The Floor Plan

Ok, so there's my totally wicked awesome floor plan. Me, being the total computer wiz just figured out that if you click on the image it will in fact enlarge the image so you can actually tell what is what on the floor plan. So, some cool things about the house.
1st Floor
My entryway. Way cool! It will have tile and mosaic tile to accentuate the oval and then it will go to hard wood in the dining room and a 3' boarder in the family room with carpet inlay and then through the kitchen area. The gallery may have a mixture of tile and hardwood. I've seen that done in a pretty cool way. There is also a courtyard that will have a fireplace that you can access from the family room and dining room. Did ya see the pantry! It's huge and it will have a fridge or a freezer in it. The closet outside the bathroom is being changed to a built in desk area. The guest bath has outside access for people using the swimming pool (the pool is getting built with the house). Did you see all the storage in my garage! We have a nice little cozy Theater room that will just fit the huge new sectional and the tv. The kitchen is showing a raised island, but I think I am just going to keep it flat since it is my only island in the kitchen. It will make the room feel larger and give me more work space. The pantry is showing a pocket door, but it will be a regular door more centered on the wall. The bottom of the picture shows a very dark picture of an estimate of what the outside of the house will look like. The 3 window area is a balcony which is practically another room. You can't see from the picture, but in between the arches there is iron railing. That window that looks like it is in between floors, is, and it is the library.
2nd floor
As your walking up the steps you come to the library that has a princess balcony. I'm not sure how often that door will get opened, but it is pretty cool just knowing that it can be. It will have the cool "belly bar" railing, which means that the iron railing curves out like a belly. Love it! You can put money on me opening the door and saying "Romeo, Romeo, where for art thou Romeo." :) Pretending that I am Rapunzel is probably going to happen as well. Ok, so can you tell that I am just a wee bit excited. I can only get excited on my blog, because it's my blog and I can say whatever the heck I want without fear of appearing to gloat or brag. I have to have an outlet for my enthusiasm! I figure that the only people that will read this blog will be excited with me and wont take my enthusiasm wrong! So, where were we. Ah yes, the top of the stairs. As you finish ascending the stairs you come across a half wall and then you're in the loft. This is where there will eventually be a pool table. The sitting area in the loft will have a built in desk area for the kids and we are taking down the additional 2 half walls. That area was originally a wet bar for which we have no need. From the loft you can look down on the first floor to the left or go right to the master suite domain. I am feeling a bit saddlebaggish with the size of the master area. I have my princess balcony again in addition to a huge balcony which will have the most amazing view of the mountains. Then you go back into the bathroom area which pretty much speaks for itself. In case you are wondering Nate called dibs on the bigger walk in closet because he actually has way more clothes than I do. Now, going out the other side of the loft you can reach the rest of the bedrooms and my laundry room upstairs. How exciting is that. No more lugging laundry up and down the stairs. The washer and dryer are being reversed from the picture. The original plan had all the bedrooms with their own baths and that was just too excessive for me, so we made a really cool jack and jill bathroom with access from the hall as well as the kids room and I did do the pocket doors so that we weren't constantly fighting with the doors. The original plan also had bedroom 4 all the way over to the wall with private access to the balcony. We shortened BR #4 to make a hallway out to the balcony instead. I also have some nice skylights in that hallway as well as my master bathroom. Hopefully all my ramblings made some sense.
Let me know if you see any additional changes you think I should make before this goes to blue print.

It's Offcial

I know that everyone is been biting their nails in anticipation of the official announcement........will they, won't they? Just kiddin', practically everyone knows already anyway, but for those that need a phone call to keep appraised of my latest adventures----we pulled the trigger and are building the house. We made some pre final changes to the plans and handed over a wad of cash. It is both exciting and nauseating at the same time. I don't take major decisions very lightly even if I manage to pull off looking like I am taking it lightly. This decision has kept me awake many a night wondering what I am doing to the fate of my family. The usual stuff to worry about, schools, friends, ward, money, is a pool too dangerous, what if I hate my new kitchen, will I really like living out in the middle of nowhere when right now I am 2 min from everything anyone could ever need in life...............the list goes on and on.......Oh! How could I forget.........the whole selling my house burden. Yikes!

As if all this were not enough to send a person into a major fit of anxiety alone there's more, oh so much more! Nate's business partner is out of town for nearly 2 weeks, so Nathan is getting slammed at work which is getting him sick, then right when Chad gets back they are opening a practice here on the west side just down the street from our current house. Because they will have 2 practices in town this means also 2 overheads so, they need to hire another Dr to work at the east side practice with Nate. That is in negotiations currently. Let's see, what else. I am supposed to be getting my house ready to sell and we are leaving for Hawaii on the 26th ( I know, I know poor me right). I swear, everything in my life happens in a cluster.

So, do you wanna see a couple of pictures? I would scan the plans if I thought you would be able to catch the vision, but we have made so many changes to the small plans that I have that I don't think it gives an accurate depiction of the final house. I need to be able to shrink down the larger final plans to make them available for viewing.

In order of appearance we have, our lot. The angle of the picture is obstructing the fairly close mountain range right behind the mound of dirt. Where our house currently is we have an awesome view of the mountains, but they a farther away than they are in this lot. There isn't much we can do about being fairly close on each side to our neighbors (if we want a paved road, water instead of well and sewer instead of septic), but we have a 1/2 acre lot with no one behind us ever. 2nd Picture is the view of the mountains while standing in either the back of the house or the backyard, not really sure which. 3rd picture is just a representation of the style of kitchen that will be in my house. I am doing a stucco hood and I really love the color of the granite and cabinets and the tile work. 4th picture is the front door I want. I love the color, style and size. All of my interior doors and moldings will also be in this color and style. I will also have a tile mosaic in my front entryway. The entry way is an oval and then the rest of the flooring will be a dark hardwood.

There are many more fun features, but I don't want to bore anyone. It gets me gitty just thinking about it. Oh, the style of the house is Spanish Colonial if I didn't mention that before. I really need to get back to trying to clear out my office (my nemesis)to get it show ready.

Facebook

I am finally slowly resuming my duties in YW. I feel like I have so much catching up to do. I didn't really get to start my new calling before my surgery so it makes it a bit harder. I have pretty much been every calling in yw now. I was the Camp Director, Personal Progress leader, and Sports Director and then I got released from all 3 of those to just be the Laurel Advisor. That calling lasted for 2 months until the 1st counselor got snagged by the stake yw, so.... calling change again to now the 1st counselor in yw. I guess I technically haven't had a calling to work specifically with the beehives yet (thank goodness). Both other times I have been in yw in WA and in our other ward in Albq I was the Mia Maid advisor. I must say that working with the Mia Maids is my favorite in yw with Laurels being a close 2nd. The Laurels tend to be a little more closed off especially their senior year, but they are the most mature which leads to some awesome spiritual growth experiences. The beehives are by far the least mature and trying to bring the spirit in is neigh unto impossible sometimes and they don't really get the whole service thing and they are just plain wild! It is that horrible awkward transition time when they are trying to find their "style" and deciding that bathing everyday is necessary, they are figuring out that they might like boys but don't know what that means and they haven't quite figured out what being a friend means yet........the list goes on and on. One word pretty much sums up the beehives, drama! This is not to say that I don't love them dearly, I'm simply stating the facts that make being their leader a bit more challenging. Now the Mai Maids are a bit transitional as well. They can now go to stake dances and being old enough to legally date is within reach. I have found that the Mai Maids tend to really love their leaders and are still open to coming to activities and looking for those spiritual experiences while also knowing how and when to have fun. This age is also the most susceptible to getting obsessed with boys so you usually have about half obsessed and the other half on their way to being obsessed. All in all, I love all of the yw as if they were my own girls. There is something about service that really helps you see people the way our Heavenly Father sees them. I think that yw in general, no matter what position, is the best calling in the church. I have an absolute ball and there is just something different about say a primary age child running excited to see Sister Ivey and giving me a big hug and one of my yw running down the hall to give Sister Ivey a hug. I guess it is because primary kids are still pretty unconditional and with the yw they are more sceptical of you caring about them.

Anyway, my YW pres informed me that she just learned from the girls that most of them are on a site called Facebook, much like myspace. Facebook is supposed to be less frightening than myspace as far as the crap that is out there. So, I set up my account so we could communicate to the girls in this new age of computers for everything. Hopefully knowing that their leaders will be checking out their pages to see what they are up to will help them think about what they and their friends are using the sites for while also being able to post little notes of encouragement on their "walls." They think that it is totally cool as of right now, but most our girls are so good that they wouldn't dream of being annoyed that their leaders were saying "hi" on their sites where their non member friends also would see.

So, first I got sucked into the whole blog thing and now I have an account on Facebook. I am also totally addicted to my Ipod and I enjoy text messaging. It takes a lot to keep up with kids these days and stay informed and be able to talk their language. Speaking of talking their language my girls started laughing at me on Tues night because I said that one of their cell phones was mack daddy. So I have to take some lessons in proper verbiage. Apparently I was supposed to say something like "who has the down phone?" "Down" is better than "mack daddy" apparently. Two years ago I was trying to incorporate "shiz" for awesome. Basically I look ridiculous no matter what I say. :) I am definately in an awsome training course for when my own children actually become teenagers! Heaven help me!

Moonlight

For all of the fan's of the twilight series of books, there is a show on CBS on Friday nights called Moonlight that can help the time pass until the next book comes out. I wasn't sure I wanted to watch the show about a Vampire detective after loving the way vampires were portrayed in the books. I set the DVR and decided that they would at least be there in case I caved and actually watched. The show has been on for 2 weeks now and I just watched both episodes today. I must say that if you can get past a few of the changes in vampire mythology that were created in the Twilight series the show is quite good. At first I didn't think that the vampire Nick was that attractive, but he has the tendency to grow on you quite fast and the "Bella" character (I can't think of her name in the show) looks like Kate Winslet. It has the human Bella ingredient and the super hot, didn't take too long to figure out your a vampire Edward, a more twisted "family" for Nick than Edward and Nick gets blood from his friend at the morgue to feed on while the main guy that is Nicks kinda family prefers the good ole fashion form of feeding, humans. I haven't been able to figure out if the "food" dies or not because the 2nd episode had Nick killing a bad guy with fangs to the neck, but got interrupted and the guy didn't turn into a vampire and didn't die. In the books a bite would immediately put poison into the blood and turn you into a vampire if the job wasn't finished. So, like I said, don't get too caught up in the details and take it for what it's worth. Total hot vampire guy solving crime and protecting "Bella" a lot. He also has a lot of the same qualities that Edward had, He can hear really well, he jumps and runs super fast, He can see things (Edward couldn't), he has the conflicting feelings of being a monster that Edward had and his personality if very similar. So, all in all, I think I am really diggin' the show. Who knows, maybe being cooped up in the house and spending a lot of time on the couch watching tv has tainted my view of the show especially in comparison to the books. If anyone else has seen the show I would love to know if I am way off base and if you haven't seen it yet, see it! :)
BTW Nate saw that there was now a show about vampires and just rolled his eyes at me. :)

ok total side note, Ethan is sitting on the desk next to me looking at the screen saver slide show on Nate's computer and there was a picture of me when I got my braces off and he said, " there's a picture of mommy with gum in her mouth when she talked normal." He is making comments on each picture as they come up and another one of me just came up and he said "mommy talking normal." Jordyn will sometime clench her teeth when she talkes to me and I'm trying to decide if she is making fun of me or trying out my form of communication. Out of the mouths of babes.............