Introducing Gretal Amelia Harris

I will post the story later, but for now here are some pics of the newest Harris addition.

We are now Homeowners...again.

Last Wednesday we got the keys to our new house and by 11:00pm Thursday night we had everything moved in, with the help of My aunt Janene, uncle Paul, Ben, Emily, and Christopher. John took a few days off work and we pretty much had everything put away by Tuesday night. We were obviously excited to be in a house again :) The puggles love the yard and the stairs...maybe Kaiia will lose some of the weight that she gained at the apartment :)

I'm an AUNT!!

I can't believe it, I'm an aunt! I feel so happy. Megan had Anton Marijan Alandzak on Thursday morning at 12:30 am (Germany time). Megan was laboring for almost 2 days after her water broke, and the baby was getting stressed so they ended doing a c-section. Both Megan and Anton are doing great. Megan is really tired and sore but she is thrilled to be a mom. Anton is the cutest little boy I have ever seen!!...Don't you think...


*I know everyone has probably already seen this picture, but if my mother would send more I would post a different one :)

Our New Home

WE FOUND A HOUSE!!!

After looking at over 30 houses and in all areas of Salt Lake, we finally found a house we think we can live in for awhile. Our closing date is set for 8/24/09 and we will be moving in our stuff that weekend. I can't wait!! Then about two weeks later we may be having a baby :) At least we are getting into a house before the baby. The house is in Sandy, which is where we wanted to be because we are only 5 minutes away from my aunt Janene and about 3 minutes from my cousin Emily. YEAH!!

On Friday night we put the offer in on the house and didn't expect to hear anything back until Monday. We offered 10 grand less than their listing price. Then on Sunday afternoon we got a call from our realtor stating that they accepted our offer and the house is ours!! We were stoked, they didn't even counteroffer. Things worked out pretty well for us. We are lucky.

House Hunting

Well we officially started actually house hunting here in Utah. Last Saturday we went around to some houses with our realtor, 6 houses to be exact. We didn't find anything we really liked. There were two house we kind of liked but there are major flaws in both of them. One of them is righ next to a major highway so it's loud and noisy, plus the house itself is kind of small. The other house we sort of like is in a great location, on a culdesac, has a huge yard but the house is very outdated. I know we are being really picky, but we don't want to have to move again in a few years. Anyway we are going with our realtor again on Wednesday so hopefully we find something that we like.

If anyone is interested here are the MLS#'s of the houses we kind of like. Keep in mind that the other houses were either really bad or there were major flaws in them as well.
The one by the highway: MLS 888027
The one with the big yard: MLS 891485

1st Week in Utah

Well yesterday marked our first official week of living in Utah. We were extremely busy. Since it was the 4th of July on Saturday and John only works four ten hour days he had Friday through Monday off, which was great. All weekend we looked for houses. We looked in four different suburbs of Salt Lake: Sandy, West Jordan, South Jordan and Draper. I bet we looked at (and my looked at I mean drove by and checked out the exterior of the house and the neighborhoods) probably 40 different houses, and out of the 40 we decided we wanted to tour the inside of 12. People can do crazy things to make their house look good on the internet :) Hopefully this coming up weekend we will be able to tour some of the houses and hopefully put in an offer...I really want out of this apartment!
During the week while John was working, I ran errands and cleaned and pretty much did "house-wife" stuff :) My cousin Emily and I (and Bennett, her baby) hung out a lot, we are actually becoming great friends! I am so lucky to have family here, otherwise it may have been a little more of a challenge moving away from my parents and everyone I know. Don't get me wrong it's hard, especially with a baby on the way, but with my aunt Janene (who is my mom's older sister and they are a lot alike) and Emily it's way easier to adjust.
The puggles are very depressed :( Tucker has not been eating, and Kaiia has been eating slowly and sometimes will leave her food unattended. Now if you know the puggles, you would know that they love food and Kaiia usually is done within seconds of me putting her food bowl down. I think they are depressed because they don't have a yard to play in and Rocky (my parent's dog) isn't here to play with anymore. I actually have no idea if that's why but I know they are depressed. We actually took them house hunting with us (they rode in the back of the Jeep) and they seemed to be pulling out of it...hopefully. Anyway I had to update everyone on how the puggles are doing :)
Overall our first week officially becoming Utards, was a pretty good one. I can't wait until we get a house and have everything all set up, so we can concentrate on more important things, like our baby :)

Germany

My mom and I flew to Germany about 2 months ago for about 10 days to deliver Megan's cats. It actually wasn't bad at all flying with the cats, they were pretty good the whole time. When we got to the airport in Germany we waited out front for Megan and Ivan to come pick us up, and we waited, and we waited. Finally my mom said that we should call them (our cell phones don't work there, so we had to call from a pay phone),$100 later we got a hold of Ivan. We drove from Frankfurt to Megan's house (about 2 hours) and dropped the cats off, then got back on the road for Austria. It was a long day for sure but it was well worth it.





Austria is amazing! We were only there for a day and we could have stayed longer but we still had a great time. We went and toured a castle...

The Castle




The castle up close.
A view from the castle






We took a Sound of Music Tour and saw where the movie was filmed...


This is the mountain where they are hiking to get away from the Germans...which actually didn't happen in their real life.





The Gardens where they are playing in their new play clothes.






The steps where they sing DO RE ME.




The place where Leisal sings and dances with the mail boy.






The tunnel where they sing DO RE ME.





We also toured the city of Salzburg, which is where the castle and Sound of Music was filmed...






This is big building that is connected to another big building, which is also connected to anther big building.

There are pretzel stands everywhere in Austria.






At the base of the castle there were horse drawn carriage rides.





Salzburg from the Castle.
Ok when we were leaving..it was on a Sunday and everything is closed so we decided to go to McDonald's :) This is the McDonalds...it's pretty crazy inside. They have a salad bar, a cafe, and the kids toys are basketball games, and dance dance revolution (not balls and slides).





We drove back to Megan's house on Sunday, which was a 6-7 hour drive on the autobon (so we were going at least 90 the whole time, and people were cruising past us, it was awesome!) At one point two Ferraris and an Aston Martin passed us.





On Monday (Tuesday and Friday too) Megan my mom and I went to Triar, the oldest city in Germany, we actually went to Triar 3 times because we loved it so much. We saw some of the oldest structures in Germany.






The main Square in Triar, this picture was acutally taken from the Porta Nigra- which is the oldest building in Germany.






We saw the Porta Nigra...












The Roman baths...











The old Roman arena...






and went into an old cathedral that was still being used (we had to leave early because the service was starting).

This is the ceiling, way cool!












We also went to Luxemourg one day too. We saw another castle there...











We spent some time in Bitburg (the closest city to Megan's house) and did some shopping and eating ice-cream. Overall the trip was awesome, I did not want to come home. The funny thing is the whole time I was in Germany John was in Spokane making arrangements to sell our house and move to SLC. I'm glad I was in Germany :)