Home Sweet Home!!

We are finally moved and settled!  Well, for the most part anyways!  We have been here in the new house since the end of September and just love it!  There is so much more space to spread out.    We just love everything about it!  Which is good, because we picked everything out!  The boys love the space that they have and actually spend a lot more time playing with toys and such since they are so much more easily accessible.  Directly across the street is the neighborhood playground so that gets used a lot.  I love having it so close.  I can let them go over there while I am unloading groceries and such for a few minutes.  It is nothing to just go over there when we get home for 5-10 minutes.  I am really loving the new appliances as well!  But what we really love is how 'liveable' our house is.  It is just set up in a way that works so well for our family.  There were so many plans that we looked at that were gorgeous, but when you really got looking at them, they just didn't make sense for a growing family.
Moving all went pretty well and we got settled relatively quickly.  We still have a few things to get like a dining room table, and some occasional chairs and such, but they just will wait for a bit.  I am kind of burned out of spending money!  For a few weeks there it seemed like we were shelling out money left and right for furniture, TVs, blinds, etc.   Not to mention movers, storage units and stuff like that!  There is some decorating that could be done yet and the garage needs some attention yet, but we can fit both cars in, so I figure that is good for now!
We love the new neighborhood.  There are a ton of kids here.  Especially 3 year old boys!  I can't wait until next summer already when they are all playing at the park or the pool.

Besides the move, life still carried on this month!  The week of the move, we had some really sad news.  Our 12 year old kitty Martini had to be put down.  That was pretty awful for all of us.  We have never had to do anything like that before.  This past summer we knew he didn't look very well and was losing weight really fast.  We attributed it to his increasing age and the fact that he was stressed from moving.  But it got pretty bad so I took him to the vet to find out that his Kidneys were failing and it was pretty bad.  They said there was really nothing we could do at this point.  So we had to make the horrible decision to have him put down.  The kids took it much better then expected, but were still understandably sad.  They still ask questions alot and Easton thinks he is sleeping under our bed no matter how many times I tell him he is not coming home. 
Also a week after the move, Justin had to head out of town for work for a few days, but the boys and I managed to hold down the fort here at home.
We just finished up the flag football season for the year.  This year he moved up to the next age division and it was pretty obvious that our boys were less experienced in the age group!  But they still had fun and Justin loves to help out.  And they look pretty adorable in their NFL jerseys!
Halloween lasted a week around here as always.  We had parties at both schools, trick or treating at work, a subdivision party and then normal trick or treating! 
We are now getting anxious for the holidays!  I can't believe that it is almost Thanksgiving!  It is time to start decorating and shopping!!  The boys love everything about Christmas and the holidays, so it is hard not to get excited when you see them just light up with excitement!

(I have added pictures to the Moving and new house album and Fall 2012).

Moving…almost... and a huge THANK YOU to my mom!

The house is almost done, so it won’t be long now!!  We are getting very excited to start our lives back up.  We kind of feel like we have been on pause for the last few months. 

 The boys want to go by the house daily and are counting down the days until we move!  I really didn’t think they would get that into it, but it is major drama if they don’t get to see it everyday.  Easton hasn’t mentioned the old house in a long time and I honestly think he forgot about it.  Which means it will be like Christmas when we get our stuff back from storage!!

 We have learned that building a house is a full time job!  I can not tell you how much work I have missed making it to appointments to pick things out our get things scheduled.  Every decision had to get made and so it involves a lot of work.  It has been a fun process, but mentally exhausting.   I even got a phone call at work once involving a grout emergency in regards to the grout we picked out for our shower!  I didn’t know that grout could be an emergency, but apparently it can!    It is also amazing how fast the costs add up!  Everything has an extra cost, and its not cheap!  But, it is almost time to move into our dream house so it is all worth it!  The designers and such have been really impressed with what we have picked out and how it all came together and we found out they are going to take pictures of our house for the developments website! 

Justin and I (mostly me!) has been shopping a lot for stuff we need.  Its amazing how much stuff you need when you have twice as many bathrooms, etc!  We also sold a lot of our furniture when we moved out of the old house, so unless we want to sleep on an air mattress again and eat on the kitchen floor, we have more shopping to do!!  I just keeping adding to my list….my never ending list!

We are so very grateful to my mom for letting us stay with her these past few months.  We are eternally thankful.  I can not imagine having to live in an apartment or something while we were trying to build.  It has really helped us so we can pay all of the extra costs with new construction.  But it has also just been nice to be at her house for the boys.  Justin works a lot, so it is usually just me at home with them, and with mom at home, there is someone else to talk to and be with the kids.  I will miss always having an adult around for conversation.  I think Justin will miss the extra conversation as well.  Mom and him get along great and I think they really enjoyed each others company.  I know mom has really enjoyed watching Justin get so excited about the details of the house.   I know the boys (and I think mom too) are going to miss their goodnight and good morning hugs!   Luckily we will still be really close by so they can get snuggles whenever they want!     It has gone really well staying there.  Although, our nighttimes must be pretty comical.  Easton usually sleepwalks into our room sometime early morning.  Mom and Justin both get up in the middle of the night and usually go downstairs and eat.  Sometimes they have even ran into each other in the kitchen in the middle of the night! Wouldn’t you love to be a fly on the wall and just observe!!   But, overall, we have had plenty of space and I think has been enjoyable for everyone.    It will definitely be quieter there without us and I am sure she is ready to get rid of our piles of stuff have her kitchen and washer and dryer back!  I think her appliances have run more in the last few months then the entire time she lived there before!

Looking forward to the next chapter….!

Summer 2012 recap

This past summer has been kind of interesting with building the house and such and the 110 degree temps that we had.  The weather made it difficult to do much of anything fun outside.  We did manage some fun time at the pool!  Payton is a natural fish in the water and Easton just loves to jump in, over and over and over!  Payton also did tennis this summer as well.  I think next year we will start getting Easton in sports too.  He seems to really enjoy playing with any kind of ball.

We also made it to Iowa for our annual 4^th of July trip.  This trip means a lot to me.  I realized this year that going up for this is good for my soul.  We love our lives here in Kansas, but I think it is important to go back and remember and embrace where you are from.  It is great to see family and very dear friends who were there when you grew up and were there when you became you.  They know the story of your life and know your history and the triumphs and tragedys that make you who you are.  We look forward to this trip every year and it is always great to see everyone.  This year we added a little additional side trip to go to Maquoketa Caves.   It was great!  We plan on doing that again, but next time being more prepared in the way of clothes and shoes!!

At the end of summer, school started back up and Payton became a 2^nd grader!  He is loving it, which is not really a surprise.  He has become quite the bookworm and usually has 2 books going at a time.  We brought a ton of chapter books with us to Grandmas this summer and the rest went to storage thinking we would have plenty before we moved, but we had to make some book store runs to get some more!  Easton is in preschool now and loves to try and write his name and practice cutting and tracing.

Football has started up, so now we are busy on Friday nights and Saturday mornings with that.  Justin is helping coach again and I think he enjoys it more then the kids do. 

(I added new pictures to the Summer, Back to School and Moving albums)

Upates

There has been so much going on lately that I have added lots of new blogs and 4 new albums! Scroll down to see all of the blogs.

Summer 2012

Since we really don’t have a house to maintain this summer we are planning on having lots of fun with the kids.  The last few months (really since the house went on the market in Feb), were not so fun for them.  We started off memorial day weekend by staying down at crown center and going to a kids music festival.  We then hit the new LEGOLAND and aquarium.  As you can imagine, LEGOLAND was a huge hit for our family!  I have learned that I think I like Legos as much as the kids and I cant wait to do them either!!   Then on Sunday night we headed across the street for Celebration on the Station which is fireworks and music by the KC Symphony.  All in all a great weekend.

Payton also just got done with Invention Camp this summer.  This was his second year and I think he loved it as much as last year!  They got to take apart things and see how they worked, make inventions with recycled items and make a town called Magnetropolis that was powered by magnets and electricity!

Easton just moved up to the 3 year old room at day care so he feels like a big boy now and he likes having Payton at his school over the summer.  Payton has gone on a ton of field trips already!  They went to the zoo, swimming twice a week, movies, TBones baseball game and all kinds of fun stuff!

MOVING!!!

We moved!  Well, sort of.  We are kind of in between moves right now! 

As I am sure everyone knows(and is probably way sick of hearing about!), we have been wanting to move for years and pretty much actively looking to move for 2 years now.  Even last spring we got preapproved for a home loan and thought we were ready to go. But when it came down to it, we just were not ready to make the leap.  (We dearly loved our old house, but our family needed more space, and the open layout was great when the kids are little, but as they get older, probably not so much!)  But in the meantime we had gone though tons of model homes to figure out exactly what we want.  (Since we have been doing this for 2 years, you can bet we are pretty specific about what we want now!!)  So, this past fall/winter we decided it was time to pull the trigger and finally do it.  Well, then it was close to the holidays and having the house show ready over the holidays didn’t sound that much fun! 

 Right after the first of the year we got a storage unit and decluttered a bit and put a bunch of stuff in storage.  One of the main reasons we were moving is that we were busting at the seams of our house…and it showed!  So, we got it looking spiffy and got it on the market.  It looked so good then I would have bought it!  Apparently I did a good of getting it ready because the the stagers showed up they said we didn't need to change anything!

If you have ever had the house on the market with kids, you know how much not fun it is!  I literally vacuumed almost nightly and shampooed carpets weekly!  (I still work full time as well).  The main inconvenience though was over half of our 4-6 showings a week were anywhere from 15-30 minutes notice!  We spent a lot of time eating out or at my moms house!  Luckily the house sold in 43 days and closed 40 days later, which I guess is relatively quick these days, but it got old, quick!  During this time we were going through the process of finding a new home.  We already knew we were going to build, so we had to find a subdivision and a house we wanted!  We were really having internal struggles on deciding what we wanted (that also fit in the budget).   We really thought we had one picked out, but the more we looked at it closely, we realized that parts of it didn’t really work for our family.  Our goal of this house is so that our family can grow into it.  We didn’t want to be in the same position in a few years where we were running out of space.  The other house looked great, but we started looking closer, we realized that there really wasn’t that much storage, and the pantry wasn’t that great.  And while the master closet was amazing and had more room then we could probably ever need (and that is alot!), the kids rooms were really small.    We kept looking and decided that we need to find one that not just wowed us, but first prioriy was that it ‘worked’ for our family and how we lived.  I think what we found does both!    Then, we found  a subdivision that is almost right across from the school and has awesome ammenities!  It is only a  few blocks from our old house.   We are SO VERY EXCITED!    The fun part is starting now and getting ready to pick everything out.  Do you know we get to decide which way every single door swings?!  How crazy is that!  I never dreamed we would be that involved!

So, since the house sold and closed in May, and the new house not done until late summer, we were homeless! We had started looking into apartments when my mom kept offering for us to stay with her.  I called her up one night and said, I know you are being nice, but are you 100% sure you want us there. Really think about what that means.  It means giving up your quiet house and having a little chaos for a few months!  Then I talked to Justin and basically left it up to him.  He was all for it and thought it was a good idea!  So, we all moved in with mom!   And it has gone great!    We have plenty of room and the kids love it!  (And I think mom enjoys having us (who am I kidding, having the boys, there!)  It has given us a chance to relax a bit from all of the stress of moving and such and just enjoy the summer.    Easton has been a bit confused since the move.  He isn’t sad, but sometimes he will ask why we are not going to his house.   The move didn’t seem to faze Payton at all.  He was a huge help on moving day and is really excited for his new room and yard.   They love to run around the dirt piles at the new lot. 

The packing and the move itself were pretty stressful.  I think I literally lost it a few times.  Justin was working, a LOT.  So I literally packed every single box we had, except 1!    It was a lot of very late nights of packing!!  I also had to decide with everything, was it going in storage, or did we need it the next few months.  At the end we were sleeping on an air mattress, eatting on the floor with paper plates!  Looking back now though, it was kind of fun! 

We also had the dilemma of what to do with all of our stuff!   We got portable storage units (3 total) that are filled with our belongings and they will be delivered to the new house.  They are currently in a warehouse.  We hired movers to move all of the furniture into them and will have movers help unload them on the back end when we move into the new house.   

I will add new pictures as the build goes along to see the stages of the new house!

Easton turns 3!!

My feisty little red head is now 3!!  It seems like now that he is 3, overnight he just became a big boy!

Interesting 3 facts about Easton:

1.        He now has 3 freckles on his nose (which he calls pretzels!)

2.       The numbers from when he was born are all divisible by 3.  6-9-9, and the numbers of his 3rd birthday all increase by 3.  6-9-12

3.       He has had 3 surgeries in 3 years!

4.       He is  33 pounds!

He also still adores his big brother (but now fights with him a lot as well!).  He has started actually calling him Payton.  But he will usually start out still calling him P-P.  It usually goes like this when trying to get his attention, P….P.…P-P, Payton!

Easton pretty much chatters non-stop.  He can and will do anything that the bigger kids are doing.  Right now he is really into coloring and building blocks.   He still has the funniest personality and tells people that he is silly.

This year for his birthday, we decided that instead of doing a big party, we were just going to go to a park and play.   There has been so much going on with the move that we thought simple was better. Justin thought we could just skip a party, which I told him he was just crazy!  Birthdays are special and need to be treated so!   So we had sort of a mini party at a local park and it worked out great.  Easton is really into Little Einsteins right now, so we did a Little Einsteins themed cake, etc.  Then on Sunday, the 4 of us went to Schiltterbaun waterpark for a day of fun!  I think he had a good time and he has told me numerous times that he really likes birthday cake!  I think that boy has a sweet tooth!  So the opposite of his health nut brother!!

Spring 2012 and end of school year fun!

Payton is now a second grader!  The end of the school year is always busy with fun end of year activities.  This year we had a huge fundraiser that I volunteered on, for the school and it was a family walk a thon and silent auction.  It was a huge success and I think the families ha d a good time.  The end of the year also brought Grandparents day and the book fair.  So grandma got to go and have lunch with Payton and then he talked her into getting him some more books.  He is a pretty good negotiator like that!  The last week of school is filled with awards ceremonies, field days and last day of school parties!  Not sure much learning gets done that week!  (Or work for that matter as parents go to a lot of these activites!!)

Spring also brought on another season of soccer.  Paytons team went undefeated this year!  He played the same league that he did for football and really enjoyed it.  He has improved a lot the last year or so.  As soon as soccer was over, he started tennis, which runs pretty much up until football season.  So, there go all of our weekends until about November!   He is still doing swimming weekly and loves it.  It is the one sport that he would do all day, everyday if you let him.  I probably need to start looking into swim teams, but there is a much larger time commitment and I am just not sure if we (meaning me) is ready for all of that yet!

Yes...We are alive and doing well!!

I have completely neglected our blog lately. I have tried to sit down and update it… I really have! But every time I get in front of the computer, there is usually a stack of bills or work that take priority over it.
The last few months for us have been extremely busy, but in a good way. (Well, mostly good. I have been very busy at work lately. We are in the middle of a large conversion and it is keeping us working a lot. There are many nights that I am logging in from home and working after the kids go to bed.) But, besides that, the kids activities and school (holiday parties, book fairs, PTO meetings, football, swimming…etc…etc…!) is keeping us on our toes. Especially close to the holidays. Justin also works a ton around the holidays. Working retail, that is to be expected. He refers to me as a retail widow from about the beginning of November until January 1! This year was especially crazy, because he switched stores in September and got the job of Store Manager in December. We are so excited for him! After all of the many years of working towards it, he finally has his own store. Somewhere during this time, we all got sick as well. That just added to the craziness!
The only time I get to myself to get things done are between the hours of about 10pm and 1-2am. (It is 12:47am right now…See what I mean!). So, the little bit of time that I would have had to update the blog, I decided that sleep sounded like a better idea. Yes, that is correct…I choose sleep! I have tried to catch up the last few months in a few different posts below…so they may be a bit rambled as I try and remember what we all did!

We had a great 2011 filled with lots of fun memories. I am excited for what 2012 has to bring for our family!

Christmas festivities!

This year was filled with tons of fun holiday activities! I think the highlight was Paytons school musical. Each year the Kindergarten and 1st grade classes do a winter musical. This year it was called the Littlest Christmas Tree. It is mostly singing, but there are some speaking parts as well. The kids try out during class and Payton got the lead role of Santa Claus! We were so proud of him! The other speaking parts had one or two lines and he had 10 that he had to memorize. We worked hard and practiced almost every day! He looked so adorable in his costume! They all did so good and we were so proud of him! I think at the end of the musical, my sister, my mom and myself were all crying! (Shocking, I know!)
In November my mom and I took the kids to Branson for the weekend to go to the Old Time Christmas at Silver Dollar City. I have never been to Branson, (not that I remember at least, apparently I went as a child). But, it was a really pretty area and I am sure it would be a lot of fun in the summer! The Christmas lights and parade at Silver Dollar City were so neat. We booked a lunch with Santa and that was a big hit for the boys. Unfortunately, with Justin working mandatory weekends during the holidays, he didn’t get to go with us.
One of the other fun things we did was go on a hayrack ride through our neighborhood! Our subdivision puts it on every year. Santa was there and they had a hot chocolate bar!
We had a really great Christmas this year. The boys are so into everything Christmas related. Easton loves the lights and trees and Payton is all about Santa. Easton really got it this year that Santa was coming to his house. If you asked him what he wanted he would say, Choo Choo, Elmo, both! On Christmas Eve we were tracking Santa on TV and Payton was so into it! He had to find a globe so he could figure out exactly where they were talking about! It was so fun that the boys were so into everything. It really makes the holidays so special. After we did our thing on Christmas morning, we went over to my moms and celebrated over there as well. I was worried that the boys would not last as they were up late on Christmas eve and then the long day on Christmas, but they did great! I was actually really impressed with both of them. Especially Easton, I was sure that he was going to be tearing into presents and such, but he always waited his turn and did so good!

Payton is 7!!

Payton turned 7! Seven seems like such a big number! It seems so much older then 6 for some reason. So hard to believe that my first baby is 7! Payton continues to amaze me on how bright, sweet, sensitive and caring he is. He is a wonderful student and is a great big brother. We could not be more proud of him. This past year he has really changed. He has gotten over being shy and is the student counsel representative for his class. He pretty much loves everything about school. He has gotten much more into sports and loved playing football (especially when he was playing quarterback) and enjoys swimming.
On the day before his actual birthday, I went had had lunch with him at school. Eating lunch with a bunch of elementary school students is always very entertaining! For his birthday we decided to go with an astronomy theme. He likes to study the planets so it seemed fitting. We just had some local family over to the house and ate and had cake and he opened presents. Most of the gifts he got from us where space themed. He really likes a moon that we hung on the wall that he can change to the different phases. On the day after his birthday, to celebrate some more, we took him and a friend of his to Incredibowl to go bowling, play miniature golf and laser tag. They had a great time! Overall all I think he had a great time turning 7!!

Fall 2011

Our fall was pretty much filled up with football. Mostly Payton, but Justin and I managed to make a very quick trip to Iowa City to catch a Hawkeye game! (By very quick, I mean we left at 10, right after Paytons morning flag football game. Drove 5 hours to Iowa City, checked into the hotel, changed, and walked up to the stadium with enough time to walk around a bit before the 6pm game. Then drove back the next morning!) That’s okay though, we had a great time!
The rest of our Fridays were filled with practice for Payton and games on Saturdays. We were actually really sad when the season was over. The boys got along great and we really enjoyed the other families. (It was nice though to have Saturday mornings back!) At the end of the season, Paytons team made it to the Championship game. They ended up getting second place! We were so proud of them! None of the boys had ever played before and they improved dramatically from the beginning of the season. Payton usually played quarterback so he didn’t get to score that much, but he did make a couple of touchdowns the last few games. And, yes, I cried! Football also carried through to Halloween! Easton dressed up like an Iowa football player and Payton was a referee! Payton also wanted to be a vampire though, so he did that one for trick or treating! (I wasn’t so sure about that one for school, so we played it safe at school and did the ref costume there!)