What is Happening?

Many of you already know that we have finally sold our house. We are waiting to close, and made on offer on a house up in Newton. Our offer is contingent on selling our house and they get to keep their house on the market while we wait to sell ours.

Newton is a very quiet little town. We are looking forward to a more simple life. My commute will be about 20 minutes each way. But a little different from my 20 minute commute in West Jordan. I probably won't see more than a couple of cars on my route until I get close to Logan.

The house we have made on offer on is awesome. It has almost everything we were looking for, but most of all is really well built. Check out this kitchen! I love to have everyone over and this kitchen is certainly set up for us to enjoy cooking for family and friends.

The one thing that I was hoping to have was a formal living room so that I would have a place for my piano. This house doesn't have that, so that is the compromise that we had to make. We will have it in the living room of the kitchen for now, and see what we where we want to put it later. There are only 2 bedrooms on the main floor, so I may turn the other upstairs bedroom in to a music room. Who knows?

We have to finish a couple of rooms in the basement, but a most of it is already done (sheet rock hung, doors hung) so it won't be too much to finish. Logan is excited to move up there too, and has given his notice at Jerry Seiner.

Kenny's shoulders are healing very well. The doctor has given him clearance to go back to work, but he can't take a job that would require him to lift any more than 15 pounds. He has started the application process and hopefully the timing of moving and him starting a job will all work out.

We have been so blessed thorugh this entire transition in our lives. As we have gone through each step, we have seen the Lord's hand in making this happen. We are so grateful for our blessings, for my job, for the opportunities that Kenny is finding to apply for in this tough economy, for good friends and family that have loved us and helped us and encouraged us.

I especially want to tell Bre and KC thanks for putting me up. There is just something wrong when the parent has to mooch from the kids! They have been great though, and with the exception of me having to scrape my own car windows every morning, things have gone really well.

Cache Valley here we come. Yipee!!!!!!!!!

Merry Christmas 2008

We had a wonderful Christmas. Losing Brittea helped remind us how important we are to each other and we really enjoyed having family time together. I'm grateful that all the kids could be here for our last Christmas in the West Jordan house. It just worked out that way and we had a great time. We had fun at the Jensen Christmas Eve party, visited with Grandma and Grandpa Harward, then opened Christmas jammies. Christmas morning was a little weird in our empty family room but was still fun. We went to the Dailey's for Christmas morning breakfast burritos. I don't know what it is about Debbie's breakfast burritos, but they are always the best. You can't eat just one, and when you try to make a second one that is small, it never turns out that way. After breakfast, we went back to the house and baked a turkey and relaxed, then went to Grandma and Grandpa Jensen's to exchange gifts. Many of Kenny's family came over about the same time and we had some more fun together.

For Christmas, the kids gave us a new camera. I'm really excited about it and I expect I'll use it more than Kenny but I'll try to share. Now I hope to include more pictures in my posts because I won't be borrowing Logan's camera.

The only damper on the day was KC and Tawni's trip back to Logan. It snowed all day long. When they headed to Logan, they made it okay to Brigham City, but couldn't get up the canyon. Their car got stuck multiple times in Brigham City before the ended up getting towed to a hotel and staying the night. Then, then next morning, Sardine Canyon was closed unless you had 4 wheel drive or chains, so they just came back to Salt Lake. I'm glad that they were safe. Kenny bought them some chains for their tires in case they have to go through Sardine Canyon in the snow.

Merry Christmas. We are very grateful for our blessings and for the Savior's birth.

I hope that you were able to enjoy the holiday with those that you love.

Tribute to the Princess

A sadness touched our hearts this weekend. Our beautiful princess Brittea, left this earth in the early morning hours of Saturday, December 20. The phone call from Chandra asking us to pray for a miracle seemed like a bad dream. We did pray for a miracle, but the miracle we were praying for was not granted. We already had our miracle; we got to know one of the purest souls that our Heavenly Father sent to this earth. We've shed a lot of tears this weekend, so sad for the days that we will not be able to see her in this life, but so grateful for the time we had.


You know how important Brittea was to our family. She impacted our life in such a wonderful way. Her unconditional love and bright smile are a treasure that we will carry in our hearts always. She impacted the lives of each of us, made us more caring and loving, she affected Breanne's career choice, she made us more considerate to others, she showed us how to be delighted in everything, and that you can be as happy just by watching other people.


Logan has been so sad. Last night at 3:00 a.m., I felt a tap on my shoulder. With tears rolling down his cheeks, he asked if I could help him. I asked what he was doing, and he was writing a poem for Brittea. He doesn't really want me to share it, so I hope he won't be too mad at me. It is so beautiful and it is from his heart.



My Hero


My hero had a special smile
My hero touched everyone she knew
My hero had great style
My hero wore Jensen blue
My hero was a fighter
My hero helped me grow
My hero made our life brighter
More than you will ever know

My hero is Brittea Hirschi
Who we will miss so dear
My hero's in a better place
But memories will keep us near


My love for you is so great
That no one can replace
You'll always be my little princess
Brittea, I love you


*****************************


Logan and Brittea had a special relationship. She loved him so much, and he could always make her laugh. She has not felt well for a while, and when they came to Utah last week, she was pretty serious all the time. The last time she smiled was last week when she was at our house, and she smiled for Logan. There were times when she was in the hospital, and Chandra would call Logan and ask him to talk to Brittea because sometimes all that Brittea needed was to hear his voice.



Breanne loves Brittea like a sister. She started tending Brittea when Brittea was 18 months old. Brittea loved to shop, and Chandra says that comes from all the time that she spent with Bre. Until the last couple of summers, Breanne spent almost every summer tending Brittea. Brittea loved to watch Breanne practice her cheers. Once Breanne could drive, she took Brittea with her when she needed to run errands, and I'm sure a few trips to the mall were involved.




KC also loved Brittea very much. I remember when he was about 16 years old, he was tending her. He was laying on the floor and rolling her wheel chair over him and she would laugh and laugh. He makes funny noises and funny voices and she loved it when he would talk funny and make funny noises. When KC was a senior, he ran for Homecoming royalty. In one of the assemblies, they had to have an escort and he asked Brittea to be his escort. Chandra dressed her in a fancy dress and KC carried her on the stage. She stole everyone's heart.



Our family enjoys camping and we invited Chandra to come with us when Brittea was still pretty small. Chandra was nervous about being far from a hospital in case there was an emergency, but she decided to try it. Brittea had so much fun coloring and hunting for eggs with my nephews. Then Matt and Chandra bought a trailer so they could camp with us. We have some great memories of the fun time we had together in Arches before they moved to Texas.






I probably should explain the "Jensen Blue" in Logan's poem. Apparently, when buying gifts for Brittea, I got in to a pattern where I would buy things that were blue. Matt is the one that noticed it, and dubbed it "Jensen Blue." Once our purchasing pattern had an official label, we had to keep up the tradition and so we've tried to include something blue in most of her gifts. I had the awesome privilege of going shopping for one last dress for Brittea. Kenny, Breanne and I picked out a dress for her to wear. Red is her favorite color and we found a beautiful red dress that Brittea would love. But she needs to have some Jensen Blue, so Breanne made her a beautiful bracelet and included blue beads so she can always wear some Jensen Blue.




I wish I had the words to adequately say what is in my heart. Mostly, I just want to tell Brittea how much I love her. How grateful I am that I was lucky enough to be with her, to spend time with her, to watch her grow and to watch how she made others grow.




I love you Princess. Give Maia a big hug before she comes down to this earth, and make sure you tell her about us. I can't wait to see you again and listen to all the stories that you have to tell. I'll save lots of butterfly kisses for when I see you again.

Holiday FUN!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Shoulder Surgery and House Selling and Moving and Commuting...Oh My!

Well, Kenny went to the doctor today, and they said his right shoulder is healing up very nicely.  He doesn't have to be in a sling anymore but still can't lift with his arm.  They have set the next surgery date for December 12.  The left shoulder has a torn tendon in the rotator cuff. We will just pray that everything will go as smoothly for the left shoulder as the right.

We finally have some traffic looking at the house.  Hopefully now that we have some people looking, we will be able to sell it.  I've got to get busy boxing stuff up, since when it does sell, Kenny won't be able to help.  I'm pretty sure that we're going to need a moving company.  It is hard to think about someone else in our house.  I hope that they love it as much as we have.  I guess you can't really think about that.

So, until the house sells, the commuting continues.  The kids have been great, but it will be nice when I can "go home" at the end of the day to my own house and not live out of a suitcase.  The good thing about this is that I plan my clothes for the week.  I should do that even when I'm not trying to pack a suitcase.  It does make getting ready in the morning less hectic when you already know what you are going to wear and it is all ironed.   Mostly, I don't want to have to scrape the frost off my car windows every morning.  What can I say?  I'm a whiner about that kind of thing. And this morning the frost was thick.  I'm dreading tomorrow morning already.

 

Award Winning Halloween Costume

I just have to post this amazing costume that Matt and Chandra did for Brittea. They are so clever! I'm sure if she entered into a contest she would have won the grand prize! Awesome huh!

We have a website

Check it out. Our agent set up this site.

www.wjhomeforsale.com

I have no idea if this kind of thing helps to sell a house or not. We are priced way too high, so we've lowered to $273,500. We hope we are in the right ball park now to get some lookers. According to HGTV (yes, I am a big fan of HGTV and TLC home shows) it is all about the numbers and getting people to come and look so that the right buyer can find us. Now I understand that HGTV is not any kind of gospel, but with how many people have looked at our house so far, we won't sell it because we haven't had any traffic!!!!

Pray for us to sell soon. I've only commuted for one week, and I hate it already.