Phantom & Colorado

Earlier this month, Matt & I went to see Phantom at the Pantages Theater. Matt had never seen it live (the movie so doesn't count) so I told him we had to see it. We went with my mom, Rick, Lindsay, & Lindsay's friend Deven and because of some connections we got to ride there in a limo. Sounds cool enough but it had been raining that day & felt like the driver was going way too fast in general, let alone with the ground wet. Anyways, I had a fantastic time but Matt was not impressed with anything except the chandelier when it came crashing to the stage. Because he'd seen the movie, he felt like the excitement had been taken out. Super bummer. Then, president's weekend we flew up to Colorado to see Matt's family. Mostly it was because Ali's fiance, Phil, was in town on leave so we wanted to meet him before he became family. We got there late Friday night & met everyone Saturday morning at the Pancake House, where we saw JOE SAKIC!!! I felt like a dork asking for a picture or autograph though. Daniel loves him some pancakes, let me tell you! The rest of the day was filled with Taylor's & Josh's basketball games. I'm not a basketball lover, as most anyone knows, but it was fun seeing them play. They were both rock stars too and played great games. Tay had 9 points and like 6 assists. It was a lot of fun meeting Phil. He's a great guy & we're lucky he's still around after Sunday night with Patty flashing him, John's comments, and the overall Brinkerhoff stories. =) Daniel also made his first trip to Invesco Field. A moment that of course had to be captured on camera. Daniel loved Madison & Josh (I'm guessing because they were kids - he's very into people his size) & his only coffee table incident happened at Lindsay's, not Lou Anne's surprisingly! We have some great pictures of the games, Daniel wearing Madison's heart sunglasses, and Matt & Colton making out...yes with each other. We love seeing everyone and look forward to June when we see everyone again.

It's not the best picture but that is Taylor shooting a 3 pointer.

Milestones

I'm way late in posting this blog (what's new right?) because Daniel hit all these milestones like a week into January. Like we said in our letter at Christmas, Daniel was on his way to crawling which he started doing for real now. He's really fast now! And he gets into everything so now we have to watch him every second. He's also decided that along with crawling, he was going to start pulling himself up on things - the couch, the tv stand, our legs, anything. But it doesn't stop there. Those two seem to go hand in hand with him now crawling up the stairs. Two days after he started crawling he got all the way up the stairs, with me close behind of course. So here are some pictures and some video of him crawling. Enjoy!

Kinda Sad

So our friends from our ward mentioned to us that a house across the street from them foreclosed and there was a sign that said make an offer. It was in a nice neighborhood in our ward and in the school boundries that we like. 3 bedroom, 2 full bath, 1257 square feet on a 7500 square foot lot. It needed work. They put in new floors & cabinets in the kitchen but it needed appliances and countertops, carpet, door/door frames, and finishing touches. It needed about $15,000 worth or work to be honest. But it had such great protential. We prayed about it did a lot of research with our budget. We got pre-approved for the loan (and found out we had a 757 credit score - whoo hoo!) and made an offer on it. Apparently though there were like 8 other offers and they were over the asking price. We wanted the house but it was not worth over the asking price in it's condition and we weren't going to get ourselves into a situation that was going to be too much for us. We were really bummed when we found out that we got out bid and frankly wondering why we were prompted to act on the house. But after we got over the sadness, we realized that while planning for this house, we made a plan. We had goals before but no real plan, for Matt working, where we'd really live, etc. Now we have that, along with a lot more information. We know what we qualify for and what we can actually afford a month (not the same thing by the way) and we know a lot better how the whole real estate thing works in terms of offers, points, lender credits, etc, as well as the whole waiting game. Anyways, we'll still keep our eyes open but we recognize that we still have some time so we can find the perfect place for us right now.