Come inside our home!

Our house!

This is only half of the backyard! It takes John forever to mow the yard but it's been really fun to have.

Our family room. We have these great huge windows in here. I love how bright it is.

Another angle!

Our dining room!

Another nook in our dining room.

Talon's Room

I painted this dresser for Talon. It was my brothers growing up and somehow we ended up with it. It was fun to do! The shelf in the previous picture is the same navy blue color.

A corner of the girls room.

Our kitchen

Breakfast nook

While we were looking for a place in Erie, we realized that more than one bathroom is hard to find. We are glad to be one of the homes that do have two. The problem is that our 2nd bathroom is down in the basement and is tiny. SO....we all share this one! I haven't decorated this bathroom yet. It feels like we have spent so much money on random necessities since we moved here...hoses, edger, new vacuum (ours broke), etc. This room is going to have to wait.

There are a lot of storage spaces and we have empty cupboards....weird! I am not used to that.

Our laundry shoot! Oh the kids have loved this! I have too...no laundry baskets except the one in the basement that catches the clothes in the laundry room!

Our 2nd...very tiny bathroom. Look at that little sink.

We've loved having a garage. For sure the best part has been that my van is parked in it...LOVIN' THAT! I also have enjoyed it because it's been a great place to work on projects. I brought this table all the way from VA and it was pretty thrashed. I found it on the side of the road for free. I love how it turned out. Totally hard to see in this picture. It is also pictured in our kitchen. It's now being used as our breakfast nook table. I am looking for some stools that we can afford and it will be great to have when I find them.

I have loved having fresh flowers on our table everyday. We have the prettiest hydrangea bush in our front yard. I'll be sad when it freezes over in the winter!

Our bedrooms nothing fancy. No walk in closet, no master bathroom, the decorations are bare. BUT, it's clean and cozy!

One of my very favorite things about this house is the basement. It is the entire length and width of our upstairs. A quarter of it is finished and the rest is kind of divided into the laundry room, storage, food storage, weight room, and my work room. I'll show pictures of all that later. This room is where the 2nd bathroom is. The built in storage shelves have been amazing for the kids toys. We have a cozy couch and TV down there for the kids too. It's a big room. Perfect for visitors!

Time to meet Kurt

This is my brother Kurt and his gorgeous family!

These two met at BYU athlete's gym. Leah was a gymnast and Kurt was on the football team. I think that they make the cutest couple and they make the cutest babies!

Here's Kurt, playing with the kids! He is most fun dad and such an awesome uncle. My kids adore him!

Kurt just bought his own practice and is an orthodontist. He has the best smile...so this is a great job for him. He is athletic and kind and so fun to be around.

This girl just amazes me. She is so generous and I look forward to seeing her any chance I get. I just love her! She is pregnant with their fourth little girl! She is a lucky little girl!

Annie is 7 and she is such a special little girl. Hailey adores her.

Alyse is 5 and is SO full of personality. She has always been so petite...just the cutest lil' thing.

I really enjoyed getting to know Madelyn better on this trip. She went from being a little baby to being this long haired, talking, 3 year old.

The girls begged to sleep in the same room the whole week, for sake of a good nights sleep, we told them that on the last night only! They were in heaven....giggles galore! The younger three in one room....

and the older two in another. These girls were actually asleep first!!

Leah and I always laugh because Hailey is taller than Annie but is 18 months younger than her. She is like...twice... the size of Alyse and they are only 10 months apart.

Meet my brother Chris

This is my oldest brother Chris and his family. His wife Keri and their 5 children: Kaden, Kelsi, Carter, Kaleb, and Cole. They live in California and so we do not get to see them often enough. It was so great to see them.  Keri is one of those people who amaze me. She is so smart. I love asking her questions and learning from her. She loves to have fun and she loves her children so much. She is the most amazing pianist and has spread her talent to her children. She has been in many pageants and is so beautiful. My brother Chris is 7 years older than me. Him and I have been compared often...both clumsy (or seem to get hurt often), both have horrible seasonal allergies and we are both allergic to many fruits. Chris is very good at building things...just like my dad and he is such a hard worker!

The boys!

Adorable Kelsi!

Yeah!

Big news at the Hecker house! Isabella has not had her binky during the day for 4 days and today she threw them away and went to sleep without a single complaint about needing her binky. All in the name of a special Zhu Zhu pet she picked out named Roxie! I do realize that she is FAR too old for a binky and I have been stressing about this for about 2 years. She was ready...so it was easy. I hope that it sticks!!

The Big Move

We started to pack 1 1/2 weeks before our three week trip to Utah. It took us every moment during that time to get everything packed. This is how our kids slept the night before we packed our truck.

It was BLAZIN' HOT in Virginia Beach on July 24th. The hottest day that I had felt all summer. We had some really sweet guys from our ward come to help...it would have been a nightmare without them. We have one piece of furniture that has got to weigh close to 1,000 pounds....no joke. Our entertainment center is ridiculously heavy but I REALLY wanted it so these guys all worked together to get it out of our place and up onto our truck. It was so hot that my camera was fogging up....so the photos are a little blurry.

Some of our helpers. It is times like these that I am so thankful for my church. It is something special to have people who do not even know you come to help you. These girls and one of the guys in the picture are from our ward but were new and we did not know them. They stayed with us for 3 hours until our truck was all packed and I am so grateful to them for their service.

Relaxing in the shade. We were all exhausted by this time. My body felt BEYOND weak. My emotions were high and I had no control of them because of how tired I was. For those of you who got a few tears from me...I apologize.

It was 102 degrees before you calculate in the humidity. It was registered as feels like: 112 degrees.

Just incase you don't believe me.

Ella is one of Hailey's good friends in Virginia Beach. It was sad to say goodbye to all of our friends. Well, most of our friends were not actually there to say goodbye too since they were all on internships for the summer but we had some very important people to see us off.

Ella's fabulous mother Jamie! Saying goodbye is one of my least favorite things to do.

We left early in the morning...okay not that early. It was supposed to be 5am and it ended up being 10am

Because of our delay, we ended up traveling at the same time as everyone else...BIG MISTAKE! Our 9 hour trip turned into a 16 hour trip! We were not prepared for that. It was rough. John always had one kid in the truck with him and I always had two. They rotated at each gas fill up.

They finially slept from about 11:30 pm to 2am when we arrived in Erie.

You can't really see this so well because it was dark but it was 68 degrees when we arrived in Erie. What a difference from that morning of 105 degrees in Virginia Beach.

This was the sweetest welcome that we could have received when we arrived to our house. We had air mattresses all ready for us and dinner and breakfast and towels and these sweet welcome wishes from our new neighbors The Stowells. Jandi has been amazing and has gone above and beyond her call of duty as a neighbor. More to come soon!