Stice Family

Wednesday was my dentist apt. Brielle was in pre-school and Ashton hates being babysat alone without her. So I braved the idea of bringing him along. The whole time Ashton just sat on my lap and stared with big bug eyes while the dentist cleaned my teeth. He was so cute and quiet.

That evening Matt Georgeson, the second counselor in the bishopbrick came by to issue Todd a calling. He'll still teach Gospel Doctrine for Sunday School, but they were wanting him to be the designated Spanish speaking ward missionary for our ward. Which, Matt said, would mean Todd would not do weekly things with the other ward missionaries. But would only go out to teach if our ward missionaries found a spanish speaking investigator. I guess the spanish branch is struggling for volume of members enough that each ward has been asked to fill this position. So a second calling, but only sort of. It shouldn't require much time.

Friday I did some visitting teaching. Todd loves reading the Ensign but always steals it off to work or somewhere I can't find it and I didn't have time to look up and print out the lesson off the internet. So I taught my lesson from the quote by Elder Ukdorf from the the Women's General Relief Society Broacast that impressed me so much... "Happiness is your heritage." Brielle always loves visitting teaching because I teach mothers of her friends and she gets a great play date out of it.

Friday afternoon, we packed up and drove to Tamarack to stay the night in our friends' cabin with them and 2 other families we are good friends with. It was tons of fun. The first night Ashton kept me up literally all night long trying to keep him quiet so everyone else could sleep. So the next day we were too exhausted to drive home. Which was a bummer because it was the adult session of Stake Conference Saturday night and that's by far my favorite part of Stake Conference. And the next morning was Stake Conference. Some other friends drove home early Sunday morning to make it. We had traded rooms with another family because their room had a giant closet in it big enough to put Ashton's play pen in and have us all get some sleep. It was VERY easy to sleep that night and we needed it! But yes, we skipped conference. We've already been harrassed for it, much to our surprise...

Saturday, we girls took a morning walk and it felt good to be moving after no sleep. It woke me up enough to enjoy the day with our friends. That afternoon, Todd and the guys went on a 4-wheeling ride and had a blast. They went off roading all up the mountain and rooster tailing through mudbogs. When they came back we almost couldn't tell who was who driving up the driveway because they were so muddy in the face! . That night we played a few fun games. I'm a game person, I loved that part. They had a wrap around porch that the kids never got sick of running around and around and around. It got their energy out! I don't know where Ashton found his, he did take a super long nap. And he was suprisingly happy and good all day having not slept at night.

Sunday we drove back in the early afternoon so we could have the evening at home to relax before the week started. Our kids were in heaven the whole time up there. And with the exception of Ashton's behavior the first night, Todd and I were too. It was just beautiful and we always love getting away to that area, especially with friends.

Monday we went and walked the piece of land we've had our eyes on for a while to talk with the seller about it. He actually beat us by two hours with his offer on it when it was up for sale 6 months ago or so. It had already been engineered to the county's taylored specifications to be developed into a neighborhood of a few lots with small acreage. Something we've been looking for now for 4 years. But he went ahead with the plan to develop it and started the pleas with the city and county to get it approved. They don't approve ANYTHING these days, including several neighborhood proposals we were very interested in buying lots from, in the past. But last week he received the final approval to go ahead with it. Which was exciting to us, but still, it all depends on whether or not he takes our offer.

Just the idea of paying ANYTHING for it frustrates me. If we had gotten our offer in (which would have been accepted because it was the seller's asking price) before this guy, we'd have developed it, sold the pieces, and not owed anything on the lot we wanted, plus had remaining profits to really pay down the mortgage on the house we would build. He gave us his prices Friday. So Monday was about understanding all of his CC&R rules, the development time-line, association fees, whether irrigation came with it, if septics, power, and wells would be included, etc. So we're in the process of talking to the bank, not the best time in out economy to be doing that but we've been polishing up and preparing for it to go smoothly, and we're putting together an offer. We'll see what happens. It's kind of my last attempt. If it doesn't work out, I'm staying here forever. Ok maybe not forever. But I'm tired of the drama buying land has been for us here these past years.

The development being approved through the county has gotten me motivated to revise our house plans. I drew them up over a year ago and never quite finished them when, the day before closing on that land, we found out it was filled land and not yet buildable. Information the sellers withheld. So we opted not to buy it and go through the trouble of compacting that much land and changing the layout. It's been a long break, but drawing again has been fun. I really enjoy drawing floor plans. If I went back to school with the intent to work, drafting would probably be my first choice.

We bought an iMac computer for Todd's schooling since they are virtually ironproof to the IBM viruses out there everywhere. His online school's website made our IBM very vulnerable. We quickly got very used to having two computers, we'd often both use them at the same time. Todd is done with school now, but iMac's are so hard for me to understand and use. And many of my favorite programs are not usable with an iMac. So two months ago, when our IBM fried with a virus, we still went and got another one to replace it. But from the get go, it had constant issues dropping the internet. We knew it was not the internet because Todd's iMac worked fine with internet when mine would be down. We had both of the IT employees at Todd's office come over and work with it 3 times. We took it in to Geek Squad at Best Buy where we bought it the 4th time. They said they fixed it. But it did it again. The internet only ever worked on it one day each time it was fixed (that very day) in the two months we owned it. In the end it would drop power. It would say it was on but wouldn't pull up a screen. We tried other monitors at Todd's work, they didn't work either. So we complained strongly enough to Best Buy that they traded us out for a new computer that was actually a significant upgrade.... because they said our computer was no longer sold there. Surprise surprise. But we were very excited to get a better one at no extra cost. We got home, and couldn't get the screen to work on it either. We finally got that working and went to turn it on and couldn't log in because it was asking for Tanya's password. It was used. Skipping to the end of the story, we now have driven 4 hours and gone about 55 days without a computer (or at least the uses we needed it for) when we paid for a nice brand new one, and we now have a very nice IBM with twice the processor and 4 times the memory of the one we actually paid for. Todd told his IT guys what we ended up with and they were both shocked that we got away with that nice of computer. I guess that does make the hassell seem worth it! We saved hundreds of dollars!

Tomorrow is Brielle's Halloween party at pre-school so I'm off to take in her Rapunzel dress...it's a bit too big.