The Abode . . . Continued!

Sorry guys, Blogger was getting pretty bogged down with all the pictures and it was taking FOREVER! 

I believe I left you at the staircase, right? 

Well lets journey up those stairs, shall we?

At the top of the stairs is our room (above the garage).  It is a MASSIVE room and I have yet to figure out what to do with all the space.

This picture is taken from the back of our room!  See it's MASSIVE!

 Good Morning Lucy!

 This is our "walk-in" closet.  Hannah LOVES to go in there and "wants all of the clothes for me, Mom!." 

And this is our Master Bathroom.  Never thought I would have one of these!

Okay so as you come out of our bedroom this is the view.

The first door on the right is the "Kids" Bathroom. 

I LOVE that I have a kids bathroom.

The first door on your left is the girls bedroom.  It looks like this.

You'll have to excuse the crazy sheets and absense of a cute bedspread.  We are kind of between beds right now and the girls are using an extra queen size bed. 

It's not working out so good!

Those doors just past the beds.  Those are their closets.  HUGE walk-in closets.

Now as cool as those closet are, it's above the closets where the really COOL thing is.  Both kids bedrooms upstairs have a loft.  The ladders are up out of the way for a while, until we feel comfortable with the girls being up there.  But I have a feeling the girls are going to LOVE it up there.

Right next to the girls room is the "boys" room.  Hopefully someday we will have some boys to use it, but for now it's just the another guest bedroom.

And another AWESOME thing that each of the bedrooms have (including ours) is window seats that double as storage.  I haven't figured out what I need to store in there yet, but someday I am going to be grateful for the storage.

Just outside of the two kids bedrooms is a second family room AND A PLAY ROOM!!!  We could not be happier about this space.

The PLAYROOM!  The possibilities are endless with this area!

And as you sit on those couches and look out these windows at night, you can see the Rexburg Temple.  Pretty Cool Huh!?

  Now that completes the tour.  I hope you like it as much as we LOVE it.  Visitors are welcome anytime.  We are so grateful things worked out the way it did, and we couldn't have asked for a better home, neighborhood, and ward. 

We absolutely LOVE it here. 

(BTW - The house is in Salem, just north of Rexburg, for those of you interested!)

The New Abode!

Okay, so here are all the pictures you have been waiting for. 

I hope you enjoy the tour of our new home! 

 Pretty sure these three will greet you with a smile, everytime! 

We LOVE visitors!!! (hint hint!)

 This is the entry way inside. 

 And this is the Front Room,

This is an extension off the Front Room.  We are excited about the gas fireplace.  It will keep us warm all winter (no need to hurry though winter!).  And that door to the left, well it's an extra bedroom that will be used as a guest bedroom/office/gym/craft room, etc.  I didn't take a picture of it because it looks like the boxes reproduced and exploded in there.  But trust me it's HUGE!

And off to the right of the fireplace is the Kitchen.  I absolutely LOVE my kitchen.

 And through that door right there, by the fridge is my Pantry. 

The Dining Room (Area)

If you continue through that open door, you'll walk into my Laundry Room/Mud Room.  I have dreamed of having one of these for so long!

 A different view of the Laundry Room.  There is a utility closet, a coat closet, and a half bath.

 The half bath off the garage!

And perhaps, my most favorite part of the house (really I have about 20 favorite parts....but it's definitely up there!) is the Garage.

Okay so now lets back up a bit, into the kitchen again.  Across from the kitchen table is some sliding glass doors.  Through those doors is....!

Our Deck!  Another one of those top 10 (maybe even 5) spots.  We love, love, LOVE the deck.  We have already had many meals out there, and plan on many more.  It is so peaceful and WONDERFUL!

And this is the view of the back yard.  If you can see it... our property line goes clear back to the little white fence, past the shed.  Mark has dreams about the potential of that shed, but for now it works great.

Oh, and I forgot to show you the view from our front door.  There is a field across the street with a few horses. One of them just had a baby. The girls love watching them!

And now I leave you with a sneek peak of the upstairs! 

Something to look forward to, you know!

California Bound.... part 2!

Okay I am back . . . a couple days later, but back none-the-less!

Everytime we go home to CA, Mark wants to take us to the train museum in down town Sacramento.  We've always had good intentions to visit, but it was never in the works.  Until this trip, and I am SO glad we made time to go.  It was a fascinating museum all about trains.  We spent a good portion of the morning there and we still missed a WHOLE floor.  I definitely want to go back.

So the first floor of the museum was FULL of a variety of real-life trains.  Some of them you could even walk through and get a feel of what traveling on a train would be like.  They had a dining car, a sleeper car, a refrigerator car, and more.  It was SUPER cool.  This is where we spent most of the time.

 This is what the inside of a postal car would look like. 

All the cute little old men were dressed in authentic railcart fashion.   

 Grandma with all the grandkids . . . that were there this time.

 Now this train . . . was HUGE!!!  And those are real train tracks.

On the 3rd floor (not sure how we skipped the 2nd floor) was a whole bunch of toy train displays.  This was a huge display with multiple trains running throughout.  The "sun" even set from time to time and all the lights of the towns and trains would come on.  The kids LOVED watching this.

But when the kids weren't watching the trains, they were playing with trains.  At the other end they had toy trains that could be played with.  Once the kids discovered this area it was hard to pull them away.  (I think that is why we didn't go back to the 2nd level.)

So just down from the museum was this old school house.  Super fun!  

How they did things in the old days is always so fascinating.

What good students these two will make someday.

 But recess will definitely be their favorite.

 Beautiful Downtown Sac. 

I would highly recommend to anyone in the area to visit this place!

So that night we went swimming again, we just had so much fun the first time.  Pretty much the same as before only this time,  Lucy fell asleep.  In her floaty.  I was right there, so don't turn me in or anything.  It was pretty cute though.

Love It!

Oh, and this time, I jumped in!

Other than that, we just played at home!  One of the kids favorite thing to do at home was jump on the tramp with the sprinklers on. 

And if this picture is any indication of the great time we had,

then you can tell we played a lot and slept a little. 

 The girls were EXHAUSTED! 

Can't wait to do it again!