House Party This Saturday - Everyone Invited

It is with great pleasure that I make this post. As most of you know, we finally closed on our very first house on 2/26. After closing and receiving the keys, we spent the next week painting almost EVERY single room in the house, and the following week slowly moving all of our stuff into the house. Well we are now officially all moved in as of a couple days ago and now we will spend the next few weeks unpacking the last of our boxes, finishing all of our final organizations, and getting pictures up on the wall, lol.


Anyways, before I give you guys all the history, I wanted to let everyone know that this Saturday, we are having an Open House style House Warming Party and we wanted to invite anyone and everyone to come on over and celebrate with us :)

Date: Saturday March 21st, 2009
Time: 3:00 PM - 8:00 PM (open house style, come and go as you please, stop by even if it's just a couple minutes :P )
Location: 731 East 425 South, Layton Utah (MAPQUEST)

We will have lots of drinks, will be grillin up some hot dogs, and have lots of munchies.

Come one, come all, we would love to see everyone, past clients, future clients, current clients, friends, relatives, blog stalkers, photographers, and so on.

We never knew purchasing a home could be such an emotional roller coaster ride. We searched for quite a while before we found our dream home. It was very tough emotionally finding what we wanted and going through all the financing hoopla. With us already having 3 children, most of the homes within our budget didn't have enough rooms or weren't in the schools we wanted our children to attend, so we needed to find a house that had enough space and was still in good school zones. We came close and found a house that we really loved, the girls loved it as well, but when we told Kyleigh she would have to switch schools and leave her best friend Faith, she started to cry which broke my heart and I started to cry as well. I didn't want to do that to her. So the house we live in now allows Kyleigh to stay in her elementary school, attend the junior high I went to and adored, and the same high school where Tiffany and I met and fell in love. Our new house has 6 rooms which gave us all our own rooms, plus my own spacious office and a play room for the kids. We finally feel like we are beginning our lives and I finally feel that I am providing for my family.

When we were first married, we lived in a nice low income apartment for about the first year until my dearly departed Grandma gave us a very killer deal on a mobile home that she owned to give us a place of our own. After about 3 years living in the mobile home, we had the opportunity to sell it, so we took advantage of it and moved in my parents for what we thought would be about a year while we got some money saved and got into a house. Well that year turned into two years and it was all 5 of us in the upstairs portion of my mom's home. Tiffany, Cameron, and me in one bedroom. Kyleigh and Madison shared the other room. Then I had my office in my mom's livingroom on a small computer desk which always seemed to be cluttered and disorganized due to lack of space and storage. I can't even begin to express how thankful I am to my parents for allowing us into their home for so long and putting up with all the mess and chaos that we brought. My whole life my parents have always put their children first and sacrificed everything for their children and I am forever indebted to them. Thanks Mom and Dad, We love you to death. Living with the parents for two years was very stressful on all of us, mom and dad included, and it seemed like we would never qualify for a house loan due to me being a self employed photographer. But it finally happened and we are overjoyed and scared all at the same time. Home Ownership is so rewarding but carries so much responsibility.

I have to give a shout out to our wonderful agent Lori Hickman of Ogden Bay Realty. She was so patient with us as she took us through house after house after house. She is such a cool person and we really enjoyed working with her. If anyone needs a good agent, give her a call.

Secondly, our mortgage agent Amber Wykstra with Bank of Utah also worked her tail off to get all the financing done and was so patient as she answered question after question after question :P Thanks guys for making this all possible.

Last but not least, Thanks to all of my family and friends who spent countless hours helping us paint, move boxes and heavy furniture, and for your support. Our house is always open to you and look forward to the many years of memories we will create together as we party and hang out together in our new home.

If you have read this far, you have a really good attention span and I commend you ;)

We hope to see you all there on Saturday.

Our humble abode.



Client Area/Livingroom #1



Kitchen/Dining



My Office





The Kids Playroom





Kyleigh's Room



Madison's Room



Cameron's Room



Not Pictured: 2 bathrooms, Tiffany and Dustin's Room, and downstairs family room.