Out of Excuses, and feeling good.

OKAY SO... I, Molly Rawlins, now have a functioning, fancy laptop with a built in webcam, to use mostly all to myself (with the exception of Joe borrowing it to screen write on occasion) that has ALL of its keys, and they work! So I think it's time to get back to blogging, don't you?

I loved logging in to see that there were comments on my last post. :) thanks to my girls who still read and comment!

So, to give everyone a quick catch up to my life:

We have moved into a house that we are renting with my wonderful in-laws in American Fork, (over by Costco). side track note- I also have a Costco membership now thanks to my wonderful Mother in-law who was probably glad it meant she didn't have to take me there every time I wanted to go. Scarlett is pleased as punch to get pizza and berry smoothies to her heart's content :)

The house is great, a lovely place (with two guest bedrooms so if you have been thinking about coming to visit, you have run short on excuses, because there is a place here for you! Best thing about this house is that it has a studio space for Joe to both shoot, edit, and have clients come, with its own entrance. Its fancy (to us), and we like being able to have Joe around to see the girls more, even if its just a few minutes between captures. He has been keeping very busy, and we have been able to not only pay our half of the rent but also pitch in on the renovations to make the basement space not only habitable for us, but comfortable! We put up two walls in the living room downstairs to create a good sized bedroom for Joe and I, and put a wall and door down the middle of the larger of the 2 pre-existing bedrooms (which was painted lime green and teal blue) for the girls to share and yet technically still have their own space. This leaves the other small bedroom for an office JUST FOR ME! I feel so fancy!

Thanks to a handful of awesome online friends, I was able to raise $300 to help me furnish my living areas down here. My mother in-law pitched in $100 in addition to help me, too. As comfortable as an outdoor all weather love seat is, I longed for something more comfortable, and dare I say a *new* piece of furniture (I dont think I have ever had a new piece of furniture except for the little pub table and 2 chairs we bought from Target when we were newlyweds) So I found a place in American Fork called Blackhurst Furniture that sells Ashley couches, and has a special going on this month for a microfiber couch for only $299! This left a little money over and I was able to find a cute little black desk at a consignment store that the guy gave me for only $79. It's wonderfully me and I love it.

The past two days I have made a lot of organizing progress attempting to get things settled, and make room for my couch that should be delivered hopefully by the end of this week! We also inherited Joe's dad's old brown recliner, so I chose a dark brown for the sofa instead of red. The red they had was not stellar anyway, and in my furniture hunts I have seen a whole lot of DIRTY ugly red couches, which disheartened me on the color for a big statement piece. I found a picture of it online since it hasn't been delivered yet. (I'll try and take a picture of the desk for you another day)

My girls are doing good, and growing like crazy. Scarlett finished out a year of special ed preschool out here, and did really well with it, but still suffers with a lot of social anxiety, so her teachers were still going to suggest a small group special ed class for kindergarten instead of a real kindergarten class. Our concern was that she would not be surrounded by kids with her condition but rather ones with more severe impairments, and would not be provided enough interaction with highly functioning peers, so we have enrolled Scarlett in Montessori schooling for the fall.

She has met her teacher and learned that they have a class pet, a little gray bunny named Cocoa, and Scarlett is overwhelmed with joy about this fact. "I have a pet!" she exclaims. "His name is Cocoa. We can't take him out of his cage or he will get scared and hide." Daily she asks me if it's a school day so she can go see Cocoa. "No, it's summer," I tell her.

Our Eloise is growing and developing at a rapid pace. She talks and inquires all about the world around her. "where's zissy?" she says when she wakes up. The girls get along mostly well. Scarlett has a hard time when Eloise cries or gets upset, because it's loud, and also has a hard time sharing, but thats common with most kids. The girls like having grammy to talk to when they get sick of me :) I'm glad they are getting the chance to develop such strong relationships with their grandparents. These are memories they will have always.

The plan is to rent here for the next 2 years, at which point Glen and Rita will re-evaluate their present situation and probably move to St George, where it's warmer and doesn't snow. In the past year that I've been here, I have not seen much snow, so I'm still not totally sure why they think winters here are so bad, but understand that certain climates, namely dry warm ones, are kinder to arthritic bones.

We also finally got furniture for the upstairs this week as well. I, by accident looking for Blackhurst furniture (mentioned above) happened into a cute consignment shop formerly known as Mona Lisa, now called main street 52(?) or something like that, right there on the main drag of downtown AF (right next store to the "Husband and Wife" store... yes it's really called that, lol). Rita had the day prior gone down to RC Willey and picked out a dining set, and a couch and loveseat and rug that weren't necessarily her style, but were priced as low as she could find, but as I walked through the store, I found a sofa and loveseat that immediately said, "these are Rita's." and the kind man told me I could have the pair of them for only $250. Knowing the pair she picked out the day prior were over $800, I knew it was worth phoning her to tell her about them. I tried to take a picture of them to send to her but worried they wouldn't do it justice, and she just said she would come down (since it was only a mile or two from our house). She ended up getting the couches and a very charming dining set as well from this cute little shop, and they are lovely. We also got an end table and coffee table to match. I found this picture online, and this is what the couch looks like, but it looks much more comfortable in our home. The original owners bought them and put them in a parlor and nobody ever sat on them, so they were still like brand new. When the man came to deliver them, he told us we lived in a "Broyhill home". (thats the name of the brand of couches and end table we got) I think he meant it as the highest of compliments.