Gummersalls: July 2013

California Bound: Maternity Shopping

We planned on staying in Bear Lake for our entire 4th of July weekend, but after much convincing from my mom it was clear that we would be splitting our weekend between Bear Lake and Orange County. My mom didn't quite understand my reasoning behind having not bought maternity clothes aka they are expensive. So needless to say we hopped on a flight Saturday morning and spent the day shopping for maternity clothes in California (which didn't take too long since there aren't many stores that sell them). I lucked out and was able to take advantage of gaps 4th of July sale where all their tees were 50% off. STEAL!

Since our shopping was complete we then headed to a movie and since we still had two whole days in Cali I decided we should do something fun that we hadn't done before... Sunday I looked up baseball tickets and was pleasantly surprised to see that the angels were playing the Red Sox! Lance was as giddy as a school boy as we headed to the game and we ended up

With pretty amazing seats along side 1st base by the Rox Sox dugout. Lance enjoyed his ballpark dog, nachos, and drink for $17 while I enjoyed my $6 bottle water (I can't believe they charge so much!!)

Bear Lake 4th of July

Lance and I love our G-squared vacations with the Green's this time instead of heading to the Caribbean we headed to the Caribbean of the west... also known as Bear Lake, ID.
We arrived Thursday morning and spent a glorious day on the beach cooking hot dogs, enjoying a casual jaunt on the wave runners [I only went 10-15mph because I'm pregnant, where as Lance was going full speed and had to do circles around me to stay close by]. The entire day was turning out to be absolutely perfect... and then the storm came.

We saw some dark clouds rolling in from the north and heading south to where we were. We quickly started packing up all of our belongings and hauling them up to the road where we parked. Greener went to the launching dock in hopes of meeting his cousins there on the wave runners. Just when we were down to our large canopy and a few chairs the rain began to pour, sand began to blow and within a matter of seconds we witnessed multiple large canopies, tubes, and chairs all go flying in the air and into the water. People were screaming and running for cover. We quickly ducted under our half taken down canopy and held on for dear life. Suddenly the rain turned into marble sized hail and was bouncing off the sand and bruising our legs. Max and Mia, the Green's 5 year old twins were with us and huddled in grandma's arms. The once tan beach turned solid white with hail. We literally thought the world was ending, but luckily it all stopped after 15 minutes and we were able to make a run for our cars. We experienced the real Independence Day.

Friday we spent out at the pool which was filled past max capacity and then took the Green's great dane, Chole to the lake where we ran, swam, and even pooped in the water (which made bystanders really mad). We finished off our weekend with a BBQ of burgers and a trip down to Garden City for true Bear Lake Raspberry Shakes!!

[pooping in the lake]

We bought a house!

I am so behind on posting things because of how hectic the past month has been but now I can officially say that we bought a house!! We had plans in the works to build our custom "dream" home, but after 5 months, only a hole in the ground, and "unforeseen costs" that increased our home $30,000 we opted to cancel and just find and buy an existing home. It was quite and roller coaster ride and still we are still currently fighting to get our deposit back with the help of an attorney, but at least we will be moving into a house of our own in a week and a half.

Our House Hunt:

The end of June when we decided to cancel our contract with our builder we then set up quite the task for Natalie to find us our perfect home. Lance and I were dead set on the east side, but opted to look at newer homes on the west side of Salt Lake County. Walking through numerous houses I was trying to be positive and optimistic while Lance was rushing through each property nit-picking out the smallest flaws. Needless to say it was an extremely frustrating process. A week into our house hunt we found the cutest house located in Sandy/Draper on a street called Cinnamon Ridge which we kept calling "the cinnamon bear house." We quickly put in an offer, but with the house only being on the market for 3 days they received multiple offers and ours was not picked. Discouraged, we continued to seek out a place to call home. Lance found "home" in a new build located in Herriman, while I wasn't in love with the floor plan nor the square footage. I fell in love with a remodeled rambler up in Bountiful, but it's location would make for quite an extensive commute to my work. Two weeks into our search I was sitting at work one morning pulling listings in the Riverton/South Jordan area and fell upon a home located in Riverton on Shawnee Drive. The house looked upgraded and was built in 2012. It wasn't until I viewed the pictures of the backyard that I knew this could be a house for us. I immediately texted Lance and told him to pull the listing meanwhile our agent, Natalie had also found the house that morning and sent me the link. I told Lance we needed to go see the house the second I got off of work and luckily we set things up for when we did because 8 hours later, 12 hours after the home had been listed it already had 2 offers and we were pulling into the driveway to see the home for ourselves. With a quick scan of the home we knew it was exactly what we had been looking for. The floor plan was extremely similar to the home we has been building and was already fenced, landscaped, and came with a trampoline! We then locked up and rushed over to Natalie's to write up our offer and that following morning we got our acceptance letter! After completing sellers and buyers due diligence we are now just waiting for our loan paperwork to get its okay through underwriting and we will be good to close a week from TOMORROW! AH exciting day!

Here are pictures of the home (with the seller's furnishings...)

[my new house]