The New Place

Today was moving day, so we are getting ready to settle in for our first night in the new house. We went nonstop from about 7am until 7pm and are exhausted....it has been a long week, and we still have tons of unpacking to do, but we are proud to say that we are finally home. Furthermore, here are some pictures of the new place. I do want to add that even though we had a 12 hour day of moving today, it was nothing compared to what we did between closing and that first box hitting the back of the u-haul this morning. Shane and I will be opening our housepainting business in the spring. (just kidding)
In a matter of 4 days (half-days really, because we both worked most of the week) we turned this:

Into this:
(Please excuse the moving mess)
Now we are off to bed--for the first time, in our house.

October is...

BREAST CANCER AWARENESS MONTH!!!!

Shane is currently fussing at me to put on painting clothes and head to the house to do some painting. This procrastination is 100% worthwhile though. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month--so put on those pink ribbons and spread the word! For more information, go to Susan G. Komen for the Cure.

I KNEW being an overachiever would have its downside....

OK, so I know that at the end of my last post I promised pictures of the house pre-painting. Well, being the go-getter that I am, I kind of overlooked the whole taking pictures thing.....and painted almost half the house. So, there will be no stark before and after photos of the house :(, I will get some up later tonight though so that everyone can at least see the inside of the house.

That said, our current painting status:

• The master bedroom is all painted--except for the vanity alcove and adjoining bath (waiting for my mother's advice on how to tackle that one)
• Trevor's room is just waiting for a second coat on the bottom half (we are re-creating his current room at the new house). Wall border will go up Friday.
• I get to go pick out a color for the guest room on my own this afternoon (Shane might regret that :) )
• Hopefully by the end of today the living room and hallway will be painted and the guest room will be cut in at least.

Not too shabby, considering we have owned the place for what, four days? Anyway, I know it is boring for me to update with what we have and haven't painted with no pictures---but it holds us accountable to actually painting the place, as I am honestly losing steam on this whole painting thing.

Everyone have a great day!

We are Homeowners!!

YAY! We finally closed on our house Monday morning at 10AM. Closing was actually the easiest part of the entire process. Yes, I know that we signed our souls away for the next 30 years, but for some reason that wasn't as scary to us as putting in that initial offer was. Of course, we had a stellar realtor and our closing agent was fabulous, so the entire thing was quick and painless--and I mean quick--if we hadn't been chatting the whole time we might have been done in 20 minutes instead of 40. Anyway, here is a picture of us with the keys to OUR FIRST HOUSE!!!
After closing, we raced to City Hall in Portsmouth to set up our water bill in our names so that the water would be taken care of that day. Then we went out for a celebratory lunch at No Frill. After that, we picked Trevor up from Pat, who graciously watched him for us that morning, and headed to the house. We spent the afternoon cleaning carpets and bathrooms and making a run to Home Depot to buy paint to paint the entire interior of the house. All of which, we will be doing this week so we are all pretty and painted by the time we do our big move on Saturday.

Today I stayed home from work so that I could be at the house when Lowe's delivered our refrigerator. They gave us a lovely window of 10-2 (talk about room to maneuver!) so I filled my time by scrubbing the kitchen top to bottom, washing all the windows in the house as well as scrubbing down the closet door in Trevor's room (which is now a lovely shade of pure white.) I am being a loving wife and leaving the scrubbing of the other bedroom closet door to Shane. This afternoon, Shane and our friend Cliff emptied out our storage unit and moved that stuff to the house and started painting in Trevor's room while I taped off the other rooms in the house. We still have a lot to do before Saturday, so we just have to keep go-go-going.

We have yet to take pictures of the inside of the house, as we really had to jump into cleaning, cleaning and painting. Maybe we will have some to share tomorrow or the day after.

Our Marathon....

Today was an absolute marathon for us--understandingly so since we CLOSE on our house tomorrow morning. FINALLY! The morning started with my usual early Sunday wake up (whoever said that Sunday was a day of rest? HA!) which got me off to work about 7:30. There I ran around like usual and as soon as the 11:00 mass was over, I did a little tidying up from children's church and preschool class and headed (more like rat-raced) back to Portsmouth for our final walk through. The walk through went well, we definitely have our work cut out for us as far as cleaning and painting this week though. No big problem. After the walk through, we raced right back to Norfolk for the parish picnic. It was great to spend a carefree afternoon with everyone--a much needed break from all of our running around. After the picnic we headed home for a bit and then ran out to Lowe's to buy our refrigerator and arrange delivery for Tuesday so that the kitchen will have been thoroughly scrubbed down prior to it arriving. Since then, we have been doing some light packing and trying to relax after our marathon of the day. Updates to come tomorrow after we CLOSE!

We did have time for a quick picture at the picnic!

From Picture to Painting....

Right after Trevor was born, you may recall that we debuted him to everyone online with this picture:

To this day, it is still my favorite picture of he and I from the hospital.

Well, my friend Melissa, who is extremely talented at painting asked if she could take the picture and re-create it as a painting for her final project for her art class at ODU. I figured sure, why not. This evening her mom dropped off the painting to us and all we can say is WOW. It is absolutely amazing and we can't wait to have it up in the new house. Like I said, the original picture is my favorite picture of Trevor and I from when we were in the hospital and to see it brought to life like this is just amazing. Thank you Melissa, you have no idea how much the painting means to us!

Many Milestones

In the past month or so Trevor has hit several milestones! He started eating solid foods and *thank goodness* is not picky about what he eats. He of course prefers fruits to vegetables, but he will definitley gobble up whatever he is given which is good. At about 5 months and 1 week, Trevor started sitting up on his own. Of course he was a little wobbly at first, but now he has it down to a science and LOVES having this new perspective on the world. He has rolled over a few times, but he still won't do it all the time and definitley not when we are sitting there coaxing him to do it. Here is a picture of our little man. I can't believe he will be six months next week!