Moving time!

Wow, the last month or so was CRAZY! First off, we moved!! We bought a home on the opposite side of town (we were previously renting the home I grew up in from my parents).  This happened to be the week before school was out (and that is crazy in itself). Right after we moved, we had to do some major deep cleaning in the new home (it was a foreclosure), we were also working on cleaning our old home to be rented out, then Sienna got sick, and then I had horrible allergies that turned into an awful sinus infection that lasted for way too long. Boo. But now we are moved in, things are clean, and we are loving our new home. We are all healthy and we look forward to all the new memories we will make in our new home. 

This is our new home!! We love it! We can't wait to take out those huge bushes in the front!

I'm going to give you a tour of our home BEFORE we painted and changed some of the flooring. I will post the "after" pictures on the next post!

This is the front room you walk into when you come into our home. It is the formal dining room/sitting area. This home came with grey-green walls with gloss stripes down the wall. Definitely not our style.

This is the other side of the formal dining room. This is what you see when you walk in.  More glossy stripes. Yuck.

Our maroon kitchen with tile floors...but not for long!

This is the family room connected to the kitchen. Back on the left is a bathroom.

This is the loft. I love this area! We have Sienna's toys up there and there is a little office nook in the back right corner (see below)

Office nook. Someday I'm hoping to build in a desk and some shelves...(on my to-do wish list)

French doors into the master bedroom (this is on the opposite side of the loft)

Master bedroom and closet #1

Master bathroom and closet #2 ( I can't believe there are 2 closets! Talk about storage!!)

Hallway to the other bedrooms and one of my favorite features of the house....

My UPSTAIRS laundry room with a small counter space!! I can't tell you how much I love this feature already. Laundry is already becoming much more efficient because I just walk it straight down the hall and put it away. AMAZING! (Ours used to be outside in the garage around a corner. It was always messy and clean clothes were always falling on the dirty garage floor).

Upstairs bathroom 

Now, are you ready for some crazy colors? Remember, this is all BEFORE we changed things up!

Bedroom #1

Yes, even the ceiling, closet doors, and the bedroom door were all painted these crazy colors...with remnants of Winnie the Pooh wallpaper here and there. 

Bedroom #2 (Sienna's current bedroom)

Again...LOTS of colors. They even painted the fan blades!

Bedroom #3- Crazy colored room with Bratz dolls wallpaper lining the room. I can't stand Bratz dolls...I just started to go off on the whole Bratz dolls concept, but then I deleted it. Haha. I don't need to vent about my distaste for them. Just know I couldn't wait for this wallpaper to come down!

Our beautiful pool. THIS, we did not change one bit :). We love our pool and so does Sienna! I'll post more pictures of the backyard on our next post.

So after all of these glorious shots, we did some changes to the house. We had the whole house painted and we changed some of the flooring downstairs. There are many other fun projects we have in mind, but those will have to come with time. Before we go I will leave you will a couple pictures from moving day. I was not good about taking pictures this day. I was a little busy :)

Garth bringing in the U-Haul

Sienna loved playing in the empty U-Haul!

She was cracking herself up

and then she pulled out some awesome dance moves 

Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures of our amazing friends and family who helped us move. Our awesome brother-in-law came all the way up from Southern California bright and early in the morning and then went back home after he helped us later that after noon. How amazing is that? He really wanted to help us out. Man, we are blessed! 

Next post you will see our home AFTER we moved in! So come check back soon!

Easter

Yes, I'm a little late on an Easter post, but I figured late is better than never! Right?!

This year, we went down south to celebrate Easter with Garth's family. We had a blast. Usually we are up north at my grandma's, so the warm weather was a nice surprise!

On Saturday night, we began the fun with cookie decorating and egg dying:

Thank you Pinterest for the amazing idea of using a whisk to dye eggs. I will never do it any other way! It was so easy and the boys loved it!! Next year, Sienna will loved this. This year, she watched for a couple minutes before heading to bed.

Kimu and Karson's creations:

The next morning, we woke up (surprisingly before the boys) and as soon as they were awake, we all headed outside to look for Easter eggs. This year the Easter bunny was so smart and filled white and pink eggs with puffs for Sienna. The rest were filled with candy. Smart Easter bunny....

I LOVE this picture! She cracks me up. She loved her Easter egg hunt! She kept asking for "mo," so Kimu, kept hiding more for her, over and over (what a good big cousin!!). I think this could have gone on all day...seriously! She had so much fun.

Then we had a wonderful lunch with all of our family (thank you Auntie Heather and Uncle Kimu--our amazing hosts!). We ate such yummy food and we were excited my brother came over to join us! Fun times.

This was the best picture of the cousins:

because Sienna kept doing this:

She wanted NOTHING to do with taking pictures!

Later that day we went swimming. She also went swimming the day before (we loved the weather!) with daddy. She loved the pool and it makes me so excited to take her swimming in our new pool this summer :)

What an amazing Easter, spent with our amazing family. We are truly blessed!

I don't know how Sienna grew so fast and how she's already 19 months, but it happened. A year and half old!! Yikes!! It feels like it happened over night.

She says so many words now and she tries to copy most words you say. She loves to say thank you (which melts my heart), she says: 'tay-too'. 'Tay-too mommy' are some of her sweet words that make me want to scoop her up and kiss her all over!! She also likes to say 'Amen' when we're done praying. But she says: 'Men.' Pretty funny. She also learned to say 'No' recently and says it all.the.time. Even though we know that sometimes she says it correctly in context, she doesn't do that a lot. Lately, it's just the opposite. She says it for anything. For example, the other day we were reading a story and this was our conversation about the book:

Me: Wow, Sienna. Look at all those animals! Do you like the zebra?

Sienna: No! (she says it in a high pitched, sweet way)

Me: Do you like the giraffe?

Sienna: No!

Me: Do you like the monkey?

Sienna: No!

Me: Do you like Daddy?

Sienna: No!

Me: Do you like Mommy?

Sienna: No!

Daddy chimes in: Sienna, do you like anything?

Sienna starts to walk away, turns around and pauses for a few seconds and then said: No!

All with her high-pitched, sweet 'No'! Someday, I'm sure I will not think it's cute when she's telling us no, but for now we think it's pretty cute. We think it's pretty funny.

Shout out to Uncle Tyler @ Boise State!! Woo-woo!

Sienna is at such a fun age. She mimics everything we do and she is obsessed with necklaces and purses. She has many child purses, but they're not good enough. No way. She wants mommy's purses. They are about the same size as she is, but she will still carry them around-one on each shoulder, and constantly empty them or put things in them. She is definitely my girly girl.

Look at her curls!! Her hair is really starting to grow and she has little curls on the bottom that are beautiful!

Got this power-wheels on Craigslist, brand new for $40. I was stoked. Sienna fell in love (YAY!) and would ride with a huge smile plastered on her face. The blissful rides didn't last long...she won't even sit on it lately. She loves to look at it and pat it, but not sit on it (Boo!). Maybe she'll sit on it again soon...

A recent favorite toy-a piano from Nana! (with a microphone and everything)

Last month, our nephews came to stay with us for the weekend, along with Nana. We had a blast. We went on a walk, rode bikes, and went to the park. It was wonderful. Sienna is obsessed with her cousins and love to watch them and copy them. She has so much fun being around them.

Some other fun news for our family is that we bought a house! It is currently in escrow and will close in the middle of May. We are very excited!! We are currently renting our home from my parents and as much as we love it, we're ready for our own place. I will definitely miss this home though, as it was the home I grew up in. So many memories were made here, as a child, and as an adult. Sienna's room used to be my room when I was little, which I think is pretty cool. But, having been here for so long, I wanted something different, a place of our own to make new memories. Here is the new place:

The new house is on the other side of town and is also a two-story home with a pool. Guess what else it has?? An UPSTAIRS laundry room!! Anyone who has a two story home can appreciate how annoying it is to have to carry laundry up and down the stairs constantly! It is such a pain! I couldn't be more excited about this feature. I literally gave out a squeal of excitement when we were walking through the house and I opened that door to find that laundry room! We can't wait to move in and start painting, pulling out those horrible bushes in the front yard, and getting it ready for us. We anxiously counting down the days!!