byufan.net

While waiting for our house to get finished we are living in a three bedroom apartment. Since there are not enough beds, we got the playpen out of storage and put Diana in it and into the walk in closet in one of the bedrooms. Diana doesn’t seem to mind sleeping there, but I’m sure she will be happier to move into her own room and into a big girls bed.

Diana’s bedroom(closet) door.

Diana relaxing in her own little bed.

Emily turned eleven on Tuesday December 12th. We celebrated by going to Leatherby’s for dinner and ice cream. The kids had lots of fun and made a big mess of themselves. Afterwards we went home and Emily opened her presents. She was happy to finally get a tomagachi like her sister Anne. Now they both can play with those little electronic pets to their hearts content. Emily also got the game of LIFE and a couple of barbie dolls.

Now that the bulk of the house is finished, all thats left are the little things like sinks in the kids’ bathroom, touch up painting, and fixing nicks on the walls.

While the dough was rising and the turkey was cooking we loaded up all the kids in the car and took a trip to the new house. When we got there we got a surprise, the cabinets were put in and the rest of the concrete was poured for the front walkway.

The laundry room. It will be nice to get a new washer and dryer to go along with the new house.

Here are the pies I made this year. I think the cherry looked the best, but the apple tasted the best.

I missed going to the new house for a few days and when I went back the paint inside was all done and the mantle was on the fireplace. I hope soon they will start doing all the other finish work in the house.

The pilasters look nice in the dining room.

The california slate tile looks good with the mantel. It will look even better when everything is all done.

Since I have to pick up the kids from their new school every day, I have a chance to stop by the new house almost every day. I take pictures whenever I have my camera with me. Here are a few I have taken lately.

They finally finished the stucco on the house. I think it looks good. When we were choosing the colors we didn’t know if it would work out once they went up, but luckily they turned out great.

Here is a picture of the railings under plastic because the painters were getting ready to paint. Now that more things are starting to get completed I am getting more excited.

It’s been a while since I updated the website but family vacation and selling our existing home took a lot of time. We had our home on the market for two weeks and ended up selling it for a pretty good price – not the highest price we could get but I preferred to have a quick sale and closing rather than hold out for the highest possible price. We are now renting our house back from the new owners and must be out by the end of November. Unfortunately, our new house won’t be done until December 4 at the earliest so it’s looking like a stay at the Marriott is in our future.

New-home-wise, the brick on the outside is completed and the stucco is in the processing of going on. Inside, the drywall is completed and they laid tile today. Nancy couldn’t go inside because the tile needed to set but here is a picture of the completed brickwork:

The stuff on in the driveway is the stucco mix. Hopefully the stucco will be done by the end of next week.

This year was a pretty fun Halloween. Emily, Anne, and Caroline were all various incarnations of princesses (I think Anne wanted to be called a “spider countess”). Samuel was a knight and Diana was a bumblebee. I took all the kids trick-or-treating together and they seemed to enjoy it.

After Diana got tired (halfway down the block), I let Emily and Anne go by themselves and took Caroline and Samuel for another hour. Samuel was a bit tired/whiney and I had to keep psyching him up to get him to go to the next house but Caroline was gung-ho the whole time.

This year I tried my hand at making a fancy pumpkin carving. I got a template off the internet and made this pirate skull:

It was fun but it took a long time. I made the mistake of scraping the wall of the pumpkin too thin so the pumpkin broke where the teeth are supposed to be. I think it looks best in the dark:

Next year I’ll get a little bit better and see if I can do an even fancier one.

Yesterday we took Diana to Primary Children’s Medical Center for a heart checkup. Diana has a congenital heart defect called “ASD” that consists of a hole in her heart as well as veins that aren’t properly draining into the heart. The official term is Atrial Septal Defect with Anomalous Venous Connection. Because only one of her veins is messed up she doesn’t have “Total Anomalous Venous Connection” which is when all your veins are screwed up.

Diana doesn’t like getting an EKG

Diana cried when they hooked her up to the EKG machine. The hard part about getting an EKG is that she has to lay still for ten consecutive seconds in order to get an accurate reading. When she wiggles, it messes up the reading and you have to try again for another ten seconds. We tried a variety of methods to get Diana to lay still but the most effective method finally proved to be to count the seconds out loud with her.

Counting to ten.

If you’re a “count the wires” type of person like Grandpa Kent is, that’s 12 wires coming off her (fortunately they are just sticking to her as opposed to stuck into her).

After the EKG, the doctor listened to her heart and said everything is fine. They still want to wait until her heart is larger before the operate. Waiting for Diana to grow will make the sugery easier for the surgeon and the risks of developing pulmonary hypertension at Diana’s age is minimal. Because the benefits of waiting for surgery outweigh the risks, it will likely be another year or more until Diana has open heart surgery. If she had a normal ASD condition, they could repair it without doing open heart surgery. Unfortunately, the nature of her defect, along with the messed up vein, will require open heart surgery.

The end result was that we set an appointment six months from now for futher evaluation. In the meantime we’re supposed to keep an eye on her and, in the doctor’s words, “let us know if she starts turning blue.

Today I went with Nancy to the house. They had started the exterior walls on the second floor. The stairs to the second floor and the basement are also in now.

Front of the house. You can see the stairs through the front entranceway

Second floor exterior walls