MERRY CHRISTMAS 2011!!!

Merry Christmas Everyone! If we didn't have your address, you didn't get a Christmas Card, but we wanted to include everyone else, so we thought we'd post it here. Hope you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!

Season’s Greetings from the Tuutaus!

This has been an exciting year of changes and adventures for us and our little family. In June we said goodbye to the beach and moved from Santa Barbara to Salt Lake City. We put our stuff into storage, and after Daniel spent 2 ½ weeks in France, Brandy and the boys flew out to meet him and spent another 3 ½ weeks travelling all over Western Europe. We put over 4,400 miles on our rental car, and passed through 9 different countries! Literally the trip of a lifetime –especially taking 2 kids under 3yrs! We’re now in Salt Lake playing the waiting game while we try to buy house… yup, with the housing market being so low, even we can afford it. So, here’s a little what’s been going on with each of us:

Daniel graduated with a Master’s of Music degree in Vocal Performance in June. At the graduation he sang the national anthem with one of his classmates, and he was the first name to be called. He started at the University of Utah in August, working on a Doctorate of Musical Arts (DMA… it’s like a PhD but more performance based than research based) in Vocal Performance. He’s loving the program, and being very successful. He has an assistantship as a member of the Graduate Vocal Quartet—a brand new ensemble created to do outreach and recruitment. He’s singing all over the place and loving it.

Brandy has had her hands full with two growing boys. She finished up her term as the Tenant’s Association President of Family Student Housing at UCSB. Her newest endeavor has been cake decorating. She started taking classes in Santa Barbara, and since moving to Utah she’s already done wedding cakes for two different friends! She has also made some awesome looking birthday cakes for different members of the family throughout the year.

John is a little ball of energy who’s always on the go. He has been having speech therapy since he turned two, and since his 3^rd birthday in October, he started going to pre-school twice a week for a couple hours. The big school bus comes and picks him up every Monday and Wednesday (even though the school is only a mile and half away). He’s starting to speak a bit more now, and doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

Joshua celebrated his 1^st birthday in Paris on August 1^st. He decided to take a bit longer than his brother did to start walking, finally taking his first steps in October. But he almost has a full mouth of teeth at the age his brother got his first. He is finally starting to grow some hair (maybe next year we’ll be able to put him in a Halloween costume that doesn’t require a bald head), and he is always curious and adventurous!

So we hope your year has been as fun and exciting as ours has, and we hope that next year will be even better. Keep tabs on us by checking out our blog…

A Short Update

I'm still alive everyone! I realize it was Oct 3 the last time I wrote anything on here and now it's Dec 2....fail! I thought I would just update everyone on how we are doing here...

Once we got back from Europe we moved in with Daniel's dad and stepmom. They were so sweet to give up their room to let us stay. We were only planning on being there for a month or so and they were still in Tonga so we had no problem taking their room and staying there. Joshua had his first birthday (which was a lot of fun and I made a cute cake), then Daniel started school (which he LOVES and he's doing great in his program) and before we knew it a month went by and we were still there. Daniel's parents came home from Tonga and they moved into the small bedroom to let us stay where we were and we before we knew it another month had gone by. The problem was we needed to have all sorts of paperwork and signatures for us to apply for a loan to get a house. Here in Utah housing is relatively inexpensive (the housing market is seriously messed up!) so when considering what to do about housing we determined that it would be a better fit for us to buy a house instead of renting. It took what seemed like FOREVER to get all of the paperwork together to get pre-approved and we finally got that in the middle of October. We immediately started researching houses and found a handful that we liked. Since the middle of October it seems like every time we have our eye on something and try to make an offer we either get outbid or we're like a day or two too late to try. It's been a very VERY frustrating process and again on Wed we found out they accepted the other offer on a house that I REALLY wanted because they had cash and we had an FHA Loan. I was pretty bummed out because I really liked this one and we had been waiting to find out their decision for over a month. So now we're back to square one. Our realtor is a really nice guy and he has been so incredibly helpful to us not just to help us find a place but to let us know every time we don't get something that everything will be ok and that the right home IS out there for us and to keep trying. I'm getting more and more frustrated but I think the Lord might just be teaching me patience....maybe...or some other important attribute that I'm severely lacking. I've been trying to keep my spirits up but each day it's getting harder and harder. If anyone has ever had to live with family you will know a little of what I'm going through. Currently there are 6 people (on the occasion up to 8 people) living in this house with 1 bathroom. Nothing is mine and all of the stuff that I do have here is piled on top of my father and mother-in-laws stuff. We are STILL living out of suitcases and pretty much my entire life is STILL in a storage unit. All day long I am trying to keep my kids out of stuff that isn't theirs and trying to clean up their messes so they don't get too annoyed with us. We have already had to deal with a major plumbing problem, rat and mice issues, cockroaches, spiders, broken washer and dryer, and then last night because of a severe wind storm our power went out for 16 hours. I'm cold. I'm tired. And I'm totally just venting. I really want to blog more and record things but every time I take out my computer the kids get to it. Currently my "N" button is not working so I've had to plug in an extra keyboard in just to type properly. Also, I know I haven't finished putting up pictures and my story about Europe (which I really want to finish so I don't forget anything) but I've hit a snag. My account is almost full and I don't have anymore room for pictures. Has anyone else come across this problem? How did you fix it? I know some people have started new blogs but I don't even know how to do that.

Sorry everyone, I know this isn't the happiest of posts but I mainly just wanted to say I'm still alive, life is hard but I know there is a reason for it. It's hard to see the silver lining right now but I'm sure something great will happen soon....right?!

Other cool things that have happened recently:
-Johnny's 3rd birthday (I made a cute Toy Story cake for it)
-Johnny started pre-school
-Joshua started walking
-Daniel had his first performance at the University and it was amazing. He also auditioned for the two major productions at the U (that will be performing in April) and amazingly he got major roles in both!
-I made my very first wedding cake for my mom's friend. It turned out alright and I learned a lot from it. I'm going to be doing another wedding cake in December for one of my friends.
-I was called to be a Beehive Advisor in our Wards Young Women and Daniel was called as a Primary teacher.