Blue tarp camper

I saw this commercial today and thought it was hilarious because it is so true!!!!
Here we are "blue tarp camping" Memorial Day 2006. You gotta do what you gotta do.

President Hinckley

The president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints passed away last night, he was 97 years old. He has been the prophet and president of the church since 1995, I was 14 at the time. President Hinckley is the prophet that I remember the most because he was the prophet during my teenage, college, and early married years.

I can't say it any better than my friend Jen, so Jen, I hope you don't mind, but here's a link to her post.

And if you click here you can read some articles about President Hinckley and also about how the church reorganizes its leadership.

I truly love President Hinckley and I am so grateful for his life-long service to the church and everyone around him. He was an amazing man and will be greatly missed.

Virtual tour

The virtual tour is up and running. Come check it out!

It's official!

Our house is officially on the market. There's a lock box on our door and the sign guy should be here any minute. The virtual tour will be up in a few hours, so if it's not up when you check it, try again later. Our agent is going to come back when it's sunny to try and get a better picture of the front, so that might be changing.

House News

Our real estate agent just left our house. He took pictures inside and out. He is doing a virtual tour so you will all be able to "walk" through our house soon :-). Our house will be posted online and officially on the market either tonight or tomorrow morning. There will be a sign in our yard either tonight or tomorrow morning. There will be a lock box on our door tomorrow morning. The crazy time of keeping my house immaculate at all times is upon us. Hopefully it won't take too long to sell, I don't know how long I can keep that up!

The Greens are officially selling their house

Our BFFs Brandon and Laura Green are selling their house too. They are also looking in the Maple Valley area. How crazy is that? I guess we have to do everything together. We're so excited that we'll still be living close to them even after we all move. To see their official listing click here. (And yes, that handsome real estate agent is Eric's dad.) If you or anyone you know is in the market for a house in Marysville you should definitely check out their house. It is FABULOUS. They have done so many cool upgrades including a huge deck in the backyard. Plus they are surrounded by greenbelts on two sides. Eric said that if we weren't moving too maybe we'd buy their house ;-).

In news about our house, we had a follow-up meeting with one agent last night and we have one tonight with the other agent. We will let the relocation company know on Wednesday who we want to go with and hopefully we'll be able to be listed by Friday. Yea!

Finally... New pictures

Now that the house is super clean and needs to stay that way, I had some more time for the computer. I added four new albums to Kaylin's site: December, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and her birthday. Her site is www.kaylinstephens.com. Enjoy!

Phew... the big weekend is almost over

First off, BIG THANKS to my parents who watched Kaylin for a full 48 hours this weekend (Friday afternoon-Sunday afternoon). We were able to get so much done at our house, it was fabulous. Friday night and most of Saturday were spent boxing up half of our house and cleaning it to get it ready to put on the market. We met with two different real estate agents (as required by Eric's relocation company) and will decide which one we're going with hopefully on Tuesday. They are both great guys with very different approaches. We're hoping to have our house on the market on either Wednesday or Thursday, so I'll post a link of the listing so you can all see how great the house looks... or so you can buy our house ;-). We also watched the Seahawks game at the Green's like we have every week for the past two seasons. It was the last Seahawks game we will be watching at their current house since they're moving too. We were SO SAD that the Hawks lost, but it was a great season and we had a ton of fun watching them this year. We went out to dinner with the Greens Saturday night since we were kidless and Laura's sister offered to watch Carter for them. It was lots of fun to be out without the kids.

I gave my talk this morning in church. It actually went pretty well. Surprised? Eric gave me tons of compliments, the best one probably being that he thought my talk was one of the best ones in our ward as of late. This meant a lot to me because Eric does not give empty compliments. If I was horrible he'd probably say something simple like, "good job," and leave it at that. I also taught Laurels. I didn't prepare as much as I usually do (see above for why :-)) but I think it went fine.

We met my parents in Burlington to get Kaylin. It was so great to see her. It was nice to have her out of the way while we were working on the house, but I did miss her. I've never had a full day where I didn't see her before this.

Now all that's left for today is my Laurel's presidency meeting tonight.

Busy, busy, busy...

I have been feeling bad for not updating my blog. It's been very busy around here the past couple of weeks. Right after Christmas we spent three days in Bellevue at the Hyatt. Eric's work put us up there for his first three days of work at the Bellevue office. The first night was our anniversary and Eric's parents were kind enough to watch Kaylin for us. It was especially nice of them because she came down with an ear infection that morning and was not in a very good mood. We spent New Year's Eve through January 2nd at Eric's parents' house. Eric's sister Carly and her husband Parker were in town and it was a lot of fun to hang out with them. Then on Saturday we tried to get a lot done at our house, but we of course had to watch the Seahawks game at the Greens and then it was time for Kaylin's birthday party with my side of the family. I have been trying to get a lot done while Kaylin is napping since she doesn't let me do much while she's awake. She has a new game of hide and seek she likes to play. I put her down in the living room with some toys and then I run off to try to clean or pack something and she comes to find me. It wouldn't be so bad but either I'm using lots of cleaning products or I'm in a messy area where I don't want her playing with the mess. I asked her if I could use some of my vacation days that I'm sure I've built up over the past year, but she told me that I don't get vacation days. It wouldn't be so bad, but I still have to live my normal life. I have to prepare my talk for sacrament meeting this Sunday, prepare my lesson for Sunday, have a cavity filled, go to mutual, and do the daily things like cooking and laundry.

But... there is GOOD NEWS. We found out that Wells Fargo is giving us the relocation package!! We weren't supposed to get it because Eric's new office is less than 50 miles from his old one. But Eric's district manager sent them some information about traffic in this area and they decided to relocate us! Yea! That means they are going to pack and move us, pay our real estate fees, and give us more money. We are so happy about it. Now at least I don't have to pack up everything by myself. With Eric being gone from 6:30 am until nearly 8:00 pm at night that doesn't give him a lot of time to help out.

I guess that's enough of my ramblings. Now you know why I haven't been blogging and why there are no picture albums of Kaylin from December or her birthday on her website. I guess I should go clean some windows or box up half of my closet now.