First Visitors

Addy was very excited to wake up from her nap 1 1/2 weeks ago to find Grandma & Grandpa Bursch in her room. She had so much to show them, tell them, and do with them. Mom and Dad stayed for a week and we were able to go on walks, hikes in the mountains, to swim lessons, church and out to eat a few times. It was great to share our new home with visitors. :) While it's still not 'decorated' it does feel more like home now. Here is a slideshow of their visit. (The random scenery shot in the middle is a moose! See if you can find the rack. Meghann would say our day was blessed, and it was. )

While Mom & Dad were here, Addy stood up by herself for the first time! It was the night before Mom & Dad left and she just all of a sudden pushed herself up on her toy basket and stood there looking around. We all saw it (except Brad!). By the next day, Addy had figured out how to stand up in her playpen but not yet how to get down. That was not a fun playpen time so we spent the rest of that afternoon practicing sitting back down. Now Addy is up and down all the time on whatever she can get her hands on. It's amazing how fast she changes.

Here is a fun video that shows a bit of Addy's personality. She's so much fun. Watch for her fabulous giggle in the second half (right before she's had enough!).

Big day for Addy!

Addy has had a big couple of days! Yesterday morning during breakfast she said 'hi' while waving her hand. Wow! This was not just accidental syllables together sounding like a word (like Mama was!). This was for real!

Then this morning she said 'hi dad' while eating breakfast! Brad and I just looked at each other in shock! She really did say it! Here is Addy saying 'hi' to her reflection in the storm door. I only caught the tail end of it.

During lunch outside today she decided she could use her 4 point stance to do a silly scoot toward her toys. I got some of it on video.

I think my life is about to change. . .

5 year anniversary!

Last Friday was our 5 year anniversary. Since it was a holiday weekend, we decided to celebrate on Monday when Brad would have the day off and we didn't have any plans. We decided to start a new tradition for ourselves to celebrate our anniversaries with. We decided to choose several new recipes (from Cook's Illustrated, of course!) to create a fancy dinner and dessert. We love to cook together and we really love to eat so we figured we could do this for our anniversaries for years to come.

Brad started early, though and made us a fancy breakfast to start off the day! He made Cook's Illustrated French Toast and Denver Omelets! Whoa! It was so good and I didn't have to do a thing but eat! :)

When Addy took her morning nap, we got started on the cooking. If you've never done a Cook's Illustrated recipe, they are complicated and they take forever but they taste amazing! I never make them by myself because I can't follow such long and involved directions! I lose focus and get overwhelmed. Brad, on the other hand, does great and he loves the chaos!

We decided to go with Thai food because I love it and we hate spending so much money eating out whenever I get a Thai craving. :) We made pot stickers, Thai Chicken Soup and Thai Green Curry. We also made chocolate mousse for dessert and that was actually pretty easy but it was as good as any restaurant mousse! Wow! Mostly I just was the sou chef and helped to organize the ingredients (while trying to clean up after the master chef as he went!). It took all day! We took a break in the middle of the day when Addy woke up but we cooked until 7pm when we finally got to eat!

Here's a slide show of the process!

Happy 3rd of July!

Here in Utah, if a holiday falls on a Sunday, it gets rescheduled. This was the case with the 4th of July this year. And let me tell you, the 4th of July is a big deal here but we all celebrated on the 3rd!

We woke up early (as Addy has been waking up early lately!) and got decked out in our patriotic gear. At 8am we headed down the street to the local Ward (Mormon church) for a neighborhood pancake breakfast for all of Highland Park (about a 20 blocks). We had breakfast with our next door neighbors and their 4 kids and we enjoyed getting to know them a little better.

After breakfast we plopped down on the grass along one of the streets and prepared for the neighborhood parade. Starting with a gun fire, kids on bikes and in strollers, horses and riders, a man with a handcart, a fire truck, an old John Dear tractor, funny cars & lots of dogs strolled down the street throwing candy and waving at everyone. It was so cute and it seemed straight out of the 50's! (Have you seen the Sandlot?) After the parade we headed down to Alden St. (it goes Alden, Beverly, Chadwick, Dearborn. . . A, B, C, D. . .) for the carnival. We got to pet the horses, go on the fire truck and partake in cotton candy, ring toss, bubble blowing contests, snow cones and everything else you could think of for FREE! It was really fun and Addy loved it!

We took a little siesta through the middle of the day in preparation for the big night ahead. Around dinner time we headed down to a neighbor's house (who happen to be the parents-in-law of the pastor of the church we have been attending) for a 4th (3rd!) of July celebration. We ate fabulous food, got to know some couples from our church and Addy got to see lots of little kids running around.

After all the food, we put Addy to bed in their house and headed for their front lawn to watch the fireworks display being set off at the park nearby. The fireworks were fabulous and it was so neat to live so close to the greatest display in Salt Lake! We got to meet more of our neighbors as they ventured out to see the display. It was quite a celebration even if it was a day early!

Busy 3 weeks!

W ell, we've had our hands full the last 3 weeks. We had some craziness with getting the house ready to move in (I spent just about every wake time of Addy's driving from our apartment in the suburbs to our house in the city to meet with some contractor or another. We were having the floors torn up and hardwoods installed or I would have just stayed at the house all day!) Once all the projects were done, we had the house painted. It was supposed to be done the Friday before Father's Day so we could move out of our apartment on Saturday and relax at our house on Father's Day. Instead, the painters still weren't done on Sunday night (but we moved out of our apartment on Sunday anyway!)! We spent Brad's first Father's Day moving boxes. Bummer. We had to put them all into the garage too since the painters weren't done. We slept on the floor in the basement so we'd be here when the movers arrived at 8am on Monday morning with all our stuff that had been in storage for almost 3 months. Yeah!

Addy Paddy is pack to her smiling self now. . . it was a rough couple of weeks. She was really clingy, whiny and just not happy. Turns out, she's now doubled the amount of food she eats at each meal, she cut a molar (?!) and the poor kid noticed that her entire world was uprooted to a new place. :) We're glad to be settled back into our routine.

My college friend, Desiree, and her mom spent a week at Snowbird (a ski resort 30 minutes from our house!) so she was able to spend a day with me unpacking the house. Then I took a break from unpacking to explore a bit of the mountains with her. This picture is from their balcony overlooking the ski resort.

The movers did a great job and were able to get all our furniture into the house! They even got our huge bedroom furniture and king size bed into the basement into our bedroom. Once the boxes were in the house, we realized the painters weren't going to be able to finish until we got everything unpacked. They were supposed to come today and they didn't show up. . . we busted our butts to get finished by today. Grr. Even though they're not quite finished, the house looks great! Check out the before/after slide show below. The house isn't totally finished, obviously, but it's getting there!

(Although it's not a 'brick house,' we were told that under the siding is the original cinder block. Does that count?)

We're loving our house and our neighborhood. We had 2 sets of neighbors bring us dinner last week and we've enjoyed being 10 minutes away from everything! I even walked to the greatest park in SLC in 15 minutes today! (95 degrees is a little too hot for a walk though!)

After our walk, Addy learned how to do the splits. :) She got herself on all fours so I thought she might crawl but she obviously didn't like it so she tried to sit back down and her leg got away from her. She did figure out how to get back to a sitting position. I thought it was really funny. . . she wasn't so sure. :)

It feels really good to finally start to get settled in Salt Lake. I can't believe it's been 3 months since we left Denver. Living in transition is for the birds. We're looking forward to getting involved in a church so we can make some friends!

Enjoy your 4th of July (we'll be celebrating the 3rd of July here. . . more on that later!)!

9 months old already!

Well, Addy turned 9 months old last weekend. Wow. She's mastered the rollover and now is really into standing and walking around. . . with our help, of course! She hasn't figured out crawling (whew!) but she's mastered the 4-point forward lean. She has a serious issue with towers of things so it's always a great motivator for her to work on her motor skills.

Addy is jabbering up a storm and often looks at us after a string of babble with a look like 'well, what do you think about that?' She's a crack up.

Here favorite time of day is when her daddy comes home from work and she's quite content to do whatever he wants to do right along side him.

We've been enjoying the sunny weather lately and we even got to visit the heated pool at our apartment. Addy had a great time but I have to say that I'm glad we'll be able to take her to an indoor pool. Sunscreen is a pain! Here's Addy Paddy in her movie star get-up.

Jenny came to visit this week and Addy enjoyed having another person to laugh, play and talk to. While she's starting to act differently with different people, she took to Jenny like she knew 'she's one of us.' Super cute.

We had Addy's 9 month appointment today and the new Dr. said that Addy will probably be one of those rare kids who actually outgrows her infant car seat at the right time to match with the car seat laws. She's 28 3/4 inches and 17lb 6oz. She's still looking like a string bean being 85% in height and 25% in weight so her 12-18 month clothes are fitting her nicely right now. How great that the girls' clothes we were given from friends are perfectly in season right now! She has a bunch of super cute summer stuff that I thought would be too big but is just right because she's tall. Anyone notice she's wearing PINK! :)

Brad's job is going well and he's enjoying getting to know his employees. He's learning a lot and he is pleasantly surprised how much he learned in Denver that was perfect for here! Yeah!

We move into our house this weekend once the projects are all finished. The hardwood floors are done and we have painters working this week before some other minor projects Friday/Saturday. More pictures to come on that. . .

What a day!

Well, we're homeowners again. . . barely! Yesterday was quite a day! It started out all fine and dandy with Brad working from home. Then, at 10:30 we headed to the title company downtown to close on our new house. As soon as we got there, we got started on our paperwork which, of course, started with verifying our identities with our picture IDs. As Marylou was writing down my info, she stopped and said, "Did you know your license has been expired since February?!" Oh crap, are you kidding?!

We decided to go ahead and finish the paperwork and that we would go back to our apartment afterwords and bring my passport back to verify my ID. (All the while I'm praying that my passport isn't expired!!!) While we were signing the paperwork, Addy was happily playing on her blanket with her stacking cups. All of a sudden, I feel (and hear!) a loud thump on the floor! Addy had fallen face first onto her green stacking cup and landed on it with her cheek! There was a 2 second delay and then she let out a monster cry! She immediately got a bruise on her cheek! Needless to say, the rest of my signatures didn't look quite right because I had to hold her the rest of the time! Here's her war wound!


After that, we headed back to the apartment (30 minutes away) to get my passport. . . again, all the while praying it wasn't expired!). Thankfully, it is still valid for 2 years. We headed back to the title company (with Brad driving, of course!) and submitted my valid ID.

On our way back to the apartment, Addy was way overdue for her nap so we decided Brad would stay home with Addy while I headed to the DMV on my own with an expired license (provided we would come up with enough of the paperwork required to get a new license). We had to make several phone calls to get what we needed because you need 2 pieces of mail (statements, bills, or contracts) that state your Utah address. Well, since we had just closed on our house, we didn't have that! We were able to get our insurance company to provide evidence that we had a homeowners policy on the new house, and we had our closing documents on our new house so I decided to brave the DMV at 1:30pm. Who does that?!

Well, after waiting for over an hour and a half, I was called to the counter to show my proof of residency, expired license, passport, and social security card. She informed me that I'd have to take a written exam (crap!) and that she needed my marriage license also! What?! That was not on the document list as something I needed! I almost cried right there. The lady must have felt bad for me (I had already told her the story of our day so far!) and so she told me to go home, get my marriage license and make sure to be back within the hour (when DMV closed!) and she would let me hop to the front of her line.

Luckily, while I was on my way to the apartment, I got ahold of Brad and he was able to wake Addy up, chuck her in the carseat (thankfully I left that for him!), grab the marriage license and head to the DMV. He made it in time for me to submit my marriage license, take my test (and pass!) and get my new driver's license. Whew! I braved the traffic of all the suburbanites heading home after work only to find out that while I was gone, Addy had rolled herself right off the middle of the bed onto the floor when Brad ducked into the other room to get something! Luckily she didn't get hurt (that would have looked great to head to the ER. . . 'No we don't beat our kid even though she has a broken arm and a bruise on her face!') She's officially changed our definition of a 'safe' place to leave her. Rolling is a form of transportation for her now.

In fact, here's a video of her going after those darn stacking cups again. This topple forward is what she usually does now. I still can't believe she landed on her face doing this yesterday!

So, when all is said and done, we own a home and I have a legal drivers license. :) What a day!

More to come on our house soon. We get the keys today and we are having some work done on the house starting Tuesday. That will take a few weeks and so it will be nearly the end of June before we move in. Grr. I'll post some before/after pictures of our house when the work is done.

Enjoy your long weekend!