Happy New Year

This was going to be a Merry Christmas post, but as usual I am about a week behind.   We love this time of year. The good food, fun times with friends and all the crazy business.  Our Christmas was wonderful, we spent time with family, nothing exciting.

There is something about spending time with people you don't see all the time. We had an early Christmas Dinner with my family a few days before Christmas.  Watching all 5 cousins play together is enjoyable.

 We spent Christmas day in Wyoming.  Santa spoiled her, she got the polar bear family and penguin family she wanted plus some too many other toys.  She played and played with her cousins, but she played most with Uncle Brandon's dog Eddie.  After we opened presents we went to Elle's parents home to visit them.  Although Elle was not there and was missed we were able to Skype with her there.  Of course Charlee was spoiled there and she was teasing everyone.  We then went back to Grandma's and helped get dinner ready for 30.  Charlee was a great helper, she cut some veggies and did a lot of clean up.  Now that she is 5 she is a big girl who can help.

We are grateful for our supportive family and appreciate it when we get to spend time with them.

I can't believe another year has come and gone.  It has happened so fast.  No amazing changes or great vacations, just enjoying our life and trying to find ways to squeeze more into a day then we should.

I am still having problems getting pics from my camera onto my computer  because of all the space, I am trying to move pictures to cloud storage system, but it is not going as smooth as I hopped.  HELP!  Any suggestions?  Tell me how you manage.

Happy New Year!!

To those of you who love and care about us

Happy Valentines

Thanks for being there for us at the drop of a hat

Thanks for listening, and sharing moments of laughter and tears

Thanks for being you and being in our life and letting us be us

Our lives are fuller, richer and beautiful because you are in it.

We love you!!

good-bye old friend, we might replace you, but we will not forget you.

As I have shared with you before, our couch is so well loved.  I think people come to visit us to sit on our couch.  So soft and broken in . . . so almost perfect.

The problem?  The springs wouldn't stay sprung, and sometimes when people come to visit, if they sat in the wrong spot they could get sucked into the couch.

And while we had talked about maybe someday replacing the couch, there really was no plans, and the thought of letting the couch go brought tears,  well at least Karst's eyes.

While visiting with Karst's parents, they told us that they were getting new couches.  Not asking, but telling us, said "you guys are going to get these couches."  I laughed because I knew they had been sucked into the couch one too many times.

We gratefully accepted. 

They are very nice, one of those fancy reclining couches.  

Charlee loves them and her favorite is the middle that folds down for a table for her to squeeze under. 

Since the couch had become a part of our family, it was not something we could just cart off to Good Will, to valuable to sell to just anyone . . .

So it sat in the garage for a couple of months until the right person who could shared the love could have it.

The winner?  My dear friend Heather.  Who was getting a new place of her own and needed a new couch.  Let me tell you a little about Heather, she is one of the funnest people I know and she has so always loved to sit on the couch and talk with me for hours.

She never has the same expression in any picture, she is full of so much energy and the biggest, tenderest heart I know.  I knew the couch would be in great hands. 

This is me & her messing around with the camera.

Although, when I think about her bedroom, when she was 17, I get a little scared that the couch might be buried. I probably need to go pay the couch a visit. 

We love you Heather!  Enjoy  the comfy couch!

just for nathan

This post is dedicated to our dear friend Nathan, who should get a prize for being our most dedicated reader, or the one who wonders what the heck is going on.  Here is his comment

Karst and Kim, Hey...you two doing okay? It's been about a month and Kim hasn't updated her blog. I just want to make sure you two are okay. I tried calling, but I'm not sure if I got the right number. Drop me a line when you get chance....just want to make you all are okay.

This was very nice and thoughtful, but when he followed up with an email to Karst and a phone call to me.  I knew my blog denial had hit an all time high.  And that we had really worried Nathan.

So I am going to tell you a little about our long time friend Nathan, and his family.

Let me just say that I knew Nathan long before I knew Karst, or Karst knew Nathan.  We grew up in the same town, went to the same school and had many of the same classes together.  If I was mean I would pull out class pictures and show this proof.  Once when we were sitting in 6th Grade Mrs. Shelton's class, during reading, I was thinking I was being all sneaky and next thing I hear is Nathan saying,
"Mrs. Shelton, Kim is reading another book inside her reading book and not following along." 

Really the reason Karst and I met was because of his friendship with Nathan, this started back when they were about 14 and both working up at Camp New Fork, as junior camp leaders. Since this isn't a post about Karst and I meeting, I will sum that up, basically Nathan lived next door to one of my best friends and we met that way.  Nathan helped us get each others address for letter writing.  

 At Camp New Fork, Nathan and Karst had many adventures, together.  So many stories that aren't mine to share.  Here is one picture I will show that Karst took while they were on a canoeing/hiking trip, of Nathan.  Lets just say they learned a few life lessons together.

So fast forward after missions, college, marriage and the kids to today.  Nathan married his high school sweetheart Sara, they have a daughter who is 13 (I think).  They live back east, so we have not seen them in years . . .Until this past April, where they flew in to visit family and stopped by to say hi.   It was great to talk with Sara again and to meet Zion as the beautiful young woman she is growing into.  Such a fun family.  

Watching Karst and Nathan talk it really was like no time had passed.  The test of a true friendship. There is never enough time when you need to catch up.  There are definatly more plans to get together sooner.

Priceless the rewards of friendships, the bottomless love and concern, amazing to witness this true brotherhood united beyond the years and miles apart.

Thanks Nathan for being the one we know worries about us and reads the blog.  When we win our millions we'll remember you were the one who worried about us.

Need to hear some good news?

Before we knew we would be going down the adoption road, we watched our friends Nate and Naomi go through the processes.  It was amazing to watch, we learned so much about open adoption and the realities of the ups and downs of the whole processes.  They adopted Aleena 15 months ago.  

When we realized we would be going down the same path to get our family, they were so helpful to us, for the good and the bad days.

And now they have some NEWS!!  Click here to check out their blog to get the details yourself.  I am still in shock, but so excited, I have to go to the bathroom.  

huh, did you say something??

Yeah, I don't know really what to name this post, I just realized that all I have done for the month of September is the Wednesday posting and then I didn't even do last weeks.  So here is an update in the life of H2K if you are interested.

Karst is just working and studying, not a lot of fun for him I guess.  Fred is just disappointed that we aren't home more.  And I am just trying to get projects done.  I am so good at starting too much at one time.  We have been really involved with the FSA (Families Supporting Adoption), it seems if we have any free time it is being used with the organization, which we love and we are so glad to be associated with so many people involved in adoption.  It's always good to be going for a cause.

Here are a few things we have done this last month.  In no particular order.

I cooked 30 meals in 8 hours and froze them,  I need to do a post on that.

My friend got married, so who do you think did the invitations, the decorations and the food.  Yeah you know me, the sucker, but it was great fun and they had a great turn out.

Here are the newlyweds, they did have on the formal wear, but I was to busy then to get a good picture so this is what I got.   Aren't they a cute couple?

I did lot of hair, this is Whitney one of my clients who was thrilled with end result and needed a picture.

We went camping with some of Karst's family.  This is his youngest brother Tommy and his girlfriend Jen.  We did get rained out and left early, but it was still nice to be one with nature.

Karst had the best bag of Red Vines ever, and he still shared.

Here is the snow on Labor Day in Wyoming.  Good thing we packed up camp!!

Rebecca's little boy Luke turned one and we went to his birthday party, where he demolished his cake.  Don't they have the cutest kids?

Well there you have it, now you know what the deal is with us.  See we weren't too boring.

Be Careful What You Wish For

To say we are overwhelmed by the outpouring of love and support for the outcome of the yard sale, is like saying we had a little snow this year.  There are no words to really describe the experience,  all we can say is it was evident that this was bigger than we are. We have been humbled by the love and generosity given to us by so many. We witnessed God's hand in our life.

2 Months to prepare

Over 45 people donating

Over a dozen "pick up" trips

3 car garage, room in basement, back porch FILLED

over 900 price stickers used, and still not enough

1 newspaper add, 1 email, 2 web listings, 3 blog posts

10 signs posted

9 people working the yard sale

8 hours of selling

Cars parked 2 blocks away, and people walking

So many hours

So many helpful hands

Countless customers

$2460 earned and growing.

These pictures help, but there is no way to share the whole experience with you.  You had to be there to believe it.  But here is our attempt to explain the miracle we witnessed.

Thursday night,  our garage is full, our back patio is full and stuff kept coming . . .

So the Tetris King  went through and re-stacked things and we got everything in, and the garage door closed.  All day Friday we continued to receive things, we were not able to get everything in the garage.

I started pricing and organizing everything the saturday before and every time I thought I was done, more would arrive.  I kept asking myself what was I doing and who's bright idea was this.

Karst, fixed what he could and put things together.  He knew who's big idea it was, and was smart enough not to remind me.  He stayed up until one am, Thrusday and Friday.  If you know Karst and his need for sleep, you will appreciate what that sacrifice was about.

So Friday came, I met my parents in Wyoming and picked up my youngest sister Channelle, so she could help me get ready.  We picked things up from Karst's grandparents and mom.  Collected more items from friends here.  Her and my sister Rebecca made these signs.  I wanted to get 15 signs put up and I had mapped out where I wanted them.  However at 2 am I was informed by a police officer that it was illegal to post any signs in West Jordan.  I didn't have to take any down, he couldn't promise they would still be there in the morning and I shouldn't put any more up.  Luckily the ones that went up stayed up.  Of the 4 roads I was going to put signs on only 1 road had signs.

We were a little anxious about getting all of the stuff out of the garage and set up to sell before the early birds started coming.  Although we said it started at 8 am we wanted to be ready by 7:30.  So we got up at 4 am to start setting up, and the greatest neighbor friends in the world came over at 4 am to help us.  My friend Christie arrived at 5 am with 2 carloads full of more stuff.

I really tried to prepare myself and Karst, I tried to have everything planned and to let everyone know who was helping us know the plan.  I had it mapped, scheduled a nice spreadsheet done.   Needless to say I started feeling very overwhelmed, because we had so much stuff and what if we didn't get enough people or what if they didn't buy and what if all the price tags fall off and it is all chaos. What if we have to put this stuff back in the garage at the end of the day??  Lucky for me I had such great help they took over in my moment of panic and got as much out as we could and kept things going.  We didn't have space to put out our personal things we wanted to sale. 

We had everything out by 6:30 ready to go.  Look at how full the tables were and there were things in boxes on the floor.  We ran out of grass, sidewalk and driveway to put everything.  People started coming at 6:30.  By 7:30 they were non stop until 3 pm!!  We took all the signs down at 2pm.

As we watched people come and go and the tables start to empty off, we filled them again with the boxes that were on the floor.  

The people never stopped coming, there was always at least 5 people walking through.  The traffic was scary, they filled the court and both sides of the street on 48oo West.  There was some horn honking.  Luckily we did warn our neighbors we were having a yard sale, and gratefully no accidents happened..

As people would buy things, some of them would leave things, things they were getting rid of and wanted to help us earn the money we needed for the adoption. Several people paid extra or just gave money to help our cause. And during the middle of the day when a lot of the furniture had gone, my friend Becky and her family brought another truck load!!  It was just so overwhelming, the love we felt. We had 9 people working  Everyone commented on how incredible it was, to have all this stuff, all donated, all the people.  They kept asking us how we got all these people here, they have never seen a yard sale like this.  

The people watching was just one of the great highlights we got.  All kinds come and go at a yard sale, and for entertainment sake, it was worth it.

This was at the end of the yard sale, the tables had bare spots, but not enough so all of a sudden everything was about a quarter, people still kept coming.

My sister Channelle sold soda and chocolate at the corner, thanks to the nice weather I think we did really well with it.

Our wonderful exhausted friends who helped us at 4 am. Gaye went and worked a rest stop for a walk for her job in the middle of the day and then came back and helped until it was all done!!  How can we ever repay them?

My sister's Ashlynn and Rebecca, helped out so much they kept things flowing and helped make everything smooth.

Alisha, Rebecca's daughter came and she helped a lot.  Whatever she was playing with another kid wanted and much to her displeasure it would sell. I think she had a lot of fun, playing store and dress up all day. 

She even decorated my side walk for me.

Karst and Justin helped load things for customers and Justin even delivered a few things for customers.  How amazing is that?  They were so good to do whatever they could to help sell everything we had, even if Karst sold the hutch I wanted for half of what I was willing to take to part with it.

Here is everyone but Justin and Ashlynn that helped us with the yard sale.  We could have never done this without them!!

We hope someday our yard will recuperate.  Can you believe this damage was done in 8 hours? I love this picture because it is evidence of miracle we witnessed.  There were a few things of value left that we will try to sell on line.  And about 3 car loads left that went to the DI.  By 3:45 we were in the house done with the sale.

To all of you, who helped in anyway with our adoption yard sale, we can not say thanks enough.  When the day was through and we were figuring out what we did, we just couldn't stop crying, the feeling we had of love and gratitude.  It was just unbelievable and overwhelming.  We dreamed big, but this was bigger then we imagined.  

THANKS

Albrecht Family
Amy Smith
April Beach
Aryton Family
Ashlynn Westbroek
Brookheart Family
Channelle Gilbertson
Christie Redford
Clark Hoffman
Dennis Larson
Diane Barker
Diane Nesbit
Edwards Family
Gaye Hatch
Gilbertson Family
Gilmore Family
Hanson Family
Harward Family
Jamie Jorgenson
Janis Hatch
Jeff (neighbor)
Jeff Friechnecht
Jen (Amy's Friend)
Jennifer (christie friend)
Justin May
Kim Vanwagner
Lerwich Family
Leslee Donio
Lynch Family
Marcy & Eddie Jones
Martha Hayes
McGerry Family
Nielson Family
Opoulos Family
Randy Hatch
Rebecca Hatch
Robb Enger
Stephanie Anderson
Taunya Allred
Tommy Hatch
Tracy Allen
Tricia Quintana
Voda Family
&
Our Heavenly Father who was mindful of our needs.

Le Lit Book Club

Okay so a long long time ago in a land close to here, my friend Tonya started the Le Lit Book Club.

It was great 6 girls talking about the book they had read.  Oh and the books we found to read, the things we learned, the stories we told.  It started out monthly and we would take turns doing it at each others house.  We would have an outing or two.  It really was a lot of fun.

The club is still here and it is still functioning, just in a different way. Now that 67% of us are very busy mothers with children, getting together let a lone reading a book has become a new challenge.  So about once every 3 months we get together and talk about the different books we have all read.   But usually it is the books that Amy has read, and she gives excellent book reports.  Here is my confession although I don't have children, I am probably the least likely to show up.  My bad!!

For this outing we met at the Citrus Grill, and amazingly we all made it there alive, no thanks to all the construction.  But once there it was worth every pothole.  It was so good to get together and laugh and catch up with everyone!!  They are amazing women and I am truely blessed when I am around them.  So since Amy is the one reading all the books and she doesn't have a blog.  I have added a side element called Let Lit Club that shows the books she recommends.  I have not yet read them, but I will be after the yard sale because I will so need an escape.  

Welcome Home Justin

Our friend Justin just came home from his mission, he served in the Ft. Worth Texas Mission. The May-Hatch family has become one of our closest friends.  They live two houses away from us, and while we did know them before Justin left we have now become close families.  

It has been wonderful to watch what his example has helped his family to become.  And now to see them all together it is amazing to watch from the outside.  We are grateful for his work, his faithfulness, and his example and we are honored to have him back home with us.  THANKS FOR ALL YOUR WORK & WELCOME HOME!!

Matchbox Twenty & Alanis Morrissette

So Matchbox Twenty . . . who would miss a chance to see Rob Thomas live?  Not I.  My Friend Christie asked if I would want to go, seeing how it is the busy season and Karst probably wouldn't even be home that night until 11 pm, why not? ( If I was blog savy I would have music on my blog and it would be playing "Long Day")

So lucky for me I had a chance to get suite seats through my job, and they were "sweet"!   Then I found out a day before the concert that Alanis Morrisette was opening up.  I was so excited.  I have loved Alanis from the beginning, who couldn't love her raw emotion and her truth.  Interesting fact that most of her songs she just sits down and writes, in minutes and then years later she realizes what she was really saying.  No wonder we can all relate. My house has been cleaned with her music shaking the windows. 

I forgot how much I love concerts.  You can listen to the band all you want on your ipod and you can know everything about the band.  But when you are sitting there with thousands of fans and they are their singing and the music is surrounding you, and your singing their songs with them and it is so loud no one can tell you are tone deaf, there is nothing else like it.  You really discover who is the singers and who are the entertainers, there isn't a lot of bands that can do both.  There was a few times, when I said to myself wow this is really loud, and a little voice in my head said if it's too loud your too old, so I put that thought out of my head and kept screaming to the music. 

So lucky for me and for you they actually allowed camera's. I filled up my card with pictures and 193 of them are good enough to keep.  Below are just a few of the really good ones. Next time your at my house I'll show them ALL to you. Again we were up in the suites so we weren't that close, but I think the pictures turned out okay.  

Alanis was awesome.  Okay I don't think they had the acoustics right, because it didn't sound as good as it could have, but I didn't care.  I have always wanted to see her in concert so she could have been up there humming and I would have been in seventh heaven.   I love it when artist share their talents!! It was a dream come true.

Then the time finally came when Matchbox Twenty took the stage.  And wow they blew me away from the start.  If Karst had been there he could tell you all the songs they sang and the order, however I am not that good I just ate every moment up. It was just spectacular. They were all so talented.  The piano, guitars, drums, keyboards they just made it all happen.  I was blown away.  And I know there was 12,000 people there, but really they were just singing for me, and it was nice of me to allow the other 11,999 people to be there.  

Thanks Chris for the fun night and good times!!  I would show you the picture we took of our selves, but it's too embarrassing even for me.  Next time we'll take the picture at the beginning and not the end.  

War good music, good musicians, and real performers who really sing their guts out!!