Words

Madison's vocabulary is starting to explode. She picks up new words every day. Her favorite word right now is PUPPY. She says it clear as day and all the time. It all started a few weeks ago when my sister Juyla got a puppy. At first Madison would just say PupPup. But within a few days she turned it into PUPPY and loves it. She tries so hard to make sure she says it clear. I love this stage when they learn new words and can start to tell us what they want. Hopefully she find a new favorite word soon, every time she sees Juyla she just keeps repeating her favorite word, Puppy.
But who can blame her, look how cute she is.

HOUSE update

John and I have been looking for a house for over 3 months now. This has been a very stressful and crazy time. The housing market is so insane I hate it. But we are hoping we are in the ups. We have put several offers in on houses and have lost a few. We have followed a house to trustee sale only to find out that the sale was postponed just moments before the sale. But we have finally had an offer accepted!! Hoorah! But we can't get too excited just yet. This was a drive by only! Meaning no one could get in without their offer being accepted. We had been in several homes with a similar floor plan in this neighborhood and knew we LOVED the layout of the house and the neighborhood. The house is a short sale and had been on the market for a few months when we put our offer in. Our offer was a back-up offer, but since we weren't finding anything else we decdied to just play the game. So we made our highest and best offer knowing that there were two other offers that were submited to the bank. On Friday July 17th I got a call from my AMAZING realtor saying that the Short Sale had been approved and the other two offers were gone so the listing agent was going to sumbit our offer to the bank! Hoorah! I was so excited. But a little nervous because interest rates have gone up since we started looking and so I was very nervous that we would NOT be able to afford the house at what we offered. John assured me that everything would work out. So the agent submited our offer to the bank and I got a call from my agent on Wednesday July 22nd, saying that the bank had accepted our offer. Hoorah again!!! Now we just needed to go see the house to see if we really wanted to proceed to purchasing this home. We got an appointment with the owners for Saturday and went in to see it. The layout was everything I was hoping it to be. (This house have everything on my wish list, minus all the new luxurious granite.) However the house is not in the best condition. It needs a TON of cleaning and some repairs. The master shower has started to be retiled but was never completed, meaning it is not useable, the flooring upstairs was also NOT completed, the pool is NOT fenced or filled, and the stove top is missing in the kitchen. (And yes, people are LIVING in it, how I have no idea.) We also counted 9 different flooring types through out the home. How crazy is that!!!! But we love the house itself. So now we are waiting for excrow to start so that we can get an appraiser in the house in hopes that he will appraise it for less so that we can finance the work it needs into the home. If not, then we are back to square one again!

a NEW pet

Charles found a little baby toad in the garden yesterday and is SO EXCITED about it. We decided he can keep it as a pet. He keeps walking up to the little aquarium it is in and saying, "He is SO cute." It's very funny! He loves it. My dad has 4 Toads so Charles is very excited to have a pet like Grandpas.

Big BUMMER

So I went with my two sisters and my sister from another mother Janica, to go see the taping of So You Think You Can Dances' 100th episode. And it was just NOT our day... anything that could go wrong did. We got to the taping about 15 minutes late and they would NOT let us in. We were so bummed. Since we sat in traffic to get their we didn't want to sit in traffic again. So we decided to hang out at The Grove. We saw the movie "The Proposal" and had dinner at Wood Ranch and then headed home. It was nice to be out with some of my favorite girls with No Kids!!! Although we did not get to see the taping as planned we did have a nice evening. Hopefully we will have better luck next time.

His 1st Trophy

On Friday our ward had their annual Pine Wood Derby. They decided to turn it into a ward activity and allow all to participate by making or bringing their own car. John borrowed our brother-in-law's car and Charles raced it. They first did a race with all the cub scouts and then had a race for everyone else. Charles had a great time racing Uncle Daniel's car. And they got lots of compliments about the car because it was Army style. Charles and Uncle Daniel's car got 3rd Place!!!! WhooHoo!!! Charles was so excited to actually get a trophy. It was really neat. He was so proud. We called Uncle Daniel after the race and told him all about. Who would of thought his first trophy would be for a Pine Wood Derby race at age 4.

I forgot to bring my camera, so these are just photos at home afterward.

I GOT Tickets!!!!!

I am so SUPER excited!!! I got tickets to go see a taping of "So You Think You Can Dance" for this weeks taping. I guess I better get caught up before I go see the results show LIVE. Yippy!!!!!

SHE'S HOME

We are SO EXCITED!!!!! Sister Janelle Anderson is HOME!!!!!
Her plane landed on Wednesday around 4 PM at Ontario Airport. All our family was their to greet her. It was a very surreal moment. The kids did great! Charles just kept staring at her, and has been following her around the house ever since. All day on Wednesday Janelle kept asking to hold Charles, and he loved EVERY minute of it. It was very cute. Madison walked to her without any problems. It has been great. We all have just be hanging out.