I haven’t done too well with the News Year’s Resolution of blogging! Life has been real busy! Thought it might be time to give an update on what we’ve been up to lately.

Our House: We are on offer #3. We got our first offer the end of January. We were so excited. After several counter-offers, we reached an agreement. We put a lot of emotion and energy into it. The potential buyers asked if we could help them make their down payment through a program called the Down Payment Assistance Program. They also asked us to pay their closing costs and asked for our refrigerator, washer and dryer. This real estate thing is totally new to us, but that offer was a bit offensive to us. When do you walk into someone’s house, ask them to pay your down payment, closing costs and request their appliances? We thought that was a bit pushy! I know the market is slow right now and you can get a great deal, but we felt that was basically taking advantage of us. We wondered if they would want the iron and the blow dryer, too! We were just so excited to get an offer - we worked with it - and made it work for us. Now, I wish we would have just put a big fat "REJECT" on it and returned to sender! We finally reached an agreement and when it came down to it, the couple backed out. We were crushed. We were hurt and real bummed! But . . . within 3 days we had another offer - that gave us hope. It was a great offer, but the only problem was they had to sell a condo. After back and forth with counter offers, we came to terms and sat and waited patiently for them to sell their condo - trying not to involve much emotion after offer #1 fell through. Well along came another couple. They knew we had our home under contract and offered us even more than we were asking. They are ready to move in and are approved for a loan. We accepted that offer and everything is moving forward. I hope I don’t jinx this, but if all goes well . . . we should be moving in to our new home the end of March. We are very excited and are crossing our fingers, legs and eyeballs that all goes well!

Keaton’s Finger: Last week we were busily working on Hayden’s Science Fair Project. We had out all the essentials: glue, paper, markers, scissors and the paper cutter. We turned our back for just a second and Keaton decided he needed to help with the paper cutter. He got his little finger caught in the rotary blade and went to yank it out, cutting the tip of his right index finger pretty badly. He started to scream and soon there was blood everywhere. I looked at it and realized it was pretty bad. I called for Jason - I just can’t deal with blood when it comes to my kids being hurt. Jason could not get the bleeding stopped. We realized he needed to go to the ER. We rushed him there. What an ordeal! He had cut off the very tip of his finger along with a little portion of his fingernail. We sat there for 3 hours. The doctor came in and cleaned it up, pulled back the tip and decided he could tack the tip back on with a few stitches. They took a big needle to Keaton’s little finger and numbed it. Keaton was in hysterics! After his finger was numb, they stitched it back together and wrapped it up. What a night!

After 2 days, we took him back for a wound check. They said it looked good and that is was healing! Keaton had a hard time returning to the ER. He was traumatized going in there. I don’t blame the little guy! He is supposed to get the stitches out on Friday, but we’ll see. We have had to change the dressing every couple of days and I just can’t see the stitches coming out. Looks very sore and bleeds when we take off the bandage.

Valentine’s Day: We had a memorable Valentine’s Day!  My sister Annie’s husband is in Iraq. He e-mailed me a few days before Valentine’s Day and asked if I could get some flowers for Annie. That got me thinking. Annie has always talked about getting a "Flat Daddy" of Jim. If you don’t know what they are, you take a photo of the soldier and blow it up to life size, mount it on cardboard and cut it out - it is like a life size poster of the soldier. So, I thought it would be cool to make a Flat Daddy Jim and have it standing on the doorstep with the flowers. The only problem was time. So, I e-mailed Jim with my idea and he thought that was good. I found a picture of him that would work and had Jason blow it up at work. I glued it to foam board, cut it out and I had a Flat Daddy for Annie. Annie has wanted one all along, but could never get Jim to get her a photo of himself. So I knew Annie would loved this! I told my family about it and we decided to call this mission "OPERATION FLAT DADDY". It all worked out and things just fell into place.

We got the flowers and left Flat Daddy on the porch, rang the doorbell and ran away. It was great! Annie answered the door and started laughing. Then we all came out and said, "Surprise!" We also brought dinner and enjoyed a fun evening with family. I know how depressing it is to have your honey away on Valentine’s. I wanted to make it somehow better for Annie. This was a Valentine’s Day we will never forget. It was fun and we were brightening someone else’s day! Annie really liked it! Here is her response to us:

     Last night the phone rang around 9:00 p.m. and it was Brother Evans from our Bishopric . . . He asked me if I was ready for tomorrow.  I sat there racking my brain, trying to figure out what "tomorrow" was.  I finally asked him what "tomorrow" was and he said Sunday.  I was trying to remember if I was supposed to do something special or what "tomorrow" was.  I then started to wonder if Jason committed us to doing something and had forgotten to tell me.  It’s funny the millions of things that can run through your head in a matter of a few seconds.  Brother Evans then asked me if we had our talks ready.  I kind of chuckled and asked him what talks and he went on to tell me that we were speaking in Sacrament Meeting.  I told him that was news to us.   I don't know who was more surprised - him or us! 

     At first we told Brother Evans we couldn’t do it, but after we hung up the phone, we kind of debated and decided we would rather do it with 12 hours notice rather than have 2 weeks of worry and stress - we could get this over with pretty easily plus have an excuse if our talks were the pits.  So Jason got on the phone, called him back and told him we would do it. 

     We got our talks written and all went well.   We got a lot of compliments on our talks.   I talked on Sacrifice and Jason spoke on Service.   We tied both topics into his deployment, what we have learned from it and how we have grown from the deployment experience.   I felt pretty good about it. The best thing about it is, IT IS OVER!  It's almost like we didn't even have time to get nervous!

     Keaton has been jabbering so much lately - he loves to hold phones or anything that resembles a phone up to his ear and jabber away.   Here are a few photos of him jabbering!