Home Sweet Home

Our little Ms. Polly Rose is named after two remarkable grandmothers. The first being my great great grandmother Mary Ann Jones Ellsworth. She went by "Polly". She joined the church in 1854 at the age of 18. Two years later in 1856 she bravely left her family, country (England), and everything she knew to come by herself to America and join the pioneer Latter Day Saints and pull a handcart 1400 miles across the plains in the first handcart company. I can't imagine doing that alone at 20yrs old! I have always admired her courage and faith in doing so. "We were met in Immigration Canyon by the First Presidency and a brass band and hundreds of people in carriages, on horseback, and on foot. It was a day never to be forgotten. We had reached the goal and on foot all the way. I never left my handcart for a day and only rode over two rivers. We waded streams, crossed high mountains, and pulled through heavy sands, leaving comfortable homes, fathers, moth...

Well Polly had a most exciting birth so I thought I should document it while it's still fresh. I had taken up tennis a year prior and was having so much fun (and really wasn't looking forward to being homebound after getting a taste of freedom with Daisy in preschool and no babies at home. I was trying to get in as much as I could before the baby). My team is made up of ladies from my ward. It has been so fun having tennis to socialize and exercise 2-3 times a week. We joined a beginning tennis league and I was determined to continue playing as long as possible. My team captain scheduled me to play the day before my due date, and everyone knew I might not make it but I had a goal to play if the baby had come yet, no matter how slow I was. I had also continued to play several times a week before this match. The morning of the match came and I remember getting ready and feeling a very low contraction, not really in my belly at all, but felt more like right at my cervix. I thoug...

Well Polly had a most exciting birth so I thought I should document it while it's still fresh. I had taken up tennis a year prior and was having so much fun (and really wasn't looking forward to being homebound after getting a taste of freedom with Daisy in preschool and no babies at home. I was trying to get in as much as I could before the baby). My team is made up of ladies from my ward. It has been so fun having tennis to socialize and exercise 2-3 times a week. We joined a beginning tennis league and I was determined to continue playing as long as possible. My team captain scheduled me to play the day before my due date, and everyone knew I might not make it but I had a goal to play if the baby had come yet, no matter how slow I was. I had also continued to play several times a week before this match. The morning of the match came and I remember getting ready and feeling a very low contraction, not really in my belly at all, but felt more like right at my cervix. I thoug...

This handsome boy turned 12 and was excited for his first temple trip for baptisms. He really enjoyed it and wants to go back as soon as possible. So proud of him!

Wow it has been a year since I posted on this blog! A year since I've chronicled our family... that's pretty sad. So much has happened since last January! We had a lot of adventures, finished the house and moved, started a new school year, found out a surprise #5 baby would be joining us... So much to update!! Rather than overwhelm myself trying to think of all the things I need to write about from the last year, I'm just going to record my feelings tonight. Justin gave me an extended weekend off. The kids had their last day of school before spring break today and they left shortly after school up to Seligman to stay the night with Dale & Joanna. Tomorrow morning, Dale & Daisy will stay with their grandparents while Justin takes Brighton & Adaira on a backpacking adventure in the Grand Canyon. They will be carrying all their own food and supplies and sleeping on the trail and at the trail campgrounds. They plan on hiking out Monday and coming home Tuesday morn...

Dale is almost 5 1/2 years old now. He keeps things loud and lively around our house most of the time. He really struggles with letters, reading, and communication (as well as behavior). He's actually doing pretty well at math. We don't know the source of his delays and have done genetic testing after the geneticists at PCH really made a connection that I thought surely was the right one. It was both a relief and a frustration for it to be wrong and be back at square one. At this point Dale will probably be repeating Kindergarten again. It's not the worst thing in the world because he started very early anyway, turning 5 after he'd been in school for over a month, but I worry about doing it again and him still struggling because his delays/struggles could possibly not be maturity related. I spend a lot of time worrying about Dale. I worry about him both academically and socially. He honestly has such a sweet, tender, and good heart. I worry about him when the time com...

This morning at breakfast Brighton asked me if I could enroll him in college classes while he is in high school, because he doesn't want to be in college for eight years. I said "I'd love to Brighton! But you know college is only four years, and then you have the option for a Masters or a doctorate" He says "I want to get a doctorate" and Adaira says "I want to get a nurserate!" Ha ha ha, love her.

My kids are always warned 3-4 times when it is time to leave for school in the morning. Nothing different this morning. Adaira and Brighton were messing around and playing when it was time to go, so I announced "Alright, time to go" and they didn't stop. I announced it again and then counted down from 5 to 1 until I was locking the door. Adaira whined about how she didn't know where her sweater was, and I told her she should have been ready to go and not playing with Brighton. We get in the car and she is upset about her sweater and finally yells "I wish you were dead!" to me (she's a peach isn't she?). I immediately pull over and order her out of the car and tell her to start walking (we were about 150ft from the intersection at Dobson & Galveston). At the light I told her to turn and continue walking to the bus stop another 50-60 ft away. At that point I asked her to apologize and picked her up at the bus stop and we headed to sch...

 So I've always had the real estate itch, and I even joked with Justin once earlier in the year about buying an investment property with the cash we had on hand from selling our home. I wasn't too serious and he wasn't hearing it. After talking to a friend over the summer about her plans to start buying and flipping properties, the bug hit me again. I talked Justin into it since we had enough money sitting in the bank since we still hadn't started construction on our house. We looked at buying from bank auctions for about a month but didn't see any really good deals, so decided to shift our focus to MLS and look at homes we could actually see before buying (unlike the auction homes). This little gem was a probate sale and we put an offer on it within 2-3 days of it being listed. We paid $113,000 for it. It was a 1960s era home, 3bed 2 bath, 1092s.f. in Tempe that hadn't seen a single upgrade since the decade it was built. Did I mention it was FILTHY??? Absolut...