In contrast to last week, not many updates or pictures to share this week, which honestly feels good. We've been going a million miles a minute for about a month, so I am embracing the hope of a slower week ahead.
Most of last week was spent preparing for a Stake Primary Activity on the Seattle temple grounds. Jared and I were asked to teach a lesson on the priesthood. We can't figure out why it felt like such an enormous, stressful undertaking, but it did. I learned a lot and the activity went really well in the end. (Other than being a little too long for both the kids and for us. Next time I'm going to encourage the presidency to try and condense their activity from 3 1/2 hours down to 2 hours if possible. I'm sure the thinking was that they wanted to make the activity robust enough to justify the long drive to Seattle, but everyone was pretty antsy by the end.)
Really I don't have much else to report from our week. It has been rainy the past few days, with hints of fall touching the trees. On Friday me and the kids did "Christmas in the Summer." We did this one day last summer as well so I think it qualifies as a tradition. I had to stay up very late the night before to prepare my lesson and I knew it would be rainy all day, so I drew upon the summer Christmas magic. This is a day that I do exactly zero preparation for, and it feels novel and exciting to the kids, and it involves watching a full-length Christmas movie. So it is an excellent trick for a survival day. Things we did: Eat cold cereal for breakfast. Wear our Christmas pajamas all day. Cut paper snowflakes. Drink hot chocolate with marshmallows. Listen to Christmas music. Watch "The Star." Play with our Little People Nativity we normally only pull out in December. Have a Christmas Bath by our coziest Christmas candle light. Read a Christmas book. I didn't take any pictures because again, I was having a survival day, but it was lots of fun for all of us on a day that otherwise would likely have been miserable.
I wanted to make a note that Jack has reached an age where he will go off and just start playing toys in his playroom without being prompted once or twice daily, or ask if he can go ride his bike in the neighborhood and I don't have to go supervise. Last summer neither of these things were happening yet, so I wanted to make a note that age 6 seems to be a magic age for a little more independence! We're also approaching an age with Alice where she can stay occupied with half of a tv show with Jack while I work on dinner. This is huge news for me. Cooking was becoming a real passion of mine, but got put on pause when Alice was born because of her food restrictions (and mine while I was breastfeeding), and then because she was in that really tricky wiggly, needy stage. I am seeing a light at the end of that tunnel though! Hoping that after we move and get settled into our next home I can lean into the love of cooking again. Although it's been a wild summer in terms of job hunting and traveling and now house hunting, the at-home days have been much smoother than they were last summer. Fewer explosive tantrums from Jack. More of the kids playing together. We've had some lovely times. (Also some miserable times, for *BaLaNcE*)
Oh! I can't sign off without acknowledging the enormous milestone that is my Dad retiring this last week! Congratulations on a wonderful whirlwind of a career and now a wonderful retirement ahead! We are so excited first to have my parents come visit next week and party like there's no lingering/looming work, and then move to Utah and give ourselves and our children the gift of lots of Grompa and Gromma time. Love you Dad! Proud of you!
What a week! I feel like I've lived 7 lifetimes in 7 days. The main thing on our minds right now is housing for when we move to Utah. Because we're hoping to be done moving for a looong time and raise our kids in whatever home we end up in next, the stakes are higher than any of our previous house hunts. We have moved so many times in the last decade. We feel very done with moving.
We started out last weekend with two top forerunners in mind for a future home. Both new builds, both on the west side of the freeway. We were genuinely excited about both of them, and when we got the green light after prequalifying for financing, we knew I would need to fly down quickly to see both homes/locations in person to make a decision (one of the builders was offering to finish our basement for free if we signed by the end of the week). We really thought I would fly down, decide which location I liked better, and then sign a contract with that option. What actually ended up happening was I flew down, visited both locations, felt decently good about both of them, then during the course of the day observed and gathered more information that left me feeling less than good about both of them. Bad enough that I knew for sure one of the options was off the list, and maybe the other one too.
The first neighborhood had a spectacular view, but it also had non-family-friendly juju and I ran into someone building with them who told me, "RUN AWAY." The second neighborhood is lovely and we feel great about the builder, but we thought it was right next to a pretty river trail and it turns out it isn't (we'd be on the wrong side of the river). The closest trail is actually a 15-20 minute drive, and I'm a big daily-trail-walk girl so we decided to keep looking, and if we couldn't find anything closer to trails on the east side of the freeway in our price range, we'll proceed with the neighborhood by the river. So that's where we're at! There's a new option on the table that feels extremely promising, but we will have to wait a few more weeks for the information we need to make a final decision. It's a "hurry up and wait" situation for now. Regardless of what ends up happening, next month we'll start looking for a rental to move into for a few months while we wait for said future home to be built.
In the meantime, lots of pictures to share from the past weeks! Too tired to narrow them down, so admittedly this is going to be an excessive number of pictures.
We are getting closer on finding a house to move to in Utah (we got pre-approved for our financing over the weekend), but still nothing really exciting to share. So this feels like a great time to post the pictures from when Jared and I stayed at the Post Hotel in Leavenworth to celebrate our 10/11 year anniversary. (Technically it was our 11 year anniversary, but we went fancier on the hotel than we normally would because we didn't do anything for our big 10 year anniversary.)
