New House

It has been a while since I posted since we have been dealing with getting into our new house.  Monday is moving day and we are really excited.  Here is the pictures of the house.

Front of the house

Back of the House

My mother has been out helping us to clean A LOT and pack for the move.  We have some ward members coming to help us move on Monday.  While we owned a condo in Utah, this is an older home so it has a number of projects that need to get done.  There were only a couple that needed to get done right away.  The upstairs dining room/living room had a spot on the hardwood floor that looked terrible.  We had a ward member come and refinish that part of the floor.  It looks awesome now.  We had another ward member come do some electrical work.  We got the house sprayed for pests, as well.  The house hasn't been occupied for a couple of years and is an estate home.  The two daughters selling the property caused a few stresses but that is over now.  

I have also had to brush up on all the skills my dad taught me as a kid in doing home maintenance.  I painted a couple of closets and a wall.  I did something new, as well.  I replaced the kitchen faucet.  The old one wasn't moving back and forth and started leaking after I tried to fix it.  Even after disassembling the faucet, it was still tough to turn.  So I replaced it.  The new faucet looks awesome, and the house is slowly becoming ours. :)

The house also has a shed out back.  It was used by the previous owner as a work area.  He had a bunch of tools and wood equipment.  A radial arm saw was left as well as some yard tools and shop vac.  But the shed was also very dirty.  There was tons of saw dust.  My mother and I have cleaned it out a lot.  It isn't perfect, but it is much better than it was.  Here is a picture of the shed before it got cleaned up.

Shed

Thanks for all the help from all those who have helped with this process.  A big preemptive thanks to all those who are coming to help move us on Monday. Give us a month and we will be ready to entertain some house guests!!

Lilly's Baptism, Sarah's Foot, Nathan's Palm and the house

I need to set aside an evening a week and update the blog.  I have been saying that I will update it on Sunday's but they are always busy with one thing or another.  I have a few things to catch up on, so this might be a long post.

Lilly had her baptism the week after her birthday.  She was able to have both sets of grandparents come visit for it as well as two of her aunts (Tonya and Shannon).  It made for a fun weekend.  It also helped to show how small our current house can be.  My parents and sisters stayed in a local hotel, otherwise we would have been sleeping on top of each other.  The Baptism itself was wonderful.  I was able to baptize Lilly and her grandpa Butch confirmed her.  She had grandma Pheobe and grandpa Rob speak as part of the program.

Lilly and Dad

Lilly ready to be baptized

The day before the baptism was the General Women's meeting.  Grandpa Rob, Grandpa Butch, Sarah, Gus and I decided to go out for dinner during this.  We ended up at Red Robin.  It was fun to be with just my father, father-in-law and two of my kids.

Grandpa Butch

Grandpa Rob and Gus

Sarah

A week after Lilly's Baptism was General Conference.  The kids were good and we enjoyed listening to the words of the prophets.  We decide to grill hamburgers after the final session of Conference.  I have a metal spatula that I was using to pry the frozen patties apart with.  I ended up getting the hamburger patties apart, but I also sliced my palm with the spatula in the process.  It went through the skin and I had to get three stitches in the ER.  

The following day Sarah and the other kids were running away from a bee in the front yard, and she ended up with a broken foot.  It has been difficult to make sure that she is not walking on the broken foot and that she is healing fine.  She has a wheelchair at school and we got one for home as well.  But at home it is hard to keep her in it.  She has been crawling around the house when she remembers that she isn't supposed to walk on it.

The last update I wanted to put was that we found this week that our landlord is not renewing the lease that we have.  While we had planned on finding a new place this summer, it accelerated our plans.  We have been looking at a number of houses to buy.  If we don't find one quick, we will have to just rent for a little while.

Lillian's Birthday - The big 8

Lilly turned 8 last Thursday.  She is super excited to be baptized on Sunday.  Her baptism is 5pm at our church building.  We are all excited to see the steps that she is making in her life.  My parents and Tonya and Shannon are in town and Jess's parents arrive tomorrow.

We celebrated as a family on Sunday.  She got a few presents and we had cake, pictured below.  I am starting to feel old with her getting older.  I am sure it is worse for my parents watching their grand children grow and hit the big milestones.

Lilly's Birthday Cake.  It is a Penguin face

Large update, Backfilling the last few months

I am really behind on posting to the blog.  There have been a number of times that I have wanted to posted but thought that there was too much to write about and I didn't have time to post anything.  Hopefully, I will cover the highlights over the last few months without missing too much.

We stayed in Seattle for Christmas.  It was nice to have just our family.  We tried a new Christmas dinner tradition of having crab.  It was fun and the kids loved it.  We will have to see if the tradition sticks.

The kids and Jess were sick in December and January.  I had to take Jess to the ER in December because of it.  The doctor thought it might have been pneumonia, but it ended up being bronchitis exacerbated by some asthma.  It took her a few weeks to get over it, but has been fine since.  She has also been going to a doctor about her stomach and reflux issues.  She is trying a hefty dose of Protonix, which is seeming to help most of the time. She also found out that she has anemia, and has been taking iron supplements and enjoying some good steaks to help with that.

I flew to Utah the end of January to attend a co-worker's wedding.  It was a nice wedding and it was great to see them take that step in their family.  A couple of our co-workers from Germany were in town and came down to the wedding as well.  One, Frank Becker, stayed an extra day and went skiing with me to Deer Valley.  It was fun to have some time on the slopes.

We had a snow day on a Sunday early in February.  We took the time as a family to have some fun together.  It doesn't snow much in Seattle and it was nice to be able to have some fun with the snow as a family.  All the kids loved to throw snowballs and build some snow men.

Sarah and her snowman

Lilly with Snowballs 

Jess and Gus

Dad and Gus

Sarah fixing gloves

Lilly and Gus

Lilly

Lilly and I have been skiing a few times.  Sarah has come once.  We need to just take a ski vacation as a family and put all the kids in lessons for a few days.  They are at different enough levels that it is hard to teach them together.

I am currently in Dresden on a work trip.  I took Friday off and went with Frank Becker and son as well as Frank Arnold to Austria to ski in the Alps.  It was really fun.  We stopped outside of Munich on Thursday evening.  We headed to the Tux valley, where we skied a glacier on Friday.  The slopes were different from where I normally ski but it was still lots of fun.  We skied another resort on Saturday lower in the valley, so we could leave to head bak to Dresden early in the day.  The rentals I got were really good for carving, so I had lots of fun on the snow.  I can say that I have been in Austria, skied in the Alps and seen /skied on a glacier.

Lilly will be turning eight years old on the 20th of March, and she is getting excited to be baptized!
Jess and I can hardly believe we will have an eight year old in the house soon, (makes us feel OLD). Grandmas and Grandpas will be coming to Seattle to help us celebrate, we can hardly wait!!

Countryside of the Tux valley

Hintertux Glacier resort

Hintertux Glacier resort

Me in the Gondola going up Hintertux

Hintertux Glacier resort 

View from Spieljoch resort

View from Spieljoch resort

Thanksgiving and two major milestones.

Thanksgiving was this week.  I took the week off of work as well.  It was nice to enjoy some time at home with the family.  We had the Barlow's over for Thanksgiving as has been tradition the last few years.  They brought Salmon, some Thai curry, bart potatoes, and Asian Broccoli.  We provided the traditional Thanksgiving fare.  It was a great meal and we loved having the company.

We are starting to transition Gus into a toddler bed from his crib.  He is taking his sweet time as the crib is still in the room, and he doesn't quite get that he has to stay in bed to go to sleep.  He has successfully taken a single nap in his bed but it did take a while for him to go to sleep.

Gus sleeping in his bed

We hit two major milestones with Sarah this week.  First on Monday, I took Sarah to the hospital and she had a surgery to get her port out.  She was scheduled for an early morning slot but didn't get into the O.R. until 3:30pm or so.  She was fasting the whole day and did a good job of trying to stay upbeat and happy.

The second milestone happened on Friday.  She finished her last day of medications.  She is now done with her treatment.  Her chances of a relapse has dropped.  She will still be seen in clinic once a month for the next year, after which her chances of a relapse drop again.  I think she will then move to a quarterly visit to check her blood.  It is exciting to be at this point.  We are excited for Sarah's body to get back to full health.  Thanks for all those who have supported us in this trying time.  We have seen many miracles through this process and know that the Lord is involved in our lives.  He may not cure every sickness, but he will always help to buoy us up so that we are able to bear our trails and our burdens.

Almost done ... and a pineapple

Last Saturday was the Winter Pineapple classic.  I ran with Patrick and Luke.  It was lots of fun.  We ran about a third of it, but I did all the obstacles.  I had no problem getting muddy on the course.  It is something that I think we might make a yearly tradition while we are here in Washington.  It was awesome to have my family at the finish line when we crossed.  Pictures are at the end of the post.  You can still donate until the 2nd of December here: http://www.llswa.org/goto/Sarah

Last Wednesday was a big day for Sarah as well.  It was her last clinic appointment during treatment.  She got a bone marrow biopsy as well as the other medicines that she usually gets during her clinic visits.  Her bone marrow came back clean.  She has a surgery scheduled for the 25th to get her port out, and her last day of medications is the 29th.  We are excited for her to be done and to let her body get back to full health.  She is ready to be there as well. 

Yesterday, the Sunshine Kids had an event at the EMP Museum.  They invited Sarah and 3 others to join her and the other kids.  It was fun.  Gus stayed home with a baby sitter.  We found out that Sarah is a drummer at heart.  She must take after her auntie Shan.  The sunshine kids did a music video and Sarah got to be the drummer and she rocked out.  It was cool to see her get into it.  Unfortunately she didn't last much longer than a couple of hours at the event.  It was a fun family day.

One other item in our family.  Our ward boundaries recently changed.  We had two wards with a east-west boundary.  That boundary changed to a north-south one and caused a bunch of reorganization in the wards.  I was called to be the Young Men's president of the ward.  It will be a busy calling but it will be fun to work with the youth again.

Thanks for all the love and support.  Our family wouldn't have done as well over the last two and half years without others to help and support us.

Sarah and the Runners at the finish line

The runners before the race.

The finish line

October 27th Update

It is two weeks until I run the Winter Pineapple Classic.  If you haven't donated yet and would still like to, the link is here:  http://www.llswa.org/goto/Sarah

A couple of things of note that happened over the past few weeks.  First I had my birthday on Monday.  It was fun.  We had a cake and I got a couple of presents.  A nice small birthday.

Second, we had trunk or treat yesterday.  Gus was dressed up as a racecar driver, Sarah was batgirl and Lilly was supergirl.  They had a lot of fun.  Pictures attached.

Lastly, we are down to one more set of steroids and one more monthly appointment for Sarah.  She goes in the second week of Novmenber for her last chemo visit.  She will get a bone marrow biopsy as well as scheduling the surgery to pull out her port.  After November, she will be off all medications as part of her leukemia treatment.  She have monthly visits to check her blood for the first year and then it will change to quarterly.  We are looking forward to the sense of normalcy, what ever that is.  :)

Sarah as batgirl

Lilly as Supergirl

Gus ready to drive a racecar