" were acting the day they were leaving.

Yep! Hugging and kissing! They needed a little persuasion the first time, then after that they were very comfortable with eachother.

Here's all four of them playing by the door.

It was a lot of fun! A little cramped at times, but so much fun.Thanks for coming to visit S & S!

Latest Hardy Update

We have been SO busy. My living room and Autumn's room and her closet is full of boxes, and it's all just crazy timing. We close on our house Nov. 25th, yes, the day before Thanksgiving, but we aren't going to move until the 28th. Plus I was at Target everyday last week taking advantage of deals I post on my other blog, check it out HERE. I just wanted to share some pictures of the house, which is why I have been so busy and failing to blog. (These are pics from the MLS listing...I haven't taken any yet...)

The front:The Backyard: (this is a big yard for AZ)Living Area (all of the house is tile except for bedrooms and den)Kitchen: (can't wait to update kitchen appliances and stain the cabinets!)Guest Bathroom:

Over 1700 sq ft of space! 4 bedrooms plus a den! It's been a long time coming, and something we have wanted for a long time. The good thing about closing around Thanksgiving is the Black Friday sales which I want to buy new appliances and home decor (hopefully at a great price). Very exciting. I am thrilled to have a guest room (no one has to share with Autumn anymore) and the kids will have a play room, their rooms can stay cleaner and so can my living room! Plus an actual laundry room, a pantry (the things you give up when renting...), and a yard. It's 2 blocks from the elementary school, so it's far enough that I miss the traffic, but close enough that in a couple of years I can walk Autumn to school.

Did anyone notice I deleted the last post when we announced we were buying a house? We backed out of that one! :) Thankfully, we waited! The house we are buying now is the same price and way bigger! The other was 1200 sq ft and we didn't know how we would fit!

Anyways! Here's hoping the next week goes quick and we can move in and be settled in our own place. I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving!