WE'RE LIVE!!! We'Re LiVe!!! We're Live!!! WE'RE LIVE!!!

We feel exhilarated!  Our adoption profile is live on LDSFS!!!  Please take a look and spread the word!  https://www.itsaboutlove.org/ial/profiles/28283211/ourMessage.jsf

Lifting Our Roots

We moved into a beautiful new house!!!  Great location!  3 bedroom, 2.5 bath, 2 car-garage, spacious living room, large kitchen, maple cabinets, tile floors, stainless-steel appliances, vaulted ceilings, master suite, jack and jill bathroom upstairs, gas fireplace, built in 2007, some 1700 square feet!

The last couple weeks have been a whirlwind!

10/31/2012 -- I text Ryan Nelson, our landlord, on a whim to ask if he would mind if Ryan and I ever decided to get a dog.  It wasn't an immediate priority of ours, I was just curious.

11/1/2012 -- I get the following text from Ryan: " Hi Tanya.  Give me a call when you get a second."  For a minute I wondered if I was in trouble for asking, haha.  I call and he's as kind as ever.  Ryan and Candice have been awesome people to house-sit for.  He asks how things are going for Ryan and I and tells us he and Candice have decided to sell the house in order to buy a bigger place in the Spring.  They have 8 children and the house just doesn't meet their needs.  They expressed interest in moving us into the new house, but they admitted there would likely be an interim period, where we would need to make some type of living arrangement.  He told us he would let us talk things over and that he would give us the first opportunity if we decided we wanted to buy the house we've been living in for them.

Ryan was home, sick, so on lunch I went home to share the news with him.  We had a few options:
A) Find a temporary home (Tami's house or an apartment) until the Nelsons purchase their new home...move in at that point and continue our current arrangement (keeping up the yard; no rent; moving out our things every 6 months during their visits -- great arrangement).
B) Purchase Washington Terrace home, and Rent it out while we live at the Nelson's new home.
C) Purchase Washington Terrace home and live there permanently.
D) Purchase a different home and rent or live there permanently.

We were overwhelmed by the decisions we had to make and had to learn a lot about home-owning in a short period of time.   Ultimately we decided buying a home would be a wise decision, given current mortgage rates and such.  We thought we had time to decide on the home of our choosing...but our situation quickly changed as people were flooding to our house for walk-throughs.  Our real estate agent, Jeramy Jones, felt confident that the house wouldn't sell until March 2013 and that we had time to decide what we wanted to do.  Within four days, 3 offers came in and we were informed that Ryan was prepared to accept an offer if we hadn't come to a decision about the Washington Terrace home by Monday 11/12...less than a week away!!!

11/8/2012 -- We hurried and got ourselves pre-qualified with Academy Mortgage (Jeff Holden), and searched 24-7 for listings on UtahRealEstate.com.  We looked online at houses from Farmington to Marriott-Slaterville, and visited some 18 homes over the weekend with Jeramy.  Those were long days and sleepless nights!  Tanya was working every day that week and eventually got sick from the stress.  By Monday we were reasonably confident that we could let our current house go to other buyers and we decided to purchase a townhouse in South Ogden (the pic you see above!!).

11/12/2012 -- We made up our mind Monday, signed our loan docs on Tuesday and made an appt for a home inspection on Thursday for the following Monday (tomorrow). We are SOOOO excited for the adventures of home ownership and can't wait to move in between December 7 (our closing date) - December 14, 2012 (Washington Terrace home's closing date)!!! 

A Rockin' Hallowesque Weekend

This last weekend weighs in high for "Best Weekends Spent 2012."  Friday, Marie and Nicolo met up with us to go party hopping.  Shale came to the first party with us, as well.  Dressed as lady liberty and the statue of david, Marie and Nicolo were looking great!  Ryan and I dressed up as Bollywood dancers!  I found my costume a couple months after last years' Halloween celebration.  Ryan and I found his costume just this week at Savers.  It was really awesome that our costumes were able to match!  Tami helped Ryan create a turban for 2 hours earlier in the day.  We are so lucky to have family around!  We went by Stefanie Versey's party first, but arrived as things were finishing up.  We got a few minutes of quality conversation in and it was so fun to see the Versey family costumes Patt Nelson made.  They were all scarecrows.  I think I want to do that next year.  They looked adorable.  We dropped Shale back at home and left for Reo Garn's party in Farmington.  He is currently living in an awesome bachelor pad out there.  We were able to see Brody Wight and David Clark there.  It was good to catch up a bit.  The homeowner has a hovercraft, a theater screen the size of the wall, Halloween decorations up the wazoo, and firepit, hottub (i think), a carnival swing (made for a senior engineering project), a kit car...just lots of fun things.  All in all, it was a fun night. 

Highlights:
 -- Learning how to place a Tikka (headpiece). 
 -- Seeing Stefanie's awesome costume and visiting with her for a bit. 
 -- Spending time with Marie and Nicolo and having some short one on one time with Marie while the boys played Live Action Zombie Attack on the Xbox
 -- Laughing about how Nicolo's underwear glowed through his thermals in the black light and how brightly his leaf shined.
 -- Telling people Ryan and I had a bollywood dance routine that didn't really exist, and then trying to make Ryan dance anyway.
 -- Trying to create a makeshift dance competition
 -- Talking with Kara Goodwin, and getting to know her a lot better

Saturday Shale got 2 free tickets for Frightmares (because she bought tires somewhere) and invited me to come along!  I was thrilled!  We met up in the morning, had breakfast, and shot off to Lagoon! Can I just say how awesome this day was?!  I haven't been to Lagoon with my sister since I was in junior high school and she was in elementary school!  I hadn't even realized how much time had passed until we got talking.  It was fun hearing about her fun adventures with friends and getting to spend so much quality time laughing together and updating eachother on all our happenings.

Highlights:
 -- Skycoaster.  This was Shale's first time ever attempting this ride and she is deathly afraid of heights so it was exciting being there to hear her anticipation and her screams!  Haha.  She made me pull the ripcord and it was HILARIOUS delaying and hearing her say, "Pull it now, pull it, JUST PULL IT!"   AMAZING.
 -- Every ride, really.  We were screaming and laughing and talking and I can't even express how much I enjoyed it.  And for most of the day, the lines were way short!
 -- Shale smashed me LIKE CRAZY on the music express...little stinker.
 -- Being reminded how cool Colossus is.
 -- Revealing the single rider line of Wicked to my sister...she was shocked that we were able to bypass the HUGE line.
 -- Quivering behind Shale as we toured the haunted houses.  I've always been the cowardly one when we are together.  She is so brave and awesome to lead the way. 
 -- Constantly running into walls while going through the haunted houses.  It was SOOO dark!  She had me lead her through one section of a haunted house, and I was walking with my eyes closed cause I didn't want to see what (or who) was around the corner.  We were walking kinda fast and I slammed us right into a wall that probably would have been obvious had I been looking...we were laughing pretty hard at that one. 
 -- Sharing fries and corndogs and experimenting with different combinations of sauces.
 -- Commiserating about how our brains feel like they lift in our heads during certain rides.  Everyone else talks about their stomach sinking...No one really gets the head thing but us.  Genetics, I guess.  :)

Then, finally, Ryan and I met up with Reo and Kara to visit some parties in Salt Lake City Saturday night.  Holy man, these parties were crammed.  Awesome dance music, fun costumes, good friends...we had a blast.  It has been a while since I've attended a party like these...it was refreshing and fun to people watch at moments.  I saw a few old friends who are still kicking it single, like Todd Simonsen, Windsor Smith, and Rob Simpson.  Cool kids.  It was fun catching up.  This night, costumes were compliments of Kara, whose mom has sewn some pretty awesome getups over the years.  I wore a Dutch girl costume and adored it!  Kara had to safety pin some zigzagged ribbon on the back because the top was too small to zip up but it made the costume look even cooler than before.  Ryan got LOTS of attention for his Moses costume...you could hear people everywhere saying, Hey!, look!  Moses is in the house."  I never got used to looking over and seeing an old prophet dancing gangnam style...but there was so much energy in the room, it was awesome.  I think this made Halloween party #5 for me, this year!  Good times...I've had more fun dressing up this year than in many other years past.  Great weekend, great holiday!  

Weekend Parties & Random Acts of Fusion

I'll start with Josh's party from Friday.  Josh hosted a Halloween party at his parent's house.  He is making a tradition of this.  It is always fun to party at the Stephens's home...I have been doing this since 9th grade.  They have a great home, have great snacks and offer great company.  This year was especially fun because Ryan and I had our own friends show up.  Nate (Rio) and Kara came as pirates, and were the only ones in costume...but they looked incredible!  Marie brought Nicolo, a guy she is dating from Italy, and he seemed to have fun learning new party games.  She left him with us while she worked.  This is the first time I've had the opportunity to share time with Nicolo in that context, and I thought it was really fun.  He is a great person for Marie.  We played Murder in the Dark, live action style, where all the lights in the house are shut off and people go around hiding and searching for each other, trying to avoid the "murderers" who pretend to kill them if they are caught.  When a live person finds a "body" lying on the ground, they yell "body, body!" and everyone comes to one room and together, they lay out their suspects and try to determine "whodunnit."  We had a lot of fun.  Afterward, Rio pulled us downstairs to play this Zombie game on the XBox...my attempt at pretty much any nintendo game is laughable, but I tried.  Ryan did well.  So did Nicolo!

Saturday I hosted a Dental Hygiene Reunion/Halloween Party at my house.  I made 20 caramel apples, Rocky Mountain Chocolate factory-style, from scratch and have a number of them left over so I'm pawning them off on my friends, haha.  It was nice catching up with some of my girls (including Maren, Julie, Jamie, Tori, Ashley, and Kelsey) but I was super tardy due to the third thing I have to blog about...

More to come

Seeing Grandparents

Yesterday Ryan and I went to his grandparents house to visit before they leave for St George.  They spend the winters there.  In the last few years grandpa Miller has given us some scares with his health.  This year we had to visit him in the ER for a condition doctors couldn't exactly diagnose, but it had to do with his blood.  We worry for him and hope to have him around for some years to come.  He has been a great spiritual leader in our family...someone we all look up to.  He and grandma are so well educated on church history and have spent so much of their lives serving in the church.  They are great examples to live up to.  We hope in some way we can.  Talking with them is always a great gift and opportunity.  They share their love for us in so many ways.  When we visited them in st george a couple years ago they made us feel so special and important.  They have a talent for that.  They always pull out snacks, including pepperjack cheese, really great crackers, and whatever else they have lying around.  Last night it was chicken sandwiches and sweet pickles.  I usually hate sweet pickles and Ryan usually hates pickles in general, but these particular ones were great...they were Famous Daves brand.  I love Ryans grandparents and I am so grateful that his grandparents have made a high priority of staying close to their grandchildren.  I'm not sure my grandparents really cared if they saw us or not, on either side of my family.  I feel his grandparents' love and interest in me every time.  Long before Ryan and I were married, Grandpa Miller expressed his hope that I would some day join the family.  I'm so glad I did, and I'm so glad I get to be with Ryan's grandparents forever.  What a great gift the gospel is. 

Switchfoot & My Gratitude for Music

 Can I just say how much Paper Route -- Blew Me Away -- tonight???  How is it that this band was never on my radar?!  Well, there's an album I'll be purchasing tomorrow.  They are honestly right in league with the greats...OneRepublic and Coldplay -- my personal favorites.  Ironically, OneRepublic has to repeatedly express that Coldplay does not inspire their music, but it all sounds like melarchy to me.  (What does "melarchy" mean, really?  Nonsense?  FYI -- That was my context.  Where did that word come from?  When did people start using it? Hmm...).  Back on point, OneRepublic may not give tribute to Coldplay for their sound (which I think is kinda ridiculous), but holy moley they seem to be two threads of the same blouse to me...which is why I love them both. 

Moving away from that, I've gotta say how grateful I am for music.  Tonight's concert lifted me out of a little slump I've been feeling today.  It's really kind of a magical thing.  I love how music can be so uplifting and edifying, and how it gives expression to the things I'm feeling.

I'm certain I owe most of my "out-of-sortness" to my recent all night blog fest, but there's something else there that took me a second to realize.  While driving to pick up some Costa Vida, it hit me how little attention I gave to the fact that 12 hours earlier I had bore the deepest parts of my soul to the world wide web.

There were years where I felt inside pressures to keep my infertility a secret from the world.  It was a deep insecurity for me, and I felt like less of a person because of it.  Telling close friends sent me into tears and any time I brought it up it made for a heavy evening.  After serving a mission at a temple visitor center, I learned that sharing my story could be a great blessing to others.  After marrying Ryan, the days of fearing the reaction of boys I cared about were far behind me...and for that I am grateful.  Today, I find it a healthy thing to share my story with others.  I tell it with a genuine smile because I see nothing but the great blessings that come from it.  Still, putting it out there for strangers, for any boy I've ever dated or been interested in, or for those of my past whom I might not have always had fond feelings for (not to say that there are many)...I can understand now why, subconsciously, this weighed down on me. 

I'm grateful that my desires for a family have brought me to this place, where I have come to terms with my loss and where I'm free from the guilt and sorrow that came from my infertility.  Those heavy feelings plagued me a long time, but those days are over.  I'm so excited to adopt...I can hardly stand it.  I'm so excited to be a mother and to share my life with my baby.

Switchfoot was good...Paper Route was better...being lifted out of my slump was the best.  Thanks for a great evening, Music and Family!!!  I better sleep now before I welcome back a fatique-induced slump for another day. 

Some of the pics are sideways and upside down...maybe Ill fix this sometime.

Making the Switch

I scrapbook, I journal, I facebook...until recently I thought having a Blog would only be redundant.  However, as we prepare to expand our family, I see where keeping a Blog could be a neat way to share our lives with any of you that are interested!  Be patient, though, as I learn how all this works!  Welcome to Our Life!!!