We're Moving

This is a picture of one of the saddest days I have had in a long time. I thought we would never move. Yes, Micah and I are always looking at houses. We always talked about moving closer to his work, but honestly I never wanted to move out of our neighborhood. We live in such a great area, and just love our ward. In fact I can't imagine moving after being here for almost eight years. This is HOME... But, sometimes there is a different plan that we are not aware of until it happens.

Micah was offered a great opportunity in Las Vegas of all places. He will still be working for the same company, but would be crazy to say no to this carrier opportunity. As many times as I have cried the past few weeks I'm starting to come to grips with it. I think the hardest part so far was when the "stager" came to take pictures of our home. She kept saying how beautiful it was (that's just her job), but it was so hard to think of how much work we have put into our home. It was so hard to hold back the tears and put on a smile. We are having so many people look at it that it is driving me crazy. With it being Summertime, and kids being home it is hard to keep things looking perfect all of the time. Hopefully someone will love it as much as we have and make us a great offer soon. 

BEFORE

(It wasn't really that bad. We took down everything before I thought to take a picture.)

Micah and I have been racking our brain as to what we can do to make our home sell faster. One night we were having a few agents coming through our home so I thought it would be fun to meet at IKEA to pass the time. That night we got home at 9:00p.m. and decided to redecorate our master bathroom. 

AFTER

We have painted just about every room in the house except for this one. We decided a huge mirror would make the space look a lot bigger, and we had a few quarts of paint left over from test samples we didn't like. We mixed all the quarts together (hopefully they don't ever ask us what color we used) and just went with whatever color came out of it. Throw in a few clearance rugs from Target and tada. We actually had a lot of fun and joked that we totally could do one of those make over shows. In three hours I think we made a great improvement. It needs a few decorations, but it looks much nicer. We should have done this years ago.

Bear Lake 2009

Everyone in our family looks forward to our annual Bear Lake trip. Micah's parents are so generous that every year they rent us all condo's so we can relax and spend time together. The cousins love running around together, and the adults love just being away from it all. Between Micah's parents and siblings family's we are starting to be quite a crowd.

Here we are on our way to Bear Lake.  I apologize for the tremendous amount of pictures in this post. I just couldn't cut any more out because I love them all.

She thought the ear phones were so great we couldn't take them away from her even when she was asleep. Aliza loves anything that she can do like the big kids.

I may be crazy, but I love this picture. I won't be able to put Aliza in this kind of swimming suit for much longer, so I'm loving it while I can.

Spending hours building sand castles is one on our favorite things to do.

Micah started the kids building sand snakes last year, and they still loved it this year. I do have to mention that Micah and his brother David are more into the sand castle building than the kids. Give them a shovel and a bucket and they are set for the whole day.

David this year made this fantastic bottle launcher.  Each cousin was able to decorate a plastic bottle with stickers and markers, and then launched it high into the air.

It was so much fun to watch each of the kids pump the launcher up with air and then watch it fly. He spent many hours on his invention and it was a hit. Thanks Dave!

I think we all love to spend as much time at the beach as possible. I was a little nervous about this situation in the above picture, but I was watching closely and standing close by to make sure Aliza didn't get dunked. Her cousin Zaylie was pulling her around and sure enough I turn my back for a second when all looked well, and she flipped over into the water and was stuck under the floaty. She didn't think that was very fun to be stuck in that cold Bear Lake water. What a great mom I am :(

I don't know how the kids could just float around all day in that cold water. It didn't seem to phase them at all. Oh, to be a kid again. I'll stick to hanging out on the beach.

A few years back we started the tradition of the annual "Bear Lake Phillips Family Talent Show". This is a picture of Abbie "the announcer" for this years show. We had everything from official programs, dancing, sword fighting, unicycle riding, and quite frankly just a lot of laughs. My favorite number for the evening involved a dance from all the mom's (not to be biased because I was involved). I still laugh sooo hard when I even think about it.  We all wore swimming suits over our clothes and did a syncronized swimming number behind a blue table cloth (water of course). I do have the video but I haven't figured out how to edit it. So don't worry ladies, it will be on here soon. Ha Ha!

This is a picture of one of the dance numbers.  It was to the music of "SpaceMan."

Between miniature golf, two pools, a treasure hunt (thanks to Grammie), and the beach we had a very full four days. We even lucked out that we were there for the Fourth of July fire works show. 

This is Aliza with her cousin Taylor whom she adores.

This is the whole crew of cousins ready and lined up to do the pinata. This is everyone from youngest to oldest excluding Taylor from the above picture, and the newest member of the Phillips family Shad (4 months old). 

After we gathered up all the goodies it made a great hat. Avery was still in a dress due to the talent show. 

We can't wait until next year! In fact Avery has such a sweet, tender heart that when she even thinks about Bear Lake she starts to cry and says she wants to go back. She loves her cousins so much and I'm so glad we could spend time together. We have a great family.  Thank you Gene and Karen for a fantastic vacation.