Footnote

By the way, we bought a house.

What's that you say? It looks eerily similar to the first house we made an offer on--the house that I had posted a picture of and then had to post a recant because we didn't come to an agreement; the offer we made 2 offers ago. Well, it is the very same house indeed. We were negotiating on a third property when we decided that the one we liked best was the one we liked first, and we figured out how to make it work.

We are very excited.

Oh, and it's a long story...

Recant

First off, I would like to read the following statement to anyone named Megan who regularly reads this blog:

I sincerely apologize for posting a picture of the home we made the offer on without consent, permission, agreement, recommendation, approval, a head nod, or a wink. I further apologize for the hopes this may or may not have raised in addition to any peer pressure this may have caused. In the future, my blog picture posting will be limited.

Thank you.

In reparation for damages, I would like to post the following picture of our future home:

Questions (a post by Megan...so don't get too excited--I'm not the creative writer in the family)

So, the main question I've received all week long has been "Did you get the house!?!" And the answer is NO. It's okay though. The countering-game was going quite well, until we found out that there would be an additional $300 worth of monthly taxes (in addition to the normal property taxes) that we would be responsible for paying until May 2010. When we were given this information, we ran away quickly. Well, not really quickly...we tried extremely hard to justify throwing away thousands of dollars, then we rejected their offer, and then we hoped the sellers would call us back and beg us to buy it. So, on we go. We're headed out for another trip this next weekend, and I'm very excited.

The next question I received was "How was the race?" And the answer is FABULOUS!!! Oh my goodness, I can't believe the outpouring of support I received about the race! I seriously felt like a rock star all week...I received lots of emails, phone calls, and words of encouragement...thank you, thank you, thank you. I even appreciate the fan support (okay, the only actual fans that saw me running were my family and Sonya). Nathan and the girls have been incredible in sacrificing time for me to train for this run and I'm very grateful--thank you. So will I do another one? You bet!

The Offer

We went out to Indiana last week (now that I only have class on Monday and Tuesday), and we found a couple of houses that we were interested in. And...we made an offer on this house:

We're cautiously excited about it, because we don't want to pay what they're asking and we're not sure they will accept the range that we're prepared to offer. So, we're keeping our fingers crossed.

We'll keep you all informed.

The Gauntlet

After I scored my 102 yesterday, a challenger scored 104. I took this as a throwing down of the gauntlet and retried. Tonight I scored 139, 126, and 104. True.

139 words

Speed Test

102 words

I am a certifiable nerd.

Tweeties and Talks

The girls came into our bedroom this morning, woke me up, and dragged me down the stairs. When I came around the corner into the dining room and kitchen they excitedly pointed out that they had set the table all by themselves, and had also gotten out the flour, sugar and eggs so that I could make them "tweety-bird waffles".

They had even set out the cookbook and opened it to the specific page for waffles! So...we had waffles this morning. How could I turn them down after they totally set me up?

We enjoyed General Conference Weekend, and the girls actually did very well listening through all 4 sessions! They carefully watched each member of the Twelve in order to be able to color in the ties on their workbook pages next to each apostle's picture. They also had a space to write down what each of their talks was about and what they could do. Ali tried to write something for each talk. Kaitlyn tried to avoid getting marker on the floor during each talk.

During President Eyring's talk yesterday he said, "God cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance." Ali immediately turned and informed us what she was writing down in her space: "I will get my allowance each Saturday if I do my chores."



Then, tonight during her bedtime prayers Ali said, "Thank you that we got to listen to conference yesterday and today, and that we got to listen to the prophet and the Twelve Apostles." Kaitlyn was very loving and happy for a good part of the weekend. Megan is so good! I'm so glad that she took the time to prepare those little workbooks. I think that they may have gotten as much out of conference for their age and we did for our ages!

Max seems to have developed significantly over the past couple of weeks, now that he's officially 6 months old. We've started giving him rice cereal at dinner time, and he's accepting the fact that he is going to have to choke that paste down if he ever wants his dad to feed him ice cream again.

He's also moving around like crazy. The only problem is that he has so much more control over and strength in his arms (as opposed to his legs), that he ends up pushing himself across the floor backwards to the other side of the room. His fine motor skills are improving as well. He's able to pick up the pacifier by himself and put it in his mouth the right way. Hopefully he'll be changing his own diapers soon.

Megan continues to train for her half-marathon. Last week she ran 12 miles! We met her at 2 or 3 strategic locations to cheer her on, to give her water, and to give her a banana to eat. I was tired after running about 50 feet alongside her while she took the banana! She's doing incredible and has been an inspiration to me: I've decided to cut back on eating ice cream while watching The Biggest Loser.

Last weekend we had a great time with our friends Chad and Amy, and Kevin and Leah. We fired up the grill and then fired up the Guitar Hero III. With all of my non-virtual guitar playing experience, I thought it would be no sweat. Unfortunately, it turned out to be much more sweat than I expected--and both Chad and Kevin totally outplayed me.

But Ali, Kaitlyn and Megan had a great time playing too.

Unfortunately, Megan was "boo-ed off the stage." This video should create some buzz:

Finally, and I don't normally post stuff like this, I couldn't help but post the following hilarious video which I saw while blogstalking recently on Ali's primary teacher Sarah's blog. I laughed so hard the first time I watched it, that I had to watch it a couple more times. Oh, I'm so glad there are people who sing at random things in the world, just like I do.