So much to Blog about

I'm a little overwhelmed with all that has gone on since I last blogged. I don't even know where to begin but I would like to be caught up. The day before my birthday we signed the papers for our new house. It was a very exciting time for us but also very stressful. I hate moving and packing :). We were able to start moving in on my birthday. I brought along help (my mom and sister Ali, my in-laws and Josh's bro Dan and fam). Thankfully we had them come cause I would not have been able to get the house cleaned for a very long time. Since it was my birthday, and my sister was there with her kids and the weather wasn't going to be warm for too much longer, we took an afternoon break and went swimming. Did I mention we have a pool now? So. Much. Fun!! My mom and sis stayed for a few more days after the move and helped me paint paint paint. The house was built when the color red was popular on walls and I kid you not there were seven rooms with red walls! Now there are NO red walls and I painted all of them very neutral. It looks 100% better!! He had a couple walls with murals painted on them so I got on those quick as well and turned one into a huge chalkboard wall (it happened to be in the playroom). I also had the carpets professionally cleaned and the locks changed. It is definitely feeling like our home more and more. The kids are enjoying their new school. We enjoyed an eventful couple months with all four kids playing soccer. It's pretty nice to have our Saturdays back now. But I must say our kids are pretty athletic ;). I'm not bias or anything. We started our new ward a couple Sundays ago. We also have a family in our ward that was in our ward 5 years ago in Omaha, NE. Small world!! After over 3 years we finally had our family pics taken. They are super cute and my sweet friend Malia was able to take them for us.

See? Told You they were cute. We have been trying to do little projects around the house and I told Josh I was going to hire someone to come clean the windows. He didn't care much for paying someone and said he would do it. So he spent 4-5 hours the other day cleaning windows. They look almost professional so I told him that my next thing I wanted to do was to pay someone to come clean the blinds... We will see if he will do that his next day off :). On our deck there were these huge grease spots that I wanted to cover up with a rug but the other day I googled how to get them off and who woulda thought that DAWN dish soap would do the trick?! Our deck looks fantastic now- you would never know that there was any marks!! And we also have a sparkly clean deck with all the soap that was used. So I went on to my next home improvement project: getting hard water stains off of windows. (I don't think this guy EVER cleaned his windows) and the sprinklers made it so you couldn't see out the basement windows on one side of the house. Did you know if you dump lemon juice onto the window it breaks up the hard water? After I did that I put a paste of baking soda and vinegar on top and then sprayed it with a vinegar water concoction and wiped it up. They look amazing and even Josh was stunned at how awesome they look. I love the internet!! I'm a little bummed that on all of the projects I've been working on I never took a before and after photo so you are going to have to take my word for it. I'm thinking I want to try and get the oil stains out of the garage next :). Good thing winter is coming up cause I love to hibernate and I have plenty of things to keep me busy!