We Moved

Sorry I've been out of the blog world lately but we have been preparing to move and man is it a lot of work (as I'm sure you all know!). It was definitely much more difficult this time...packing up a house instead of a condo. Good news is...we did it (see our new house above!). We had a few glitches but we think all our belongings are somewhere in a box in our new house so that's a start. Here are the hoops we had to jump through prior to or during the move:

1. negotiate on 15 points of contention after the inspection on our house

2. go to the emergency room at midnight the night before our big move to get my foot stitched up after I cut myself on a huge piece of glass, rendering me virtually useless during moving days (now for most people that would have been a blessing...for me the control freak...a nightmare!)

3. fight with the uhaul company after they lost one of our trucks the morning of our move
4. beg people to come help us move after our movers only stayed 2 hours and left us with a full truck and lots more stuff to move out

Luckily we had our friends and family to help out and we are in love with our house and our new neighborhood. Finding time to unpack with a 1 year old is a bit difficult and SLOW but we're working on it. The great thing is we love our neighbors! Almost the entire cul-de-sac has come by with various baked goods, wine, notes and welcome smiles...a drastic difference from our last neighborhood. We are looking forward to Friday night happy hours, block parties, and many little boys for Ty to play with. We couldn't be happier with our decision to move and are so thankful our house sold in this market. :)

Also...right before we moved I needed a day off packing and constantly thinking about the move. My mother-in-law and I took Tyler to the zoo and it was such a fabulous day. I truly enjoyed sharing Tyler's moments with Marcia and appreciated that she'd want to spend the day with us after she just got back from her 3 week honeymoon and was exhausted. Tyler loved the cat house the best as this is one of his new words and he was using it at every turn, pointing and saying "cat". He also loved the fish...as always (hence the fish-themed bday party) and monkey island where the monkeys swung and hooted. It was a lovely day!

Mimi and Ty enjoying the fishMonkey IslandTyler watching the monkeys
And Ty's morning activity...Mickey Mouse Clubhouse!

Update

Hi all! First of all congrats to the Graske family. They welcomed a baby boy to their family last week. Cole Anthony Graske is gorgeous and we are so excited for Becky, Cort and big sister Mia!

It's been hectic around here as of late, as is obvious in the lack of blogging. We are moving in 1 week and we finally feel comfortable saying...we're really moving! It's been a roller coaster with negotiations with the buyers of our home (that's a story for another day!) but we finally see the light at the end of the tunnel! We started packing last week thanks to my amazing mom who came in to babysit Tyler for 3 days while I chaperoned cheerleading camp (fun fun!). My mom is an animal...lighting a fire under my butt and finally getting me to tackle parts of my house I was dreading organizing and packing. We are now 3/4 of the way packed and feeling much better about things. Just a few public service announcements we've learned along the way 1. 1800gotjunk is the best, and totally worth the money. They took items we didn't know what the heck to do with. 2. never ever buy boxes! Mike went to Walmart 1 time and came back with over 30 great boxes for free! 3. get movers! Our progress and the endless pile of free boxes below!

In Tyler news...he's walking everywhere and getting much faster and harder to catch. He has learned how to slide down the stairs, but prefers going up to going down. Ty is saying a few new words and doing a few new signs. He says dog, cat and daddy (instead of his usual dada), and he's working on hi, bye and up. He now signs hi, bye, eat, and milk. We're still vigilant about using signs and hopefully they'll all catch on soon. Tyler claps and laughs constantly, he's one happy kid. He does have a severe case of the Mommys, and I spend the majority of the morning trying to peel him off my body and getting him to play. We are still doing water babies once a week, and he's getting really comfortable going underwater, putting his face in to blow "bubbles", kicking his feet, jumping off the side and floating on his back. He definitely enjoys the water, until he gets cold then we can't get him to do anything. He definitely has an end-point to his water fun. We now have 6 teeth; 2 on the bottom and 4 on the top. His teeth have really helped him be able to eat just about everything. We're working on using utensils right now and starting to transition from a bottle to a sippy with his whole milk (no more formula!). Ty also just recently moved up to size 4 diapers! He's grown a lot since his 1 year appointment, so we're looking foward to going back in a couple months to see what his progress has been. It's been fun being home with him and watching him change. We are looking forward to enjoying the park and the pool that are in our new neighborhood, along with using our zoo pass and Kings Island passes more when we get settled. Hope you are all well!

New pictures of our little toddler! He's still in love with his Buddy!

Movin' on up!

We found a house! I still can't believe it's happening. We threw our house on the market thinking there was only a small chance it would sell...and here we are! We were a bit under the gun, considering the buyers of our house wanted occupancy by the 30th of July. Mike took off the Monday after the 4th weekend so we could house hunt all day. We narrowed it down to the top three and went back to see them the next day, made a decision, and made an offer. We now have a great house in northern Mason, the same suburb we live in now. We went to the inspection last week and it really hit home that it was going to be ours and how excited and blessed we felt! We move in on July 28th and don't have one box packed. I guess we need to get going. It's been a heck of a June and July...but we can't wait to settle down for the rest of the summer in our beautiful new house! We'll post pictures once we get moved in!

4th of July

First of all...on a happy note...I'd like to wish Erica Laskey a happy 1st bday. She turned 1 on the 4th. I'd also like to wish Eleanor Gausman a happy 1st bday today. My friends are such wonderful people and they have even more amazing kiddos. I am lucky to share in the experiences of the first year of the lives of our children with these lovely women and I wish their babies the best start to their 2nd year!

Now on to our hellish 4th of July. We headed up to my parents lake house in Michigan ready for a relaxing holiday. What we didn't know is we were in for an interesting one...to say the least. Tyler had been fighting a cold for a few days, and I thought we were on the better side of it. Not so much! On the morning of the 4th Ty woke up with a fever. We hadn't come prepared so we had to hurry to buy some Tylenol from the local grocery store. He seemed to make a small recovery for an hour or so...then it suddenly went down-hill. He became lethargic, unresponsive and he was burning up. Obviously concerned...we ran out (yet again) for a thermometer and he registered a temperature of about 104-105. It was time for a run to the emergency room. We spent the rest of the day and evening in Lee Memorial Hospital in Dowagiac, MI (the same tiny hospital that took care of my Dad when he had his heart attack). Ty had a severe ear infection in both ears and a really high fever so we were forced to wait it out in the emergency room until his fever broke and the antibiotics kicked in. Needless to say...I was a wreck...especially when he was lethargic, unresponsive and glassy-eyed. However...after some tylenol, motrin and some ampicillin he was much better come the next day and he's recovering nicely.

What we didn't know was there was another crisis going on back at the lake house. My brother's girlfriend has a dog, Siri, and the two dogs don't really get along. We're not really sure why. We keep them apart normally...just to avoid conflict. While we were at the hospital my brother and mom decided to try to get them to get along. It was going fine for a while and suddenly the fight broke out (we think it might have been the fireworks...my dog is very jumpy during fireworks and often cowers in the bathroom). My brother tried to break it up and grabbed Cincy to protect her from Siri but Cincy was freaked out and bit my brother (which she had never done before to anyone) really giving him some pretty major wounds on his hand. Unfortunately, my brother didn't break up the dog fight before Cincy had some battle wounds of her own. They ended up taking her to an emergency vet to get shaved, get some staples put in and get some pain meds and antibiotics. So when I returned from the hospital with one baby...my parents had to tell me that my other "baby" was on the way to the emergency vet in Indiana (an hour away). By the time both "babies" were home and asleep it was well after 2am and we saw no fireworks, had no cocktails and celebrated with no sparklers. To be honest...my brother should have headed to the emergency room himself, but he's trying to tough out his wounds even still. Luckily the weekend got progressively better and we're all recovering nicely. It will always be a 4th we will remember...and hopefully laugh at later! Here are a few pictures of the happy times of the rest of the weekend...

Tyler with his new toy from Auntie Pam...his very own duffel bag! He loved walking around carrying it!Since the lake was pretty chilly and Ty had ear infections...we decided to put some warm water in a baby pool and let him hang out with us by the lake. He spent hours in there and loved it!

A night cruise with the family around the lake on the 5th...after the craziness wound down

Flashback: Tyler last 4th of July (9 days old!)

We're Moving!

Yes it's true...we actually sold our house in this god-awful market! The phone call from our agent about the offer came in as we were driving the 5 hours up to my parents lake house. We couldn't believe all of this was happening and we were going to be somewhere with little internet access and absolutely no cell phone service, let alone a fax machine. Yikes. Luckily...we got the dealings done (after a few back and forth negotiations) before we arrived in Sister Lakes and lost our cell service. Unfortunately...the offer asked that we be out by JULY 30TH...so we have a lot of time to find our own little dream house (note sarcasm here)...not to mention that we were 5 hours away and it was a holiday weekend. Luckily, Mike took the day off today so we could house-hunt in a hurry and we narrowed it down to 3 fabulous homes that are all so wonderful (by our standards at least) that we can't seem to pick one! However...given that it's already July 7th...we need to decide in the next 24 hours. We are going back to the three contenders tomorrow then an offer will go in and hopefully we'll be able to close and get into a house before we are essentially homeless. Phew! We'll keep you all posted!