Springtime!

Charlotte is amazing in the Springtime the landscape here is lush with  dogwoods, eastern red buds, magnolias and azaleas, a simple drive down the highway is splashed with bright, colorful flowers. Here are a few pictures.

Bad Habits

Herbie teaches Lilly that to be a true dog you have to learn to eat off the floor.

"Lean in a little more"

"That's it, you've got it now."

House Hunting in Iowa

Karen and I went up to Iowa last week to house hunt. We looked at 28 homes between the cities of Bettendorf, Davenport, Eldridge and Le Clair (which is home to American Pickers). We saw a lot of nice homes but we kept coming back to one that we really liked and honestly just felt good about when we were in it. This home is in a very nice part of the quad cities in a town called Bettendorf and belongs to the Pleasant Valley School District; which is highly regarded and is generally the winner in state championships. They also have a very good arts program and early college program. The house is 4 bedrooms, 2.5 baths and has a large kitchen with a center island, a family room with a fireplace, a dining room and living room. It also has an unfinished basement and a wooden deck on the back of the house which is accessed through a sliding glass door in the kitchen. We really like that it has a laundry room on the top floor where all the bedrooms are. We also like that it has a three car garage and most of all, for me anyway, we like that it comes with a beautiful hot tub on the patio. The lot is wooden fenced and adjacent to the lower field of an elementary school. We love the idea that Lilly would be able to safely walk to and from school in the morning through the gate at the end of the yard. It is also located a block away from a bike path entrance which runs down through a few parks before it drops out alongside the Mississippi river. From there it runs alongside the water for 13 miles at which point the path crosses the river on an old converted rail road bridge and comes out on the Illinois side.

Well, we couldn’t resist all this so we made a decision and put an offer on the house before we flew back to Charlotte. A couple of negations were held and a few days later the owners accepted our offer. We are now in the process of closing on the home and excited to be home owners.

Karen’s already made a list of things to get for the house, window treatments, a lawn mower, a snow blower, furniture and a few other things. She assures me that we won’t be getting everything on this growing list all at once but that we still need to document and prioritize all our wants and needs and decide what’s best for the family.

 Below are pictures of the house. The next time I am in Iowa I will take better pictures and try and get some video of it for everyone to see.

Silly Lilly

Taco Salads

Usually Tyson is the one that post pictures of food he cooks but I am particularly proud of this meal I made. I made some Café Rio chicken in the crock pot and with the left-over’s I made taco salads. Those are homemade taco bowls. We used a tool that was given to us by Gloria. She was giving away stuff she didn’t use anymore and I grabbed it. I am so happy I did because it was a lot of fun. The taco salads were amazing and had all of the fixings on them. I know that if I was still living in Utah Steve would hire me immediatly as a chef at Sonora Grill.

Lilly's Book Club

The Holidays

Wow… I am way behind on blogging. To catch up let’s go over the holidays. Our Holidays started with a small Thanksgiving at our apartment. We had been invited to go to a couple of other people’s home for Thanksgiving but we were excited to have our very own Thanksgiving. Tyson made a wonderful turkey and I made all the fixings, well most of them.

It was such a beautiful and warm day that we decided to go on a hike after dinner at the Latta Plantation. We didn’t even have to wear our jackets.The rest of the night was spent relaxing, watching movies, and eating leftovers. It was a wonderful Thanksgiving. I thought I was going to be lonely but I wasn’t at all.

December was spent doing the usual Christmas preparations. We decorated the apartment and since Tyson didn’t have a house to put lights on this year he put lights around our deck. We also drove around checking out lights and spending time at the SMALL Christmas Village set up down at Birkdale. One house close to us had their lights set up with music. A sign would tell you what station to tune into and watch the light show.

In this picture Tyson and I are trying to make both Lilly and Herbie look at the camera.

Our apartment complex brought in Santa for all the kids to see. We brought Lilly
down to see him. She did not like Santa and cried the whole time. Before we saw Santa we taught her how to say Ho Ho Ho. After we saw Santa she refused to do that trick anymore.

On December 19th we did a small Christmas together before flying to Utah. This way we didn’t have to bring all of our presents with us. Lilly and I had gotten sick this week so it was a snuffle-ie Christmas. Lilly was very cute at opening presents. She enjoyed ripping everything open.

On December 21st we made our way out West. I am always nervous about flying with Lilly but she always ends up doing pretty well. Usually she only gets fussy the last 30 minutes of each flight. I don’t know how she knows when we are 30 minutes from landing but somehow she figures it out.

While in Utah we had several family parties including a Harris Christmas party, a Ballard Christmas Day party, a Ballard sibling party, and a Harris New Years Eve party. They were all a blast. It was funny playing games with the Ballard siblings. I am surprised how shocked everyone was about how competitive the Ballard’s are. I think the Harris’ knew that about me from day one (or the first time we played Pounce). We also went to the lights at Temple Square, Tyson went shooting with the Wiricks, we eat at Sonora Grill and Café Rio (both of these are very important ‘To-Do’s’ for Utah), we spent an afternoon at the instant care, and both Tyson and I had a chance to hang out with friends. It was so much fun seeing everyone, Lilly loved seeing and playing with all of her cousins.On Christmas day we opened presents with the Dave Ballard family and Richard and Gloria. Lilly had a good time opening presents with Luke, Isaiah, and Layla. Usually she liked their presents better then hers and we couldn’t keep her away from the stairs.
Lilly wanted to thank Grandma Harris for teaching her how to go down the stairs, the Kippen’s for letting us stay at their house, Gloria for babysitting, Richard for letting us use his car, and everyone else for being so nice to her.