the longest post . . . . ever

Better just get that out front- this may be long. I finally downloaded photos from our new camera and can get caught up on several weekends. The girls and I are home sick, just like half the families we know. I am surprised they didn't cancel church (lol). It was amusing (not really) to see the progression of the "plague" throughout the week. Facebook updates and blog posts about how sick everyone is escalated to emails asking for people to cover for them to phone calls this morning that ended with "oh, we are not going to church either . . . "
We've got the endless coughing at night for the previous few nights that turned into nasty fevers and malaise and coughing all day today. Despite this culminating in 2 toddlers putting themselves out of commission on the couch behind me, we had a banner weekend. The girls enjoyed their second birthday party in 2 weeks (yes, I know now they probably shouldn't have gone) while I helped run a bake sale in Magnolia to benefit the FFCIN. We threw it together in about 4 days and were hopeful we would make several hundred dollars. An elementary school in Queen Anne neighborhood had a very well advertised bake sale last weekend and raised $1,500 for their Haiti organization! We were amazed by people's generosity and could not believe when we counted the money that we made $1,320! One big and rough looking older man walking 2 little dogs came up to the table when I was alone. He choose 2 chocolate cupcakes and as I bagged them he told me they looked like they were worth $25 a piece and put a 50 dollar bill in our donation jars. I thanked him profusely and he told me he had met one of the other volunteers the night before handing out fliers. She has 4 kids, was carrying her 1 yr old and he was just amazed by her. Another customer who bought something as we closed also mentioned meeting her. She also came the day of the bake sale and helped, along with several other families with kids. The kids held posters on the corners and directed traffic to the table. It was such a great group effort, so many people came with baked goods, it was AMAZING!! Some emails circulated to Magnolia groups and we had people arrive with platters of items whom we had never met. It was so much fun, despite my cough and being drugged up, I haven't had that good of a day in a long, long time.

Since the 16th, our lives have been mostly engrossed in house hunting, mostly in West Seattle where we can actually afford a house. I have been over there almost daily with our agent looking and looking. She cracks me up, one house we drove up to and she said "you CANNOT move here, just keep on driving". I stopped waiting for everything in this house to be put away and took pictures for those who have been asking. I guess I don't have a picture of the outside of the house.

Stephen has built a couple of fires, it's nice.

the kitchen space where I let the girls knead bread or stir pancakes

the oven has a microwave "drawer" as the top half of it, and I love it! we got rid of our microwave, darn it all.

the other side of the kitchen

separate dining room! big bonus for us

looking at the living room from just inside front door

Stephen made a very clever computer corner with boxes under the printer

the hall as you come in the door, staircase leads to lower apt and houses our storage right now

girl's bedroom, Stephen loves the berber rug in there

Part of our room, yes- we kept the old lazy-boy (lol!)

After an inspiring Curious George episode, the girls insisted on making hats of their own. Odessa dug through the garbage for stuff to put on hers- thus the toilet paper and toothpaste tubes.

this tree outside our bedroom has had one lone pink blossom on it for over a week

Ava had an "Up" themed party, what a great cake, huh?

One game was stuffing each other with balloons, so funny

the girls have been playing together so well lately

they like to act out movies like Mulan or Aladdin

We were lucky one day was dry and "warm" enough to go to the park. We've had an unusually warm January

We have also had some fun meals with friends. Two weekends ago, my friend Hermes (from the flight home from the Philippines) invited us over for a Filipino lunch. The girls got to walk his roommate's dog and were in HEAVEN. It was hilarious.
Last Sunday Paul, Mark, Mike and Julia came over for dinner. Stephen works with Paul and Mike and they helped us move. Once everyone had accepted, I got an email from Stephen at work reminding me that they are all vegetarians and Julia is allergic to gluten and dairy and chocolate. "What have I gotten myself into?!" I thought. But thankfully Indian food came to the rescue and we enjoyed 3 different dishes with brown rice, a spinach salad by Paul and gluten free coconut macaroons with mango sorbet for dessert. Finishing the night with herbal tea made the dinner party seem really formal!
Hopefully we will all get better soon this week and maybe we'll even put an offer in on a house! we'll keep you posted . . . .

Help Haitian orphans

There is a girl (Leah) in my ward (congregation) whose mom founded a non-profit in 2002 to help orphanages in Haiti. This mom also adopted 8 Haitian street boys after she and her family spent 2 1/2 years doing service in Haiti. That's a LONG time. When I heard that Leah's family spent so much time there, I was amazed. I barely survived 17 months in the Philippines.

Immediately after the earthquake, Leah's mom joined a medical team headed to Haiti so she could find out if the orphanages she works with were still standing and how the kids were. She is there now.

Some of you have gotten an email from me about this. I just want to put it out there again.
Here is the web address: (www.ffcin.org)

Here are their needs:
1. Money for food, shelter, supplies
2. Donated frequent flier miles for volunteer's travel
3. A volunteer travel agent
4. Volunteers
5. Increase awareness

Here are some questions answered by Leah:

Q. The news advises against donating to small organizations, why is this foundation worth supporting?
A. We partner with orphanages that are not usually registered anywhere and larger organizations are not aware of them. We are established in Haiti and have relationships and experience which help us get the money and supplies directly to the people.

Q. Where will the donations go?
A. 100% of the donations go to the orphans. The money is not used for travel or overhead. Right now those who are in Haiti have almost immediate access to the money that is being donated and they are using it to buy food, supplies, water, gasoline and shelter for the kids. In the future the money will also be used to help rebuild. Volunteers who go to Haiti pay their own way and donations do not pay for them.

Because I know the people who run this organization and know 100% of my money will go to helping the orphans, I am donating to this organization. I encourage everyone do to the same!
Our housing situation seems so ridiculously cushy when you think of people in Haiti. Don't all problems seem trivial now?

this is killing me

so I am just going to tell you. Your guesses are much better scenarios than the one we are currently in (especially yours Kim). I would much rather be having a spontaneous baby in the next 4 months (you didn't know I was even pregnant, did you? ha ha- I'm not). Even having crazy landlords would be good. And no great, new job. No, we found papers taped to our door Saturday morning, this house is being foreclosed upon (if that's even the right terminology).

I think I am going through those 4 stages of . . . . whatever they call it. Denial, anger, depression . . . acceptance. But I go through those in like 30 minutes, over and over. I giggled hysterically as Stephen read aloud things like "auction on the steps of the courthouse" and "60 days to vacate the premises after the house is sold" as we ate our pancakes. This stuff seemed like it belonged on TV and not in my life, and I found it surreal and utterly funny. Then the hysterical giggles turned into crying when I thought about moving AGAIN. Possibly leaving Magnolia and a lot of our friends, uprooting the kids, not going to Disneyland . . .
Here's the dirt: if we are moving again, it should probably be into a house. Where we can stay. For AWHILE. Like, OUR house. BUYING a house. Which means an expensive trip to Disneyland is probably not the smartest move right now when we'll need the money for house, and another move. I say it like that out loud too. I'm trying to make it sink in.

So, what does the owner of the house say, you might wonder? Stephen got a hold of her Saturday evening. I did my best to not be in the room with him. They had a much too jovial "heart to heart" about what was going on and what our options were. We have a long standing family joke that may shock a few of you (consider yourself warned), but it goes like this: "don't send a MAN to do a BITCH'S job". That just means some of us Hambelton girls don't always approve of the nice ways our husbands deal with people who we feel are treating us unfairly (and comes from an incident with a landlord, actually). Apparently, she has an adjustable rate mortgage and has been trying to refinance the last few months while she also tried selling the house. She thought she had a refinance deal all sewn up when she decided to rent it and then it fell through. She is still trying to save the house, but we are not counting on anything. We technically have a 4 month lease (coincidence that April is when it goes to auction?), but it was always verbally month to month and she confirmed that with Stephen. If we find the right place, we are moving out of here. I don't even know how to feel about this place anymore. Part of me wants to hang on here as long as possible since a mortgage will be like double what we are paying here and part of me wants out of here ASAP.

Can I claim a little woman's intuition "I KNEW IT!!" right now? The decision to move here seemed to fall into place like dominos, "clink, clink, clink". We beat out the other interested parties, our landlord let us out of our lease, the move of 2 blocks was amazingly smooth. So you would think that I would feel all warm and fuzzy about it, right? No, the day after we decided to move, I started feeling HORRIBLE. I kept chalking it up to the nervousness of moving our stuff over the holiday and asking our friends for help again, but I think now it was more than that. The night we moved in, I still felt bad. If I had really listened, maybe I would have backed out, I don't know if that would have even been possible, but here's to wishful thinking . . . . . . . do you think I can get her to pay for these blasted area rugs?

You will never guess . . . . .

. . . . but I will give you a shot at it. Guess why we will be moving again before June and are no longer going to Disneyland in February? I will give you about 24 hrs and then tell you WHY!

The big put-off

As in, I can't believe we are still working on this house! We've rearranged the living room a half dozen times. What's funny, there is more room in this house but we can't figure out what to do with it! Very strange. We are used to such small spaces, there is only one logical option for the placement of everything! Having options can be so confusing and exhausting.

We got area rugs on Saturday, I am sure much to the relief of the tenant in the basement. LOL. We went to a place in Kirkland where they take carpet and cut it to the measurements you want and bind the edges to make area rugs. It felt like picking out carpet for a house! We took 3 samples home with us and decided against all three, so we called her and picked one over the phone that we had only looked at briefly. Talk about leap of faith. Turned out really well, we couldn't be happier. And since we got carpet padding to go under, they are super cushy and soft. The girls love them and even Stephen stretches out and snoozes on the berber in the the girl's room.

I've learned the hard way I shouldn't let myself get so exhausted that I sleep in tortured positions without the pain of it waking me up. My neck has been a MESS for the last 3 days, I have to take advil just to be able to turn it to the right or sleep on it again. What to do?

Last night was our nutrition and fitness activity for Relief Society, the women's organization of our church. It was super fun and thanks to all who attended. I was the pinch hitter presenter for the lesson portion and I took nutrition questions before hand and answered them last night. It went well and a friend suggested I start a blog where I take nutrition questions and answer them. Her RD friend used to do one but got too busy. What do you think? Would you submit questions? Ha ha Paula and Becky- you can be the co-authors!
After the nutrition lesson, we split into groups and played volleyball, did yoga or quilted. Fun times, thanks ladies!

our bowl part-ay

We are not huge football fans, so we have never had a football watching or tailgating or anything like it sort of party. But we are big BSU football fans, and we've settled into our new place a little, so we just had to have some food and friends over for the Fiesta Bowl Monday night. Our poor friends had to listen to us go on and on about BSU football history and the last Fiesta Bowl (I really scared them with my excitement on that). We lured them in with the food: pizza, hot wings, taquitos, salsa, queso and guacamole. Mini cheesecakes rounded out the night. Fortunately, it was a great game and we won! Go Broncos!!! We were very excited.
Pictures of our new abode will follow in a few weeks- we seem to get a little slower each time getting pictures up and boxes away although Stephen is so good about organizing furniture and rooms- he can run circles around me. My job when we move is watch kids, he packs and unpacks and then when the kids are in bed I sit on the couch and complain how tired I am. He loves it.

Our trip to Disneyland seems to be materializing slowly although technically we would be there this time next month! My oldest sister was going to be in Anaheim for a work conference the very weekend we were planning on going. But then she had a terrible accident skiing in Utah over Christmas break! Tore her ACL to shreds and broke her tibia. Needless to say, she won't be in CA next month. We are so sad she has this long road to recovery and we won't get to see her in Disneyland.

Just came from a bit of a fiasco at the postal annex (much less customer friendly than an office) where they were holding our mail. The girls got some privileges taken away and a weepy discussion with Odessa ensued with her being very angry at me that she couldn't get her privileges back and why not, where did I put them?? Are they gone forever???
Too bad taking TV away is almost as much a punishment to me as them!

And one from Ada:
Stephen coming home tonight: I'm going to eat you up!
Ada: (shaking finger at him) No! Remember what I told you? No eating children!