28 weeks

October 30 marked 28 weeks. (For those of you not used to referring to a pregnancy by weeks, I'll use other terms: six months.) I'm officially in the third trimester.

P.S. We will (eventually) put up pictures of the new home, so stay tuned.

New home

We bought our first home today. We'll be moving to southwest Orem. I grew up in northeast Orem, and I never envisioned myself sticking around the valley so long, much less buying a home on the Mountain View side of town (I went to Orem High.) We had been looking off and on to buy a home for about a year now. We'd focused our search on Springville, where we currently live, since we really like this town for a number of reasons. However, we couldn't find a place that felt right.

We had been avoiding looking for homes in Orem/Provo, preferring to stay on the outskirts of Utah Valley. Actually, the home we ended up buying was the first home we even looked at in Orem. We saw it listed online one evening, phoned our realtor the next morning, saw the house two hours later, liked nearly everything about it, felt good, made an offer an hour later, and the sellers accepted our offer a few hours after that. It was amazing how quickly it went, after fruitlessly searching for months.

I wanted to make a few comments about the different people we interacted when we bought our home. We didn't know a thing about buying a home before we did it, so this is what I learned.

REALTOR: As a home buyer, it's hard to think of a reason to not use an agent. The seller pays the agent commission (the buyer's agent and the seller's agent split 6% of the price of the home), so you basically get the help of the buyer for free (as I understand it, if the buyer has no agent, the seller's agent gets the full 6% still). Additionally, you need an agent, as far as I can tell, to open up key boxes to look at houses. We used Donna Lee Henderson from Affiliated Realty Group. She is an old family friend that my parents and neighbors have used to buy and sell property. I appreciated her help and would recommend her. We felt bad because I think we must have looked at over 20 homes, but she was very patient with us, and there were a number of times that she was more excited to be looking at homes than we were, since we had started to doubt if we would ever find a house that we would want to move into at a price we would want to pay.

MORTGAGE BROKER: We initially worked with a traditional mortgage broker. However, I had heard ads for Box Home Loans on the radio and was intrigued by their tagline: "Your reward for great credit." We hoped we might qualify, so we checked out this company and realized that we would save about $3,000 in closing costs by going with them. That's really some incredible savings. I initially was a bit worried about using a company whose stated inspiration is In-n-Out Burgers--they want to be as efficient as possible and they only do "easy" loans. However, we found some good recommendations for them, so we went ahead. Honestly, Tricia and I didn't always feel like the loan officer assigned to us was always completely aware of everything, but he did a satisfactory job and it was evident that he always had a supervisor making sure he didn't mess up or forget something. (It seems that they recently made a rash of hires to meet the increased demand, and maybe we got a new guy). I would definitely recommend using Box Home Loans--that extra $3k that we saved will be mighty useful as we get ready to have our baby in January.

The weirdest part of the mortgage was trying to decide when to lock our rate. Box Home Loans lets you check the daily rate online, and it fluctuates every day, so we spent a week or two trying to get the pulse of the market so we could lock in on the very best day. We discovered that it's quite impossible to guess what the interest rate will change to each day (at least for us) so we finally just locked in a rate that we felt good about.

HOMEOWNERS INSURANCE: We discovered that we needed to get homeowners insurance before our loan could go through. Bear River Mutual turned out to have the best rates for us. It was really fun for me to discover as I tried to find an insurance agent that my friend TJ Bowen from college now works at LA Bowen insurance. We made him our insurance agent and it was nice to be able to reconnect with him. I'd always looked up to TJ in college and it was fun to be able to do business with him.

empathy

WARNING: This post will likely be ponderous--maybe even rambling. You have been warned.

Today on NPR, a scientist reported that studies of animals show many more instances of empathy than of greed. In fact, this scientist was proposing that today's animals have survived evolution because of their empathy, not their greed. Take, for instance, a mother monkey. When her child screams out for attention, she responds--mostly because her child might die if she doesn't.

As an expecting mother, I have thought long and hard about the kind of mother I want to be and the kind of environment I want to create for Henry (the baby's name--I sure hope he looks like a Henry when he comes out). As a human, I have a bit more wiggle room when it comes to responding to my baby's cry. Essentially, I have fewer predators to deal with.

But then again, do I? My main goal as a mother is to teach Henry TRUTH. And I know a lot of un-truth exists in the world. So maybe I won't have to deal with predators who will kill my child physically, but I will be dealing with a lot of predators who could kill my child spiritually (and emotionally). And I wonder what the warning signs will be? Certainly, I can be empathetic to a cry, but what are the signs of Henry latching on to un-truths? And will I see them in time? And how will I respond?

It turns out I don't have all the answers (sorry to disappoint), but I am comforted by the fact that I am armed with the SOURCE of truth. I plan to use that source as my first line of defense (or attack, as necessary) to envelop Henry in truth. Truth that will set him free.

Friday vacation

Trish and I had been talking all summer about a one-day vacation for just the two of us. We're lucky to live nearby lots of family, so usually when we come up with a fun idea, our next thought is to start calling some parents and siblings to drag along. However, we realized that our days of being able to run off by ourselves are numbered, since our baby boy will be born in January. So we designated this Friday as our vacation day.

We drove out of Springville Thursday afternoon and headed south to Manti, where we spent the night in the Temple View Lodge, right across the street from the temple.



The next morning, we had a neat, spiritually rejuvenating going through the Manti Temple.



For lunch, we enjoyed very tasty donuts and a delicious burger at Miller's Drive Thru. 15 years ago, I had played a tennis match in Manti, and our coach had brought us to this donut place afterwards. I had great memories of it, and I wasn't disappointed when I returned today. Best apple fritter and mushroom burger (on a freshly baked bun) that I've had in a while.



Afterwards, we drove north, meandering through the charming small towns, settled by Mormon pioneers, that dot Sanpete Valley. In Mount Pleasant we stopped for a chocolate shake and strolled along the historic main street. Then, in Fairview, we took a detour. Rather than heading straight home, we took a scenic route. The fall colors are just beginning to turn, so the aspen forests were a very pretty mix of green, red, and yellow. It snowed last night, so the white snow add to the pretty scene.





Our drive took us past Scofield reservoir. I had spent a week here at scout camp as a 12-year-old. One day, our troop paddled the large war canoe out to this island (pictured below) in the middle of the reservoir. A big windstorm came up and we got stranded on the island and had to find shelter. We were excited that we might need to spend the night, but within 30 minutes we were being shuttled back to camp by the camp staff on a powerboat.



What a great day! Thanks Tricia!

why I love my husband

He makes the bed every morning (unless I am still sleeping in it when he leaves for work). I didn't think he had time this morning, but after he left, I went upstairs and found the bed made. How delightful!

fun project

Matt's nephew, Ike, turns five years old today! We sent off a (late) letter with a surprise game inside:

We made a memory card game with 20 two-by-two-inch cards on which we drew pictures, letters, and numbers relevant to Ike and his birthday. For instance, he loves cowboy boots. (See my attempt at matching cowboy boots above.) Matt helped include more "educational" cards with the number 5 (for how old Ike turned), the letters M and T (for Ike's siblings), and the number 17 (for Ike's birthday). 

Unfortunately, our markers bled through, so this morning I cut up some "Happy Birthday" paper and attached it to the back of the cards. (Ike is definitely smart enough to figure out how to game the system by noticing bleed-through marks.) I'm just hoping the paper is random enough that he doesn't start memorizing patterns that go together.

All in all, it was a very fun project--and made us more excited for the arrival of our own little boy.

growing grass

Thanks to Sandra, Matt's cousin, we got to grow some grass. As a table-top decoration. 

Here are the seeds,

here is the growing grass,

and here is the result.
We did give the grass a trim to keep things tidy. (Although I kind of like the modern-art statement of controlled chaos.)