Jacob Birthday (I know it was clear back in June)

Here are some fun pictures of Jacob's 6th birthday. We were just barely homeless at this point in time so we had his party at a park that was in our old neighborhood. It was lots of fun and we all got wet!

Living with Grandparents

So while we were homeless we were lucky enough to live at Grandma and Grandpa Cannons. We also stayed with Granny and Grandpa Halverson on most weekends. These are some fun pictures of us staying there.

Just For Karen!

Karen posted on our last blog yesterday pointing out that we were not homeless anymore. So just for you Karen I took some pictures of our house! All taken today so you can feel like your visiting us this very day. Yes I did go out in the snow to get one of the outside.

Here is our Living room. We have no furniture yet!





Here is our Kitchen and dinning room.


This is our main level family room just off the dinning room. So we have not been homeless since August sorry it has taken so long to post I'm hoping to catch up in the next couple of days. I will try to be better about posting for the family that does not live here.

Homeless

We are still without a primary residence. Grant and Sandra are being great hosts for us. They house and feed us during the week and we spend the weekends up in Ogden. Lisa treks up to Kaysville a few times a week for cub scouts, guitar lessons, piano lessons, etc. She is becoming a great commuter. (a little empathy for my daily drive!)


We just spent this last weekend with the Halverson Family celebrating the 4th of July. We started the morning bright and early (3:45 am) getting ready to cook for the Hunstville Breakfast in the Park. After breakfast we all enjoyed a nice "small town" parade.

After the parade we enjoyed a nice family barbecue and then went swimming at Ryan and Christy's parents house. We had a great time until Alicia jumped off the diving board and went to the side. She "kissed" the wall. She hit right above her lip and just below her nose. Angelina Jolie has nothing on Alicia's full lips!


The house is coming along slower than we want. We have a punch list of items that we are discussing with them to have them fix. It seems to me that it would make more sense to do it right the first time and not have to incur the hastle of fixing it again. All the same, things are turning out beautifully. We are excited to move in.





We have started attending church in our new ward and really enjoying it. It is huge. There are 694 people in our ward, including the Halversons. They announced today that they are going to split it next week. We had a ward swimming part at the Farmington pool this last week and there were around 600 people in attendance. Everyone is in the same situation we are trying to get to know each other.

It has been a great summer. We are getting more and more excited to move into our new house and start a new life in our new neighborhood.

SOLD!

We are officially homeless. On June 11th Lisa and I signed the papers to sell our home in Kaysville. It was a lot harder than we ever expected to drive away and leave the place that we had dumped so much time, effort and love into. We have been in that home for over 7 years. The kids have all grown up (so far) in that neighborhood. On the 12th when Lisa had to finally pack up the kids and drive away it was harder than we ever imagined. This coupled with the fact that we lost Josh for half an hour on the 11th as we were packing the house made for a tough few days. We were working on finishing up loose ends at the house and Lisa had taken Jake and Izzy to the neighbors for a birthday party and Josh set off to find her. He overshot the neighbors and just kept on going and was two or three blocks away when we finally found him. He was pretty traumatized from being lost and was very happy to be back in Lisa's arms. Overall we know we are making the right decision, but it has been hard.

We have been able to move in with Grant and Sandra. They have been off to Paris for the last week so it gave us a chance to settle in to the house while they were gone. One of the best parts of this is that my commute is now only 8 minutes. Hopefully we should only have to inconvenience Mom and Dad for a month or so before our new house is complete. Things seem to be moving along nicely.

We did run into our first big issue on the house. They finished all the drywall and applied a "Holy Smooth" finish to all the walls. This is apperantly a popular finish that they are doing in all the "High End" homes. The only problem was it wasn't what we wanted. They originally told Lisa that there was nothing they could do. This didn't help since this news came on the 12th just as Lisa was leaving the old house. We were able to pull together all our paperwork and show them that we had indeed opted out of this "upgrade". With a little help from a few friends at Woodside we now have smooth walls. It was a big project for them, but they restored the smooth finish.

This should be a great summer with a lot of adventures!

The house is comming along fast!

We went by the house yesterday while someone came to see the house. They have put in most of the plumbing and both furnaces and Air Conditioners. The roof was finished last week along with the porch being poured and the framing being completed. It is amazing to me how fast it is coming along!

ALOHA!!!

Aloha! This past week Lisa and I had the chance to make it to Hawaii. We had a really nice trip. Sandra and Grant we great enough to come and stay with the kids while we were gone. We really owe them for this one. I worked the entire time we were there, but Lisa had some good time to enjoy the lovely beaches where we stayed and simply relax. That is a luxury that doesn't often appear in the life of a mother of 5 kids. We flew into Oahu on Monday, then went to Maui on Wednesday morning and then took the red-eye flight home on Thursday night. We have picked out a nice time-share complex by Marriott that we are saving up Marriott points for to take the whole family back to some day.

The house finally looks like a house. They are moving along quickly. The framing is probably about 75% to 80% complete. There are a few minor items that Lisa and I are working with the builder on to fix, but it is amazing to me how they can build something so big from just a simple set of plans. I guess that's why I am more of the numbers and operations guy and not in the family business of construction.


We had a couple see the house last week that let our Realtor know that they were pretty interested. If they end up buying it then we will have to share a commission with Sandra and Grant for showing the house when we were gone.


Other than these few large items, things are moving along for the Halverson family. Life is never dull. We love the energy the kids bring to life and all the excitement. We were really ready to come home after being away for a week. We have a great group of kids!!!