New Year's Eve

Okay, so it's the most happening night of the year, and here I am on my blog making little adjustments and updates. You can tell how interesting my life is right now. There was a time when I could tear it up on a dance floor all night, but now all I want to do is sleep for New Year's. So here is the latest cute picture I just had to post.
Okay, now I can get back to my exciting life! Have a great night everyone! (even tho you will probably all be reading this later because you are all at a great party tonight)

Christmas and Stuff

It's a good thing this is the holiday season, and we don't have to maintain any regular schedule or anything. Because we have been taking our time getting organized. It is amazing how something so small can disrupt a family so much! But we love our little disruption. Brooklyn loves him too. She is very gentle and affectionate with him, which really suprizes me because she's not gentle in any other way.

Notice our Christmas tree is only decorated on the top. This was the scene after all the excitement. I am admiring my new dance dance revolution game to go with our new Wii. Santa was very nice this year!

This is Dakotah's favorite place to sit and drink her bottle. She gets herself situated and waits for her milk to come to her.

Brooklyn's favorite Christmas gifts were her dress ups. She put her outfit on and in her best princess voice said to Jackson, "I'm a princess. Dance with me!"

So that kind of sums up our Christmas. We feel very blessed this year. We have everything we need and want. There are always more things we could put on our wish list, but none of that would make us any happier than we are right now. We even got an extra, unexpected blessing this year with a new little guy we never knew before. We could not ask for more. 2009 has been good to us. Here's hoping 2010 will be just as fulfilling. (Maybe not so much in the children category this time. We could use a little break.)
Happy New Year Everyone!

Family of SIX!! What!?

Levi Granger Godbold

7 lb 7 oz, 19 inches
After 2 1/2 hours of labor and only about 20 minutes of "real" pain, our little boy was born with the cord wrapped around his neck twice with a perfect figure eight knot hanging down like a tie. Thank goodness he was not affected by it at all. The doctor barely got there in time to catch, but he was not waiting, and I'm happy he didn't delay.

















Proud Papa! He's looking fresh and happy because he just watched while I put in all the work! Typical!

Brothers at last!

This is the best we can do for a family picture at the moment.

Halloween!!

This is our little Tinkerbell. I didn't even have to do anything to her hair because it was already pixy like in its craziness. We called her the pink fairy. (I don't know all the Disney Fairy names.)

Jackson wanted to be a parrot, so we went to our first party at church with this costume. Then he wanted to wear a dolphin costume (he calls it a shark) for his school party. However, I think he got some teasing about it not being too "cute", so by Halloween night he was back to his Batman costume from last year. We had to actually show him parts of the Batman movie to prove that Batman was still cool.

These are the wings.

This is our scary scarecrow. Daddy helped the kids with it while Mommy took a much needed nap.

This was not Halloween, but Brooklyn had to celebrate the first snowfall of the year. She got all her gear on, ran outside and danced and jumped around, and then came in saying it was cold.

Lots of fun and lots of candy. We are closely controlling the candy intake so as to avoid too much sickness this flu season. However, Mommy has had to partake of some of the more chocolatey treats. We call it the Mommy Tax (or in Daddy's case the Daddy Tax). The kids don't appreciate the chocolate anyway.

Last summer picnic

The kids wanted to have a picnic over fall break. So I asked them what they wanted to eat. Jackson picked out some pickles and crackers and stuff. This is what Brooklyn wanted. She's got a fruit leather and a cucumber mixed with some garden tomatoes and bell peppers

Probably one of our last nice days. Indian summer is winding down.

Later I caught my husband on the couch with 2 scantily clad blondes. But I forgive him.

Potty Confusion

I think these pictures pretty much say it all about our future prospects with potty training in this family. Can you tell who is more interested?

Cheap Kitchen Makeover!

So, it's really not much change, but I think it makes a big difference for being under $50.00. I just painted my kitchen cabinets to give the room some color.
Pay no attention to the man in this picture. He has nothing to do with this post. This was the only "before" picture of the cabinets that I could find. Think of Granger as a demonstration model.And here's the "after." I went with two shades of green for the upper and lower cabinets. I'm really happy with the way it turned out. Now I just have to figure out how to get a cheap countertop makeover. I don't want to get carried away because we will most likely be tearing out the cabinets in a few years and replacing them anyway. So I just need to get by until then. However, my husband has forbidden me to speak the word countertop again in his presence. He's heard every idea from painting it to covering in in contact paper. He'll have none of it and just tells me to be patient. Doesn't he know a woman can't rest with that ugly of a countertop?! Oh well, at least I don't worry about cutting on it or burning it. It's all been done.

The kitchen was still a little messy, but, hey, when is it not when we eat constantly. Those are my peach and prune seeds up in the window sill. Hopefully some of them will become trees in our backyard at some point. That will be a project for the winter.

The Bean Museum does not display beans!

Ok, so it was a while ago, but I had these pictures and thought you all might enjoy them. We went to the Bean Museum a few weeks ago. I think part of what took us so long to get there was that Dayne was afraid he'd be looking at a lot of displays about agriculture or something. Anyway, here we are with some of the actual displays. Dayne is the one that's smiling.

Why is it that all our children just have to investigate the nostrils of the animals. Jackson did this to a bear at the museum in Idaho Falls.

If Dayne looks confused it is because he didn't know these fish were in California. If he had, he probably would have tried to catch them too.

Sorry, this picture is on it's side. I didn't want to spend too much time looking at the nasty spiders.

Butterflys are much better. That's where the girls gravitate.

And there's the proof. I was there too. Dakotah is in the stroller. They had a live animal show too. They brought out a few different kinds of reptiles. Dakotah was not impressed at all. All in all it made for a pretty good Family Home Evening.

We're In!!!

On Wednesday of last week, with a lot of help from our local scouts and a few men in our ward, we moved all our stuff into our new house. We got basically everything moved in only 2 1/2 hrs. I attribute it to my two weeks of toil and sorrow in packing up all the boxes and making sure we left nothing unpacked. It may have been annoying to have to search for items we still needed, but I wanted to be more prepared than we were on our last move in which I had only a few days notice.

Now we have been here a week and are once again connected to the world via the internet, so I can now bring this blog up to date for your viewing pleasure.

The kids were very excited to move and celebrated with dancing. Even little Koda got into the spirit and busted a move. In fact, her first "trick" in the new house was to conquer the stairs, which she did the first day. Way to break in the new living room, Kids!

However, all the partying did take its toll. All the kids came down with a cold that really exhausted them. After late nights and lots of fast food (and junk food for Daddy's birthday bash), we had a little trouble regulating our sleep patterns again. One day we thought Brooklyn was awfully quiet playing downstairs. This is what we found:

Slowly things are starting to feel "normal." We are getting into a routine again and enjoying our independence once more. Having your own home really does mean a lot, and we are so blessed to be able to own our own home once again. We thank God everyday for His tender mercies.

Stress!!!!

Well, after an EXHAUSTING day, to say the least, we finally got to sign for the closing on our house. Let me explain. For the past couple weeks we have been told we should be able to close by the end of the month. That saves us paying extra interest at closing, so we were very pleased. By the beginning of this week, however, we still had no final say on what was going to happen or if our financing had even been approved. Our appraisal came in, and we thought maybe that was the only thing left we needed. All week I sat by the the computer waiting for word from our agent, Uncle Mark, or our lender. I kept receiving reassurances that all was on track and just to wait.
By Wednesday we found out that the sellers had signed their papers (they were buying the house around the corner at the same time and were relying on our financing to support their own.). Thursday we still hadn't heard anything until 4pm when the lender called and said he needed a few more things for underwriting. I was panicked because I couldn't get it all in to him before 5pm. Cool as a cucumber was he and said I could get it to him by morning. So Dayne and I scrambled to get the fax machine of his parents' up and working and faxed everything that night.
Friday morning I woke up waiting to hear that they got the stuff and what time to come in and sign. Instead I got word around late morning that they needed a few more things from us. This required some begging and all around pathetic pleading on my part to get letters faxed from various places. Then all came together and I relaxed a little and waited for the call saying we should come and sign.
Instead I got another call saying we needed just one more thing. You can imagine my distress at this point. It was afternoon by now, and the underwriter was still getting things approved! I had no idea how things work with underwriters and title companies. I was worried! Not to mention I almost forgot to pick up my son from school and was a half hour late getting there. (So glad kids are so forgiving.)
Finally, around 3:30 the lender said we were good to go. I was so relieved! I called Dayne at work and arranged for him to come home early so we could go sign at 5pm.
Then I got another call...just one more thing. What!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I worked frantically to do everything I could. I sat there at 4:55 still not knowing if it was going to happen. I had serious doubts at this point. Then the lender called and said the docs were on their way, come on over! I grabbed Dayne and headed over before they could change their minds.
Needless to say, I am completely relaxed now.

Big News!!

Most of you already know that we are in the process of buying a home. The other night we went to do an "inspection" of the property. We brought many "inspectors" with us to see the house. Dayne took a few pictures to show you all. However, I didn't realize until we were home that I should have taken the pictures because he wasn't exactly going for the best shot on each picture. Anyway, for what it's worth, here you go:


I believe this is one of our inspectors, Granger, Dayne's brother.

This was Jackson urgently telling me he had to use the bathroom. What do you do when you're in someone else's house? Hopefully they didn't mind.

Master bedroom-->

<--Dakotah's new room until she starts sharing with Brooklyn

Jackson's new room, he picked out-->

Nice back yard, old shed.

Deck runs along the back of the house. And this is the body of Dayne's dad, Bob.

Double Birthdays and Standing Up!

This is our happy clan of July birthday buddies. This is called family planning, when you can just have all the parties together and at the other end of the year from Christmas. I guess that is how everyone can tell this next baby was not planned because he is due in December. I guess he didn't get the memo.
Anyway, Jackson and Dakotah actually even share the same day for a birthday which so far is a thrill for Jackson. We will see how long he feels that way. Here's a little bit of info on how the double birthday was spent.

Waking up at one year old!

Mom got creative with the cake for the first time in her life. Jackson was very clear. He wanted chocolate cake with orange frosting...well, he got chocolate frosting with orange sprinkles. That seemed to be enough to please him. However, he didn't even finish a whole cupcake before he said he was done. I think his mind was on the gifts!

Dakotah got her own too! She ate it like a lady.Dakotah also learned how to stand up over the past week. We are anxious to see her walking since mommy doesn't feel much like carrying 2 babies around much longer.

Working! Almost there...

Ta da!!