Introducing Addison Kay Howell

So this may be old news to about everyone who reads this but Addison was born Saturday, August 13, 2011 after a long long labor. She was 6 lb 6 oz, 20 inches long.  She and Mary are did just fine. Addison was a put under a heat lamp for a hour or so because she was a little cold. Other than that, things went very well. We came home on Sunday afternoon.

Having her at home is quite a change. Mary and I have felt like zombies the last six weeks. But unlike normal zombies, we feast on any and all the sleep we can get, which isn't much. Things are starting to calm down a bit. We're on the verge of a normal routine. We hope to regain some sanity soon.

Of the 300+ pictures we've taken of her already, here are some of my favorites.

I love how tiny she looks in her car seat.

Being able to hold a human being in one hand is an amazing feeling.

She's going to be just like her mama and have a craving for foot rubs.

Too much to talk about (part 3)

So if major home renovations and the announce of our first baby isn't enough to keep us busy....

We just bought a real house!

That's right. A real, single family, suburbia home in Saratoga Springs. Mary and I have been looking to move out of Provo for over a year now. We're kinda done with all the students and our tiny apartment and always worrying about being too noisy for the basement tenants.

Mary has been on the look out for a house that would suit us best. Well she found one in February. It was a short sale in Saratoga Springs.  The drama involved in this house purchase is too long for this blog.

But the tl;dr version is that because this house is a short sale, the banks (yes, there were two with liens on the house) were very unwilling to cooperate or be lenient in almost any way. So our realtor and our mortgage broker and we have been fighting with the banks and jumping through their stupid hoops to finally get to the closing table on May 19th. And just to tell you how close we were on this, our broker had to personally courier the docs up the the corporate offices in SLC in order to process them before the deadline. Our mortgage was funded about an hour later.

I only hit the tip of the iceberg on the drama that happened during this purchase. But we're soooooo glad that it's all over and we persevered and fought hard and got it.
I'll have to post pictures of it soon.

Too much to talk about (part 2)

The next big event in our lives is...

We're expecting our first little girl at the end of August!

We're very excited about this. We both feel ready, but a little anxious, about this next big step in life. But we'll be just fine, I know.

Too much to talk about

So, since our last blog update 8 months ago, it seems like a decade's worth of events have happened to us. So I'm really sure where to begin. But being prodded by enough family and friends, I shall attempt the impossible.

So our last post was about redoing the electrical in our old house. That project went more or less smoothly.


In September (a week or so after our last post), we had a guy come and replace our old breaker and electrical meters. So with the really hard parts done, I just had to go room by room and run the wire, switch out the old and put in the new.

I didn't really know anything about electrical and I kept stalling on it, waiting to get some know-how help with it. (I was super busy with work and school as well). So when the Christmas break finally came, I was resolved to get this project done while I had the time. Eddy came down and helped a ton too.

I forced myself to learn it. I started with the most simple circuit: the fridge's dedicated circuit. It has one plug.  After that was done, my confidence was boosted a little (residential electrical is quite simple really), and Eddy and I worked on next circuit.

We continued doing one room at a time, and we were able to get the entire upstairs apartment done.  We pretty much ran everything through the attic, which made this project much more simple. I spent several days up in the attic, pulling wire from below and wiring various circuits and such. Eddy spent a bunch of time cutting in new plug boxes in the old lathe and plaster walls.

Eddy helped us out a ton during this job.

This is the finished product. A new breaker with new wire!

In the end, we now have five plugs in the kitchen (instead of just one), and a lot more plugs in each room in the apartment. And we can run the toaster over and the space heater at the same time! Looking back, I'm quite amazed and proud that I was able to figure it all out and get it done. And honestly, it was fun.
Not wake boarding fun, but still fun.

After the electrical was finished, we finished that room that we tore down, which wasn't as fun as the electrical. We put in a new floor, new paint, and put a carpet top on that laundry box, so now it's a comfortable reading nook.

Here's Eddy and me working in super cold weather, cutting the frame for the wall.

 Mary helped out a lot with the mudding and sanding.  Unfortunately, we neglected to take a picture of the finished product. Oh well.