The Houston Temple... Our New Temple!

One of the favorite parts of our trip to Texas was our visit to the Houston temple.

Among all of the temples that we've ever seen, Houston is really among the prettiest.
(I'd say that it is the prettiest, but I know I'm biased)

Honestly, the pictures just don't do this temple justice.

One of Gabs' favorite parts of the temple was the great fountain that they have out front. She loved walking around the edge of it and trying to put her fingers in. We had to be careful to make sure she didn't fall in.

I think what Christy and I loved about it was how pretty the grounds around it are. there is a little walking path that takes you behind the temple to this beautiful little green area.

Gabs also loved pushing the stroller through the paths. As you can see from the pictures, She had a bit of a hard time driving the stroller straight.

We really love our new temple... We hope to be able to go inside in a few weeks!

Is This Really a Public Park?

We checked out of our hotel early on the day we were leaving Houston so we had tons of extra time to waste until we needed to be up at the airport. Kyle made the suggestion that we check out the park close to our new church building. We had seen the park as we were driving to and from the church and thought it would be interesting to check out. In the entrance, all you can see is a ton of soccer fields so it is kind of deceiving. I was not too thrilled at the beginning because I thought it was just going to be fields and no where to play. Boy was I wrong.

We drove all the way down to the back of the huge area and parked the car. There was this beautiful little pathway with a stream and ducks. We kept walking to see what else there was in the area.

To our great surprise and delight, there were live animals in the park. Most of them are sheltered there because they were injured and cannot return to the wild. We got to see a lot of birds that were very pretty. Our favorite was the big white cockatoo. He was a total show-off and kept doing tricks for us when we asked him.

another pretty bird...

oooh, what else is there to see?

Then to our surprise, we came to the Bison. There were three of them just lounging in the sun until this one in the pictures decided to get up and show off for the people standing at the fence taking pictures.

the other two lazy bison were more interested in resting...

As we were walking, this tiny little bird came flying out of no where and landed in the water fountain. Gabbie and I were trying to be super quiet so we could watch the bird without scaring it away. Gabbie thought it was so cool that she could get so close to all the animals.

'Look guys'...

taking a break from the animals to do some swinging...

We found a bunch of caterpillars on the sidewalk on our walk back to the car. Kyle picked one up and tried to introduce it to Gabbie. She was not so sure that she wanted to meet it.

We are so excited to live close to this park. It is most definitely going to become one of those places that we go to all the time. We can't wait to do more exploring after we are all settled in.

Our cute little new house

Okay, now to the post you've all been waiting for: Our House!

Obviously I'm not going to post our address on here, but I wanted to tell all of you that might want it that we will be publishing it on the family webpage. If you are not a family member, feel free to send us a message (e-mail, private facebook message, phone call, etc.) and we'll be happy to let you have it.

Also, as I know many of you were looking forward to this post, just know that we will probably be posting 3-4 other posts today, one about our visit to the temple, one about our favorite park and Cockatoo we found, and one about our trip back on the airplane. They'll be worth your while.

All introductions and announcements aside, on to the main event!

Here is our beautiful new home. We will be moving in the first week of June.

It looks really small from the front (and it's not huge) but below you will see a picture of the builder's floorplan.

Here's the cute little porch out front...

Below is a picture of the front "formal dining room." Why anyone would want to eat on carpet right by the front door is beyond us, so we've decided that this is going to be a little library until we get some chairs to make it a sitting room.

Here is another picture from the doorway. As you can see, it's a pretty open floor plan. There is a hallway off to the right of the pregnant lady that leads to the 3 smaller bedrooms (non master).
(Christy just told me she thinks that she looks huge in this picture, so no one make any pregnancy picture comments)

Here's another angle of our library.

Okay, these next four pictures are of our kitchen/dining area. I tried to take them in a sort of panoramic way.

Above is the portion of the cabinets that borders the entry to the room. The stove will fit in the empty hole (they've told us the appliances can either be black or white... we have to choose. We want you guys opinion, do you think we should get black or white kitchen appiances? The true color of everything comes out best in the 2nd picture below.)
Below connects to above going to the right.

Below connects to above moving left to right. The diswasher and fridge will fit in the empty spots.

And below is the dining area. Behind that half wall is where the living room is at.

One of the things that really made us love this house was all of the half walls. We felt like they allowed the house to still feel open while separating the rooms. Below is a picture of the living room from the kitchen/dining room doorway. The door in the back leads to the back yard.

Here's another view of the doorway to the family room with the family room behind it. Notice the arches and crown moldings. Christy loved that part.

Here's a view of our tiny little back yard. We will definitely grow out of this, but for a family with only little kids and this being a starter home that is this nice on the inside, this was something we were willing to sacrifice.

One thing that Christy fell in love with in the family room was the vaulted ceiling. I think eventually we are going to change that light out for an overhead fan.

Right off of the family room (to the right) is where our master bedroom will be. Below is the view from the doorway.

The closet sits right off to the right just passed where the door hits the wall (it can't be seen here) in the above picture. The below picture is a view from the closet doorway.

Another thing that Christy fell in love with in this house was the master bath. I have to tell you a funny story about the below picture. Christy always... always... makes fun of the people on the HGTV shows that get into the bathtub at a house that they are looking at. I found it hilarious to walk in to this picture and I couldn't help but take the picture.

The cool part about the master bath is that not only does it have a full sized tub, it also has a beautiful shower....

and double sinks.

The bathroom was definitely a selling point in this house.

Since I made so much fun of Christy getting in the tub, she made me get in too so that she could blackmail me if I gave her a hard time about it.
Gabs thought it was pretty funny.

Another thing that Christy loved about this house was the pantry. Seen below, this pantry is about 3 times the size of anything we've ever had before.

Something we've also never had before is a linen closet. This linen closet, below, is in the little hallway that connects the entryway/library with the garage/laundry room and other bedrooms.

Right next to the linen closet is the Untility/Laundry room. You can't really see it from the view pictured below, but the garage is right through the door on the other side of this room.

Off of the utility room is the hallway to all of the other bedrooms. They are all basically the same.

As you can see, Gabs loves her bathroom.

Here's another room (looks just like the other one, just flipped around).

One thing that Daddy loved about the house is that it has a garage. Not only does it have a garage though, it has space where I can build a little workshelf for myself (pictured below) along with a little space for our freezer (not pictured).

So, you've all been waiting for it. There you have it!

We feel really blessed to have gotten this house. A few months ago we were really disappointed when we realized that we weren't going to be able to come up with a downpayment to buy a house (the only thing keeping us from fulfilling our pre-qualification requirements). We didn't think there was any way that we could get into a home without leasing for a year or so. We looked at everything we could to try and come up with that downpayment (from looking into other loans, to looking into government programs, to asking grandma).

When we happened upon this lease to own program with this builder it really came as an answer to prayers. On top of it all, while we were down in Texas they made a bit of an exception, allowing us to lease this house under the lease to own program when it wasn't even supposed to be included (most of the lease to own homes were actually more townhouse style rather than simgle family homes. We begged them and had some help from the leasing agent who convinced them that it would be better that we lease it and buy it in a year than to have it sit there for another year or more). The cool thing, too, is that 3 months of our lease payments will go to the purchase of the home (as a downpayment) at the end of the lease period. It really is a blessing for us to be able to live in this house.

Anyway, there you go!

Flood

One of the most adventurous and exciting (and I think Christy would add scary) parts of our trip was on Saturday when we decided to go out and ignore a "severe weather warning"

We learned from this experience that severe weather warnings in Texas are very different from Severe weather warnings in Utah. You really can't ignore them.

I would write more, but I think the following videos say more than I ever could.
(Oh, and yes, that is water coming up over the hood of our car and that is a car stuck in the water ahead of us in the 2nd one.)

This video is while we were on the main highway road.

This video is of the neighborhood road that is by our church.

Once we got through that really deep water, we found a place of high ground and parked our car. Luckily we were only about a block from our church (the purpose of our little excursion was to find the church so that we wouldn't get lost the next day at 8 in the morning). While walking, we got completely drenched. Here are some mug shots of the guilty severe weather warning non-heeders.