Charged Battery

Dave and I went on a date on Saturday night with some friends. The girl listened to my story of how my camera battery charger was mistakenly thrown away and she said she had an extra one! Yesterday my sweet friend brought me the charger and I now have a working camera again. Just in time for upcoming birthdays and Mother's Day (which they all happen to fall on the same day this year). So yesterday when the battery was fully charged I put it into my pink camera and voila! It worked! I was able to upload my pictures (upload? download? what is the difference?) and now I am ready to share. Here are the real pictures of our rental house. I think we did a pretty good job recreating most of the rooms to look almost exactly like what they did in the old house. This house has almost the same layout which is nice, but what is not nice is the tile. Yucky tile. But all in all we are enjoying it here. We are starting to really love the ward (each Sunday I like it more and more because we're meeting so many nice people), we have super nice neighbors, I love all of the big huge trees and lovely green grass as we walk to school or to the park. It's really worked out well. And we do still have a guest room for any of the Reno Eyre's who want to come and visit!

This kitchen is smaller than my old kitchen, but I have found that all of my stuff fits and sometimes it's way easier to keep a smaller kitchen clean! I think the best thing is that we got rid of a lot of junk before we moved so we moved in mostly with just the things we need. This is right off the kitchen and it's supposed to be the family room. However, because of our huge television and entertainment center it would not fit every well in this space (and the tile was yucky) so we made it the office. It works so well and I actually love having the TV and playroom together, upstairs.

This is our HUGE upstairs bonus room. We loved this room. This room is the reason we wanted to rent this house. The kids love having a TV in their playroom and it's nice that the whole family can be in here at the same time reading, playing, watching a show. It's turned out to be my favorite room of the house.

Family Pics

My friend Celise took these....she said it was the wrong time of day (notice the squinty eyes) so we're going to try again. Different time of day, different location. But I still think these are cute. I sure have the most handsome boys ever!

Photo Shoot

My friend, Celise, posted on FB a few months ago that she had just bought a new camera and was going to be working on starting a photography business. I immediately volunteered my family for practice. Celise wanted some time to work on figuring out her camera and learning a little about photography so we planned to do a photo shoot in the spring. I wanted to do the pictures at Floyd Lamb Park. I have seen pictures of friends taken there and I thought it would be a lot of fun. So Saturday was the day and as we drove out to the park we noticed signs advertising a festival. So the park was out. We ended up just driving to a park near by and Celise tried to get some shots in, but the boys were too busy trying to run away to play on the playground. After the shoot was over Celise suggested we try again at a different location and she wanted to try in the evening to get shots in different light. I happily agreed. The new location will be Spring Mountain Ranch and we decided to make it a fun family outing complete with picnic dinners and time for the kids to play. It's nice having talented friend who want to practice their talents on you. Hopefully we'll soon have some nice, new pictures to post.

Pictures of house

So we moved into a rental house. Some of you have been asking to see pictures so I thought I'd post some today. Now get ready, because I think you will be impressed with my decorating abilities. Here is the kitchen...The Family roomThe upstairs playroom and TV roomTrevor and Colin's roomLogan's roomThe master bedroom

As you can clearly see my camera still has a dead battery. Dave is now sure that he threw the battery charger away when we were packing, since at the time he was not sure what it was. So I need to go buy a new one, but I just keep forgetting. One of these days. But for now these pictures are sure fun to look at.

My Grandpa

My grandpa passed away this week. I haven't cried about it until tonight when I was in the car alone, on my way to Target to get Easter stuff for the kids. I am not sure why I started crying then; probably because I finally had a quiet moment to let it all sink in. I think I've been too busy the last couple of days vacuuming, doing laundry, taking care of coughing kids, changing diapers, attempting to make cookies and everything else that goes on in a normal day. I keep reading posts my cousins are leaving on FB or talking to my sister and hearing how everyone is doing. I was wondering why I am not as sad as they are. Maybe I wasn't as close to him as some of them, or maybe I have been too distracted. I thought back to when my friend Aimee died and how hard it hit me and how much I cried. But tonight, in the car, I just started thinking about him. I thought about his smile. He always seemed to have a smile on his face, well except for when he was at ball games yelling at the refs over mistakes he wanted to make sure they knew they made. I thought about a day when my sister and my cousin and I were at my uncle's house sitting out in the sun and my grandpa came up and just looked at us. I remember asking if he wanted something and he said, "I just have the most beautiful granddaughters." He used to come to the football games to watch me cheer. I remember the 50th anniversary party we threw for him and my grandmother and how I hoped I would someday have a party like that with the man I loved. I thought about my wedding and how my husband had asked my grandma what their wedding song had been. Dave made a CD of wedding songs and when my grandparents' song came on they danced. I watched them dance and they looked so happy and so in love, all those years later. We celebrated their 60 anniversary on Saturday and he passed away a couple of days later. He was a good father and husband and he taught so many things to his children and grandchildren. I know my dad is who he is today because of my grandpa and for that I love him so much. I have always loved my last name, always loved being a Faircloth and having people tell me they knew my grandparents, or my aunts, uncles, or dad. It's a good name to have, a good family to belong to. My grandpa loved his family and it showed in everything he said and did. When you were with him you felt like you were the favorite. He did a lot for a lot of people. I was talking on the phone tonight to someone who knew him and she said such nice things. It made me realize that everyone who knew him must have loved him because that was the kind of person he was.

Give-away!!

I never win anything. Well, I did win something once. In college I entered my receipt when I bought my books into a drawing and won a backpack which turned out to be a duffel bag. I don't know if I still have it but I was pretty darn excited that I won. There are lots of blogs and websites that do give-aways. I always see the stuff and then see that tens of thousands of people have entered and I think, "I have no chance of winning so why even try?" But lately, I've been checking this one particular blog because there are always really good give-aways. I mean bake ware, pots, mixers, all of the fancy stuff I want to buy but never would buy because it costs too much. So I saw this today. This pretty little yellow mixer. I already have a mixer like this (well mine is almost 10 years old because I bought it with wedding money....wow, that's old!) but mine is blue and this one is yellow. My favorite color. So I entered along with over 20,000 other people and still counting. I know I'll never win, but it's worth a try, right?