A Whole Lot of Crazy

So right now my life is: Take kids to school, go run errands for new house (like picking up paint, choosing tile, etc), pick up kids, feed them lunch, go to the new house and try to make progress by cleaning something or painting something, usually while Eliana screams in her playpen and the boys get into things they're not supposed to get into (even though I went through the trouble of getting one room completely ready for them with toys and everything so they can play in there while I get stuff done but it's clearly not working), go home and eat a dinner that I can whip up in 30 minutes or less (unless I remembered to put food in the crockpot in the morning), then see Marcelo for 5 minutes while he scarfs down some food and changes his clothes before he leaves again, give the kids baths and put them to bed, clean up the aftermath of dinnertime, edit pictures that I owe people, try to pack up some more of our house, shower, see Marcelo for a bit when he gets home, aaaand crash.

This is Marcelo's life: Wake up early to get to work early, be swamped at work all day, come home to scarf down some food and change clothes, head to the new house and work work work putting in new floors, tearing down a wall, painting, and on and on, come home around 11pm, make plans with me for the next day's goals, shower, aaaaand crash. This paragraph is a lot shorter, but the work he's doing is a whole lot harder and way more exhausting physically than anything I have to do. He's a superhero and I'm so grateful for his hardworking, capable hands!

It's CRAZY. But good crazy. It'll be completely worth the exhaustion we're experiencing.

To anyone who has been helping us who reads this blog, THANK YOU! You don't know how much we appreciate you taking time away from your own busy lives to come help paint, put down floors, cut baseboards, clean, watch my kids, and more. We are sooooo grateful for the help we've received. Thank you thank you thank you!

We’re MOVING!

We closed on our new house today! Before I get into the long story of how this all came to be, here’s a 30 second video of us telling the kids the big news.

Clearly, they didn’t care much. Our first mistake was leaving their new tractors out where they could see them. They came with us to see that house a few times and the little boy who lived there had lots of tractors. The boys told us that they wanted to move to that house because they had good toys. We didn’t want them to walk into the house and be disappointed that there were no tractors anymore, so we bought them each a new one. I thought about putting it in their new room, but instead we left it in the living area and, as my dad said, “Tractors trump everything.” So our big news wasn’t really big news.

I’m writing out the story because it’s been a complete roller coaster and I want to remember it. You can feel free to skip it. It’s long.

Towards the end of last year, our house hunting turned from casual and sporadic to hardcore and let’s-make-an-offer-now. We saw this house and another one. We’ll call that one the blue one. But the blue one had a contract on it. We decided to make an offer on this one, so I went to the bank and went through the process of getting financing. Before we could submit an offer, the house went under contract. After a few days, another one, four or so houses down from this one, popped up. We’ll call that one the white one.  We put in an offer immediately. A couple days later, the sellers of the white one countered a bit too high. We let it go. On the same day that we let it go, this house popped back up. The other contract fell through. We put an offer in immediately, and it was accepted a couple days later. This was at the end of October. Since it was a short sale, we had to sit back and wait. And wait. And wait some more. By the time February rolled around, we had a decision to make. Extend the contract or let it go? We decided to go ahead and extend, even though it meant we could still be waiting for another two months.  Two days after that, the original blue house went back up on the market. We saw it, and put in an offer. Both houses were in the same neighborhood, exact same model, and pretty close in price range. We decided that we liked both equally and it was basically a race to see who would answer us first. Three weeks later, the first house, this one, let us know we were approved.

And that is just the beginning of all the drama that followed. In the last month and a half, there have been so many hiccups, so many giant bumps in the road, and so many times where I thought we weren’t getting the house after all. The latest and hardest blow was today, just hours before our closing. In the last 2 weeks, I had finally begun to believe that nothing could stop this from happening. Our realtor (a wonderful lady who has been fabulous through this whole ordeal, and who also sold us our very first home right after we got married) had reassured me that we were past all the little bumps and it would be smooth sailing from here on out. Our lender (a cranky old lady who gave us looks funny enough to be in an SNL sketch) had even told me I just needed to breathe and that it was all going to work out. So it kind of hit me like a giant kick in the gut today when our realtor called this morning and said, “Are you sitting down? There is a HUGE hiccup.” She then told me a long, crazy story about a missing piece of paperwork that we absolutely could not close without. Apparently, a few of the people involved in the closing had known about it for 2 weeks and hadn’t bothered to tell us. The previous owners had been looking for this document for 2 weeks and had not found it. Since they couldn’t find it, the title company had to try to track down the owners before them. The owners before them were now divorced and the wife was nowhere to be found. Blah blah blah, if they didn’t find the wife and get signatures from her, they couldn’t sell us the house. Our only hope for all of this to get solved was for the other owners…the ones that just moved out…to find the dang paperwork. The realtor told me to prepare myself for the very real possibility that we were not closing today, and that it was highly likely that we would never close at all.

What do you think I did when I got this news today? That’s right. I cried. And cried and cried. This six month saga was still not over. I spent a large portion of the morning on my knees praying and praying for a miracle. My boys even asked me why I was praying so much. Those poor kids have been so confused for months now because our house is full of boxes and tons of their stuff is packed away and they’ve had no idea why. Well, Diego has had an idea, but we’ve been lying to him for weeks so we could surprise him. Whenever he asked about the boxes, I’d say, “I’m just doing some spring cleaning. Just putting away things we’re not using right now.” One day I asked, “Why do YOU think there are so many boxes?” He said, “Because we’re moving.” I squashed that with a, “Maybe one day but not right now.”

Anyway, back to the story. About 2 and a half hours before our closing appointment, our realtor called back and said, “It’s a miracle! Best news ever! The document has been found!” What do you think I did? That’s right. I cried some more. HOLY ROLLERCOASTER. My prayers were answered! We are new homeowners! I type this all out so I can one day look back and remember how much we fought for this house, and how clear it was that the Lord’s hand was in it every step of the way.

Now the real fun begins. The house is in need of some major work, so our next two weeks will be quite crazy. Marcelo has already ripped out every inch of carpet and has moved on to baseboards. The carpet. was. nasty. NASTY. They let their pets have their way with it. It absolutely had to go. In the next two weeks we’ll be replacing the floor, painting, cleaning, and maybe knocking down a wall. I’ll be taking pictures all along the way so I can do a before and after post down the road.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!

I love Newborns

A little peek from my latest shoot. He didn’t sleep a wink for the whole shoot, but he was calm and happy as can be. 

And why wouldn’t he be when he pooped and peed all over my stuff? Good thing he was so cute.

Hello?

Or as Eliana says it, “Hawo?”

She likes to pretend to talk on the phone. Sometimes she talks to two people at once.

And in case you’re wondering what she’s wearing, it’s a little apron dress that my grandma made for me when I was a baby.

Celo, Celo, Celo

This boy. Mr. Tough Guy. I wish I had a video camera on at all times so I could capture all his funniness. Sometimes the funniness is not so funny in the moment, but I know he's going to crack up at all the stories we tell him when he's older. He's just so full of personality. A few recent Celo funnies:

We were reading a story from the scriptures that talks about a king threatening a man's life because he was preaching about God. When Marcelo said, "So the king told him that if he kept teaching people about Heavenly Father, the king would throw him in the fire!" Without missing a beat, Celo got his little mad face on and said, "I would throw HIM in the fire." It was SO hard to contain my laughter. It just cracks me up that if he perceives any kind of injustice, he feels it is his duty to correct the situation and defend the defenseless. As the story went on, Celo kept interjecting with things like, "That man is not nice. If he said that to me, I would NOT be nice to him."

Another Celo trait is that he is as stubborn as a mule. When he gets dressed by himself, I sometimes have to say, "Good job! But your shorts are on backwards." His response? "I wike (like) them wike this." Okay then.

The other morning, I got a message on my phone from a lady who thought I hadn't called her the day before, when really, I had. I complained to Marcelo, "She didn't get my message, so now she's probably thinking I'm a flake." Celo overheard this and said, "Mommy that's not a nice lady. I would not be nice to her because she thinks you're a fake." It was flake, not fake, but how does he even know what it means to call someone a fake? And what's with the "I would not be nice to her" comments?? I keep telling him that we have to be nice to everyone, even if they're not nice, but it's clearly going in one ear and out the other.

Lastly, we were recently at a get together where there was a little kid who was kind of terrorizing the rest of the kids. Celo was approximately half the kid's size, but he still stood up to him every chance he got. "You are not being nice!!!" This also happened at the playground one day, when a kid bigger than Diego was being mean to Diego. My sensitive, sweet Diego came running to me crying, while my little tough guy walked right up to the kid and yelled, "Be nice to Diego!"

I keep wondering what I should do about this little attitude of his. It's not like he ever tries to hit anyone, and he's not mean to kids who are being nice to him, but he's definitely not afraid to talk harshly to someone who is being mean. I tell him that he needs to be nice to everyone, but it doesn't seem to be getting through to my little confrontational child. At least I know he'll never get pushed around, right?

New link for your readers

Hello friends and family of mine. A couple of my super smart friends gave me an idea to make it easier to check in on my blog. One of the downsides of going private is that new posts don't show up on people's readers. Personally, I love the convenience of being able to check all my friends' new blog posts at once on my google reader, and I forget to check in on my friends' blogs if they are private. SO, I now have an update blog that you can put into your reader so you can see when I put up a new post. Add this to your reader: http://marcenatiupdates.blogspot.com, and I'll add links to the newest entry, so you can go directly to it. Make sense? Pretty smart. :) I know you are all sooooo happy that you can now be up to date on every detail of our super fun lives. "Ooooh, loooook. More pictures of her muddy boys! YES!" ;) You're welcome.

My Little Artists

Celo came into my room this morning with a picture he had drawn on the magnadoodle. He was like, "Mommy, this is you at the temple. You're getting married. You look beautiful." I oohed and ahhed and asked if I could hold it so I could see it better. He said, "No! Wait! I have to draw the boy that's gonna marry you." I said, "Who's that?" He said, "Daddy!" The big mess is me in the temple, and the little guy with the long legs is Marcelo.

Not to be outdone, Diego drew me a picture, too. He drew me as a princess in my bed inside my castle, with Marcelo at the bottom waiting for me. I told them both how great their pictures were, and Diego said, "But you like mine better, right? Because Celo's is scribble scrabble."

Diaper Tower

I've been getting a lot of amazing deals on diapers lately, so there are many boxes of them in the house. The other morning, I walked into Eliana's room and was surprised to find this:

The Earthquake

I posted this on Facebook, but I want to remember it, so here it is on my blog. A few nights ago, there was an earthquake in our home. It made everything in the boys' room shake. It knocked down their dresser and all of their things. Broken glass was everywhere. It was really scary. Luckily, their stuffed puppies that they sleep with helped them clean it all up. They cleaned and cleaned and cleaned all night until they made the room look perfect. They spent all night doing that, which made them feel very tired in the morning. Soooo tired because they were up all night. I am SUCH a deep sleeper that I didn't even notice we had an earthquake. And the boys' room looked so good in the morning, that I would have never known about this awful situation had it not been for Celo's detailed account of the events and for Diego backing up his story.

Just Some Kid Quotes

Celo doesn't really know where to insert the word "even" in a sentence. He uses it a lot. Like this: Me: What do you want to do today? Celo: Play with cars. Even I want to play with trains. Me: What did you do at school? Celo: Went outside, painted, even we used instruments. A few days ago, we went to a store called Lumber Liquidators. Diego kept calling it, "Limber Lumber". When I tried to correct him, he kind of laughed and said, "I can't get it straight because I'm from Colombia."

Celo likes to make up nicknames for Eliana. I think he gets it from my mom. She's all about nicknames. (She calls me Surina and Sur, Diego is Jego or Jegoreen or Chiqui, Celo is Chelito or Chiquitin, and Eliana is Peen Peen.) Anyway, Celo's nicknames for Eliana are always changing. She's Baby Elle, Baba Elle, Ellie, and the latest...EElien. Like Alien, but EEElien. I asked him not to call her that because it just sounds like alien, so he changed it to Vivi. Which is his cousin's name. His songs for her are: "You're just a baba Elle, You're just a baba Elle", for when he wants to make her laugh, "Make room for Ellie, Ellie, Ellie, Make room for Ellie, Ellie, Ellie" for when we put her in the bathtub with them or whenever we're trying to include her in something, and "Watch our for Ellie, Ellie, Ellie, Watch out for Ellie, Ellie, Ellie" for when she's trying to knock down their stuff.

Diego is the king of questions. It's non-stop, all day long. "How do you make electricity? What's lightning made of? How does a light light up? Why are some ants black and some are brown? What does masquerade mean? Why do daddies have Saturday and Sunday off? Why does that man work at this store? Why do you like taking pictures of people? Why don't babies have teeth?" And on and on. I'm not smart enough to be his mom.

While Diego loves to know the how and why of everything, Celo is busy making up his own how and whys of his own little world. He's so imaginative and verrry talkative. He tells us long stories that are maybe 10% true, 90% made up. The most recent one was about an alleged earthquake we had in our own home, which will be a whole separate post.

New Joseph Smith Movie

Marcelo is at church playing soccer. I should be getting stuff done around the house, but instead, I just spent the last 62 minutes watching Joseph Smith - Prophet of the Restoration. I pretty much bawled from minute 56 until the end. They changed the movie from the original version to make it more easily understood by a wider audience. People who are not members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints can watch it and understand a little more about who Joseph Smith was and what he did. Although I enjoyed many things about this version, I'd love to know if the original version is available to buy. There were some things I missed about the original. When I saw it in Salt Lake 5 years ago, it touched me and affected me more than any movie I've ever seen. I cried roughly 398 times in that version. And I'm not a huge crier in movies.