May 2011 - A trip to G&G Stapley's and a Shiner...

We were all excited for a chance to escape the early heat of summer - we went up to Pinedale to help my Grandparents plant their huge garden. They are amazing examples of working hard, loving others, and following the Prophet's counsel in every way. Raising 9 children on a school teacher's salary couldn't have been easy, but like they say... there's not one child they would have done without; each is a blessing. Every year they plant and take care of this garden, without nearly enough help from the rest of us and they lovingly preserve and share the harvest with everyone: green beans, pinto beans, corn, cucumbers, watermelon, etc.







Taking a break to swing and ride on the tractor:








In other news, Brexton got his first "Shiner" while visiting G&G Tompkinson in Tucson by tripping and catching his eye right on the corner of their concrete slab. He was mighty tough and always wanted to look in the mirror at how purple his eye was. Purple has always been one of his favorite colors. ha! Purple... and pink. Silly boy!




Even after all that excitement happened at 6:30am he was still game for going shooting with Dad and Grandpa.





And now... random pictures of Maddox :)




This kid LOVES to splash. He cleans the bathroom for me every time with how much water he disperses :)




I love my boys!

April 2011 - Easter and silly boys

Mr. Maddox was not super excited to pose for pictures, but boy... he is cute!




Silly faces. I'm still amazed that Maddox can pull off a "fishy face" with his squishy cheeks. Makes me laugh every time. He started doing this at about 6 months... now at 18 months he still does it!




Brexton loves to pose for me. ha!

So, let's pretend that it really hasn't been a whole year...

I'm sure I could list a few excuses as to why I've been MIA, but really... who cares about those anyway? ha!

It's been a wild ride from where we were April 2011 to where we are now in 2012. Unemployment took it's toll until July 2011. During that time we decided that we needed to "let our house go." Instead of just foreclosing we were hopeful that a Short Sale offer would be accepted by our two banks. The fist offer, submitted in April, came to an end in October when the banks demanded 20% more than their already full price offer. The second offer, submitted in October, never had the chance to close because the banks didn't give the approval letter until Wed. Dec. 21 with an expected close date of Mon. Dec. 26th and the foreclosure date was already set at Dec. 28th - with the banks closed for Christmas and a weekend in the midst it was impossible to close. Despite our best efforts we still got foreclosed on. That was a major blow for us. I know we're not alone in experiencing that, but it was terrible news, especially at Christmas. We ended up staying in the house until March 4th and then moved into my Grandparents' empty house in East Mesa. Since then Jared was offered a new job at Boeing (1.2 miles from our new house) with a much higher salary, amazing benefits, etc. We are so blessed and are so glad to have moved on from 2011.

Now to a recap with pictures :) We'll go by months...