Moving on up

This is our little house in Riverton. It was the first home we owned. It had 3 bedrooms and 2 and a half bathrooms. We had an unfinished basement and a fenced back yard. We lived in an HOA comunity and so the lawn was mowed every week for us. We lived on 0.11 acres (I think, it was small). We were so excited when we moved in, and had anticipated we would be here a few years as it was a starter home. Little did we know that the economy would essentially crash leaving us "stuck" here longer than expected. We tossed the idea of selling around a few times. We actually tried once with no luck. 

It was roughly a little over 1800 square feet. It was the perfect place to start our family. 

I tried to keep the decorating on the simple side as I knew we would be selling eventually. 

We had a walk in closet and a bathroom in our room. 

The front room and main living space "flowed" together but was not totally an open concept. It was perfect for our family but it was a bit squished when it came to getting together. 

The kitchen got the job done but didn't have a ton of counter space. We were able to keep our refrigerator. When we sold the house they didn't say they wanted it so we, of course, kept it. 

Here is our dining room

And down stairs bathroom

Here is the upstairs bathroom. Before we moved in the counters were upgraded to granite in the bathrooms and kitchen. 

We had an upstairs laundry room, which was totally awesome. At the end of the hall it opened up to Katy and Will's rooms, and also had a linen closet. 

Will's room was fun. No rhyme or reason in a way. I knew I really really wanted a chalkboard wall and I thought this would be the perfect place. We had SO much fun with that thing. Katy especially enjoyed creating masterpieces there. Then again, I think I enjoyed it just as much. 

Katy's room was a different story. I really wanted to do green. It seems intense but for some reason I don't think that it was quite as bright as these pictures are coming across. I made her quilt when she was little. I had so much fun doing that.  

I love this house because it is the house I started my family in. I remember nursing Katy in that chair every few hours when we got home from the hospital. I did the same in Wills room. I will remember all the dance parties and hurt boo boo's. I will remember all the friends and wonderful neighbors we had here. We put our home up for sale on June 5th.

May according to my iPhone

4 x 12 May

Seeing that I am totally lame and am catching up on blogging from May...I will do my best to remember everything that happened.

Trying to remember things that my kids say something that I am trying hard to do lately. Since Will isn't interested in having deep conversations yet I'll tell you something sweet that happened with Katy. Steve works nights. Most of the time we are totally fine, but every once in a while she gets sad when we go to bed because she misses him. I decided I would fix this by spraying some of his cologne on her pillow. That seemed to make things better especially when she started talking about cinderella. She said a dream is a wish your heart makes and she was going to dream of dad because she could smell him on her pillow. She melts my heart!

Will got really sick on his birthday and we spent pretty much every week after that for a month. He had all sorts of things going on, but ended up having asthma type symptoms which resulted in getting a chest X-ray and getting sent home with a nebulizer.

That was not the last we saw of the doctors office. Poor Katy ended up there with what we thought was a broken wrist. Lucky for us it was just sprained. And can I just add my two cents that having sick and hurt kids is pretty much the worst thing ever. I hate feeling so helpless.

We were able to celebrate mothers day, which was fantastic. I was reminded how lucky I am that I am a mom. I am reminded by that fact every day...and am grateful that Steve helped me realize that dream of mine.

I was also able to run my first marathon. I have a long way to go in that department, but my goal was to finish...which I did. One day I will be able to smash my time and that will be a story for then. For now I am proud I can say that I ran a marathon.

my first marathon

Since forever and a day ago I've wanted to run a marathon.

A few years back I sort of ran the Ogden half marathon with my friend Nicole. Sort of? Yes. I never actually signed up and it sold out. So technically I ran the race but I was not an official participant. About the race....it was amazing! Part of that, I'm sure of it, was because it was a blast running with Nicole. But more than the runner buddy it was the most beautiful and wonderful course I had ever run. I vowed that if I ever ran a marathon it would be Ogden hands down!

So after I had Will I thought it would be the perfect motivation to get back into shape. I started researching when registration would open, especially since the half sold out in like a day. Lo and behold they turned this race into a lottery. Great! I had signed up for St. George in the past and not been chosen. I was pretty bummed that I would not get in and this would ruin my grand plans. I signed up anyway and pretty much figured I wouldn't get in. I was nervous opening the email in November when I got it. Congratulations.....I was in!

Here is where I started to question what in the world I had gotten myself into. I was so beyond excited and so pee my pants nervous at the same time. What was I doing? But hey, people run marathons every day right (not really as easy as it sounds)?

So the training began...if you can call it that. How do you train when you have Will for a kid and a husband who works graveyards? That sure threw a wrench into things. I did my darndest but to be honest my longest run I got in was about 8 miles. Defiantly not recommended for sure!

And then there was race day. I didn't want to necessarily get up at the crack of dawn (I totally should have gotten a room) so Steve had the brilliant idea of taking the camper. We found a scary parking lot just a bit from the shuttle pick up, parked it and grabbed some shut eye. The only problem was that Will didn't sleep so well and it was POURING rain all night long. I was sure it would stop or let up or clear up but that was not the case.

When I woke up in the morning (with about 3 hours of sleep) and got ready, I realized that it was still raining. Usually I just bring an old beat up long sleeve shirt I can dump on the side of the race. That rutty shirt of mine was cotton. Not the slightest bit helpful in keeping you warm in the rain, thank you very much.

The course? Friggin beautiful. More so than I remember, but also more of a course being the full marathon and not the half. Surprisingly I felt pretty amazing up to mile 19. When I was half way done I felt even better. But then there's that wall that you hear about. I slammed into it at mile 19. Well actually I wasn't running that fast at that point so slamming into it would not be a good description of that. I was totally soaking wet (it never let up), my phone was waterlogged and stopped working, I couldn't feel my hands or anything else for that matter. When I would reach for a glass of water at the water stops I could barley close my hand around the cup.

So the last miles were my roughest. But I knew my family was waiting for me. I knew that Steve was the champion of the day wrangling those kidos all morning because of the bad weather. I didn't cry when I finished but I think it was because I was in shock that I couldn't feel a thing. So Steve picked me up, gave me a hug, said he was proud and we left. I left it all there on the course...Katy wearing my finishing medal telling me that she was so proud I won first place! And then it was all worth it. Until I realized that I totally sucked it up and will now need to do it all again....one day when I maybe have a minute between kids and crazy schedules to actually train! In the end, my family motivates and makes me want to do amazing things....like run marathons and follow me on crazy adventures.

That and theses freakin hilarious signs they had up everywhere...one of my favorite parts of the races!