"Sisters"

Twenty-three years ago today, my mother delivered a beautiful, healthy, happy little baby boy. (Happy Birthday Uncle Kyle!!) A few days later, my parents brought him home from the hospital. He was a sweet child, but apparently I was devastated that my parents had not produced a baby girl so that I could finally have a sister. I had asked for a sister for Christmas a few months earlier, but the little dolly Santa brought just did not do the trick. I was sure, however, in my little five year old mind, that my parents loved me enough to bring home a baby sister for me to love and play with. In my journal my mother recorded: "After we got home from the hospital with this boy that was supposed to be your sister, you looked at me and said--you just didn't want another girl, did you !!"

Well, I've since grown up, and even though I didn't have a sister as a child, so far I have inherited five wonderful sisters-in-law. I suppose it all works out the way the Lord intends it to. I will be forever grateful, however, that the Lord intended my two little girls to have each other--sisters and best friends forever. With that in mind, I decided to write a little post celebrating some of the many things sisters get to do together.

Sisters....

share a bedroom,



share a jewelry box,



do each others hair,



put on make up together,



paint each others' toenails,



play dolls,



have tea parties,



wear matching clothes,



and so much more!! Congratulations to all of you out there who are lucky enough to have a sister!!

Travel Log Update

Well, our days on the East Coast are almost over, so we decided to squeeze in a few more outings while we had the chance. Our first outing took us a few hours north to the tiny town of Harmony, Pennsylvania. Harmony is the town where Emma Hale was born and raised, and where she and Joseph Smith Jr. met and fell in love some years later. After living with Joseph's family for a short time, Joseph and Emma then moved to Harmony to live with her family. While there, they lived in a small home, the foundation of which is still visible today. Several revelations were received in Harmony. John the Baptist also appeared to Joseph and Oliver Cowdery there and restored the Aaronic Priesthood. Here is a picture of us at the monument depicting John the Baptist restoring the priesthood.



While we were at the monument, the missionaries happened to see us and stopped by to say hello. They offered to take us down to the river and show us that exact location where the visit took place. They also showed us right where Joseph and Oliver were baptized. It was a very special place and the spirit was very strong. Here we are down at the Susquehanna River.



During the short time that Joseph and Emma lived in Harmony, Emma gave birth to her first baby, a son whom they named Alvin. Alvin died shortly after his birth and was buried close to their little log home. The area has since become a cemetery, also containing the tombstones of both of Emma's parents. Madison was particularly excited to visit baby Alvin's grave. A few weeks before the trip, I found her drawing a very peculiar picture. It was a picture of a big cherry tree. Below the tree was a square with a person inside of it. When I asked her what the drawing was, she told me it was the place where Joseph and Emma had buried their first little baby boy. I later asked her primary teacher if they had discussed this in class, which they hadn't. I thought it was very strange, but Maddi stuck to the story that little Alvin had been buried under a beautiful cherry tree. There was no cherry tree there when we arrived, but I honestly wouldn't be surprised to learn that a tree once stood nearby! Here we are at the tombstone.



Our second outing was actually a stopover on our way home from Minnesota. It too was a well-known church history site: Kirtland, Ohio. The Church has built a lovely Visitor's Center there, and created a little village, much like the town in Old Nauvoo. While there we watched the video and toured the little village. Here we are in front of the Gilbert/Whitney Store. Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus Christ appeared in the upstairs bedroom of the store to the men attending the School of the Prophets. It was a wonderful site to visit.



After touring the LDS Church sites, we went over to the Community of Christ Visitor's Center and toured the beautiful Kirtland Temple. Nick and I both wondered if our church still owned this temple if we could have been doing temple work inside of it instead of passing from room to room in a group walking tour. Here's me and the kids in front of the temple.



I think these two sites officially complete our Church History site seeing. We highly reccomend them to anyone who has yet to visit them.

After the trial of our faith

As many of you are aware, Nicholas and I are soon relocating to Rochester, Minnesota to begin Nicholas' Anesthesia specialization. While the economy has proved a little scary in the last few years, and our last home sale was nothing short of a miracle, we still decided that we would like to purchase a home in Rochester rather than renting. (Our year back in an apartment was a major motivating factor in that decision--as well as the Obama tax credit!) Since we completed an intern year in Pennsylvania rather than going straight to the Mayo Clinic, we have had the major advantage of knowing where we are moving to early on, while most fourth year medical students are just today "matching" into their residency programs. As a result, we planned our house hunting trip at the prime time--a few days before the medical match, but close enough to it that the enourmous resident population now vacating Rochester have already listed their homes in anticipation of the wave of residents arriving this weekend. This planning proved very beneficial to us, as yesterday we signed a contract on a beautiful home in Northwestern Rochester.

Since many friends and family have been following our house hunt, and since an article in the July ensign encouraged us to "share our testimony" online, I want to share our very personal experience in purchasing our new home.

The story begins right after Christmas when we began finalizing plans for our trip to Minnesota. We were referred to a real estate agent by our good friends already living in Rochester; however, the agent wanted us to get all of our financing in order before she sent us any listings. Since Nick's schedule has been kind of hairy, finding the time to interview lenders was much like finding the time to paint my fingernails--next to non-existent. So, being the impatient people that we are, we decided to temporarily take the house hunt into our own hands. We searched out our favorite real estate listings, and systematically begin searching and saving homes we liked. About a week into our house hunt, we found the perfect home--large, new, beautiful, and in our best friend's ward. Since we had yet to secure our financing, I decided not to call our agent about the house, rather, to simply call the listing agent directly to get more information on the home. To our great dismay, when we reached the listing agent, the house was already sold.

Needless to say, we were quite devastated. Had it still been available, it was very likely that we would have changed our plans and gone out early to purchase it--but alas, that Lord had other plans for us. Plans we were hoping included dream home #2. After we found out the first home had sold, we thought it might prove to be less painful if we stopped looking at homes until it was closer to our house hunting trip. That idea didn't last long though, and soon we found another home were really interested in. Again I called the listing agent directly, and after having a very pleasant conversation with her, I was pleased to hear that this home was still available. We put it at the top of our list, but decided not to rashly change our plans to rush out and purchase it. Unfortunately, a few days later, that home sold as well. Misery!!

This time, the disappointment did turn into an extended period of avoiding realtor.com. Then, when we finally did get back online, we were pleased to find dream home #3--this one perhaps our favorite of all. I called the agent, and again, to my great pleasure, the home was still available. To make things even better, it had been on the market for almost six months, and the seller was apparently VERY motivated. We were again very excited, and watched and waited for our trip to arrive.

As the weeks passed, and our trip drew closer, we found the time to secure our financing, and finally got into contact with our real estate agent. We immediately sent her a list of the twenty plus homes we were already interested in, and well as a list of requests concerning more pictures and measurements of dream home #3. To our great surprise, she responded by telling us she was unwilling to take the time to get us the information we wanted on the home--that she would prefer it if we simply waited until we arrived and then we would check out what was still for sale. We were frustrated, to say the least. After much consideration, we kindly told her we would be getting another agent, and decided to contact the agent of dream home #2 who had been so friendly and helpful. Right away, we knew we had made a good choice. Our new agent jumped on all of our questions and shot off a very encompassing list of her own questions wanting to know anything and everything about us and our house hunt. We were impressed and very pleased with her efforts.

Now, as if this post wasn't already a short novel--let me pause here and make a brief side note that will bring in the spiritual dimension of this whole ordeal. Shortly after we began our house hunt, a completely unrelated (or so we thought) event took place in our family. The sister missionaries, who I have become quite close to, extended an invitation to our family to prayerfully select a date by which we could find a person that was prepared to learn more about the gospel. In all honesty, I wasn't very prayerful, but instead told the sister I already knew the perfect date--The 15th of March. In truth, this was very calculating on my part because this was the day we would set off for Minnesota. In my spiritual immaturity, I figured I would set our missionary goal for this strategic date hoping that as we met this goal, the Lord would in turn bless us by letting dream homes #3 still be available. For weeks our family prayed and fasted and poured over our missionary goal, asking neighbors and co-workers about the church. No interest. Then the weeks turned into one week, the week before our trip, and we still had nobody for the missionaries to teach. I was very stressed out, but remembering that we do have a "fourth watch God", I didn't give up hope. Instead, we had both the sisters and the elders over to our house, and asked for their ideas and prayers. The sisters motivated me to talk to everyone--which I did, bringing my Book of Mormon and pass along cards to the park, the leasing office, the store. Still nothing. The elders suggested Nick hang out in the chapel at the hospital, which he willingly agreed to. That too turned up short. I called the sisters in my disappointment and stress, and they held a special fast for our family. Then, the elders came over and took Nick and Spencer tracting in our complex. While knocking on doors, they actually secured an appointment with our next door neighbor. Everyone considered this the answer to our prayers. In my heart of hearts, though, I still felt like this wasn't our golden contact. I still kept looking. In fact, as our goal date arrived, I felt sure that we would find our person broken down by the side of the road, or walking around the rest stop. As the day progressed, I felt more and more discouraged, and that night, as I climbed into the bed in our hotel room, I felt very let down by the Lord. What could we have done more? I wanted to complain--but felt like I should not drop our goal so soon. I would just move on from our date, and keep looking until we found the"one".

When we arrived in Rochester, and met with our new agent, I was caught off guard by her inquiries into the church. She told us that when she read our email stating that we were Mormons, she decided she had better find out about the Mormons to really know how to better serve us. First, she went around her office asking if anyone was a Mormon. Then she got onto lds.org and spent several hours researching the Church. When we got into her car to start the home tour she prepared, right away she started in with the questions. I couldn't believe it. The Lord was up to His usual tricks again--requiring the trial of our faith before providing the miracle. I was pumped. We laughed and talked like old friends, stopping here and there to look at homes. After a few homes, I wondered out loud when we would be heading over to dream home #3. My stomach immediately dropped when she pulled the listing. Dream home #3 sold the evening before!! (Thanks Aunt Jenny for predicting the usual Hoskins family drama!!) I was devastated, biting my tongue to keep back the tears. It took me several more homes to recover from the shock.

Then, I decided to pull myself together, to trust in the Lord, and to have faith that just as we prayed for the right person to buy our St. Louis home, we would be the right person for someone else's home. Shortly after, we entered another home, just down the street from dream home #3. When we walked in, I immediately felt at home. I even turned to Emmie and said "welcome home baby girl." I was sold on the home right away. Again my spirits lifted. We looked at five or six more homes, but I had already decided where we belonged. Eventually, we decided to start moving forward with a contract on the new home we found, and gratefully so, because nothing else we had seen really caught our eye and stayed in our price range. I finally felt like the week was coming together--when of course--some more Hoskins drama. Indeed, our new house love wasn't sold, rather, as it turned out, was scheduled to have the entire backyard ripped out by the city in a few months to add piping and drainage so the house would stop flooding. What a treat!!

It was the end of the day, and we were at the end of our rope with houses falling through. Enough was enough was enough. Our agent could tell we were discouraged. "Let me make a call" she told us. Then she proceeded to unfold some very exciting news. Early on in our home tour, she had taken us into a home that she had added to our home list. It was a home that she was also selling, and she was personal friends with the seller. It was a beautiful home on the outskirts of town, but it was listed for twenty thousand more than our goal price. As we walked through the home, I refused to even consider it. It was just too much money. I wondered why she had added it to our list. Then, as if she read my mind, she began to explain. The sellers of the home were very motivated to sell it, and even though their listing price was high, they were actually willing to take quite a lower offer on it. She convinced us that she would talk to them and work it out so that we could get that home. Then she sent us home for the night.

In all honesty, neither Nick or I was convinced that they would drop their price twenty thousand dollars, so we decided to keep looking for other houses. We stayed up late re-looking through every possible listing we could find. Nothing jumped out at us. Finally, in our disappointment, we decided to settle on a cheaper home that neither of us really loved. It stayed within our budget, and we wanted to honor the prophet's council to live within our means. We were sad, but resigned when we entered her office the next morning. To our great surprise, our agent announced that the sellers of the more expensive home were open to not only dropping their price, but also paying all of our closing costs. To sweeten the deal, we could close on the home in May so that we would be sure to live in the home for three years and be able to qualify for the Obama credit, but they would rent the house back from us until we were actually moving there in June. It seemed to good to be true. But in truth, I hadn't seriously considered the home, and asked if we could go back through it. We went back to our friend's home and picked up our kids, as well as our friends to come and give their opinion. Then we made our way over to dream home #5, now our new home!

The whole experience has anchored my faith that the Lord is over all things, is mindful of each one of us, and truly does bring forth the miracle after the trial of our faith. We are so excited about our new home, about moving back by good friends, and about finding our golden contact. I think we'll even send a Book of Mormon to the sellers of the home.

And now, for those of you who have stuck it out this far...

Check out our new residence!!!
(Sorry about the quality of the photos--we had to scan in images off of the home flyer.)

OUTSIDE

Front of our house (winter)



Back of home (winter)



View from deck (winter)



Home with Spring landscaping







Summer view from the deck



INSIDE

Living room



Kitchen



Kitchen #2 Looking into dining room with door onto the deck



Master Bedroom



Master bathroom



Basement (bottom of stairs)



Basement Living Room (kids playroom)



It's nothing too fancy, but quite the upgrade from our 1950's home in St. Louis. It was built in 2004, and is 2200 square feet (as compared to 973 square feet in St. Louis). It has four bedrooms, two full baths, 2 living areas, kitchen, dining area, and a downstairs laundry and food storage room. It also has a beautiful deck on the back of the home. As you might be able to tell, one of our favorite parts of the home is the yard. The home sits on a 1/2 acre lot--the city owns part of the lot to allow for a walking path into the new development that will eventually go up in the land behind our home--and backs up to absolutely no one! The land behind our home is owned by a Rochester developer and is projected to become a park in a new housing development, however, because of the recent changes in the economy, the project has received a ten year delay. So, in the time we'll be in the home, the land is being rented to a farmer. That means, we'll be looking out into a giant cornfield in the summers, and snow-mobiling into the wide open Rochester back-country all winter. We love it!!

We don't take posession of the home until the middle of June, after which we'll send out our new contact information. We are excited for the big move, and we expect all sorts of visitors once we get settled in!!

The Wonderful World of Three!

Well, as many of you have recently noted, EmmaLee is the first of our three children to celebrate her first birthday without already being a big brother or sister. I can assure you all, that if it were soley up to me, this would not be the case. I'm all about having them close together and getting the whole pregnancy / delivery thing over as quickly as possible! Nicholas, on the other hand, is unsure about four children under the age of five. (I can't imagine why!) Plus, several times in the last few years, (particularly when he is stressed out with the children we have) he has claimed that his ideal family would have been a little more spaced out, but that I--get this--seduced him and thereby acquired more children by sorcery! Well, I can abide no more of these silly claims, so, I have laid aside all of my magical potions and secret voodoo and turned the timing of our fourth, and probably last baby over to my husband. In other words, we're probably done!!! No, I won't let that happen. I've actually warned him that if he waits too long I will probably need to have five just so the last baby isn't hanging out all by itself. Hopefully this will motivate him some.

Anyway, the moral of this story is that these days I just innocently wait for the dewdrops of revelation to grace our home. And I must say, during all of this waiting, I am truly enjoying the three wonderful, bright, beautiful children that we already have. (Who, as I am writing this, are marching up and down the hall pretending to be a marching band with Maddi on the trumpet, Spencer on the drums, and Emmie with the maracas! Clearly, I am not the only one who adores these children! Our neighbors must think they're marvelous too!) In fact, after reviewing some recent photos, I felt inspired to come online and write up a post to honor them. I decided a poem (with accompanying pictures) would be best.

Ode to the Wonderful World of Three

Three little hands



Three pairs of feet



Three Bare Behinds



Three smiles so sweet!



Madison, Spencer, and EmmaLee--I love you so!!

Our Baby Girl Is Growing Up

The older I get, and the more children we welcome into our family, the more I realize that time--the days, hours, and minutes of our lives--is changing. The time of childhood passes so slowly. When I was a little girl, waiting for Christmas morning, even when it was already Christmas Eve, was like waiting for eternity. Time as an adult, however, and particularly as a parent, passes much more quickly. Almost too quickly. So quickly, in fact, that I am often surprised by just how grown up my little ones have become.

Just a few days ago, I found myself in one of these moments of surprise. Little EmmaLee, who I frequently refer to as my "littlest love", reached her 12 month milestone. Our baby girl is one year old!! "How did that happen?" I keep asking myself. "When did she grow up?" I remember so well the day she was born--all those rolls, her chubby cheeks, her dark eyes. She has been a little angel, and the perfect balance of cuddly love and endless energy. She sat up early, crawled early, and walked early. She simply couldn't wait to get in on all of the fun with her big brother and sister. And now that she has, she seems more like one of them, than the sweet little baby I used to hold in my arms. Oh how I wish they would just stay little!! Still, I love them just the same, even when they grow.

Happy Birthday EmmaLee!! One is a wonderful age to be!!

Our Baby Bumblebee's Birthday

Since Emmie has been such a buzy baby, we thought it would be appropriate to throw her a Baby Bumblebee Birthday Party. For all of you who couldn't attend, we thought we'd post a few pictures from the special day.

Here are the little Beehive invites.

A few of the guests playing at the party.





Emmie and all of the little baby boys at her party.
(from left to right: Hyrum LaMont, Korbin Sollars, Emmie, and Devon Pederson)



Spencer playing pin the stinger on the bumblebee. Emmie and the six younger kids went first, placing their stingers without a blindfold. Then the seven older kids (all of the babies' siblings) got their turn at the game, but with a blindfold on.



The Bumblebee / Beehive Birthday Cake.



Emmie contemplating the flame on her candle,



eating her bumblebee birthday cake,



and playing on her favorite birthday present.

Thanks to all who celebrated with us on Emmie's special day--both in person, via webcam, and now through the Hoskins Family Blog!