Sunday, March 18, 2012

We bought a house!!!

So...this all came about in a crazy way, but we bought a house!!!  I began looking at houses for "fun" online the last week of January.  I told my mom I was casually looking at homes and of course she jumped on that boat and started looking too.  She showed me a house that had been on the market for a while and it looked interesting enough to go through.  We also fell in love with a beautiful yellow house on the East side of town and had to go and look at it.  So, we called our realtor up and went through both homes.  We were half way serious about looking and half way just looking to see what was out there for when we really wanted to move in 1-3 years from now.  Our realtor sent us a huge list of homes to look at online over the weekend and then the next Monday night he took us through 5 homes.  This home is the last one we went through and it checked off a lot of boxes for us!  Closer to town, on a cul de sac, in a great neighborhood, 4 bedrooms plus a bonus, move in ready, a beautiful lake view, and an amazing mortgage rate.  Adam immediately loved it and I liked it, but was still stuck on the old yellow house on the East side (which was too pricey and needed some work too).  We ended up making an offer on this home that day bc another offer was coming in and we were told to move fast if we wanted it.  I felt super rushed but we got a good deal!  I had a good dose of buyers remorse, wondering if we made a hasty decision bc we still had to sell our own home!  Ahhhh! This freaked me out! I always said I wouldn't buy a new home until this one was sold.  Ha.  Broke my own rule!  
4545 Langly Ct.
 We look forward to spending many days out on our gorgeous patio with a lake view!  We are installing a fence ASAP, and we hope to put in a dock so we can go fishing sometime.  =)  All in all- we are thrilled with how everything happened and can't wait to live in our new house!
 It will be bittersweet saying goodbye to our current home.  We outgrew this home a little faster than I had anticipated.  We will have lived in this home for almost exactly 3 years.  We moved in with 6 month old baby Graham and now we move out with 3 kids!  It's been a good house for us and an AMAZING neighborhood.  Sad to be leaving our neighbors (tears), but we are moving just 7 minutes away!!! 

I do need to tell you that God answered my prayers for selling our home!  Our amazing realtor, Mike Reeder, did a superb job of getting our house sold.  14 days!!!  We got an offer on our home just 4 days before we closed on our new one.  It gave me so much peace closing on our new home that we were not going to be paying 2 mortgages for 3 years like I had pictured in my head! 
3011 Deland Dr.
 I confess that our home usually NEVER looks this clean, but I've watched enough HGTV to know that a staged home sells WAY faster than a cluttered home.  We spent a week packing up a Go-Mini storge unit and I got to live in a beautiful, clutter free home for 2 weeks. I'm not going to lie.  I LOVED LIVING IN A CLEAN HOUSE!  The adrenaline I got from getting that phone call about a showing got my booty moving!  I cleaned this house top to bottom at least 7 times in 2 weeks.  Phew.  My body hurts now (literally, I pulled out my back during the last home-prep for a showing), but I think I've developed a few good habits that I hope I can keep up!  It's tricky with 3 toddlers making messes, but the key is less is more and stay on top of it!  Our motto is "Don't Put it Down, Put It Away".  (We can dream, right?)

We get posession of our new home on Sunday, April 1st and we plan on painting that week.  The "Big" move will happen on Friday, April 6th.  Maybe we will have a few boxes unpacked before the Easter bunny arrives?! 

Saturday, March 17, 2012

Little Bunny Foo-Foos

Testing out our bunny ears a little early...

Sure do love this bunny!

This picture makes me laugh!  Same face!!! Huh?!

Pretty impossible to get all three kids to smile at once.  I'm just happy they all still have their ears on! 

So over these ears...

Looking forward to pics with real Easter bunnies this weekend!!!

Life in February...

February gave our family another run for our money!  We had eye infections, stomach bugs, and strep throat! 
 Why do my kids love to put things on their heads?!  Loey had a pretzel stuck in her hair the whole meal.   (Excuse her swollen eyes...eye infection!!!  Loey had it for 2 days, Tucker for a week and Graham for a week.  I hope I NEVER have to put eye drops in Graham's eyes again. That was rough.  Tucker could have cared less.  That tells you a little bit about their personalities!)  Also, Loey is now growing in "Chris Farley" hair.  Oh well, at least she has some hair!!!

Loey is a lounger.  She loves to sit on couches and chairs and just relax. She's a snuggler and I love holding my girl. 

Killing two birds with one stone...teeth getting brushed while taking a bath.  =) 

 Unfortunately, February brought some heartache for our family. My sweet Granny passed away on my Grandad's birthday, Feb. 16th.  We got a call on Valentine's Day that Granny was starting to pass and so our whole family got to say our goodbye's to her.  I loved my Granny so much, but I am grateful she is now in heaven and not suffering from Supranuclear Palsy anymore.  The one benefit of Granny's death was getting to see family.  Above is my sister Becky and her husband Jason.

 The night family came in for the funeral, we got together to watch home videos of Granny and we stayed up until 10:00pm with all the kids! 
We brought the walker over for Tucker to push around.  Tucker loves walking around with the walker.  He started walking for real on February 26th!  He just took off that day!  He is a pretty adorable walker...like a little stick man.  =)  Even though he running around now, he still enjoys racing through the house pushing his walker.

My brother in law got free tickets to see Lady Antebellum and gave them to my mother in law and I!  We had so much fun going to see Darius Rucker and Lady Antebellum.  It really was a great concert!  I felt pretty cruddy bc of strep throat and sinus infection, but there was no way I was going to miss out!!!


Graham is enjoying the jets working in our tub again!  BUBBLES!!!!!!!!!!!!

As I mentioned in the last post, Graham has been struggling with sharing with the twins lately.  SO, I decided to enroll him in a jumpstart preschool program to give him something special just for him.  He was SO ready!  He absolutely loves school! He goes 2 days a week for 3 hours at a time.  It gives me some much needed alone time with the twins.  Everyone wins! 

Thursday, March 15, 2012

Alive and Well!

OH. MY. WORD.  Considering my last blog post was in JANUARY, I guess you could say we've been pretty busy the past few months.   Here are just a few pics to prove that my children were alive in January and February!!!
 
 Loey and Tucker are getting SO big and SO much fun!  I admit that the first year of life for the twins was a year of complete survival for me.  To be very real...It was the hardest year of my life so far, but oh so worth the work!  Now I have two adorable, very different, toddlers who keep me hopping.  Not to mention a very grown up, three year old who tests me daily!!! 
 When Graham is gone, the babies enjoy a few moments with the "big boy" toys!  We have had a lot of trouble with Graham being willing to share his things with the babies lately.  Poor Graham did has his world rocked by the twins, and I know he loves them, but sometimes he can be pretty rough and angry.  We are working on learning how to play with the babies and not antagonize them.  Having a 3 year old and 2 one year olds brings many challenges! 
 Here you go Mama!  Loey is a collector.  She loves to find 2 or 3 items that go together and carry them around for a while.  For instance, she wanted to carry 2 K-cups (for the Keurig machine) while we ran errands the other day.  So funny. 
 Loey's cute attempt at peek a boo on her own. =)  Loey is a growing girl!  So solid and built like Graham.  She's a strong girl and oh, so flexible! 

Tucker doing his typical hair pull!  At least he doesn't have any food in his hand this time.  =)  Tucker is still very lean and light.  His body build is completely opposite of Loey!  They couldn't be more different physically or in personality.  He is such a "boy".  He is quiet and mostly easy going. He's the one playing by himself and examining each item in the trashcan after tp-ing the bathroom with the toilet paper roll. Tucker seems to be very smart and mechanical!  He is a thinker and is very good at figuring out how to work things.  He wants to be an adult.  He LOVES utensils, brushes, anything that has a purpose.  He works hard until he accomplishes whatever he wants to do. 


Loey began to take her first steps in early February!  13 months old

 Graham "helping" Loey take steps.  =)

 So much fun!  Walking has made Loey so much happier!  She loves freedom!  People always ask me if it's been easier or harder having them be walkers now. I LOVE IT!  Just think about getting 3 kids to the car...Now I can say, "Come on babies!  Follow me!"  Beautiful.  =) 

Below are our Valentine's Day pics.  Let's just say Valentine's Day didn't work out exactly as I had pictured in my mind.

Nice...quiet evening in the dining room with china, a candle, a table cloth and wine glasses for our juice!
We got off on the wrong foot. Babies were SO hungry and crying as I rushed to get the food on the table while still hot.  Graham ate his heart jello before I could get a picture and preceded to drop it. 

Graham did ok drinking from the wine glass, but Adam was a little skeptical of my choices.  Hey, we NEVER use our china!


Oh Loey...it's not fancy to spit your food everywhere sweetheart. 

It's also not fancy of Tucker to pull the table cloth and scoot the green beans close to the candle and being to melt the nylon spoon. It wasn't too great when I then grabbed the melting plastic spoon and it adhered itself to my skin!  OUCH!  Not a happy moment. 

Smart parents would have blown out the candle.  We are not smart.  Tucker pulls the table cloth AGAIN and this time the handle of the spoon catches on FIRE!  I start yelling and Adam and I blow it out while Adam runs the spoon to the door and chucks it out our front door.  HAHAHAHAHA 

 Evidence of the spoon..you can't seem the melted part, but there is a bit missing from the top that was attached to my poor finger. 
Happy Valentine's Day!  ;)  Romance at it's finest with the Hubert Five!