Saturday, August 29, 2009

Packing Up

sorry i have not posted in eons. we have a ton going on in the house, which is not an exageration. my girlfriend from canada (who i met in korea) has been visiting this week with her adorable 9 month old, josh. so awesome. jessie has proved to be a ridiculously helpful and eager houseguest! she has been helping us pack up, throw out, and clean up all our crap. and boy do we have a lot of crap! even after downsizing!
we have now sold on craigslist (what did we ever do without that?!?!?!?):
-our giant tv, dining room set, computer desk, computer chair, bookcases, extra tv we had in our room that we watched maybe twice this year, entertainment stands, two sets of couches, our bedroom furniture, and i think that's it.
then we sold some stuff in chris' mom's garage sale last weekend, which really helped us to get rid of a lot of knick knacks. but after emptying my closet yesterday, looks like we are ready to have another garage sale... yowsers.
anyway, i am realizing hoe ridiculously blessed we are, and also how ridiculously wasteful we are at the same time. i am going to try to go on a shopping freeze for 6 months. i will buy no clothes or accessories for the kids, chris, or me. we have given away so much, and yet we are still left with... SO MUCH. we don't need more of much.
so that's where i have been for the last week or two. downsizing has been fun and downright cleansing- for the house and my soul. we are going to start moving starting tomorrow, and should be done by tuesday. it's not going to take us that long because we have so much stuff, it's just cause we have the opportunity to do things slowly. i have also realized that i am a disgusting pack rat and i need to learn how to do 'spring cleaning', but until that happens i will probably be moving once a year to keep myself, and my possessions in check...

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Movin On...

Sungu, my nephew, is almost 26 months old. He has lived in 5 different homes, on 2 different continents. Topher is looking to catch up to his cousin's jet-setting ways. Only, all his homes will have been in Arizona, and really all within 10 miles of each other.

So, about a month and a half ago, our renters in our Gilbert house told us they are moving out at the end of their contract. Which would be at the end of this month. I did not panic cause I felt like God was preparing us for that. Then Chris decided (and I immediately jumped on board) that we should put our Mesa house up for rent too. If one got rented out while the other didn't, then we would just live in the rejected house. Everything was fine for the first week or two after we posted both houses on various sites. Then extreme panic would set in every couple of days, offset by days of shame for how weak my faith was that God was in complete control of everything.

Then this week happened. Chris had been communicating with this guy out-of-state who was looking to move into our Mesa house with his fiancee and her daughter. The finacee and said child came by on Monday to scope out the house. They loved it. Or they loved us, and the house. They took a rental application home that day, and now are signing a lease agreement. Praise Jesus. And that's for 2 years I believe. (Praise Jesus x 2!)

Then a lady called Chris on Wednesday asking if she could see the Gilbert house on Thursday morning. Chris said she sounded very nice, and very excited. I had already shown the Gilbert house to about 5 very nice people, none of which were terribly excited about the place. The Gilbert house is in a GREAT location, but the house itself is 20 years old. For people coming from new builds, the house looks like junk. The bathrooms are smaller, and not as fancy, the kitchen is tiny, etc. But I met this lady on Thursday morning and she was VERY EXCITED. About everything. The house was bigger than she thought it would be, as was the yard, the driveway, everything. She didn't get to see the master bedroom cause the guy who lives in there, a fellow policeman, was asleep. She told me was very interested in the house and would like to rent it for more than a year (!!!) and then I felt I had to be very honest with her. I told her the master bedroom was NOT pretty. Which is the understatement of the century. It has the stupidest looking wallpaper up, the toilet and this huge shower are in one 'room', and the vanity area is anything but vain. But she said she didn't care, she loved the house, the location, and that she was so excited to live here because she was coming from Florence, where they had been struggling for the last 4 years to make a new life for themselves, and it just didn't work. She felt like finding our house was the first step for a better life for her family. Praise Jesus!!!!! (x a million!!!)

So now Chris and I are going apartment/small house shopping! And we are so stinkin excited for this new chapter of our lives to begin. We are at a place in our lives where we just want to simplify and save save save. We could have stayed here in this amazing house that God has blessed us with. But now with Jeehon and Sungu gone, this place feels like a montstrous cavern!

This will be home #3 for our little Toto who will be 16 months by the time we move next month, so I guess he probably won't be able to catch up to Sungu. But we kinda don't want him to, so that works out for all of us.

And I just wanted to add a special shout out to all those of you who have been praying for ALL of this to work out just as it has. God is so good! Thanks for always movin on with us in prayer.

Friday, August 14, 2009

Pictures!

my sister is back up from Sierra Vista, and she brought back her digital camera. i took some pics on it a few weeks ago, but for some reason the pictures wouldn't download. probably cause our computer is a p.o.c. anyway, here are some literal snap shots from our lives over the last few weeks:
here is the fruit of my cake decorating class labor! yes, the cake looks very 1980s, but i made those stinkin flowers by hand and i am proud of it! i am now working on a birthday cake for my sister-in-law lindsay's birthday, which is tomorrow. we'll see how that goes...
we went to flagstaff! just chris and i (no kids!) and our new friends carrie and brian (they also left their 1 year old at home, their 29 week old came along as he is still in the womb). brian works with chris, and carrie is my long lost white-girl-pretending-to-be-korean friend. we went up for the Arizona Cardinals' training camp which was tons of fun. And we got to hang out with chris' awesome cousin todd and his beautiful wife elisa, and their two kids. We will definitely have to go back up there to hang out some more. the weather was great- 90 during the day, about 75 at night. so awesome!
this is the most recent pic of the crazy kids. they are just getting too dang big!

Friday, August 7, 2009

Wilton Cake Decorating Classes

Craft stores are simply incredible. I'm not even all that crafty (arts-and-crafty that is. I have been known to be connivingly crafty however!) compared to my super-creative-and (arst-and-crafty)crafty friends. But I love walking through the aisles and looking at the different hobbies that people are into- jewelry making, scrapbooking, etc etc. One thing that caught my eye a long time ago was the cake decorating aisle, and a sign that said 'cake decorating classes'. Sometime in June, Chris and I talked about how I needed to do something by myself to stay sane. And I remembered the sign I saw many years ago, and checked it out online. And sure enough, every Michaels, Joanns, and Hobhy Lobby offers cake decorating classes throughout the year. Amazing! I found out that the Michael's near my house was offering Course 1 (of 4) on Tuesday nights, and my small group was taking all of July off, so it was perfect! (cause Barb and Jerry watch my kids every Tuesday night anyway.)

So let me break this down for you, timewise. There are 4 courses available, but they say you need to complete course 1 in order to do any of the other courses, cause it teaches you the basics of using different icings, and tips, etc. Each course is made up of 4 classes that are 2 hours long. When you consider the time it takes you to bake, and prepare icing and stuff, you are looking at spending a good 3-4 hours a week on this class.

Now, let me break this all down for you, financially. Each course is about $45, depending on where you take it, and when. I was fortunate enough to take the class in July, when they had a 50% deal on the class, and they also gave me an additional $10 off. So I paid about $12 for the course. Then you have to buy a student kit. That's about $25. And some additional decorating items, which will set you back about $25 (and that's with using coupons). Then you need the actual baking and icing items, which will cost you another $5-$20 (coupons and sales are my beat friends). So even if you are a diligent sale-monger, you are still looking at spending about $50-$75.

There were plenty of times when the class was very frustrating. Like trying to ice my cake before my class without picking up crumbs, with my crazy kids trying to 'help' (ie. eat the cake). Or even trying to make the right consistency of icing for the first time was time consuming and draining. Everyone in my class walked into our first real lesson pissed off at icing and baking. But during our two hour classes, everyone was content to be doing something creative, that ended up being relaxing, especially cause there were no kids around. And that time alone as a mom (which 90% of the women in my class were) is always priceless.

(Imagine a picture of a cake here, with pink roses, and just a tiny bit of crumbs exposed in the VERY THICK layer of homemade buttercream icing. I still have no properly functioning digital camera. boo...)

NKOTB

If you grew up in the 80s, you know that NKOTB stands for New Kids on the Block. They were, in my eyes, the premiere BoyBand sensation, fronted by cute boy Joey McIntire (sp?). Where is he now? I think one of the other members is a real estate agent... Random.

Anyhoo, today's post is not about those NKOTB, but about the new kids in my life. July was choc full of births, and lots of time spent at Mercy Gilbert's maternity ward. As you know, my sweet nephew, Corban, was born on July 12. Then my girlfriend Erin endured A LOT to bring her son Greyson into the world on the 17th via emergency c-section. And finally my girlfriend Kelly brought her lovely little girl Gretta into the world on the 22nd of July (also via c-section, only this one was planned.)


All the new babies and their mamas are doing so great. I have added a picture at the end of this post to show some of the ladies I roll with here in Arizona. I am SO beyond blessed to have amazing friends and family to share my life with here in the hot hot desert. One thing that amuses me, because these kinds of things just amuse me, is that Lindsay had Corban on Greyson's due date, Erin had Greyson on my sister's birthday, and Kelly had Gretta on Lindsay's due date. Ah, the wonderful trivial things that keep us all connected!
Christin, Erin, Kelly, Lindsay, Cambry, Jeehon, me.