One Week Update

It's been a week of late nights and steady progress on the new house! There haven't been too many exciting updates to post because it has been mostly small projects leading up to some big projects but we're getting there! 

The closet and Door were framed and carpet was removed from the boys room:

                                                     Boys played and played and played!

The fireplace was removed and the hearth was taken back.  Someone came and took the fireplace:

                                                The mermaid princess room was painted!

There were wide gapes in the railing on the stairwell so we (meaning the men) recycled the railing off of the loft and added them to the stairwell to make it safer for the kids!

The downstairs bathroom was painted (twice!) 

Here's to another week of good progress!

Wall Raising!

While the littles (and I) were doing lots of this:

The big folk were doing this:  

We have a framed bedroom for the boys!  My role in all of this is not nearly as exciting as everyone else's since I am spending my day doing what I do everyday - watching kids.  But someone has to do it right?

And since my in-laws read this (who I imagine are feeling a bit on the tired side right now) I want to take a second and say how much we appreciate all they do for us.  They are literally always there when we need them and his home project is no different!  This is the 3rd home we have purchased and just like every time before they are right there alongside us pulling late nights and doing back breaking work!  I've been blessed with some pretty great in-laws which I know not everyone can say :)

Still lots of work to come so stay tuned!

Home Sweet Home

So, remember back a little bit ago we, kind of spur of the moment decided to put our house on the market and begin looking for our new "dream" house?  And remember how I said this was going to be our calm year way back in December?  Yeah, so that pretty much isn't going to happen!

So, back in January we began dreaming of a bigger house.  We have a pretty tight budget and lots of big dreams! This will be our 3rd home and we're ready to be in our "forever" house now where we can stay put for the long haul! Our main criteria was that it needed to have 2 living spaces, a big yard, ideally be around or bigger than 2500 sq ft, have a nice master, and the big kicker - it needed to have 5 bedrooms!  Add all of that together and we're looking at a pretty lofty goal especially in the area we live.  

We kind of felt like we were looking for the impossible and had been highly considering the option of building, but that has added costs of its own factored in so we weren't sure how it all was going to work.  Well, then everything fell into place and here we are today getting keys on this AMAZING and lovely home that met every single one of the criteria we were looking for  - how incredible is that?!?  We have been truly blessed!  And as an added bonus Grandpa and Grandma literally live in the backyard.  The kids are already loving that feature!  

So, as projects carry on and we dig in to the nitty gritty of making this house our own, you will be seeing some new updates.  Pretty much the only room NOT getting renovated is the kitchen so here's a glimpse of that for you!  The more time I spend in the house, I love it even more!  This kitchen is huge compared to what I have now and I know I am going to love working in it!  

The first assignment for the man folk of the family is turning this beauty of an office/loft into what will become a 5th bedroom. This will become Malachi and Eli's room!

The room actually had some really nice built-in shelves and such and the guys can certainly vouch for how well they were installed :)  We hope to reuse at least the book shelves, unfortunately they just won't work in this space.

It was very difficult to entertain the boys on this first night but movies worked well for Malachi!

Nothing like learning you'll need to replace some carpet. Have to love those unexpected "treats"!

                                                      Insert Aflack advertisement here:

                                          No post is complete without a photo of the princess :)

                                                 Yep, it's not coming down without a fight!

                                                        Every job must have an audience!

       Eli was so cute watching them work. He kept saying "oh no" and was very concerned about them breaking the house!

                                        And they got it done!  Now to put it back together again!

It was a late night and we all know there are many more long days and late nights ahead.  But we are also very excited.  This house has exceeded our expectations and will be an amazing house for our family to grow up in!  We're blessed!

11 Months

Yep, she really is already 11 months old!  Time sure does fly when you're having fun (or a super busy mom!)

This gorgeous girl still delights our lives!  Nothing has changed there.  She's still the sweetest lil baby girl I have ever met and her cheeks are just too kissable. She's finally starting to grow some hair and it seems to be a light brown with some reddish tones in there too.  She also really looks like she is going to keep those blue/gray eyes!  Yay :)

Sabrina is now 18lbs 8 ounces so maintaining her position in that 10-25% for weight.  She is just now the weight that Malachi was when he came home at 3 months.  In general, she definitely has grown (and eats) way less than her brothers did!  She still mostly fits in 9 month size clothes but all of her spring stuff is 12 months so we've been pulling from there some too.  I really hope she will fit in all the 12-18 month summer stuff I got her.  Time will tell :)  We also recently bought her a first pair of walking shoes and she is in size 4!

She is definitely on the move now and is finally crawling the "normal" way.  She is also pulling herself up on anything and everything and loves us to walk her around the room!  I still think we probably have a couple of months before she will be walking but this whole stage makes me so nervous! Can't wait for her to get a bit more steady on those feet.

She is also very vocal!  She already knows a lot of words and tries (and succeeds) at mimicking a lot of the words we say.  This MUST be a girl thing!  She's going to be a chatty one :)

We are also still toothless.  I'm not at all surprised since Eli didn't get any teeth until after 12 months.  She actually looks like she has two teeth coming in but they are not her front top or bottom teeth so she just may be doing this whole teething thing out of order.

She is also almost exclusively on people food now! All of the kids have been pretty easy to get off the bottle by 12 months.  She is now only drinking one bottle per day and that bottle comes at bedtime. Otherwise, she wants whatever her brothers are eating!  She is also almost completely transitioned to whole milk.  She's pretty much eating anything and everything these days.  Big girl!

Gosh, baby girl. I really can't believe that here we are on the brink of your very first birthday already. This year has gone too fast for me.  Hard to believe that one year ago I was huge and so uncomfortable as your little foot was always digging in to my ribs.  We were on baby watch and had no idea how long it would be before you made your appearance and I was completely shocked that we had to serve you an eviction notice when we did!  And now, here you are such a big girl.  We love you more than words can say!  You are perfect in every way!

Shamrock Run!

Well, I have "officially" completed my first real race!  We did the color run back in September but I was sick and it was definitely more of a walk than a run for the masses!  

So it was up bright and early to make Peter's early start for his 15K!  It was a pretty darn cold morning for all of us!  But before long it was time for him to go run run run!

The boys spent the night at Grandma Fair's but miss Bina got to tag along and be part of the early cold morning cheer squad!

Unfortunately I didn't get to see Peter finish his race.  I had to get off to the starting line for my little 5K but the cheer squad got some good pictures of him :)  I was super proud of Peter because he is currently recovering from a knee injury but was still able to handle the tough hilly race and finish at an 8:15 MM pace!

After his race he came over to meet me and run mine with me, but unfortunately about a mile and a half in his knees just couldn't handle anymore and he had to stop and walk but he told me to keep pressing on. It was definitely not my best time and showed me where I had areas to work on but it is a starting place and I finished at an 11:00 MM pace.

We came and we finished and had a pretty good time. Races are definitely great motivation to keep at it!  Hopefully we will get another race scheduled for the spring and we will keep on training for our Disneyland Half Weekend in September!

Post 3 of of 30

Continuing on down this road of 30 posts for my children to know about me:

Today, I am to describe my relationship with your daddy to you.  My marriage with your daddy brings 3 words to my mind.

1)  Love
                For starters, I want you to know without a shadow of a doubt that I love your daddy with all of my heart!  He is the only person that I want to spend the rest of my life with.  I cannot imagine a moment of this life without him by my side.  Being married to to each other (for 6 1/2 years now) has been easy and felt like the most natural thing.  We prepared for marriage to be hard but it has not proven to be a challenge for us. Sure, we have disagreements and we get upset with each other, but those moments never last long.  Most of our time we are just happy to be together and when we're apart throughout the day, we can't wait until it is time to be together again.  We are in the truest form of love that I know.

3) Trust
        Being in true love also means being vulnerable.  To let go and love someone else, you have to trust that they won't hurt you.  Trust is such an important component to our relationship.  We are always 100% open with each others lives.  I share everything with your daddy and he shares everything with me.  We are constantly communicating with each other!  There are no private areas or secrets to be kept.  No hidden passwords on phones or computers.  Everything we have is open to the other person.  Not that this is at all a key to a trusting relationship, but these are a few examples of area's that we maintain trust with one another.  A good marriage is built on the foundation of 100% honesty and openness and vulnerability with one another.
               

2) Commitment
     On the other side of the circle of trust is a constant commitment to one another. If your daddy is putting his trust in me, than I have to stay committed with deserving that trust.  Relationships fall apart when the commitment is broken which causes trust to fail.  Commitment comes in a lot of forms.  Not only do we have to stay committed and not stray in our relationship, but there are hundreds of ways we have committed to one another.  I have committed to being a stay at home mother. Which means we've had to make budget cuts and I can't stray from the commitment I made to watch my spending (I sure to like to shop!).  Your daddy is committed to providing for his family. That is just one of many, many examples I could have of various areas of commitment. Another little side area of our commitment I want to discuss is is our commitment to constantly work on and communicate in our marriage.  Since the day we decided we wanted to spend our life together, we have been committed to making our marriage the best it could be.  We try to communicate with one another constantly and work through any  disagreement as soon as possible.  We never want to find that place where marriage feels like work.  Sure, we've had our moments where it isn't all sunshine and unicorns but we always, without the road getting too difficult, work our way back to a very happy place together.

Even though we made the decision to get married at the very young age of 18, we prepared.  We never for a moment took the decision for granted. We knew that it was the biggest decision of our lives. There is so much more to a marriage than just being in love.  It takes a lot of trust and a constant commitment and maybe even some sacrifice here and there.  I already pray over all of you that you will make good choices and find a Godly spouse someday.  I can only hope and pray that your marriage is as satisfying and happy as ours is!