All Better

I figured I'd better do a quick post to say that the plumbing problems from last week are all fixed! The house passed the final inspection on Monday and we are starting to move in already. Technically we haven't closed on the house yet, but our builder said we are free to start moving our things in. We will still wait until next weekend to do the BIG move since the kids are still in school until Thursday. I can't believe this is finally happening!

Here are a few pictures to show the bathroom area after they dug it all up and fixed the plumbing. It looks good as new. What a relief!

Oh, and here's my cute new dining table from Ikea. This is our first new table in over 15 years. We've been using my parent's hand-me-downs for our whole marriage- not that there was anything wrong with that! (Love you mom!!) But it was definitely time.

Plumbing Problems

Ugh. I'm having a hard time putting my thoughts into words. We've had a bit of a setback today with our house. It's not pretty. It's a mess, literally. But yet, I refuse to panic and complain because I really have hope that it will all work out. Please let it all work out.

Our house was sooo close to being done. It was to be cleaned today, have the final inspection, and then it would be finished. But last week, the plumber was installing the toilets and faucets and noticed that the main bathroom downstairs was not flushing correctly. They put a camera down the hole and realized that they were going to have to dig up the line to fix the problem.

Let me stop by saying that I KNEW this when I posted my "happy thoughts" last night. I knew there was a problem but I really wasn't too worried about it.

But then I went out to the house this afternoon and saw it for myself. Yikes.

Where my carpet and tile used to be in the family room and bathroom area, is now a big trench of dirt. No, it's more like mud. There is mud splattered all over the bathroom clear up to the ceiling, mud on the walls, mud on the mirror, mud tracked all the way out the front door. Mud!

Our builder said that the pipe was bent, most likely from when the plumbers were backfilling in the sub-plumbing. The ground was pretty wet this spring and he thinks that the weight of the tractor caused the pipe to bow. Not break, but bow enough that water wasn't flowing properly. So they are digging it up and replacing it. He is confident that it should all work out and everything will be fixed and redone by Friday. That means new concrete has to be poured into the foundation, new tile put in, carpet replaced, and everything cleaned up. Our builder is great and I trust him that it really will all work out. But oh, the mud!

But being the "glass half full" person that I am (today at least), I am grateful that this problem was found BEFORE we moved in. It would have been nice to know about it BEFORE the foundation was poured, but I really am hopeful that it will be fine by this time next week.

In the meantime, here are some pictures of what it used to look like, and what it looks like today:

Happy Thoughts

It's Mother's Day today, which means that I am lounging around doing nothing while my family is cleaning up dinner and fixing me yummy caramel bars. That makes me happy. And it also gives me time to finally update this blog after a month. These is so much to catch up on that I will never do it all justice, so instead I will just give a few highlights of good things happening in our lives.

I just returned home last night from Salt Lake where all six Blunck girls got together for our cousin Dana's wedding, to also celebrate our sister Kristina's upcoming "significant" birthday (not saying the age!), and to do some major shopping together! It was such a quick trip but so much fun. I love my sisters and I love when we are all together. And I love that we always have to stand in age-order when we pose for pictures!! We wish our mom could have been there with us.

Last weekend we celebrated Troy's 8th birthday with a "Percy Jackson and the Olympians" themed birthday party on Friday. The weather was unusually chilly and windy, but these boys must have been true sons of Poseidon because they loved playing the water games and swimming. Troy has always been crazy about swimming so this was a great party for him.

The next day, Troy was baptized and confirmed a member of the Church. We appreciate all the family support that day and enjoyed being together and playing afterwards. Again the wind was a bummer, but we still managed to have a great time together. I'm so proud of Troy for his decision to be baptized. He is a sweet, smart, creative, talented, fun boy!

Whitney just recently participated in her school's performance of High School Musical Jr. She was a "Braniac" in the ensemble, and this was her first time ever performing. It was such a great experience for her, despite months of daily practices and two weeks of nightly performances. She loved being part of it, and we are proud of her for trying something new and out of her comfort level.

Audrey celebrated her 5th birthday on April 4th which just happened to be Easter and General Conference all on the same day! We went ice skating on Friday night to celebrate, and then spent a relaxing weekend at home watching General Conference and celebrating Easter together. Audrey LOVED getting a new guitar for her birthday and regularly gives us concerts with her own made-up songs. Performing is not out of HER comfort level!

Justin had a visit this month from his friend Hayden who recently moved to California. Justin and Hayden have been friends since Kindergarten and it was very hard on Justin when Hayden moved away. So it was such a special treat to get to see him again- if only for an evening!

The only child I haven't talked about yet is my sweet Dallin. He is still a fun little 3 year old who loves to play with friends, but loves his mommy even more! I'll add a picture of him in the house pictures to follow so that he can feel represented in this post!

Our new home is almost done! I haven't been updating regularly for a couple of reasons. 1. Who has time to regularly update their blogs?? 2. I didn't want to bore or annoy anyone. But since it's almost done, I'll give you a little taste of what it looks like.

Building for the first time has been such an amazing, exhausting, exhilarating, overwhelming, EXCITING experience. Adam has been so great to work with me with every decision we've had to make, and I'm happy to report that we still love each other after going through this process together. The home should be done in the next week, and we plan to move into it over Memorial Day weekend. We seem to like to move over very busy holiday weekends and to really inconvenience people who would otherwise be spending fun time with their families.

Are you still with me? Congratulations on making it through this long post- even if you only skimmed it! I will end by saying HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY to my own wonderful mother who is serving a mission in Armenia right now, and to all of you amazing mothers out there. I hope you were able to enjoy your special day as well!