Change of Pace

 

After Gia was born I was able to stay home on maternity leave for 10 weeks.  And Oh how I loved every minute of it.  It was happy valentines to me as I waltzed back into work at the Y.  I missed those kids who I had had in my program every school year & summer for 4 and 5 years.  But the business aspect & upper management part was not missed once!  I survived heading back to work knowing that my girl was spending her mornings being loved on by Papa, Nana & Uncle Joey and the afternoons with Uncle Noah & Nana.  Kevin was home by 4:15 everyday so the evenings were daddy-daughter bonding time.  While everything was going just fine, Mama wasn't okay.  Early mornings & Late nights at work had mama in need of a change.  By mid March many dinner conversations were focused on "how can we make this work?"  And the answer...Home Daycare.  So we began the journey to licensed to home daycare.  Having grown up with my mom doing daycare it wasn't something I had ever thought I would do BUT after much prayer and consideration my heart knew it was the right thing to do.  I finished the school year and ended my 10.5 year Y career on the last day of summer camp.  It was a bittersweet day.  The next day we woke up early and headed to Myrtle Beach for a week.  Then 2 weeks later I started back to work at HOME!  I first started watching an 8 week old baby on Thursdays & Fridays.  Then a month later I added to the mix my best friends 2 kids every afternoon. Then the following month added another friend on Mondays, Tuesdays & Wednesdays.  We have been very blessed with this opportunity and thankful that the Lord continues to show us he will provide during our times of need as we must trust him!

I'm Back!

It has been forever since I have blogged!  I have still been following along on friend's blog post but took a step back from my own blogging BUT today I'm changing that!  With my last post I announced that a little girl would be joining our world and that she did!  December 2011 she was "evicted" and every day since then has been a blessing.  Not a day goes by that my girl doesn't put a smile on my face and warm my heart.  I now have the best name in the world...Mama :)

Our precious little one!

Just about 20 weeks along and everything is looking wonderful!  Last week we had our anatomy ultrasound and it was music to my ears to hear that our little baby was perfect and healthy.  We did want to find out the gender but that was just the little cherry on top compared to seeing all of the little one's organs & body parts complete and functioning :)   We were completely surprised during the ultrasound to hear the gender.  It was neat because I actually said what it was before the sonographer was able to.  She built it all up by talking about everything we had seen so far during the scan of our baby and then she told us that she saw 3 lines which I knew is what they looked for to determine that it was a little GIRL.  It was a very sweet moment :) 

 

We can't wait to meet Gia at the end of November/early December !

She was quite stubborn throughout the entire scan causing it to take longer than normal but look what she showed us right at the end...

So may say she is saying "hi" but considering her parents we are going to say she was telling us to stop and that she had had enough of the picture taking ;)

Upgrades...

About 2 weeks after we moved in we replaced this nasty sliding glass door with the help of 2 amazing friends from church who spent a good part of their Saturday at our house! 

We love our new french doors!  (sorry for the poor quality picture)

House Tour

Welcome to our new home!

Entry way/foyer

living room

Kitchen & Dining Room

Bathroom on main level

Master Bedroom

 

smallest "extra" bedroom

Guest Bedroom

Office (in basement)

Family room/basement

There is also a backroom workshop, laundry area and full bathroom in the basement that didn't seem to make it into the photos. 

We're alive!

We are still around and finally starting to see less boxes sitting around!  We have been homeowners for a month as of Friday.  It is crazy to think of all the work that has been done around here in that short of time.  Of course if my parents & brother weren't around to help I know we would not have made as much progress on the house.  We have been trying to take pictures of before & afters along the way.  The house was beyond dirty when we moved in.  We spent the first days cleaning and ripping out carpet.  Our plan was to leave the carpet in the 2 "extra" bedrooms upstairs for a few months until we had the money to replace them.  Well that idea quickly went out the window...quite literally!  The Sunday after we moved in my parents came over and my mom, brother and I were throwing carpet out the bedroom windows.  The carpet smelled like dog pee!  We could not have that for several reasons...1. being i wanted my dog to come live with us and didn't want her to smell it and think it was okay to pee in the house.  2. it STUNK! That following week the basement carpet had to go as well.  We have left the basement office carpet in for now.  That carpet seems to be in good condition and we haven't noticed too much of a smell in that room...fingers crossed it stays that way!  I will leave you with this picture for now...more house pictures to come!

Moving

Yes I am procrastinating on packing by blogging!  But its official we have a settlement date for our new house.  April 13th we will officially be homeowners.  Yikes...2 weeks!  We are very excited about our new home and can't wait to make it our own.  Of course there is LOTS of cleaning to do, painting and a few other misc. projects my wonderful Dad will be working on :) Right now we are living among a mess of stuff everywhere...packed boxes and empty boxes waiting to be packed.  I guess I better get to it since they wont pack themself!  Be on the look out for house pictures to come...