First Father's Day

Nathan has to work on Father's Day (boo!), so we celebrated one day early (yea!). There's nothing I love more than an excuse to give/receive gifts before the actual holiday. It may seem superficial, but my love language is gifts - I just love giving and receiving them! And the more meaningful/useful, the better!

That's why when William suggested we make a candy card for Nathan I was totally on board. Candy happens to be my man's favorite food group, and I just knew he'd love it. 

(I can't take credit for this creativity...I found the idea on Pinterest, and just used Nathan's favorite candy as inspiration)

In case you can't see it, it says:

Dad, this Father's Day I was going to give you 100 GRAND, but I Fished around for a more meaningful gift. You're the best POP hands down! You love me when I'm SOUR, you know what makes me LAFF and SNICKER...my LIFE just wouldn't be PEACHIE without you! From the top of my HEAD, to the toes of my feet...I LOVE YOU! - William

We also surprised him with a few other candies in a gift bag - some cotton candy, Sugar Babies, more Air Heads and a favorite of ours that I'll count my lucky stars Nathan will let me share with him - Twix. It just doesn't get much better than a Twix. You know?

On a more serious note, Nathan does happen to be a wonderful dad to William and I'm so thankful for him this Father's Day. One of my favorite things about him is that he is so in tune with mine and William's day together at home. He always asks how William has done for me that day, how he has napped for me, what fun things we've done, etc. And if it has been an especially long day for me (and sometimes even if it hasn't), when Nathan gets home from working all day, he drops it all, and takes over...he'll play with William, feed him dinner, and do his bedtime routine. He's the most hands-on dad I know and I love that about him!

And William thinks he's pretty rad too! ;)

4 years

Hey! I'm blogging! :)

It was quite a temptation to let another day go by without blogging (it's become a habit of mine lately), but today's a special day worth documenting. Today, me and my man celebrate our 4th anniversary since we said 'I Do' in a small southern church one hot June Saturday. I've documented all 3 of our previous anniversaries on the blog, so I felt the nudge today to keep that up. 

It's not that our anniversary isn't special this year - it's quite the opposite. It's just we're slap busy this week with getting ready for our big move on Tuesday into our new house. But I'm setting aside my To-Do list and excuses for a chance to brag on my man and tell the world how much he means to me. [insert long, drawn-out 'awwwwwww' here]

My Love - 

Yesterday it was a simple moment. Me, you and our babe walking out of the Kroger after grocery shopping together. And it hit me - this profound sense of love for you. I watched you with our son and how tender you were with him. How fun you were. How careful you were. And then I saw how he looked up at you. It does something to my heart every time I see the two of you interact. But yesterday it took everything in me not to break out into the ugly cry right there in the Kroger parking lot. I just felt so full. So blessed. So rich. So in love with you and our life. 

Our lives have never been anything fancy...we might actually be the only 20-somethings in America (in your case, 30-something. GRIN.) who don't have smart phones, cable TV, or fancy careers with nice cars. You've always been a simple person, and I love that about you. You've taught me so much in 4 years about the blessings of living simply. Because of that, I'm able to stay home with William (BEST. JOB. EVER.), we're able to sleep better at night knowing we don't have a mountain of debt looming over our heads, and some of our most memorable moments have happened in those simplest of days when we've just spent quality time with one another. 

Basically, what I'm saying is, Thank You. For teaching me how to live life more simply, but at the same time more fully. It's a crazy thing I never knew about before until I met you. And Thank You for living this simple life right alongside me - there's no one I'd rather do this thing with than you!

All my love,

11 months

I'm a bit sad these monthly photos are coming to a close soon. I can't believe my sweet boy will be 1 year old in just a few short weeks! 

The above photo was taken in my inlaws backyard this past weekend. We've gotten so busy lately that I had forgotten to take William's monthly photo. That's the state of our lives right now - busyness. And these next few weeks are no exception as we get ready to pack again and move again. And somehow try to figure out how to celebrate an anniversary, a little fella's birthday, and my sweet man's birthday all in there squished in between unpacking and settling into our new place. 

But this isn't supposed to be a dump of my To-Do list here! I did have a story about the photo above...

So we took the photo in the backyard. I did the uploading and the editing and got it all nice and pretty and then told Nathan to "come! look at the new monthly photo! it's so cute!" To which he replied, "William looks like a one-armed baby in that photo." Insert momentary silence here. To which I replied, "Are you serious? That's the photo I used on his birthday party invitation too." 

Marvelous. 

So, to all of our family and friends who receive an invitation and wonder, "Did something happen to William's arm?" No. No it did not. Other than a weird camera angle and a (very) fidgety little boy who refuses to sit still for more than 5 seconds. His right arm is still very much intact. 

Other fun tidbits from this month...

• Mimicking is in full swing! If you make a sound, you can bet William will try his darnedest to replicate it. 

• He's throwing everything, and although he's been doing this for a while the act of throwing doesn't seem to lose it's appeal one bit. Such is the life of a mom to a boy, I guess.

• He's obsessed with bathrooms, specifically toilets. And I never thought I'd utter the words "No-No, Don't put your mouth on the toilet William." 

• We traveled quite a bit during this month with two trips to Alabama to visit relatives. I'm so happy William was able to spend some time with my grandparents, and my brother's family.

• This month we also introduced him to the splash pad. A local park down in Birmingham had one and then we also took him to one in TN. He LOVED it!

• He finally took milk from a sippy cup today for the first time! Weaning progress = success.

Happy 11 months my boy. You keep changing more and more with each passing week and it's been so fun to see your little personality emerge. I love getting to know you!

Our New Digs!

Hi Friends! Are any of you still out there?? 

It has been awfully quiet on the blog lately because we've been busy with something exciting - purchasing our new home! I've been bursting at the seams to share the news, but wanted to wait until it was semi-official. We've had the inspection and everything checked out, so now we feel more at ease about it actually being "ours".

Yes - we're still in shock too. We never expected in a million years to find a house we loved so quickly, but the moment we walked in we were smitten. We still find ourselves giddily smiling about it and randomly saying, "I'm so excited about the house!"

I'll spare you the 1,629 details I could gush about and just get straight to the photos. 

The highlights: it's an all-brick 1947 sprawling ranch that has been updated to the 21st century on the inside (still needs some TLC on the outside) but it also still maintains some of that 1940's charm, and it's situated on 9 acres (!!) with 2 barns, 3 fireplaces, 5 bedrooms and 3 full baths. We were totally sticker shocked (in a good way) when we saw how much house and land we could get down south in comparison to Upstate New York! 

Here are some photos:

Here's the front of the house. Lovely rust-colored wrought iron that we have to figure out how to beautify or get rid of ;) The landscaping to the front of the house is all new, so thankfully that's one outside feature we don't have to worry with. As you can see, the house used to have a garage but has been enclosed to make 2 extra bedrooms, so there's just a carport (which we don't mind since the south isn't known for snow, and since there are two barns where we can put our lawnmower and garden supplies).

When you walk into the front door, there's a small entryway (not pictured). To the left is the dining room and to the right is the living room (below). It has a fireplace, with two giant windows. I see us spending the majority of our time in this room!

Living Room

Another view of the living room (you can see the entry way to the left and the dining room on the other side of the entry). The dining room leads into the kitchen and there's a full bath off from the living room through that door.

The bathroom off from the living room

This is the best picture of the kitchen I could get without snapping a photo of our inspectors work station down at the end ;) My favorite feature(s) of the kitchen are that it's a galley much like our old house, and it has two giant windows at the end with a big clearing (perfect for a breakfast nook!). The only thing I think we'd change in this room is the paint color (it's a bit peachy), and eventually we'd like to switch out the countertops for granite.

Dinging room with carpet (that we'll eventually replace with hardwoods that match the kitchen). 

And down the hall from the kitchen are the 2 spare bedrooms that used to be the garage...

Back to the living room, and you can see the main hall that has the other 3 bedrooms and  2 bathrooms. There's one bedroom on the right (we're probably going to make that William's room), one on the left, and the master bedroom straight back.

Possibly Williams' room

 The bedroom across from William's room

Laundry nook off from the main bathroom

Main bath (it's bigger than our ONE bathroom back in the old house)

Master Suite 

With a fireplace! 

 And a bathroom! (we'll eventually do a double vanity in here)

And one of my favorite features - a charming little linen closet. 

Now to the outside!

Here's our view from the front porch - the neighbor across the street has a large horse farm.

The side of the house has some nice clearing and mature trees. 

The two barns (which you can't really see that well because of the overgrown lawn)

And the back yard that's also overgrown and leads out to the wooded land (there's also a cool dry stack rock wall that separates the "yard" from the "land" 

Looking at the back of the house...

And that's the 3rd fireplace - on the patio! We envision lots of opportunity for entertaining out there. 

So that's the grand tour! And that's what we've been occupied with lately. This post is now looking a mile long, by the way. 

Closing is officially set for June 10 and we're planning on slowly moving in that week but having all of our stuff settled by June 15. And then the fun begins of making it our own! However, Nathan and I have decided that we'll be taking our time with this house - we really want to think long-term and make smart decisions so we're not re-decorating, re-modeling, and re-doing a bunch of things in a few years. So expect to see the progress happen slowly - we're still recovering from lonnnnng project list from the old house! ;)

10 Months

Someone please tell me my baby boy is not actually getting ready to move from baby to toddler in just two short months! The double digits have arrived, and with them a whole host of fun new things. 

Here are some other tidbits from this month:

• At William's last check-up, he weighed 19 pounds (25th percentile) and was 29 inches long (50th percentile). Basically, he's tall and skinny which makes clothes buying a bit tricky. He's in mostly 12 month onesies and shirts, and 6-9 month shorts because of his itty bitty waist. 

•  He's perfected the army crawl, and is quite fast at it. He'll occasionally push his hiney in the air and do things with his knees, but he hasn't quite figured out the crawling on all fours thing yet.  

• He's got quite the throwing arm, and loves to play catch with Daddy.

• He likes to include himself in conversations. If we're all talking and someone says something funny and we start laughing, the room will quiet down and then William will bust out with a "fake laugh" to round out the conversation. ;)

• He went from being very quiet and serious to very babbly (I'm sure that's a word) and funny. He wakes up from naps babbling away, and all he does during his wake time is make noise, laugh, or smile. I'm so thankful for such a happy baby! 

My sweet, sweet, boy. I love that you refuse to cuddle me in public but when it comes to our bedtime routine, you just can't get enough of your mama. I look forward to those end-of-the-day hugs and kisses each day! You bring such joy to us! 

A Long-Awaited Baby Dedication

Hello from the sunny south, friends! 

We are finally unpacked and settled in at our new (transitional) home in TN. We'll be staying with Nathan's mom and dad until we can find a new place to permanently call home. (Prayers for that would be most welcome!) 

I finally found our card reader in a box today, so I thought I'd share some photos of the latest happenings.

Let's rewind a few weeks prior to the move! Nathan's parents graciously drove to NY to help us move, so it presented a very rare opportunity for both sets of parents to be in the same state at once. We decided it would be a good time for us to (finally) have a baby dedication for William. My dad offered to host it at his church, and I am so happy that both sets of families were able to be there with us. 

Here are a few photos from the day:

I'm not really sure why William had a giant red splotch on his face that day - maybe all the attention was a little overwhelming ;)

After that Sunday, things kicked into high gear for our big move. I have to be honest, I was totally sweating it - spending 13 hours in a car with a 9-month-old mobile baby is not my idea of a grand time. But, William surprised us all by being the perfect little angel baby. He slept like a champ in the car seat on day 1 of our travels, so I knew day 2 wouldn't be as easy. But he proved me wrong again! He seriously didn't even fuss! Praise the Lord for safe (and sane!) travels. ;)

Dear House...

Well, I almost made it to moving day without having an emotional ugly cry moment. Until last night. It's one week from moving day, so I guess I made it pretty far. 

I know a "house" by definition is really just a man-made building. There's really nothing special about it, and it's totally perishable. But when you take two young newlyweds who don't know a thing about marriage or living together or fighting fairly (grin) and you move them into said house, fast forward four years later and one babe later, you have a house that's not just any ole' house. But one that's full to the brim of memories. And one that's getting awfully hard to say goodbye to.

When Nathan and I were engaged, we started looking for houses. I remember driving around town with my mom when we spotted an "Open House" sign in the front of (what would be) our yard. The moment we walked in, I fell hard. Partly because it had hardwood floors throughout (love at first sight!) and needed a lot of TLC - it just oozed "potential". But also because I grew up in a house very similar to this one - a tiny ranch with 3 bedrooms and 1 bathroom. I wanted to sign the dotted line that day! I remember calling Nathan immediately and telling him, "I found the ONE!" He came and checked it out, and as luck would have it he loved it too! 

We closed on the house in April 2009, and he carried me through the threshold in June that same year. We hit the ground running with projects galore, and we really haven't stopped four years later. In fact, just this past week I found myself with paint brush in hand doing a few touch ups. I just can't help myself when it comes to this house. 

There isn't a single surface that hasn't been tweaked, painted, gutted, re-decorated or touched. We have worked from the time we bought the house until the day we put the for sale sign up. 

And I love everything about it. Even the things that drive me crazy (like the squeaky floorboards right outside my slumbering boy's room, or the road noise) will be missed. 

But more than the work we've done, or the time we've spent, I'll never forget the memories we've made. 

Bringing our boy home for the very first time...

(sweet day, where did time go?)

To watching him take his very first crawls . . . 

And all the memories in between!

My man will probably roll his eyes when he reads this, but I really am honestly going to miss things like this too . . . 

Some of our marriage's biggest "growth opportunities" occurred when we were knee-deep in house projects! ;)

So as we pack up our lives and get ready to move hundreds of miles away from this place we've called home, it's all a little bittersweet . . . 

I'm thrilled we'll be closer to the majority of our families, and close to some very dear friends. I'm beyond excited that William will get to spend some much-needed time with family members he hasn't quite gotten to know yet. And I'm excited we get to set out in search for our next place to call home.

But we're also closing a major chapter in our lives, and I'd be lying if I said that wasn't sad. I've made some very dear friends here and it has been so difficult to say goodbye to them this week. I've also had to say goodbye to my parents, resign some volunteer duties from our church, and try and soak up every last sweet second of fun in our town. And the house? Well, with each closing cardboard box we get a little closer to saying goodbye to it too. It feels a little less like home every time we pack up a mirror, take down a photo, or empty out a cupboard. 

But God did something so cool that was very specific and personal to me to help make this transition a teensy bit easier. The lady whose buying our house? Her last name is that same as my maiden name, and she loves the house. Like head-over-heels-wants-to-move-in-as-quickly-as-she-can loves it. And I really couldn't ask for anything better. I know all of our blood, sweat and tears over this house was worth it because we're handing the keys to someone who appreciates it. 

We've come a long way ole' house...

Thank you for letting us reside here for a season. One of the happiest seasons of our lives. You will never be forgotten.