Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Family Vacation, July 2012

In the midst of our move and getting settled here at the new house, we took a week long family vacation! Haha - wouldn't you?! We knew that with taking the kids, we wanted to go somewhere close, so we traded our timeshare in at the Silverleaf Villages Resort on Lake Palestine, just outside of Tyler, TX. Here are some pictures of our week! Don't laugh, they are all with my cell phone because in the stress of packing for a week long vacation before we even got our house unpacked, I totally forgot our good camera. Oops! Thank goodness for our half-descent cameras on our phones, or we would have ZERO pictures to remember our first vacation as a family of 4 by!!

We spent LOTS of time at the pool. Each pool had such a great kid area with a beach style entry, which was perfect for Ella! 
 Nana, Grandad and Uncle Andrew came out and spent one day with us. Fun!





 The only picture of the 4 of us from the whole trip :)
 Big girl walking around in the water
 HA! Carter grabbed my hat when we were getting the kids ready for a bath, and this just cracked me up! 
 Day 1 - white booty! 
 Snack time poolside....
 Ella eating, AGAIN. She was a little piglet this trip!
 Exploring at the second pool. These pools were nearly empty in the mornings. So perfect!! 

 Eric inflating the world's smallest beach ball! 
 We rented a pontoon boat for a half day... Carter was on cloud 9!
 First time on a boat for this girl... and she isn't loving the life jacket!
 My two handsome guys :)

 Check out Carter's hook 'em..... HA!

 We filled a baby pool on the floor of the boat.... best idea ever for Ella! 




 Dinner on the boat!

 Naked baby!
 Mini golf at the resort.... Carter got not one, but TWO holes in one!! Impressive! He may or may not have had a little help from Daddy ;)
 Ella slept great in her pack and play, so grateful for that! 
 Carter and Eric took a paddle boat out on the lake. 


 They came back to the dock all sweaty, and Eric's legs were hurting..... ha! 

Great accommodations, great time away from everything, and great first family vacation for the 4 of us! 

Monday, July 23, 2012

Out with the Old, In with the New!

I feel like I'm sooooo behind on what our family has been up to lately, and I'm so glad to finally be able to sit down and write this post. As you know, we had our two closings and our move scheduled for Friday July 6th. Wellllllll, that didn't exactly go as planned. Long story short, our buyer's lender messed it all up! Fortunately we were able to go ahead and move into the new house on the 6th, but didn't actually get to close on either properties until Tuesday the 10th. To say that was a stressful and emotional 4 days would be a giant understatement. I was afraid my worst nightmare of all of it falling through AFTER we had moved forcing us to move back was going to come true. But thankfully, that did not happen, and we are now feeling pretty settled in the new place.  Thanks so much to our family that helped with the move itself and watching our kids, and to our agent, Deanna, and our loan officer, Jared, (who both also happen to be great friends) who helped to get us into this wonderful house! It was definitely a stressful and trying time for us, but you all helped tremendously, so thank you!

Sunday after the move, we took the kids back to the old house to say our goodbyes. I wasn't feeling particularly sad about the move at all until I started thinking about the kids leaving their rooms. For some reason, thinking of my tiny little babies sleeping in those rooms since birth got me all nostalgic, and made me a little sad about the memories we'd made there and leaving it all behind. I do know a lot lies ahead for our family in this new house, so I just try to remember that. Fortunately though, I can say there is not one other thing about that house I was sad to leave behind, so it wasn't horrible to say goodbye once I was able to get past their rooms.  

Bye-bye babies' rooms!



Now, a tour of the new house! It's taken a few weeks, but we're mostly settled now, so I finally have taken some pictures and feel like I can share them without it seeming like a total disaster! :)

Welcome! :)
 Front porch
 LOVE the front door!
 View from the front door. The office is to the right and the formal dining is to your left as you come in the door, neither of which are in any state to be photographed ;) Straight ahead is the living room, a bathroom on the right, and a closet under the stairs. The opening across from the stairs is a hallway to the master. 
Hallway to the master, including a built in desk and a butlers pantry/bar area that leads to the formal dining.
 View into the dining room
 Master and bathroom
 Other side of the master
 And the side patio that is just off the master. The little window peeks into the kitchen, and the window up high is the guest room. 
 View into the kitchen from the living room
 Living room 
 View of the living room and kitchen from the doorway to the garage.
High ceilings, catwalk above, and playroom over kitchen
 Backyard from driveway
 Backyard and driveway from the side yard
 View from the top of the stairs. Turn left to go to the bedrooms, right to the playroom and media room.
 Playroom 
 .... other side.
 Media Room
 Then to the bedrooms, view from the doorway of Carter's room
 other side
 View of huge closet (so big it has it's own window!) and into the kid's shared bathroom. Ella's room (see the crib?) is just through the bathroom. 
 Ella's room from doorway. Bathroom to the left, closet on the wall not pictured.

 Also, there is a guest room next door to Ella's room with a giant walk in closet and another bathroom next door. Again, not in any condition to be photographed, but we'll get there! On our list of things to do right away (in the next 1-2 weeks) is get all tile and grout cleaned as well as replacing the carpet! Can't wait until that is done!! 

Anyway, we're definitely feeling more at home every day, and loving being closer to things! We've met a few neighbors, and everyone has been so nice and welcoming! We know we'll be really happy here for a long time! And we hope to have all our friends and family over VERY soon! :)

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Carter Swimming

Carter finished his June swim lessons last week, and I wanted to share a few videos of his progress!

I am so proud of how Carter has really come out of his shell in the water so far this year. He has gotten so much more brave, and I'm proud to say he has really developed some true swimming skills! He's pretty proud of himself, too!

Here he is a few weeks ago jumping in and swimming to the wall during his lesson with Coach Stephanie

And here he is fetching a little toy that she has placed at the bottom of the pool. He has to open his eyes and and go down to find it. 

He also had a lot of fun jumping off the diving board to Daddy on the 4th of July! 

I'm so proud of how far he's come in only one month!! Can't wait to see him improve even more over the summer!

Thursday, July 5, 2012

4th of July, 2012

We had a really fun 4th this year!

We started by having some fun with fireworks at home on Tuesday night. We let Carter stay up late so we could play with them in the dark. This is the last time we'll be able to do fireworks in the backyard, since we're moving out of the boonies this weekend! :) 

He loved the colored smoke bombs!
 And of course, the sparklers! (which he kept calling "sprinklers!")

Then on Wednesday we headed over and spent some time with our family friends, the Warricks and the Pattersons. Carter and Daddy swam with the other kids, and Ella and Mommy sat and chatted with the rest of the ladies. It was a fun morning! 

Here are the kids in their very festive and patriotic outfits! 
(Forgive the bad quality of all these pics - they are from my cell phone!)


After long naps from each of the kiddos, we met our friends, the Byrums, for dinner and fireworks! 

Here are my two little loves playing before the fireworks start! 
Glad I ran to Walmart and snagged these adorable little chairs..... they were a hit! 
 Soooooo excited! 





Amanda snapped this picture of all 4 of us, and look - everyone is smiling!! 
(and no one's face is blurred - HA!)


The kids were up waaaaaay past their bedtime! We weren't sure if we would even last until the fireworks started, but they both did great! Once they got going, Ella just relaxed in my lap holding her lovey, stared into the sky, and didn't move a muscle for almost 15 minutes!! She loved it. And of course, so did Carter and Ava! 

This little girl was beyond pooped!! She fell asleep in the car before we could even get out of the very backed up parking lot!! Carter, on the other hand, refused to go to sleep on the way home, and therefore was up until well past 11!

What a fun day we had! I hope all of you enjoyed your day with your family and friends celebrating our wonderful country and our freedom!!