Where in the world

Wow, it has been a really long time since I've been able to read up on my blogs!  It was nice to catch up on everyone's lives ;)  I shall catch you up on ours!  We have had an exciting couple of months and I am very excited to take you on a tour of what we call home.

We were finally able to move in June 7th, and did so in a day.  We didn't have much to move, although we had much more than we realized!  It seems when you put boxes in storage, they have babies and you end up with a butt load of stuff you forgot you even had.  Needless to say we were fortunate that a van and small trailer were sufficient in moving our stuff.  

Now on to the pictures!    Without further ado, Welcome to the Gardiner Home:

This is our cute new house!

The Living Room Before...

Bathroom/Hallway

Kitchen Before...

Basement Before...

This is my Laundry room, it looks the same :)  HUGE

This is our "weight room" that is at the moment weightless

Downstairs bathroom

Living Room after

Its kinda hard to tell with the lighting, but I textured the walls and painted a faux

it kinda looks like stone, there are veins and all that 

Kitchen after

We just painted and are planning on staining the cabinets to match our kitchen table

Basement after

Ben made this fireplace!  So proud, he is amazing

Our backyard, in my opinion very decent sized

I will continue to post pictures as we continue to update!  There is still tons to do, as you can see all bathrooms are outdated (3), and besides Tazia's room (yes she moved in) and the weight room we have 3 other bedrooms that need to be updated, one of which is a... nursery!!!  Yay!  I am now 4 months prego!  We are so excited and can't wait to find out what we get to have.  I of course would love a girl, and Ben has literally been praying for a boy.  Can you believe that!?  I guess we will see how hard he has been praying next month.  As far as being pregnant I am extremely lucky other than being sensitive to smells and losing my appetite I haven't had a sick day in 4 months!  I'm a few weeks into my second trimester now and I'm feeling great ;)  We are expecting this baby Feb 15!  Happy anniversary to us.

In other news, we are loving our neighborhood and ward.   We just received our callings I am now the Laurel adviser and Ben is the second counselor in the sunday school presidency ( what ever that is)

Well now that I have covered the basics in a crazy long post...

ta ta for now, we will update you on the baby soon, hopefully with little pictures

Delay

I'm just about to get to bed, but I thought I'd give an update on the house situation!  We are squared away, everything is approved, we're just waiting on HUD to close!  Unfortunately they are taking their time.  A lady who works for our Broker called today and said they will take around 6 days to close after they have all the paperwork.  So now instead of the 1st we're looking at the 7th or 9th.

It was kind of a downer to hear, a-whole-nother week to wait.  But we are just grateful that that is the only problem we've encountered through this process.  I'm really excited (believe it or not) to start cleaning and even more excited to start on projects.  We have everything lined up, and I've got some creative ideas up my sleeve that I am really stoked to try and to share.  I've run into some really cute blogs lately that have helped stir that creativity, check out the flea market trixie.  Her blog is so cute!

 Anyways, I have one fear about our moving date being moved.  My sister in law is having to stop and breath through contractions before she can finish a sentence.  or start one for that matter.  So-it could very well turn into quite a busy week for us as we will most likely be watching kids while they're at the hospital ;) Hold out just one more week little baby Ence! Or come now while we're still here!  I'm sure your mother would appreciate the latter ;)  I'm excited to meet yet another Ence child.  They are all so cute, and I've now seen 2 boys as babies, but I didn't really know Ali when she was a baby so it will be fun to see a little girl this time.  I think Ali needs a sister, yet again maybe she would rather remain the one and only princess of the house.  She's already terrified that her new sister is going to have a prettier name than her for heaven's sake.  Bring on the drama!

Anywho... I will do my best to keep updated, and hopefully return soon with pictures of either our house or our new niece!  Perhaps both...

Live long and Prosper
                                         Sorry, I just love Big Bang

I'm Back!

So... I'm back.  My computer for some reason was not letting me connect to the internet.  Holy frustrating!  Its sad how much we rely on technology to keep us occupied and happy.  Anyways so I'm back for now, and then in a WEEK, yes a week, when we move into our new house :)  I will be back to no internet.  Until we figure out installing it or whatever.  I'm not dreading the time away from the internet though.  I will be more than happy to spend any extra time working on my house and/or yard!  I'm so excited!  So basically thats all thats new with us.  Pretty much just waiting for our closing date.  I'm all packed up except the things we use on a daily basis.  It didn't take long.  We don't have too much to move.  I'm sure it will only take one load with a truck and trailer.  That will be nice!  Luckily I will have some time off work right when we close and I'll be able to get us all nestled in over a long weekend. Hooray!

Speaking of work... I am so stinking sore!  My sister in law paid to go do a 5K in Salt lake last Saturday and was unable to go, so she offered Ben and I to go.  We decided it would be fun...ugh.  What were we thinking!?  The last time I ran a 5K was a year ago at the Memorial Day one in WX.  We are so out of shape.  We weren't even half way through the first lap and mothers with strollers were passing us.  Ben just looked over at me and went "aw..."  We then busted a gut at our own expense.  Which by the way doesn't help you run faster, when you're laughing.  Any way by the end we had been passed by many a mother and stroller along with a paraplegic who kindly cheered us on as he passed us, and an old stinky grandpa (seriously, we could smell him.  That my friends does help you run faster, when you need to get up wind from stinky grandpa).  Although we are regretting it now, and trying to decide who's idea, and fault, it is; we had fun.  
So back to why work brought up the 5K.  I was working with Dr. Robins, Christopher Robins (haha cute huh, his mom named him after pooh's friend) and we always talk about food and how out of shape we are over our patients.  So naturally I told him about our idiotic idea to run a 5K without training... screw training, without being in shape and his advice was to make sure we keep stretching really well to help release the CITRIC acid from our muscles.  BAHAHAHAHAHA  the funny part is we both kinda stopped and  sat there for a moment.  I knew that wasn't quite right, and I could tell he was thinking about it too.  Then we both said "oh wait, LACTIC acid" at the same time.  Hilarious!  Oh I bet the patient was scared that our hands were in his mouth doing work when we had to stop what we were doing and think about that.  Yikes.  And even funnier, is that he said citric acid, considering we're always talking about food.  He must have really had food on the brain.  Good Grief!  I know that probably wasn't quite as funny for all of you, but you had to be there.  Picture yourself in the dental chair and reread that.  I absolutely love my job.  I work with the best people out there!  Woot Woot!

Drum roll please...

I just heard some wonderful news today and had to share!!!

We got a house! They have accepted our contract and we are scheduled to close June 1st ;)
I am so thrilled!  All this waiting has definitely paid off.  I must say all the credit goes to my wonderful husband.
I was ready to have a house, um... over two years ago ha!  Good thing he has so much patients.  I gotta say though, lately its been hard to tell who's more anxious to move.  We have really enjoyed living with the Ence's over all, and although it has been a great thing for us in some ways we are so excited to establish a place we can really call our own.

And the best part is, well not the best part, but a big perk.  I will have my very own kitchen!  I cannot tell you how happy that makes me.  Ah, I am on cloud nine right now.

As soon as we start projects, I will post before and afters, I'm sure they'll be amazing!  The pictures will be slow coming.  Money doesn't grow on trees you know.  but this place is totally clean so we have all the time we need to save up and knock 'em down one room at a time.  That is what Ben is most excited for.  He can't wait to do some work on his OWN house.  It gets really tiresome working for everyone else.

We were skeptical about getting excited over this one, but I feel really good about sharing the good news!  Tuesday we'll have an inspection done and then an appraisal and from there it is smooth sailing (probably not, I hear nothing is too smooth in this crazy process) through financing and on to closing.   Buying a house is so much more complicated than you'd think, and it doesn't even sound easy to begin with!  There is so much to do!  I am so glad though to be doing it.  We got a great house in the heart of Bountiful, where we wanted to be, for an outstanding price.  Plus we can grown into it.  I really like that there is a lot of room to grow.

I will definitely keep you people up to date on this awesome adventure!  Wish us luck :)

Landrie Grace + Titan

My last post reminded me that I slacked off on the last little one that came into the Fam Damily ;)  Little Landrie Grace.  She belongs to my Brother in law Hank and his wife Rachel.  She is such a cute happy baby.

Here she is! In the cute little out fit I bought her ;)

Such a sweet girl!

Our girl time was shortly interrupted by a little boy.  Titan:

He wanted to play "birds".  He is the cutest thing. He just shoots the birds backwards and laughs.  Wow, isn't it sick that this two year old knows how to use an ipod?  Holy cow!  Now I know how old people feel when they see us using computers ;)

Adventures in Rexburg

Ya, I know.  You probably read that and thought Rexburg and adventures should never be used together in a sentence because Rexburg sucks.  Well, yes Rexburg sucks, but we ventured out there anyways because Ben's oldest sister Cheri and her family live there.  She just had a baby a few weeks ago and we hadn't seen the little guy! 

Chase Vincent 

Cute little guy!  I had him several times while he was hungry and I must say He was quite angry at me knowing I had the parts but wasn't putting out! Hopefully he won't hold it against me the rest of his life:)

Ben and I decided we wanted to stay at a hotel there.  It's called the Americ Inn.  It was really nice!  Ben surprised me and got a theme room.  Take a look:

The chivalrous "knight"

As you walk in the door

I want the big brown chair sooo Bad!  It would have been far too noticeable carrying it out to the car, so I had to settle for a towel instead.  O, come on!  Like you've never stolen from a hotel.

My flat iron was still hot, so I just "borrowed a towel". Don't judge me.

The bed.  Super comfortable!

Our Jetted Tub

Sorry its blurry, but there is a knights armor next to the bed. 

Not going to lie, I checked it's helmet for cameras hahahaha

paranoid much?  Yes.

My blurry husband walking in to put our complimentary 

Martinelli's on ice

The bath room

It was so much fun to get away for a night!  We stayed in a themed hotel room for our wedding night as well, the captains quarters (a pirate themed room. Arg! be there any booty in here!? ;) bahaha) and I'm so sad I didn't get pictures of it!  We like the theme rooms, they are so fun.  Two down, and hopefully many more to come.

The People of Walmart

I just had a thought.  Ben and I were driving the other day and I remember him saying (out of the blue),

"Hey, we haven't looked at any Walmart People in a while..."

So I though I would share with you one of our favorite pass times.  Enjoy ;)

TESTING HIS BOOB PRESSURE

Why roll up your sleeves? Another way to check your blood pressure is by clamping the testing device on your left nipple. See, you learn something new every day.

END SCENE

Oh sorry for staring, I just assumed a Shakespeare play was about to start when I saw the theater drapes on your back.

THE FIRST EVER WAL-MADNESS CHAMPION!

It was a close one, but That’s A First prevailed to take home the title! We would like to thank everyone for voting.

IF IT SMELLS LIKE A FISH…

Oh damn! How is it that fishnet can’t even hold you in? Those things are strong enough to contain angry sharks but somehow your side tire is too much for it! Not good.  Ps they found this in UT People...

ELITE EIGHT: EAST #1 FRONT TO BACK VS. #3 NO TAN LINE

I shall dub this match-up “Who would you like to hug in a loving embrace more?”

WHAT YOU’VE BEEN WAITING FOR

Holy Sweet Mother of Molasses! I’m not gonna ask where you’ve been all my life because I don’t venture to the types of places you do, but I can’t help but wonder why you weren’t in my life sooner so we could have put you in our tournament!!!!

SOUTHWEST: #3 TIGHTER VS. #14 FEEDING TIME

I like the connection between these two opponents. He looks like he is wearing a big condom and she could have used one.

HA HA!  Sorry if this isn't your kind of humor, but we love it!  So stinkin funny!