June

June was all about trying to get our house in order and exploring our new area. People were shocked that I decorated my home so quickly. But I just always figured it didn't feel like home until the pictures were up and the house felt beautiful. 2, I was stuck on a mountain for about 2 weeks with no car so I had lots of time to unpack boxes and "get settled". 

Here's the new house when we moved in. We think it's a lilac bush in the front, it was heavenly to smell every time we opened the door. 

 This is down in the basement. The wall is red, but it came out orange'ish looking in the pictures. I started with a few pictures, then it lit a creative fire

 I shopped for more frames. Sometimes I found the shapes that I wanted, but not in black, so I enlisted the kids help in painting them black. 

I bought some vinyl lettering and the "family" is actually metal. This was the final product. Tyler called it a "museum" of our family. 

This is the wall in relationship to the rest of the room down in the basement. We brought our white shelving units from Idaho. The people buying our house weren't keen on them in the family room and didn't really care if they had them or not. Marc had to trim them down just a bit to make them fit, I took the picture before he had time to fix the top shelf. But I was very happy we kept the shelves, they're perfect for toy storage right now. 

Here's our family room. I actually love the neutrals. It feels very calming and "matches" with the environment outside. 

Other view from the family room before living room was complete.

Here's our view out the family room window. I spend lots of time watching out the window from the couch.

Start to the living room. I bought new vinyl lettering to go above family picture. 

Lexi helped me paint over the orange wall in the master bedroom. The blue instantly felt more peaceful and serene. 

We ordered new bedding online. It has too much green in it, but for now it will do. 

This is my kitchen. I feel a little spoiled. Having a "nice" kitchen was important to me in the home search. I instantly eliminated many homes because I didn't like the size or layout of the kitchen.

I enjoy having the computer in the kitchen, Though, it has been a little harder to keep it clean with all the clutter that tends to build up in an "office" that is just wider than a keyboard.

Marc and I really wanted our living room to look nice. We sold a lot of things in Boise, saved up as much money as we could and for the first time in our marriage, got to go shop for a living room. We bought a few things at RC Willey. It was going to take forever for them to be delivered. During that time, I stumbled on Wayfair.com and found all sorts of pieces of furniture that we liked a little better, and was not so expensive, so we could actually do a few more things with the room. We ordered a couch I was shocked when this box showed up a couple of days later. I built a couch from a box.

I know, I know. I bought a cream colored couch when I still have lots of littles at home. But it ultimately went better with the design scheme. 

Little by little, all the pieces arrived. Both Marc and I love how it turned out! (we have more accent pillows on the couch in yellow and turquoise). It's fun to have a warm inviting living room that just feels bright and happy :) Eventually, we want to put a piano under the family picture.

View from up top:

After a month of waiting for the settlement check from the car wreck, we finally received the money we needed to go buy a new van. Happy Dance!! I really wanted to find a van that had a DVD player and a jump seat for the second row. That brought the price and mileage up for anything that was in our price range. Marc found a Silver 04' Odyssey that only had 65,000 miles on it that was right in our price range. It was the practical car to get. It does have leather seats which feels like an upgrade. 

We discovered that kids eat free at Ikea on Tuesdays with the purchase of one entree. That was a score! We took advantage of this deal several times throughout the summer. 

The kids helped me set up the trampoline. I think it was fun for them to have some type of normalcy from home. 

Our neighborhood has a clubhouse and pool. Lexi won a free session of swim lessons so we spent quite a bit of time there for two weeks straight during the last part of June. The pool doesn't open for regular swimming until 12:00. Most of the time, we ate lunch and then Isabel went down for a nap, so we didn't go swimming as much as we thought we would this summer. I see a lot more time at the pool in store for us next year when Isabel is a little bigger.

Lexi in swim lessons.  

Boys waiting for lessons to be over.

 Isabel and I waiting for lessons to be over. 

 Lexi got a new hair cut. This is the before:

This is the after. It is a lot easier for her to take care of and she loves having shorter hair right now during the summer time. 

The Greenwood family came up to our house for swimming and dinner. The kids were all downstairs playing and Jolynn pulled out these delicious, gourmet cookies that the adults sampled and shared. 

During family home evening, we went on a short hike on one of the nearby trails in the neighborhood.

 We went to a splash pad down in Highland and met my friend Jaclyn with her 3 boys there. 

 What's up Doc?

 Playing at the neighborhood pool. It was incredibly difficult to get all 4 kids to stop moving for 2 seconds to take this picture! 

 I picked up a little sand/water play box at Costco for Isabel and she was so happy to sit and dump water from the pails. Definitely a winner toy!

Lexi is still in between wanting to stay close to me and Isabel, and playing on her own. She enjoyed diving for rings, swimming around the lazy river, and coming back to check in on us. She got cold pretty quickly so was always ready to go "warm up"

 Tyler and Bryce enjoyed  their independence in the pool. They mostly swam around the lazy river, but had fun finding new friends to play with, going in the hot tub, diving for rings, and being silly. 

We took a family hike to "Battle Creek Falls" just outside American Fork Canyon. It was a fun hike. We would have liked to have gone further, but weren't prepared with enough food and water to keep going in heat.

  We had a few minutes before church, so each kid took a "Dad and Me" picture. 

The boys were able to go to cub camp in June. We weren't sure we'd be able to go. Registration deadline was already over by the time we had moved up here and apparently they're pretty strict about not adding last minute boys. We thought we were going to be lucky by letting one boy go one day and the other going the next day and sharing one shirt. We found out last minute that both were going to be able to go and both got a shirt! (Tyler's was an adult medium, but it was his own shirt :)
These are a couple of pictures that some of the other leaders took of them.

The kids love being in Utah. They've only talked about missing Idaho in reference to missing their cousins. There are lots of little neighborhood kids that they have become friends with already which makes me happy. We finally got our bikes to Utah at the end of June. My sweet Aunt Connie and Uncle Jere delivered them to us with the rest of everything that was left in the garage. Everyone was so excited. It's a lot more difficult to ride bikes up here with all the hills, but we are learning. We're trying to find our new sense of "normal" up here. Hopefully, I will love being in Utah as much as the kids do.