Snowbird

We moved into our new house on a Friday. on Saturday we left to go up to Snowbird Ski and Summer Resort for the week. My parents have a time-share up there that they bought when my mom was pregnant with me. So I've grown up always loving our annual Snowbird trip. However, as we've gotten older and our families have grown, my parents arrange it so we can go up every three years, but have three units for the 21 of us to live in. We have a gorgeous view of the mountains from our room.
It was so fun to spend time as a family. The kids loved having a sleep-over every night in the family room.
There's a loft up above with more beds, and the view of the kids below.
The kids loved the kids pool.

Cedric loved the kiddie pool and the water was so warm.
Sunday we went to a little branch they hold at the Snowbird Center for a short little Sacrament Meeting.
Monday was the 4th of July and Tom's birthday. He went golfing that morning, and the rest of us went to the Snowbird center for lunch and ice cream.
There was so much snow that Snowbird was opened to skiers even on the 4th! It was packed with summer snow skiers. That night I made red-white & blue shortcake for Tom's birthday cake.

We also each took a night to make dinner for the group, so we had plenty of food and yummy meals.
Another fun thing about Snowbird is it gives us time to just play games as a family or with cousins.
The adults would meet every night in our room after the kids were put to bed for games and treats. One of the traditional games we play at Snowbird is the candy bar game.
It was so funny to play with the little kids. Everyone was happy to get a couple candy bars to eat for dessert.
Tuesday just the five of us went for a little hike. We saw a baby moose..
(There was a mom and baby moose that just lived off the path close to the Snowbird Center It was amazing they were so close. My nephew, Marcus was even charged by the mom moose, but luckily there was enough people around that she never got close enough to hurt him.) The kids thought it was fun to play in the snow in July.
So did Tom.
There was a nice look-out at the end of the trail with a pretty view of the valley.
Some other people were at the look-out and were all dressed as pirates. They were nice enough to give the boys some of their pirate hats.
On Wednesday we drove down to the valley and went on a tour of Hale Center Theater. I left the boys at Tom's mom's house so I didn't have to worry about them. The rest of the kids got to practice being actors and actresses. It was a neat tour.
On Thursday We bought passes to do the Snowbird Summer activities. We did the Alpine slide.
Here's Cedric going up on the ski lift.
There was a zip line rider for the adults.
The kids had fun on the bungee trampoline.


The also played in the bounce house and tried rock climbing. Cedric found some baby potguts.
A storm was coming, so they had to temporarily close the activities, so we went back to the rooms for naps and games. After the sun came out again and we went up the Tram to the top of Hidden Peak.
It was cold up there and a lot of snow. We did the Alpine slide, rope maze, and the bungee tramp a few more times before the next storm blew in.
On Friday we did a family olympics. There is a kids competition and an adult competition. Here are the kids getting ready to participate (Cedric's on the floor).
They did a basketball toss.
A straw wrapper blowing contest.
A pillowcase race.
And a marshmallow eating contest "chubby bunny".
Lily took first place in the pillowcase race and tied for third place overall. Here are the winners.
The adults (and our 15 year old nephew, Tyler) did a real basketball shooting contest, a shuffle board contest, and a ping-pong tournament. I lost all three, but Tom came in first place overall (sorry, I didn't get any pictures of the adults)!
All of the guys went the whole week without shaving.
Cedric got to know his cousins better. He and Grace had fun together.
But Cedric's favorite person the whole week was his cousin Tyler.
It was a perfect week! Jeff even said it was funner than Disneyland! We packed up and headed home Saturday to our new house that was full of unopened boxes. It was hard to come home to so much work, but it was nice to have a little vacation. Thanks Mom and Dad!

Baby Avocado

So my niece nick-named the baby, Baby Avocado because that's about the size it was at Snowbird and the name stuck (for now). We had our ultrasound today (I'm now 18 weeks along). The baby seems healthy all over from what the ultrasound tech could tell. And we are having a...


Girl!!!
I am so surprised, I thought it would be a boy. Boys are in the majority on both sides, all the Chinese gender charts said boy, and I just thought I'm not that lucky to have two of each. However, I was wrong! We are all so excited. We called the kids to tell them (we headed straight down to see the final Harry Potter movie, so we had to call the kids) and Lily said "I'm so excited I might cry". Jeff was a good sport too. Despite wanting a boy he said "The one good thing with a girl is I can hold her like Sammy's baby" (our friend's also have a little girl). And Jeff will do well at that, he loves holding little babies. Cedric seems to know it's a girl, but I don't think he understands exactly what that means.
She was completely folded in half! See her knees touching her nose?
It reminds me of how Lily was when she was born. She was breech and came out bum first and completely folded in half. Hopefully Baby Avocado stretches out a bit in the next four months so we don't have another breech baby.
We are so excited to add another princess to the family!

Moving

After living in our first home located in Taylorsville for six years Tom and I decided it was time to get into a home where we could raise our family without feeling too squished. Rates were good and we thought, if we didn't move now, we might never move. So we took action.
Our Taylorsville home went on the market and within one day a full-price offer was made. Things continued to go smoothly and we had no problems with the buyer. In fact, he was even kind enough to let us rent back from him until we bought our new house. We found a home we liked in West Jordan and made an offer. There was another offer made on the same house, so we made sure ours was a good one. Then we had to wait through the long Memorial Day weekend before we heard back from the bank to see if they accepted our offer or not. Luckily they did and things continued to go along smoothly with the buying process of our new home. The home was a bank owned, but they had fixed it up with new paint and carpet. It was pretty much move-in-ready, which I really liked. And I feel like we got a great deal. We were so lucky to have my sister, Aimee as our mortgage loan officer and my cousin-in-law, Bryan as our realtor, whom both took very good care of us.
Here is our old home...

Here is our new home...

So after two months from when we listed our old home, we finally packed everything up and moved into our new home.
We moved on a Friday and were fortunate enough to have lots of friends, family and neighbors help. (Here's the old, small kitchen)
The next day we took off for a week up to Snowbird with my family (that blog yet to come). After the stress of moving it was nice to have a relaxing vacation. However, it was hard to come home to a mess of boxes. (Our new, nice kitchen, but a mess of boxes)
We came home to find several things that needed to be fixed or replaced (Tom did an awesome job getting right to work on those things), living out of boxes and having to go to the garage for our fridge and freezer items (we hadn't bought our new fridge yet) was not easy, and it was hard on the kids. (Here they are at the old, empty house for one more good-bye)
On Sunday we went to our new ward for the first time to find out that families with young children were in the minority. However, things are moving along nicely and I'm sure in a couple weeks when things settle down we'll really be happy. Change is always hard, but I still feel like we made the right decision. There's been many tender mercy's along the way and I know there was a reason we were supposed to move. There are many many things I love about the new house: A lot more space, a lot of cupboards and closets, better cooling being a rambler, the kids each have their own room and hence go to bed 100X better, newer accessories, more space for kids to run around and play, our own bathroom, etc.
Now our next project is expanding the preschool. I'm sure that will be another post for another day.