The trouble with cuteness

This morning as I was looking over my email Desmond came into the living room with his arms covered in flour asking "is this for dogs mom, is this for dogs mom?" over and over. I'm not sure why he wondered if it was for dogs but I immediately took him into the kitchen to wash him off only to find that he had gotten into the pantry and ripped open a new bag of flour and spilled about 1/3 of the bag on the floor.

Two days ago I was on the phone with John and after finding a huge puddle of milk on the table and floor I commented that Desmond is the equivalent of 15 kids. And it's true. So as I was cleaning up the flour I said it again and my girls said "if Desmond is at someone elses house we need to keep him away from their pantry" and I said "and their milk, and their eggs, and their cereal, and peanut butter, and sugar, and soap, and faucet sprayers, and goldfish, and spaghetti, and cannery juice mix, and hot chocolate, and butter, and toothpaste, and desitin, and deoderant, and baking soda, and baking powder, and I'm sure I'm missing something. Seriously, these are all things that I have come into the kitchen or bathroom and found a gigantic mess.




So maybe you should watch your child Robin you're thinking, and although there is an element of truth to that there is also just an element of the kid is a magnet to messy stuff and making messes and getting in to everything when I turn my head for even a minute. Will he ever outgrow this? I think so because Collin was exactly the same way and he has toned it down a bit. But honestly, I don't know if I can survive much longer, I have had 3 mess makers right in a row, so much that sometimes I don't even blink an eye, I just pull out the broom and start sweeping. On the other hand sometimes I completely loose it like yesterday when he decided to wash off the peanut butter he had spread all over his body in the kitchen sink and then proceeded to take the sprayer and spray down, nay soak, my entire kitchen. Water was dripping from the ceiling. That was a proud moment in the Holman household.

If he wasn't so darn cute and didn't walk around singing Bob the builder and Super Why and saying "I miss you" everytime I come home from being gone I'm not sure what would happen. What do you do with that much cuteness and that much trouble?

2010 - what a year

Ok, I guess it's time to face up to the fact that I have not had an entry for about 1 1/2 yrs. Oddly enough 2010 was probably one of our more interesting years. Here's the quick summary:

January 15th: John's last day at Brown & Brown

January-Marchish: we try to decide what John will be doing for a new CAREER not JOB and where we want to live. We decide that we are feeling good about Tucson and put our house on the market FSBO. Within a week our house is under contract and we are amazed. Although it was priced well, we were still surprised how lucky we were. Ultimately it did close on May 26th and we knew we had made the right decision to put it on the market when we did.

March: with the house under contract we know we need a plan and ultimately decide to have John run for Justice of the Peace in Tucson. Kind of a crazy idea but we decided to really go for it and see what would happen.

April: John moves to Tucson and begins collecting signatures and we later join him on May 26th. That was quite the move. We had the moving truck, John's truck and my van so full that I literally had no where to put my purse. This is not an exaggeration, my van had every nook and cranny taken. We made it though and got settled in with a few more dings on our furniture than previous moves. Thanks you movers...

Summer of 2010: In the blazing heat, we all go tracting door to door to hand out fliers and talk to people about John as a candidate. Lesley, Benjamin, Alan, and Angela all pitched in on the door to door and Lindsey, Lesley and Angela made a million phone calls. John worked full time on it nearly every day. It was amazing to see him out in 110 degrees with a suit jacket on. We all put in a big effort and felt that we had done all we could.

August 7th: Madison gets baptized. Angela, Alice and her family and Grandma and Grandpa come in from out of town and Nana and Papa and Lesley and her family are also in attendance. It was a great day and Madison looked beautiful!

Aug 14th: My mom came down to Tucson to watch my kids for over a week (who were starting school the next week) while we flew to Florida and set sail for the big Holman Cruise 2010! All of John's siblings and spouses surprised his mom for her 60th birthday. We had planned it a year before and had to keep it under wraps that whole time! We all met in Florida where we surprised her at dinner and announced the cruise to the western carribean. It was a great week and tons of fun. Thanks mom for babysitting and thanks Holmans for such a wonderful memory. We arrived home on Monday and went to the polls the next day.

August 24th: The big election day. We went to the booths and cast our vote and awaited the results. When they came in that night, we saw soon that it was a landslide and not in our favor. In the end John got about 25% of the votes and Keith Bee got the rest. Some have said that wasn't bad for the first time of throwing your hat in the ring. To us it felt like a big loss. I would have thought that the vote would reflect our efforts at least a little more but alas it is politics and it didn't happen for us. All in all I think it was a great experience and would never wish that we hadn't done it. How often do people try for something big in their lifetime? At least we tried.

the rest of the year: Once again we tried to figure out a different career for John. Nothing ever jumped out at us and ultimately he started applying for attorney positions. Because there wasn't a lot out there and we wanted to stay in Tucson, nothing came too quickly. In the end he took a job as an elevator operator at a constuction sight the beginning of December. It was a blessing because it was income. He worked a lot of overtime and was gone for 14 hrs every day.

Jan 2011: John worked 265 hours this month and more than made up for being home with us for so long. We missed him but were glad for the work.

Feb: John's position ended at the construction site (at this point, he was more of a safety guy than an elevator operator) and that afternoon he had an interview with the Santa Cruz County Attorney's office. The next day I enrolled in and started Real Estate school. Finally I was doing something I had wanted to do for about 7 yrs and had put off for various reasons.

March: John ended up getting the job as a prosecutor in Nogales and he started the end of Feb. I finished school just before he started. I took my exam and passed! Yay! and will be working with some friends here in Tucson on their Real Estate team. I am so happy to be doing it, I have loved house hunting ever since I did it for the first time in Bisbee in 2004. Maybe now if I can house hunt for other people we won't be moving so often. :) John works 4 10's so he has Fridays off which gives me another day to go and work in Real Estate. John has a long commute but is able to carpool and really likes the office and people at his job. I personally will be so happy to have real health insurance (something without a $7500 deductible) since we haven't had that since summer 2005. Also, it means we can get a loan for a house so you know what that means.

So there you have it, just a quick overall synopsis of 2010 without all the cute sayings or pictures of my 4 adorable kids. I have a great family and a great life. Maybe now that I've forced myself to start again, I can begin posting things like birthdays and holidays and start back up a record of our lives.

El Tour de Tucson

I'm starting to think my husband can do any kind of double dare physical challenge. First he does a half ironman (did I forget to post about that?) which consisted of a 1.2 mile swim (in open, really cold water), 56 mile bike ride, and he finished it off with a 13 mile run. And just this past weekend he did the 108 mile El Tour de Tucson bike ride.

I suppose the fact that he rode 108 miles on his bike was not the real accomplishment of the weekend. What was even more amazing was that he actually found AND bought a pair of bike shorts! Way to go John!

Seriously though I think he's pretty amazing.



This is John and my brother-in-law Rob who also participated.

A little food for thought

Since I'm apparently incabable of blogging about our lives, I thought I would share this video that I saw on a friend's blog. Enjoy

I'm so excited!!

I can hardly contain my excitement, I just discovered this morning that we now have a Show Low Craigslist! We've been requesting one for years and we finally have it!

http://showlow.craigslist.org/

It really is time

Ok, it's time for another post. I can't locate my cord to download pictures so it's going to have be picture free but I have too much to update. My attempt at documenting our life (I don't scrapbook or write in a journal) through this blog is failing miserably. So here's just a quick summary so that I'll have some memory of this crazy time.

1) We bought our house and have officially moved in. Buying this house has consisted of a whole lot things.

a) big estate sale to empty the house so that we could move in. We did the sale one Thurs, Fri & Sat and it was amazingly successful. Thursday morning we ended up with a constant crowd of people until about noon. We probably had a least 10 people there at a time the entire morning. By the end of the weekend we had sold almost all the stuff. We finally had stuff that people up here were interested in. Kid stuff doesn't do to well up here. We ended up with 2 bedroom sets left and a washer and dryer which we put in an auction that will happen the end of this month. That was a little bit of a pain but my dad came in and saved the day and has taken many loads out to the auction. Thanks Dad!

b) we wimped out and hired someone to paint the entire house. In the end we ended up with 6 different colors (purple in the girls room, tan in the the master and boys room, darker tan in great room, blue in kids bathroom, and lime green - yes lime green in the master bathroom and laundry room, plus the pretty white/slightly cream for the trim. I love all the colors and am so happy that we have it all done. John also managed to rip out the weird fake fireplace before the painter came and luckily so because he did a great job fixing the wall.

c) once the painter was finished we were going to have the tile done but it got delayed because it was on back order so we decided to just move in. Moving week was a little overwhelming but thanks to my 2 sisters it was doable.

d) we moved in and set to work trying to organize. Eventually we got our tile installed and then found out our carpet was also on back order. (I guess the annoyance was balanced by the fact that it confirmed that I had chosen a good tile and carpet and was getting a good price - apparently a lot of people were choosing the same thing).

e) Angela persisted on getting me to tackle the garage so with Alice's help for a couple of days we cleared it out, tucked a lot things away and prepared for our second yard sale. From our move we personally had a lot of things to sell. We held the second one and once again had a lot of traffic. Probably not as much as the first but we still got rid of a lot of stuff. It made me realize that we unknowingly picked a really good weekend to do the first big sale.

f) The entire house has vaulted ceilings (except the bathrooms and laundry room) including the 2ND and 3rd bedrooms and sometime in all of this it was thrown out there that we should build a loft in the girls bedroom. The more John looked into it the more it became a reality. Before I knew it he'd built it and we were able to have the carpet installers even install carpet up there. I have to say John has done some cool things since I've known him but to me this was one of the most impressive. I love it, everything about it. And I'm so impressed that he went from talk to almost finished in a month. I think the kids are going to absolutely love it and it looks so cool! They still have an 8 foot ceiling but it has an opening on the far end of the room. You don't even see the loft when you walk in. Anyway, I can't think of a better way to have added a playroom to this house. Way to go John!

g) This week we finally got our carpet in and let me tell you I love it! I was worried at first that I didn't like the color but the last 2 days I have fallen in love with it.

h) I forgot to say that somewhere in the last month I also went through the house and installed all new door handles and I LOVE them! I think it makes such a huge difference.

We still have a lot to do for the house (baseboards, yard, kitchen counter, etc) but it's coming and we're having small and big victories every week. I really like the layout of the house and am very happy overall with the house itself. The back porch is so great to go sit on especially during a rainstorm. It's nice to be close to the park and the store and we seem to have really great neighbors. In fact this week we had a neighbor come over and invite us to a neighborhood BBQ this Sunday at her house. Fun stuff.

Angela and Alice and my parents get a gold star for all the help they have given me. Alice watched my kids on numerous occasions and her and my mom were a huge help with the first yard sale. They came every day and worked the outside garage stuff while I worked the inside bigger stuff. They were fabulous! Angela devote all her time off this summer to me. It was amazing, she taught summer school and then came and lived with us for basically a month. She changed so many diapers that John started calling her our diaper Sherpa. She basically stepped in and did anything from cleaning the garage to changing diapers to babysitting so John and I could go out to getting up in the night with Collin to putting all the outlet covers back on. Needless to say I miss her greatly and tried everything I could to get her to just move in as a full time nanny/friend. And if anyone is wondering if John was OK with all this, he was. It was a big help to him and he and Angela get along great and well he's just a really good sport about a lot of things.

In the end I probably could spend my whole life trying to say thank you to my family and still never feel like I expressed it enough. It really meant a lot to me and to be completely honest there is literally no way I could have survived it all without them. Seriously, I'm already barely surviving and adding a move to that would have put me over the edge.

In other news, the kids started school this week. Oddly enough we're not entirely sure who Bridgett's Kindergarten teacher will be, it's been a little bit crazy but she's attending and loves her teacher. We're keeping our fingers crossed that she'll be able to stay in her class. She has afternoon Kindergarten and so far has 8 kids in the class. Pretty crazy. Madison started 2ND grade and was thrilled to get the same teacher Hannah had last year and was very happy to have her friend from Kindergarten back in class with her. I'm adjusting to being on a schedule again and hoping to one day have my house clean...

Miracles do happen

Well, it's official. We are finally buying a house. It's only been a short 2 years and we have found the home of our dreams. OK it's not really our dream home but a while ago we decided that we needed to find one of two options.

1. A house we love with a mortgage we like.
2. A mortgage we love and a house that we like.

So ultimately we found the house that we liked with the mortgage that we loved. Here are the specs.

1530 square feet
3 bedroom 2 bathroom
the tiniest 2 car garage you can find
decent back yard

The cool thing is that it's full of furniture so we get to have a fun yard sale and we have even acquired a 42' plasma TV and some nice patio furniture.

So overall we are excited, mostly to be done looking and to finally have our own house. Yay for us!

The winds of change blew away

Still no house. We had 3 very probable options (that's 3 more than we've had in the last 2 years of looking) and within a week they were all crossed off as options. Crazily enough in this buyers market, we put in an offer on a house and within 4 days of it listing it had 6 offers. We can't win. But our hopes are high, something will come. I'm sure of it, we will find a house... sometime... in the next 5 years...

A trip to Utah

I went to UT last week for Forrest's graduation and his baby's blessing. Little Davis is adorable! I have no pictures of any of it except for the day we spent at Thanksgiving Point. Mom, Alice, and Melanee and I went to see the tulip festival and I met up with a friend of mine that I haven't seen for about 4-5 years. I can't believe I forgot to take some pictures with her! Anyhow, it was really fun and so beautiful. The weather was perfect and we had such a good time.

This is my favorite picture. Their was a girl there doing her wedding pictures and Bridgett couldn't stay away. She followed her around and watched, I don't think she could have loved anything more.

Bridgett turned 5!

She was soo excited to turn 5. When she woke up Madison informed her that she "didn't look like a 5 year old." I just wonder what kind of transformation needed to take place for that to happen.

She had a great Birthday, we had cake and ice cream with the family and she was very excited (a lot more than mom) about the make-up she got. It was the only thing she wanted besides jewelry and I felt like it would be a little mean to not get her some. Turns out I chose the kind that is very hard to get off. The next day the girls looked like they had sunburned faces because we couldn't get all the pink off. Bridgett just kept putting it on and taking it off and putting more on. She really did love it a lot. The good news is that it was all used up in about 2 days.

Desi is well taken care of

I found Desmond in his swing this way one day. As I took away the flowers I found about 3 other toys. Collin is always concerned.

Easter

Just a quick picture of the girls in their dresses. Amazingly, this was the best shot we got. We had a fun Easter although we woke up to snow. We had an easter egg hunt on Saturday and then dinner on Sunday with Alice and my mom and dad. Somehow I ended up getting no pictures of any of it.

Bridgett must be a tired girl

Bridgett plays outside a lot. One day she hadn't come in for a while so I went to check on her and found this. I think she was waiting for the neighbor girl to come over and just fell asleep. Doesn't that nice piece of wood look so comfy?

Desmond's Blessing

We had Desmond's blessing on March 15th. We were lucky enough to have Aunt Ang, Alice, Lesley, and Lindsey and their families and Nana and Papa and Grandpa and Grandma all in attendance. We had a great time and were so glad to everyone join us.

The winds of change...

As many of you know, we have been looking diligently for a house since we moved here to no avail. Before I go on let me say that we still haven't found one but things are looking up. One of the factors in our house buying has been that we wanted to stay in our ward. We have a very small ward and I figured that at some point they would change the bounderies because there are other wards in the Stake that are bursting at the seams. My worry in the back of my head was that we would go to all the trouble of staying in the ward only to have half our friends gone within the year because they moved the bounderies. Well last Sunday John came home from his meetings and said they were having a meeting at 3:30 to change the ward bounderies. I was school girl giddy. It was one of the last factors to fall into place for us to buy a house. I won't mention that John knew on Friday night and didn't tell me! Anyway, it turns out that we lost only a small portion of our ward and gained a whole lot more! So now our house buying options have opened up a little more and now I can buy a house without wondering about what the wards will look like in a year.

The reality is that I still probably won't find the house that I want but now we're reconsidering building because land prices have dropped. The prospect is very exciting and very scary at the same time. I love the idea of getting the house I want but then again what if I pictured it wrong and I end up hating it? Or what if we do build our dream house and then have to move for some reason (we're not planning on moving but you never know)? Anyway, it would also take a long time to build but at least there would be a light at the end of the tunnel.

I'm just glad that the stars finally seem to be aligning for us.

Pay it forward

Here's how it goes: the first three people to post a comment on this post will receive a handmade gift from me (Robin or John)! It could be something crafty, something crazy or if you live close enough to me, even something edible. What it will be and when it will arrive (sometime this year) is a total surprise. The catch is that you must participate as well. Before you leave your comment, type up a pay-it-forward post on your blog to keep the fun going. Then come back and let me know you are going to play. Then you can just sit back and wait for the arrival of your gift! (Please make sure I have a way to contact you, or you might be waiting a long time.)

How do I love thee...

This is a lot of pictures but I had to post these for posterity sake. This Valentine's Day Madison decided to hand make valentines for each of the kids in her class. What I loved the most was the personalized messages on each of them. She's at the perfect age where she's old enough to be able to write little notes but not too old to get embarrassed about what they say. If you click on the pictures you'll get a much bigger image and it will be alot easier to read them. I found it hilarious that about 75% of them mention hair. Maybe it's because her whole life people have commented about her hair.

Some pictures of Desmond & Collin

Here's a couple of pictures of Desmond.


This is Collin adapting to his new life. I was on the phone one day and holding Desmond so instead of waiting for me to lay down with him for his nap he crawled into Desmond's swing and went right to sleep.


I just thought this was really cute.

A whole new world

After a couple of months of many people telling me that Madison couldn't see anything, I finally took her in for an eye exam. Last year I took her for one and her vision was 20/60 which the Dr. thought didn't warrant glasses. I figured "how much could her vision have changed, really?" Well turns out it changed a whole lot. Her vision is now 20/200. Needless to say she got glasses this time. When we picked them up, the lady put them on and Madison said "mom, everything looks so different." Poor girl. But now she has them and she loves being able to see and frankly I think their adorable. Incidentally, they are basically a miniature version of my glasses.

One week ago today

So it's been one week since I went into labor. It all started around dinner time. About 5:00 Wednesday evening I noticed that I was having contractions pretty regularly. I'd been having maybe about 5 a day for the last month but these kept coming and were more like 5-6 and hour. They weren't painful but it made me think that I should probably do all the last minute things. As the night wore on it became apparent that I would end up in the hospital sometime that night. By about 10:00 the contractions were getting a lot more painful so I labored at home for a while and at 1:30 we dropped of the kids at Alice's and headed to the hospital. It was perfect I got all checked in, they handed me the gown, I got dressed in it - twice (I put it on backwards the first time) and then I went to sit on the bed and my water broke. At this point it was 3:00 and I was at a five. By 4:00 my epidural was under way and at 6:00 I was at an eight. Everyone figured I would have the baby around 8:00. But then everything halted. I stayed at an 8 for another 6 hours. They gave me pitossin to get my contractions to be harder in the hopes that it would help me progress. By noon I was fully dilated but Desmond was still quite high up. We tried pushing but it didn't do anything. My doctor checked me at some point and determined that his head was cocked to the side and it was preventing him from coming into position. We figured we could just keep going and hope that he moved into position. About 3:00 my Dr. came back and said that we would try pushing again and if that didn't work he would use the vacuum and then if that didn't work we would have to do a C-Section. At that point I didn't care what we did I was done. We got all geared up to push and after one push John, the nurse, and the Dr. all exclaimed wow, great, etc. After 2 pushes John said "the head is out!" Next push he was born. We were all shocked and I couldn't have been happier. What a great ending to the very long process. I've never had the pushing go so well and it's always my least favorite part. So although the whole process was very long and I had a little break down about half-way through I feel like I can't complain because the end went so quick. Little Desmond came out looking a little rough and had a side cone head but he was in great shape otherwise. Throughout the process he never showed any signs of distress and seemed to be just a happy little camper hanging out in there.

So far I've been taking it very easy and figure I'll just allow myself to heal before taking on life fully again. I sit around a lot and spend a lot of time feeding Desmond and holding him. My mom decided at the last minute to come into town to help out and it has been so wonderful. She takes care of the other kids and the house so that I can just rest. It's also nice to have company around so I don't start feeling too cabin feverish. We'll see how I do when she leaves but for now I'm just taking advantage of having her here.

Desmond is doing great. He's a great nurser and does great at sleeping off and on. Enough to feel like I get some occasional good sleep. He's not a cryer yet and he's a great snuggler. So far it has been a good week.

This is what Collin likes to do with the baby. Overall he is so good with him. He frequently comes up and just pats him softly on the head and talks to him.


P.S. Many people have asked where we got the name Desmond. Apparently there is a show called "lost" with a character on it named Desmond. We don't really know anything about that but we both really like the Beatles song "OB-LA-DI, OB-LA-DA". It talks about Desmond and Molly and we just fell in love with the name.

It could also be that we've watched every episode from a certain show and think there's a guy on there with a really great accent and fantastic hair and we just HAD to name our son after him. Or maybe we just liked his name.