Crazy April…

April flew by and I didn’t get nearly enough posted on here. We just had such a busy and stressful month. I just looked at what I already posted for most of the month and it looks like we completely skipped over the fact that I had a Birthday, Yay me I’m now 34 years young. We didn’t do anything special we even talked about how when your parents make such a big deal for your Birthday growing up they are just setting you up for disappointment when you’re an adult. Unless you have a crazy spouse that if full of ideas and loves to do big things Birthday’s as an adult are just another day, another year gone by. Neither David or I are crazy about Birthday celebrations for each other. We usually do dinner and maybe a movie. We did go to Tucano’s the weekend after my birthday and ate for free. I had a free Birthday coupon and we also had a $25 gift certificate it was nice. I was talking to a friend about Birthdays and how once you pass up 21 there just isn’t anything to look forward to anymore, no big milestones and she said “No way, when we turn 65 we’ll get senior discounts that’s worth looking forward to”. I like that so that’s what I’ll be looking forward to. :)

David and I have spent most of our April weekends working in the yard trying to make some progress. It looks like that’s what will be happening most of our summer. It’ll all be worth it when we can enjoy a backyard and a vegetable garden. David built some beautiful garden boxes and we got them all installed. We will be doing 1 more 4x8 and 2 4x4’s or possible 4 4x4’s not sure yet. We’ve been leveling out the north side of the yard to make tiers for the garden boxes.

Madison participated in the Hope of America program this year. We’ve never been to one before and it was quite impressive. They held it at the BYU Marriott center. There were 3000 5th graders who have all learned the same patriotic music and performed for all the family and friends who attended. They also had performances from other groups that were really fun to watch. The ones with the ladies from 54 to 92 that dance was really fun to watch. David and I said we could really see Grammy, Aunt Colleen and my mom all joining that group. We’ll look forward to going again when Jenna is in 5th grade. I have several videos I’ll attach and a couple pictures of the whole group of kids and we tried to get some of Madison but she was really a long ways away from us so they are a close as our lens could get.

 
In the first 3 Pics Madison was waving at us and posing silly. The 4th one is of one of their songs.
 
Madison was in the very far left and upper yellow section.

The next thing I wanted to post about is the Idaho house. We have been stressing out most of April because our renters moved out on the 12th. We were hoping to sell the house but that isn’t going to happen for a while. To put it simply we owe 125,000 and our realtor said it won’t sell for more than 119,000 about. So with all the closing costs and fee’s it’s a no go. The realtor said we should rent it for another 3 years and then try again. So then we spent most of the month trying to find new renters. We hired a Property Manager who did all the leg work which was a huge relief. Then Gary and Colleen put several day’s work into fixing current problems with the house and getting it all cleaned up. We went up one weekend and spent the whole weekend working on the house to get it in better shape. We ended up putting in a whole new bathroom floor upstairs, the old one had too much water damage. Then we put in a new toilet to avoid new water damage. We put in a new sink in the basement bathroom the old one just wasn’t cutting it anymore. We added some cupboard doors to above the microwave we painted the deck floor, we cleaned out the water heater we through away a lot of paint. We were going to do some paint touch ups but couldn’t match the colors so that’ll come next year. We put up vertical blinds in the front room too. Overall it was about $700 and a lot of labor. But really most of the credit goes to Gary and Colleen, honestly I don’t know what we’d do without them there to help us with that house. I can’t tell you how many times David and I expressed our hatred towards that house but it all paid off. I worked a lot of extra hours in April to be able to cover the mortgage and I’m truly thankful to my amazing employer for being so great to work for. But just in the last week and a half we have a group of college kids interested in the house. They will be moving in the Wednesday and our Property Manager really checked each one of them out thoroughly and they have parents co-signing too. We really feel good about it and I’m so glad we won’t have to pay the mortgage. My extra paycheck money ended up paying for most of the house repairs. Thank you for wonderful blessings.

 

This last weekend which was actually May instead of April was busy too. David had his 5th wisdom tooth pulled on Saturday morning and Jenna had her first tumbling recital. David did great it only took about 10 minutes to pull and he’s been a little sore but that’s about it.

Jenna did great I was so proud of her. It’s crazy because I was sitting there recording her and couldn’t stop from crying. I really couldn’t figure out what in the world was wrong with me. I finally decided that I have such an overwhelming joy and gratitude for watching my kids excel at something it makes me very emotional. Since I now know how precious this life is and how quickly I could lose the chance to watch our children grow up I really treasure all the things I get to watch them do.

Jenna is so cute with her tumbling she’s always doing cartwheels and somersaults and round offs and flips around the house. She’s right in her element and looks so dang cute doing it.