Out with the Old, In with the New

Last night Andrew and I stopped by our condo to say our good-byes. We had the place cleaned yesterday for the new owner... and today we finally closed. We are no longer condo owners.

We had some good times at our little condo, so the good-bye was bittersweet. The place looked so spiffy. Here are a few pics to show how we left the place.

Ahh... I'm already missing my beautiful granite countertops. Formica is not my favorite surface. Our new rental doesn't have a dishwasher, microwave, or an oven w/ a timer... things I've come to appreciate more this week... and possibly good motivators to move out of here sooner rather than later.


I will miss my bathroom. Everytime I was in there I thought about all the fun times Kevin and I (mostly Kevin) had destroying the bathroom. I also loved my huge bathroom mirrors and double sinks. Another silly thing I will miss is our toilet. The thing was a powerhouse. It could flush 18 golf balls. We had a lot of fun deciding on which one to buy. :)



Our bedroom looks so small compared to our new bedroom at the duplex. I loved our plantation shutters though.... and flatscreen tv on the wall (which we sold to the new owner). I also loved the his and hers closets... although our new ones are much bigger and feel somewhat empty!! Yay! I guess it's time to buy some new clothes :)

I will also miss the little man's cute room and my pretty window treatments (which we also sold to the new owner). I spent a lot of time deciding on just the right colors for the living room and Andrew's room. I think I brought 20 different drape panels home to try them out. There were a lot of great moments in this room!


This room is where I spent the most time during the past 3.5 years. Pretty much every significant moment in Andrew's life occurred in this room (rolling, crawling, walking, talking). I can't really dwell on this move too much or I'll get teary-eyed. It was time to move on... and we're excited to see where this next stage of our life will take us.


Here are a few pics of our new place. It'll be interesting to see how long we stay here. For now we are considering it as a temporary home. We are leasing the duplex from month-to-month.

Our new street... Alice Drive.


The front of our little duplex. I still need to hang our wreath on the door.


The side of our place. Andrew loves to take out the trash and then run along the side of the house and play with the rocks.


We also have a little backyard/patio. The landlord will probably be putting grass in for us soon around the concrete. This will be much better than the dirt/rock pile... although Andrew LOVES all the rocks!


He also loves the hose. We're going to get a baby pool soon so he can play around and stay cool in the heat.


Here is the tour of the inside of our new place.

Living room- the fireplace is still a little bit of a child-proofing hazard... hence the box in front of it. This morning Andrew stuck his foot around the box and into the fireplace and tried to run around with a soot covered foot. He always manages to keep things interesting.


Living room/kitchen area... yay, we can finally set up our kitchen table!


Another view of the living room... can anyone guess what we're watching?


Our bedroom... such a bigger place! Kevin is so happy to finally have his dresser back. We've been sharing a small dresser for about 6 months. We each only had 3 drawers.


Bathroom- not awful.

Laundry room- Possibly my favorite place in the house. I am SO EXCITED to have a full sized w/d and storage space above them!

Our office and guest room.


Andrew's room- His crib didn't fit through any of the doors, so Kev had to take it apart and reconstruct it. Andrew loves the butterfly border around his room and I love his closet... I will be using it for a lot of my work stuff :)


That is our new place for a few months! We're excited to make a lot of new memories here! Come visit anytime.

More New Words

Andrew loves to do his own sign language version of "ball"... but while I was gone last week he started actually saying the word.



He also spent a lot of time with his Grandma last week, so now he tries to say "Grandma" too. I love it!



I also love that he's saying "mama" more consistently now and I love watching him wake up Kevin in the mornings by running into our bedroom yelling "dada!!!!" Who wouldn't love to wake up to that?!

Other fun new things I'm trying to catch on videotape are Andrew saying "dog," (another new word)... and following lots of directions. He can touch his nose, toes, tummy, and mouth when asked now. He also is starting to sing along to songs sometimes and it is so darling :)

I have just been amazed at how much the little man changed in just the week that I was gone!!

Moving Out

I got home from camp at 6pm on Friday night. We ate some Cheesecake Factory for dinner and then spent the rest of the evening packing.

The Elders Quorum arrived at 9am on Saturday morning to help us move some of the heavy things. They were so helpful!

Andrew and I spent some time together cleaning up our condo and putting things away at our new rental- a good-sized 3 bedroom duplex (1300 sq ft) which is HUGE compared to our 900 sq ft. apartment.

It is amazing to see what is fun for a toddler to play with.



We also spent some time watching the gardener guy mow our front lawn. Andrews loves the sprinklers that come on every evening and loves watching the guys work.



We also cheered on Kevin as he moved more things out of the truck.


This morning we signed a lot of paperwork at the Title Company and we'll most likely pass off the keys to the new owner of our condo tomorrow. Yay!

Signing paperwork at the title company office...
looking a little tired :)

Favorite things at Girls Camp

1. Dinner time- we had to sing for our food. The loudest group usually ate first... we were not the loudest group. We usually had a lot of extra time to spend decorating our table... here is how I spent my time.


2. YCLs- the Youth Camp Leaders were incredible. Not only were they great leaders, but they were also hysterical. One night they dressed up like the camp directors and did a skit. It was really really funny. I am missing them each night now that I am back... their jokes were such a great way to end the day.


3. PJS Investigators- "PJS" stands for "Prayer, Journal, Scriptures." The girls were encouraged to do all three things each day while at camp.


The "PJS Investigators" reminded them about these 3 things each night at campfire. The little skits/devotionals and dancing were all very entertaining and and insightful. I won't forget to pray, read my scriptures, or write in my journal any time soon. Here is their little song that they sang each night.

4. Polar Bear Swim- I did this 2 of the days at camp. We woke up at around 5:30am and then joined several other campers/leaders at 6am to swim across the lake. Considering that I am deathly afraid of large bodies of water... I was proud of myself. I tried not to think of the living creatures swimming underneath me. The added bonus was that waking up that early ensured a hot shower each day!

The lake was so beautiful and serene in the early morning.



Here we are finishing the swim... I was too cold to stand up!

5. Hiking- the first year girls go on a 3 mile hike. We hiked up to a beautiful lake. The trail was hilly, but not very hard.

I loved having some time to spend enjoying the beautiful views.
I hated all the mosquito bites that I got!

6. Star gazing- for all of you that might remember my previous posts about sleeping outside... here is a little peak at where we slept at camp. The cabin held our stuff. It was pretty nasty inside. The views as we slept were amazing. I loved looking up at the stars... although I only took quick peeks because I didn't want to get devoured by the mosquitoes.

Here is our little campsite outside. We slept in a big wheel shape with all our heads facing inward. We kept plastic over our beds during the day to attempt to keep the bugs out. I got over my fear of bugs pretty quickly since I had six scared girls to take care of. I just tried to pretend that there weren't bugs in my sleeping bag... that was the only way I was able to get myself to sleep.

As a leader I got to be woken up if the girls had to go to the bathroom at night. After being woken up over 4 times the first night (12am, 1:30am. 3am, 5am), I basically cut the girls off from having any beverages after dinner. It seemed to solve the problem... although all my girls were early risers! I think I was awake before 6am each day.


7. BB Guns- I typically am not a fan of guns. I actually discovered that I am a pretty good BB gun shooter though. I loved hitting the tin cans and water balloons. Several of my girls liked BB gun shooting too. It was pretty funny when one of them accidently shot the other one in the arm with a BB gun. Fortunately, no one was hurt badly.... just another reason why I wonder sometimes why parents would trust me to be responsible for their daughters?


All in all, camp was a spectacular experience. I met so many incredible women and girls. I was amazed at how many remarkable people there were to learn from. I hope that I can grow up to be like some of these great women. My 1st year group was very sweet and thoughtful too. One of them even made me a necklace at crafts that said "Kristina, U R My Hero." It was fun to have a little fan club all week (except when I made them clean the toilets).


Ahhh.... so sad camp is over, and yet I am SO HAPPY to be home too! Hopefully I'll find a way to catch up on some of the lost sleep sometime soon!

Friends are Treasures

Two weeks ago my good friend Liz sacrificed an entire evening to help me make cute bandanas for my unit of girls at Girls Camp. I cut, she sewed and offered creative advice... and the finished product was perfect!

Here I am modeling one of the bandanas. The theme for camp was "Where is your treasure?" and each group came up with a name related to treasure. My girls were "The Gold Diggers" (thanks again Lindsey for the name suggestion!). I had to make or buy something for them to wear that would identify our group around camp.


I loved the b&w polka dot edges. The symbol I made was of a shovel and a pick... some of the tools used to dig for gold. The girls in my group spent the week "digging for gold" within one another and within the scriptures.


The girls loved the bandanas and wore them a variety of ways throughout the week at camp.


Thanks again Liz! You are such a treasured friend!

I'm Back

This is how tired I feel. I'm sure Kevin feels even worse.


We are almost done with our move. I can't wait until Tuesday to be over. I wish that the rest of our stuff could teleport to our new little duplex.

We feel very blessed that we were able to sell our condo. We sign the papers to pass over the keys tomorrow. I also felt very very blessed to attend Girls Camp last week. I am counting down the days til our Alaska cruise so that I can sleep and recover from the past few weeks.

I am also grateful for an incredible mother-in-law who not only took care of my two most precious possessions last week (Kev & Andrew), but also packed up a lot of my condo and MOVED some of it to our new place before I got back. I was definitely surprised. I am sure she is even more tired than I am right now!

There are many more posts to come about girls camp, our move, and all the new things that the little man can do. Stay tuned. Once we have internet at our new place tomorrow I will start uploading pictures!!

Two Favorite Words

Here is some video footage of Andrew's new favorite words, "cat" and "throw"



I think he loves the word "Cat" so much because he adores his Aunt Cat. We also have several neighborhood cats that like to come visit sometimes... so he can see them from our window.

He has loved to throw things ever since his Grandpa taught him how to throw rocks. Nowadays it can be pretty dangerous to be close to him when he is in the vicinity of rocks since you never know exactly where he'll be throwing them. He also loves to throw his toys... and other items, especially when he gets mad. I love it when he has a little temper tantrum and throws everything around him or anything that you give him. Such a funny little guy.

Getting Ready

Since I have felt like a bad mom for about two weeks... I finally took Andrew to the park today. He was so excited when I told him where we were going. He rushed to the door and started knocking on it. Once I opened the door he climbed down the stairs all by himself and ran all the way to the elevator, falling down twice. He only has one speed these days-- fast. Although he got some scraped knees, he didn't really care.

He ran all over the park. It was nice and hot and I only lasted 30 minutes.


He was so happy to see this little friend that he gave him/her a kiss.


Afterwards he helped me finish getting ready for Girls Camp.

He jumped on my bag and made sure it closed.


He did his cheesiest smile for me because he was so excited that he got to "help" me take my bags to the car.


He tried to help push the bag outside for me...


But wasn't too successful.

So instead, he took out the trash. He said his own version of "trash" all the way to the garbage


He threw it down the chute all by himself. I think it was the highlight of his day.

I am going to miss my little buddy next week. I am hoping that I don't cry every night.


Wish me luck!