Another Check!

It's been almost 2years since we've moved into our house (how is that possible??) and today we crossed something sort of major off of our to-do list....a driveway!

See....when we moved in, we wanted to get a concrete driveway. So we waited to look into it until last summer. Then when we started pricing it out, it was just crazy expensive compared to doing blacktop. And of course we also had to tackle the landscaping project. Our priority last year was the landscaping, so we did that and let the driveway slide.

So, this year's project was the driveway and they finally came today and put it in! YAY!!

Now we just have to wait 10 days to drive on it...ugh!

Green Thumb?

Every time I've been grocery shopping over the past few months, I've been tempted to buy a mini garden kit for kids. I've seen them every week at the store and for some reason never picked one up.  This past weekend, they had them on clearance so I thought "what the heck" and got one. I figured it would be something fun for Avery and I to do and something she would enjoy over the next few months.

They had a decent selection of things to grow....fly traps, strawberry plants, daisies, "fairy" flowers, etc. I decided on the strawberries since my kids love their fruit!  I showed it to Avery when I got home and she was very excited about it.

Of course when she woke up this morning, the first thing out of her mouth was, "can we plant our strawberries?"

So, I got the baby strapped her high chair to eat breakfast and while she ate, Avery and I got to planting. They included everything you needed-the "germination disk", container and seeds.  We got the dirt all ready to go...

...then added the seeds, buried them a little bit and put the lid back on. 

Don't you love the PJ's and mess of hair?! Yikes!

Then to the window sill they went!  Avery sat right by them and said, "I'm going to watch them grow!" Poor kid would be sitting there a long time!  I'm hoping we get something out of this...she would get such a kick out of it if we do get some berries!! Here's to hoping!

Patio

Mark another thing "complete" on our list of things to do with the new house....a patio!

We decided to go with a stamped concrete patio.  They started late last week and finished it this morning....and it can be walked on today which is awesome-it'll be ready to use for Avery's party this weekend which is so, so nice!

Monday they started pouring the concrete:

Avery was fascinated!

This was the step on Monday after it was poured and stamped:

And part of the patio on Monday:

This is the final product: Stamped, grout done, sealed, etc:

A close up of the pattern:

Let's just say we are in LOVE!

Landscaping-Day 2 (Complete!)

The landscapers came back on Friday and for maybe an hour Saturday morning.

And, now it's done!

Love it!

Landscaping-Day 1

One thing you have to do when you build a house is some sort of landscaping.

The builder (in our case) included the front and back lawn, but that's it. The rest was up to us.

We decided to hire someone to do it since we just don't have the time (nor desire) to do it ourselves. Plus, our backyard faces a busy street so we wanted it to be made more private. And, we just wanted someone with a "vision" to come up with something that would look good as opposed to us just throwing in plants in random places.

So yesterday the work started....

front yard by driveway

around utility boxes

front beds

front lawn-corner

side of the garage

our busy street side-backyard

The work continues today....

Room Updates

My Mom came out last night and is staying until tomorrow.

As part of her Easter gift to the girls, she got them some nice decals to decorate their rooms!  She put them up today so that when Avery got home from daycare, she'd have a surprise waiting for her! 

Here is Avery's room:

And Cassandra's room:

I love the way they turned out! They just spruce up the rooms a little bit! I'm hoping to find something similar to use to put their names up on the walls too.

Goodbye 2011

So I mentioned in the beginning of the year that I thought this was going to be a big year of changes.

Well, our first change was not a good one. Having to uproot a child from daycare is not fun.  However, we found a new place for Avery to go and now I can say that we are VERY happy with where she is. The teachers there are great and they do so much with the kids. It's like she's in a preschool when she goes there and we just love it! The only bad thing? They don't take infants. So we have no idea what to do when baby #2 joins us in a few weeks.

Our second big change of the year was deciding to build a home. From the initial piece of land, to groundbreaking day, to the finish line! And of course moving day!

Change #3...our big news of the year....becoming parents again! Of course this will really effect us in 2012, but it's still a change for us nontheless.

Avery had a few big changes as well. She started potty training, and moved to a big girl bed! Not to mention the poor thing went through the daycare change and moving into a new house as well!  She's gone through a lot of changes this year and will soon be a big sister-another change for her to deal with. I have to say this girl is a trooper and has taken everything in stride-and way better than we anticipated!

One other change is in the works that I haven't mentioned on here yet. My In-Law's are in the process of buying a new house as well! They've been in their current home since before Gabe was born so this will be a huge change for them. It's a bigger home (don't you know you upgrade when you're empty-nesters?!) and closer to us, which is nice. They still haven't gotten a closing date on it yet, but they're hoping sometime in January. So they will have a lot of work ahead of them. It was sad at the holidays this year knowing it will most likely be the last at their current home.

I think that pretty much sums up the big changes for the year.

Other things to mark 2011?

I started some new skills when signing up for my first cake decorating class. It was a ton of fun and I'm glad I did it!  Now I can make my kids' birthday cakes and feel like I have some sort of clue what I'm doing!

Gabe and I celebrated 3 years of marriage already!

And some firsts for Avery....bowling, her first haircut, her first egg hunt, her first daycare performance, first time going on the potty, turning 2 years old, and having her eye tube removed,

2011 was a great year for us and we're looking forward to what 2012 will bring!

Happy New Year!

One Month

One month....

We have officially been moved into the new house for one month already.

Part of me feels like we've been here awhile and part of me feels like we just moved in.

The first week or two were odd. I think Gabe and I both felt unsettled. I chalk that up to the fact that we were going to the old house almost daily to get things that we needed. And also the fact that he had lived there for ten years and I lived there for six years. For me, as soon as I turned onto the old street, it felt like I was coming "home". I would get that relaxed feeling and think "I'm home" when actually I wasn't anymore. I'd open the door to an (almost) empty house and it was an odd feeling. Then I'd come back to the new house and not feel fully settled here either. I think it was really challenging for us at first because we sort of felt like we didn't "belong" at either place.

I will say that now I'm feeling more like this is home. I think decorating for Christmas really helped-the tree is up and decorations that we normally would put out at the old house are now put out here. So it's familiar stuff in a new place. I think that has helped me feel settled. Plus, we hosted our first party over the weekend and I think that helped too. Getting to entertain and show off the place was nice.

I think Avery settled in pretty well. She hasn't mentioned the old house in a long time now. We purposely haven't taken her there since moving day and I don't know how she would do if we did take her there. Part of me wonders if she remembers it at all but I don't want to bring it up to her either.

I was at the old house once last week and actually didn't even go in....I forgot the key! So it's been awhile since I've been to the old house. We still have some things to empty out of there one of these days. And we're still getting mail delivered there so we have to go every now and then to pick that up as well.

First month down...many, many more to come!

Gingerbread

I'll admit, I've been a slacker on my blog this week.

This week was just very, very busy.

My Mom came out for a visit Tuesday night and into Wednesday. I took advantage of having a babysitter and did some Christmas shopping on Wednesday. Thursday was work like normal. Friday I had a dentist appointment then took Avery to story time. Gabe had an employee only happy hour after work and didn't get home until after I went to bed.

Did I mention that we hosted a holiday party on Saturday?! Yeah, so between all of that, we were cleaning, baking, etc to get ready to host our first party in the new house. And did I mention that I'm almost 34 weeks pregnant?! Yeah, just when cleaning, etc needed to be done, all I wanted to do was sit on my butt and relax with my feet up. Not a good combination.

But I will say that the party was fabulous. We had a great turn out, got to show off the house, had some great food and even better company. It was wonderful!

So today I was thankful that we had nothing to do. ZERO.

Sounded like a good day to relax and bust out the gingerbread house kit I bought for Avery.

I ended up assembling it myself because she was being too grabby with it-she wanted to just reach in and eat the frosting so I took it in the other room to assemble.

After her (no) nap time, we did the decorating. And I think she really enjoyed it! I would put on frosting and just let her have at it. She lined the roof with gumdrops:

And decorated the roof with little colored balls:

And here is her masterpiece (she's saying "cheese"):

Of course all she wanted to do was eat the candy so at times it was hard to get her to actually decorate. I don't blame her though-that's the fun part is getting to eat the stuff that comes with it! But she had a great time and the house stayed together and turned out really cute.

I took a picture of each side of it as well:



Now my question is....do you actually eat these things or what?!

What's Next?!

I'm starting to think that someone doesn't want us to sell our house. Or better yet, they want both Gabe and I to have a breakdown of some sort while doing it.

Everyone knows when you sell your house you have a lot to do to get it ready to sell. Decluttering, packing, and any other things that need fixing along the way.

We have a decent amount of painting to do-kitchen, sun room, hall going upstairs, our bedroom and the trim in all of those places. We also have to tackle our backyard and have a TON of landscaping done back there. This stuff we expected.

It seems like every week, something is happening to our house to create more work for us....like I said, leading us to a breakdown soon!

We have a border in the kitchen that needs to come down and according to my Mom, must have been put up with super glue. She said she has never seen a border so hard to take down. She's already spent about two hours on it and maybe got 2feet of it down. Not fun. And how is this creating more work? Well, it's taking down chunks of our wall with it. Yeah, nice.

A few weeks ago we came home and noticed a funny colored mark on our wall going up our stairs. Over about 5 days, this mark grew to an enormous size. Yep, we're getting water behind the wall. So, not only does that wall need painting, but now it probably needs to be torn down and completely redone.

Our dishwasher shit the bed last week so now that has to be replaced. And let me tell you that life without a dishwasher SUCKS! God bless people that don't have them!

Then there's the latest.....yesterday we come home to find a huge gutter hanging off the back of our house. And it looks like it took some siding down along with it.

Do you see where the breakdown is about to happen?!

And did I mention our house is supposed to go up for sale in about....oh....2 months?!

How the hell are we going to get this all done?!

God give us strength....

Craigslist Crazy!

I'm officially a Craigslist post whore! Haha!

Friday when Avery napped, I started to tackle our attic. We have a ton of stuff up there to go through and decide if we want to keep it, or pitch it. I spent about an hour up there going through a few things and mostly doing some rearranging of things-making a "keep" pile, a "sell" pile and a "throw out" pile.

Yesterday when Avery napped, both Gabe and I spent about 2 hours up there starting to sift through things. We did pretty well, but still have a ways to go.

In the process, I took some pictures of some bigger items I wanted to sell on Craigslist.

Then the fun began!

Last night I did 10 posts on Craigslist! Yep, TEN!

And today I woke up to find 5 emails about items already! Yay! We actually had one person over tonight interested in something and they'll be back tomorrow to pick it up. One thing down, many more to go...but hey, it's a start, right?!

It's Friday!

Well it's Friday! We had a pretty uneventful week. We got a new furnace put in on Wednesday which took all day. Gabe's Dad came over to visit while they were here working. Yesterday, Gabe's Mom came over for a baby fix as well. Other than that, it's been pretty quiet. We took Avery on a few walks at night after dinner. The last one we went on she screamed for 2 blocks on the way home! It must have been pretty comical to see! Haha!

We're going to attempt introducing a bottle tonight to see how Avery does with it-should be interesting. I got my pump all up and running and used it for the first time today-all went well. Now we just need to see if she'll actually take the bottle and be able to handle both that and breastfeeding like a champ! I'll keep ya posted on that.

Here are some pics of Avery from the week:
A cute one on Daddy's lap between burps:

Waking up from a nap:

On Mommy's lap making silly faces:


Helping Daddy play Xbox-we love car racing!

Project #3 Done!

"The Jungle"...remember it?! Before you go any further, go here to refresh your memory!

So that was last fall....spring came and here's what the jungle looked like:






You can see that stuff started to grow again, which we expected. So, we decided to get a few estimates to get this job taken care of. Lord knows it needed it and our neighbors I'm sure wanted it done :)

After having two estimates, we decided to go with Rockview Landscaping who is the brother of one of my coworkers. They came on Monday and started the demolition. I didn't really know how long it would take or what to expect when I got home from work that day. Here's what I came home to on Monday:



I was shocked that everything was pretty much gone and it looked pretty bare! The area next to the driveway used to be an area where we planted flowers (you can see a very small part of it in the original "jungle" pics). That was our one thing we did the past few years was to plant some annuals there and they were surrounded with a brick border. We decided we didn't really want that anymore-the grass was growing into the flowers all of the time and it made mowing around the flowers challenging. So we decided to get rid of it and just put grass in. I was surprised when the landscaper called Monday night and said they would probably be done on Tuesday with everything! I never thought they would have had it all done by then. Sure enough, I got home on Tuesday and they said they had a few hours left and they would be done.

So folks, here's the new landscaping!!










It'll take a few weeks to get the full effect because the grass all needs to grow and the bushes he put in need to get a little bit bigger. But, we love it so far and are really happy with how it turned out! It'll be so easy to maintain now and of course makes the house look much better!!