The Grubers: MARCH 2019 - Mr. Frog’s Birthday and Finding Our House

Mike and Kate invited us to their cabin again up Spanish Fork Canyon. That was lots of fun as always!

We had a get together with Jason’s high school friends, this time up in South Weber at Nate Tadje’s house. We hit a road bump on our way over there, literally. We ran over a dang metal ramp that fell out of a truck on the freeway while we were driving! We feel lucky because it could have been so much worse! The ramp had just fallen out and was still bouncing and tumbling on the road. It easily could have bounced and hit our windshield or the front of our van, but we ran over it with our front right tire. We were in the carpool lane when we hit it and our tire blew out instantly, so we had to pull over right there to the left. There was hardly any space so we were in a very dangerous spot. We were glad that it didn’t take too long before highway control got there, slowed up traffic, and allowed us to slowly make our way to the other side of the freeway so we could exit. The policeman had us write up a report and such, they helped us change the tire, and there was a nearby Costco we took the van to. Nate Tadje came and picked us up so we could still enjoy our evening with them while Costco got us a new tire. It worked out great. The undercarriage of the bumper also got messed up, so we took care of that the following week with the repair shop. We got to drive a Dodge minivan rental while we waited for it to be fixed. We were not fans.

what we ran over

the damage

The main event:

Charlie didn’t let March go by without remembering to celebrate Mr. Frog’s Birthday! Remember back in November when Charlie made invitations for the family for Mr. Frog’s Birthday. Well he didn’t forget. There was no way I was going to “throw a party” for a stuffed animal. But then I decided why not have a fun get together in the name of St. Patrick’s Day (and Mr. Frog...at least he was green)? So we threw together a fun little night with laser tag and a piñata. Charlie made some other game we played and we had pizza. The party guests were Karl, Kim, Kyle, Christian, Camry, Dallin, and Tyson. It was hilarious and ridiculous, but in the end it was fun and a great memory.

We had a Star Wars movie night with Tyson. We ate pizza and watched Episode Six. The boys had watched Episodes Four and Five, and were anxious to watch number six with Tyson. It was great.

We continued our online house searching and finally came upon one we were interested in seeing. We did a walk through and really liked it. It was in American Fork in an area kind of behind Costco. The outside and inside had been remodeled and the house came fully furnished with a finished basement and a decent sized yard. It was kind of unique in its layout. However it was on a corner next to a busy road. We put an offer down, but ultimately a different offer was chosen. We were super bummed, especially Jason. It is kind of hard to describe the disappointed feeling of not “winning” a house you are offering for. It’s almost like your hopes and dreams have been crushed and you can’t see any future happiness or anything that could possibly compare. That’s a little dramatic, but really that’s how it feels for a few days.

I went to the dentist for the first time in a LONG time. I need to be better about that. Low and behold, I had a cavity.

We celebrated the Bachelor finale and Pi Day with our Bachelor group. It was great!

We had an amazing night skiing up at Brighton. Thanks to Daylight Savings, it was light a lot longer and we could see a beautiful sunset. It was also warmer and the snow was still great. We seriously had a wonderful time, even more so than usual. We ate dinner in the lodge. Jonah was with Grandma and Grandpa A at their house.

Jason also had another great ski day up at Snowbird.

I went to a baby shower for Meeya.

We decided to sell the Go Pro and Gimble because we wanted to buy the newest Go Pro Hero that included stabilization. It is pretty good (but looking back now we really miss our Gimble).

And then it was St. Patrick’s Day! We had dinner at my parents, complete with a leprechaun hunt. It was fun also having Ashley and Connor there.

We were happy to enjoy some days of warmer weather.

I had a Girls Night with Kerstin and Alisha, we at dinner at Summit Pizza.

We continued our house hunt, after recovering from our earlier devastation. In a matter of one or two days, I looked at four houses with our agent, Melissa Downs. She is amazing, by the way. She is so knowledgeable and has a real confident and go-getter personality. For one of the four houses I was lucky enough to spot it the day it was listed and was one of the first, if not the first, potential buyers to look at it. This particular house was in Lehi, and this particular house I loved. I was finally excited about a house (besides that previous American Fork house we missed out on)! All of the houses I saw left me feeling...nothing. I just couldn’t picture our family in those other ones. I still had to have Jason see it, so he got the walk through the next day. I was crossing my fingers that he liked it as well as I did. It seemed to check all of the boxes, it was fully landscaped (beautifully and with plenty of room). It was even fenced in. It had an open kitchen and family room area. It had enough bedrooms. It was a convenient location, near the freeway and shopping, yet had a more country/rural feel being near several fields with cows and horses. And the view leading up to our street is just amazing! Especially in the winter and early spring! Holy cow, that is when I knew I loved it...driving up to the neighborhood and seeing the expanse of Utah Lake leading up to the snow-capped mountains in the back. I LOVED it! Luckily Jason liked it a lot. He wasn’t as sure yet if he was ready to call it “the one” like I did (the outside was kind of an ugly green/brown color, it was about ten years old, and we knew the proximity to the lake would have to create a bug problem), but he also knew how insanely quick houses were being sold these days so we knew we had to make a move if we even wanted to have a chance. So we put an offer in that night, an offer even above asking price (because that is the game you have to play to be relevant in the housing game). We were so excited and relieved when they accepted our offer the next day. We were stoked and continued to love the house more and more. During the due diligence period I visited with the next door neighbors to get a feel for the neighborhood, and I was sold even more when I found out that they were an all boy family as well, with their oldest being the same age as Charlie! How perfect and meant to be was that?! AND Jason’s high school friend (Jake Goeckeritz) was married to the sister of the new next door neighbor...they were in-laws. AAAAND the original builder of the house turned out to be another of Jason’s high school friends (Mike Monson) and he was the seller's cousin! SMALL WORLD. Jason spoke with the Bishop there and he confirmed that there were definitely months where the mosquitos and mayflies are annoying, especially when there is a “hatch” but nothing unlivable. We continued to be worried about that, but that was our only real concern as we continued on with the buying process. We also worked it out so we would own the house come end of April, but then they would rent it back from us until the end of May to allow them to finish up the school year. This was also great for us because it gave us an extra month to sell our house and pack up for the move. Luckily our purchase was not contingent on the sale of our house.

The sellers online pics:

a look at the garage

Colson had another fun field trip, this time to Cook’s nursery.

We attended the wedding for my cousin Tyler at the Draper Barn.

dancing with LoyAnn

We went on a couples Axe Throwing date with our old PG friends. This was a first for us and it was really quite fun and unique. We also went to dinner at R&R BBQ and had dessert at Coldstone afterwards.

The babysitters:

The date:

During the due diligence of our Lehi home purchase we went to a couple more open houses to be sure our heart was in the right house. We went to one in Alpine while on our way to drop off some early packing items in our moving preparations. It did not impress us. That night Jason went to March Madness games with John and the rest of us went to Felicia’s wedding in Draper.

On March 24th we sadly told the neighbors in our circle, as well as those we were associated with for callings at church, that we were moving. That’s never a fun thing to do.

Amy and Johnny came over for dinner and we sous vide some giant ribeye steaks. They were very tasty. We also had mashed potatoes, homemade breadsticks, salad, strawberries, and homemade peanut butter chocolate chip cookies.

Thanks to Charlie and Colson’s school field trips, they were excited to have our family go together to the Bean Museum, so we made a family night out of it.

Charlie's photography (not bad actually):

Nancy brought Great Grandma Gruber over for a visit one afternoon and we went to lunch at Kneaders.

more grandma time

George's homemade coconut pastries! Amazing!

We had a park date with Amy and Tess in Lehi.

While we were under contract for the Lehi house, and even after the due diligence time, we kept looking online for any new listings that interested us. Even after going to a couple of them, none of them impressed us or felt better than the one we had already chosen. So that was a winning realization and comfort to us. (The decision of what house to buy can be so overwhelming! It changes everything!)

We stayed busy with packing and our own home-improvement things to get ready to sell our house.

We had a game night with our other PG gaming gang. We had dinner at Maria Bonita’s and then we came to our house to chat. We didn’t even end up playing any games. We just talked. They had picked up some Crumbl cookies that we enjoyed as well.

Here are more pictures from the month: