Richardson Report

Click to super-size if you want! Snuggles with Daddy 2.5 months old Fun bird carved from an apple. turning 3 months old in two days.  We love this happy girl! Watching the big girls play I forgot to rotate the photo - but I love her eyebrows.   Kenna loves to change Faith.  She doesn't ask.  She just does it!  She's really good at it. I can't tell it's been done by a 6 year old! We just had a lovely week off from school.  The kids went back today.  I loved having them home for a few days.  We didn't get as much playing in as I had hoped, but having a slightly less busy schedule felt so nice.  Not too mention the cleaning!  We could get so much done - so much faster - it was like the old days!  Just a few more days till Natalie's 5th Birthday.  She is SO excited.  She's been waiting since March 2, 2013 for this day!

I'm missing my dairy today.  So far today I've missed out on homemade pumpkin muffins and quesadillas.  I never realized just how much food my family eats with dairy.  I'd like to wean them off it a little too, if only to make life simpler for me.   On the flip side, last night I made our favorite berry German pancakes and made a mini batch for me with coconut oil and rice milk instead of butter and milk.  They were FANTASTIC!  We had them with some of Costco's jalapeño bacon which was  actually super yummy and not too spicy. We thought about looking at another house in town that is in a great location.  It's about the size of our old mobile home, though, thus would need major adding on.  And for the mid $200,000 range, that seemed a steep price to pay for just the basic house.  Especially when I can get on zillow and see that anywhere outside of California we could live in a nicer, bigger house for less money.  It's tempting to try to move.  Some days

So it looks like we are not going to buy that house.  It goes like this: We made an offer.  The seller countered.  We made a second offer.  The seller refused to lower her counter offer.  Josh and I told our realtor that over the weekend we would discuss if we wanted to raise our offer a final time. But then.... Josh talked to a friend today and did not mention this whole house buying thing, but in the course of the conversation she happened to mention that there is apparently a huge 100 person homeless camp in the bottom of the creek ravine that the house is located near. Hmmmm.  Buy a house across the way from a homeless camp?  No thank you.  Granted, it's quite a hike up the ravine and who knows where they come in and out, but I like to think my family is safe when we are home. So that's the end of that saga.  Currently there are no other properties on the market that we are interested in.  But seriously, as happy as I would be to buy our own place here, we really

Faith is ten weeks old now.  It's crazy how fast she's growing already.  She loves to stick her fist in her mouth, coo, and watch what's going on around her.  She weighs 11lb - so almost as much as the cat.   :-)  She is so sweet.  Every day I'm grateful that she's here.  Even at 3am. She has her first cold - the little girls have been sick, and I got it last night (I felt so awful - terrible chills and aches, but better today), and when Faith woke up this morning I could tell her nose was stuffy.  She doesn't like it.  She was mad that she couldn't breathe too well.  Hopefully it will be a quick one. Oh man.  So in love with this little goose.  I can't even tell you.   Some of you may have heard that Josh and I made an offer on a house yesterday. We are in the waiting period to see if they accept or come back with a counter-offer.   So the house needs updating, but even though it's old everything seems to be in super good co