So golden

Today is my golden birthday. 

Finally. 

I've been waiting my whole life and am as old as I can possibly be with a golden birthday. ;)

My very best birthday present: 

getting Christian home tomorrow! 

I've been having a strong desire to have all my little family home under my wing and to get back to our beloved schedule! 

I'm done with this summer. 

Yes, done.

I was gonna make this post longer and more meaningful, but like I said, I'm done. 

Too tired.

And it is my birthday, after all!

So this post can be as short and meaningless as I please!

Home tour, anyone?

Our house still need a lot of work and a lot more "stuff" but I've had lots of requests to see our house. And I got to thinking that progress photos are kinda fun. So here is the progress we've made so far. We finally got shutters for our windows. Plantation shutters up front and plantation blinds in the back.

The family room looks so bare in these shots! I'm looking for just the right fabric to make curtains and then we'll make pillows that match the curtains. You know you love those wires coming out of the tv, huh?! Like I said, work in progress. :)

The attached tiny dining room, which is also attached to the kitchen.

My favorite. My kitchen. :)

Another view...
oh and I love having a pantry! First one I've ever had!

The formal living room. The lighting on most of these pics is terrible! Sorry! This room is such an odd shape, I've moved all the furniture at least 5 times. I even had a neighbor come over to help! It's just weird.

I never thought I'd like a formal living room, but I actually kinda like ours.
It's quiet and peaceful.

View from the front door. I still need to hang pictures here too.
Sigh. So much to do.

So here's a funny for ya. We worked feverishly to get all the walls painted before our blinds got installed. Anyways, in the formal dining room I only wanted the bottom part painted. Well, Christian didn't get the memo. So he comes in for his turn to paint and slops this lovely mess on the top. I about passed out! But now I think it's kinda funny. I still need to fix it though.

Formal dining room.
All of our rooms look so bare! Maybe this will be my motivation. :)

View out the front door.

And down the street.

And down the other way. Look at all that wide open space, just ready to be built upon.
And good old Tallulah-Belle. She's our Camry. She was born in Washington and has moved with us all over the country. 3 times. She's a good girl.

Back of the house.
That huge window over the sliding glass door is our Master bathroom. And it was bare for over a month! It was not fun trying to shower in there!

Our boring back yard. The garden is our neighbors. Notice everyone else's fun play things. We really need to get on the ball! And we will.
Behind the wooded area is where the old farm house is. They owned all the land in our development and sold it for something like $8 million. That's where the fireflies hang out.

Going down to the basement.

The basement/gym/playroom. You know you love the red rug and brown striped couch! We keep the rug down here so I can work out with my shoes on and in case Addie spills.

That's all for now. We love it. It's roomy enough for all of us (and maybe a couple more) and so homey. Now it's time for some progress. :)

A cat burglar she is not...

I don't think our little Addie would make a very good burglar. It would be pretty easy to tell she'd been to your house...

your food and drinks would be on the floor...

your toy boxes would be emptied... (onto the floor)

your tissues will be scattered... (all over the floor)

your diapers would be unloaded... (all over the floor)

and your kitchen chairs would all be pushed away from your table...

Mad burglary skills she does not have.
She's pretty cute though.
Even with egg all over her,
and yup,
you guessed it,
all over the floor.

Oh Joy!

One of my oldest (not like, age oldest, but like, length of time I've known her - 20 years in case you were wondering!) and best friends, Joy and her family came to visit us a few weeks after we moved in. There's no better motivation to unpack and get stuff together than visitors! And you know how we loooooove visitors!

The crazies drove all day from Galesburg, Illinois, which was a super long drive! The next day we had a full day planned in Washington DC. Matt had to work and silly Christian chose to go to school (can you believe that?!) but the girls and I had a fabulous time with them. Dante's brother lives in DC so he came and met us and acted as our tour guide. He also got us tickets to go up in the Washington Monument which was very cool!

Smithsonian

This little guy inspired a character in Night at the Museum 2, pretty cool!

Addie bonding with Joy, one of her favorite people!

You gotta do the self-portraits!

Up high in the Washington Monument

The next day we had planned to go to the beach for a birthday bbq for Alexis. We waited for Matt to get off work but of course just as he drove up the storm started rolling in. We went anyway and by the time we got there it looked like a hurricane was coming! We're not quitters though, so we got out the grill and the kids ran to the water, only to see this.

They were so sad! Can't you tell?! Even Addie's looking around like "what's going on?! let's get in the water!"

We tried to make the best of it but it just kept getting worse.
But isn't this an awesome pic?! Just look at that lightning!

Joy and Dante - aren't they a cute couple?! Back when I was single I always hoped of having a marriage as wonderful as Joys! And now I do!

When it started really raining we finally decided that it had gotten bad enough, put the grill away and raced to the cars.

The next morning they left, all bright and early. Even though it was a short visit it was super fun! I can't wait to do it again!
Love ya, Joy!
(and Dante, Ethan, and Andora!)

Happy Birthday Addie-cakes!

In the spirit of better-late-than-never, here are the long anticipated pictures from Addie's birthday. This year we chose to celebrate her birthday a day late so that Lexi could have the day to herself. I'm not sure how we'll do it in years to come, but for this year it worked.

And since we were still so new to town, we celebrated with just our little family. :)

So here she is opening her presents. She loves being the center of attention and loved being able to tear all that pretty paper!

"Oh man, harder than it looks!"

"No, for real, why is this so difficult!?"

"Awwww yea, now we're talking!"
Addie got her first potty!

And then decided she wanted to sit there and open the rest of her presents!
I'm not complaining, I let her sit on her potty as MUCH as she wants!

New crayons that went directly to her mouth.

The loot!

Both my mom and friend Kirsten sent cute music cards (and they both played "Girls just wanna have fun" - great minds think alike!) and Addie absolutely loved them! We had them in our play basket and she'd open them and dance! They just ran out of batteries last week. :( I think I might buy her a new one. :)

I got this idea for cake pictures off of her blog, she's got lots of great ideas!
So here was my variation...
First, singing happy birthday.
She liked that enough.

But then...
"You want me to do what???"

"Ummm, like this? I'm not sure if I like this..."

"Well, it tastes pretty good..."

"But I really don't like the way this feels!"

(One of my favorites!)
"It is pretty yummy!"

"Oh okay, your gonna clap for me, well I like that."

"Ohhh, my hands are all messy!"

"Icky!"

"I think I'm done!"

"No really, I don't want anymore, I'm done."

So that was the end of that. But I just didn't feel like I got the picture I really wanted. I just had such ideas in my head and I wasn't satisfied. Sooo, like all good mothers, I forced my daughter to try again. :)

First taste...

"Seriously, I have to do this again?!"

"It's kind of squishy fun..."

"Okay, let's get this away from me..."

"Well maybe that cherry is pretty cool..."

"K, all done!"

Then I took a couple shots that I almost didn't take, and they turned out to be some of my favorites!

Like this one...

And this cute one!

"Oh man, enough is enough! Please make me clean again!"

"I'm outta here!"

And the only slightly dented cake.

And it looks like we might have a little neat freak on our hands! Lately if anything drops in her high chair she will not eat until she has retrieved it!

And even though her birthday pics didn't go exactly as I planned (do they ever?!), I thought we got some cute ones.
And we'll try again next year.
Or with the next baby.

Who hopefully won't be as particularly particular as our little Addie-cakes.