Emily "Graduates" From Preschool

Emily has been attending preschool the the SUU preschool. Her teacher has been Miss Emily (of course, she thought that was pretty cool). She has had a great year and is very prepared for kindergarten. She finished her year at the end of April. She recieved an award for the most "positive attitude". Some of the other awards given out were "most rambunctous" and "most likely to come to school dressed like "Indiana Jones", so positive attitude may sound a little bland or generic, but could be much worse. At the end of the graduation, all 50 preschoolers sang a song together (well, kind of), and you couldn't help but notice Emily, front and center and a solid three inches taller then the next tallest child. I sure hope she likes volleyball...

Progress on the house...

We are one month in to our building process and look how far we have come! The first week, the basement was excavated, week two, the foundation was poured (see bottom picture), week three, the basement was framed and the floor trusses were laid, week four, the main level is framed the the roof trusses go up on Monday! We can now walk through the house and get a feel for the size and layout of things. I love the windows, I feel good about the room sizes, and the kids are starting to get excited now that they can stand in their own rooms, closets and bathrooms. As stressful as this process is, I am enjoying it. It is fun to see something you have drawn and created come to life.

Santa delivers... a few months late

Santa brought the kids a certificate for a new trampoline at Christmas. We thought we would be in our new house, but decided it was worth it to set it up since we are still going to be here for the summer. Jeff spent a solid ten hours putting the thing together, (you are so handy, honey!), but it has already been worth his time (according to me!). The kids have been out there for hours every day - rain or shine. Brock jumps in circles yelling "This is fun!" Britton and Emily have a blast together, and I think Jeff has even enjoyed it. Unfortunately I am a few kegal muscles short of being able to jump without peeing my pants. Darn the post-childbirth bladder!

HOLY HOLE!

The process has bugun! We have a hole! I was so excited to go see some progress being made on our house after all the months of preparation. You can see some of the view we will have from our back windows. It is just beautiful! The plan for this next week is to do the underground plumbing and start pouring the foundation.

We're movin' on up!

Okay, here is the next chapter in the Gardner housing saga, and my excuse for infrequent blogging these last few months. Despite my apprehensions toward building a house (see former posts), we have decided to take the plunge. After things went sour with our short-sale, we cried a little, moped a little, then got up, brushed ourselves off, and started the house hunt once again. My list of must-haves is not long, (a neighborhood with kids, a three car garage, an open kitchen/great room area, a mud room, and room for a grand piano), but there wasn't anything out there to match our list, so we are building. The closer we get the more excited I am. It is fun to be able to put together a home I really love. It may not be my dream home if money were not an issue, but it is my dream home for real life and real living. I am so excited to see it through from start to finish and look forward to being "settled" for the first time since I left home a mere fifteen years ago. I will post pictures of the progress as it occurs! Wish us good luck!

EMILY!!

Sweet Emily! Emily just celebrated her fifth birthday. I am so excited to be able to tell people that she is five. People would just roll their eyes and mutter a "ya, right" when I would tell them she was four. You just don't run across too many 4 foot tall four year olds. Especially with a vocabulary like Emily's. These are just a few moments from the week before her birthday that I actually wrote down (Yeah, me!):

While reading a valentine from a class mate aloud she said: "To: Emily From: Elsa - hey! that's alliteration!"

"This ring pop has an exquisite taste!"

(Jeff had just told Emily to clean up the living room and they could play a game she had just invented called Karate Ping Pong afterward. Emily went to clean, then came back and said:

"Dad, God just told me that we are supposed to play games THEN pick up." Jeff said: "No, he didn't." Emily answered, "Yes, he did, you just can't hear Him because he talks to my mind."

and finally - "If I were cheese, I would eat myself."

How can you not be entertained with a child like this in the house. I love you, Emily!

Addendum to the previous post...

Just a little FYI, the home shown in the previous post does not belong to us and will not be the home we raise our family in for the next thirty years. We learned a lot about addendums this past week. We learned that if your realtor does not hand one in on time and the other realtor doesn't like your realtor and wants to "teach him a lesson", he will promptly submit another offer, even if it happens to be 7:30 on New Years Eve, and you will wake up to the new year, thinking you are moving in a few days, but wrong, oh so wrong. Oh well, renting isn't such a bad idea in this economy, right?...