All moved in!

Yes, I am back and all moved into our new house! We moved on Monday morning and it took the movers 10.5 hours to move us, they said if we had anymore stuff it would have been a two day move. Cory and I knew that we had a lot of stuff, but we had no idea it would take that long and we had 5 guys moving us. By Wednesday I had us basically all unpacked, by us I mean me and the girls, Cory can do his own unpacking. Is that mean of me, nah! Anyways both my parents were here on Monday and Tuesday to help get things where they needed to be and to help me start unpacking. Mom and I first tackled the kitchen and my mom could not believe all the kitchen items I have. She keep saying "another box, where did you have all this stored in your old kitchen". Once we had a box unpacked, dad would break it down and carry it out to the garage. So we are just about unpacked except for the office and I think I will let Cory tackle that room.
I am chomping at the bit to start painting and hanging up pictures. Everything in this house is pretty much move in ready except for a few things that need some tweaking like a new shower head in the master bathroom. It is a very nice shower head however, it doesn't put out very much water pressure and with all the hair I have (a lot) I need pretty good water pressure to get the shampoo and conditioner all out. We also have ceiling fans, but they are older and we are going to replace them in all the bedrooms. The one thing that is driving us crazy are the light switches, they are all upside down so on is off and off is on! That will be getting fixed fairly quickly as well. Luckily though the house is all painted in either cream, tan or white so it will be easy to paint and we don't have to deal with any wallpaper.
I will post more about the house over the next couple of weeks, but as of now I wanted to let you all know that everything went well and we are getting settled fairly quickly. Cory is outside now with my dad putting together the girls new swing set. They are both so excited and by the end of the weekend should be playing like crazy on it. I will post pictures later as well.

Our Little Fish

We have been spending a lot of time at the pool this summer and in doing so both of my girls have turned into little fish. Claire's swimming improves a little everyday we go it seems. She is to the point now where I know she can swim across the pool by herself and I don't need to be right beside her every minute. She has mastered the "underwater" swimming if you will, you know where you basically do the breaststroke underwater. She knows how to come up take a breath and continue on her way.

Paige has been my cautious one. The one who didn't like getting her face wet and if she did jump in off the side she wanted to immediately dry her face on a towel. This weekend however she did a 180. We were at my parents on Saturday swimming in their pool when Cory convinced Paige to put on her goggles and go underwater with him. I have tried to get her to put on goggles and go under and she never would do it, however, she liked the idea of daddy wearing goggles and going under with her.

It didn't take long until Cory and both the girls were going underwater, waving at each other and laughing. Once Paige realized that going underwater was fun and if she wears goggles her eyes don't get wet she started going after our torpedoes. Needless to say the girl is now in LOVE with swimming. She asks everyday if we can go to the pool and spends basically the entire time like this.



We even went into almost the 4 feet today, she threw down the torpedoes and would take a break and then I would push her down to the bottom where she would grab them and push off the bottom of the pool and make her way to the top. The girl has a great pair of lungs on her and can hold her breath for a long time, too long for this mommy.
Sorry for the quality of the pics, I took them with my Blackberry today while we were at the pool. Happy Wednesday!! Only 5 more days until the big move.

Operation packing officially underway.....

One week from today we will be moving into our new house!!! We are so excited, it seems like we have been waiting forever. This past weekend we really starting tackling the house and getting our office, master bedroom, linen closets and bathrooms packed. Later this week I will do the girls bedrooms and kitchen. I have been holding off on the kitchen for as long as possible because once I packed that up I can no longer cook, wait a minute maybe I should pack that room today. :) The girls rooms I am waiting until the last minute so that I don't disrupt their routine and environment until I absolutely have to. Paige is having a really hard time sleeping lately and I truly feel it is because of all the packing and not understanding what is happening. I have been trying to talk to her about it all, explaining that everything and everyone is coming with us to the new house, but how much can a 3 year old really understand. She did not nap at all this weekend and took very few and even those naps were short last week. She just cries and cries, says she is scared and wants me to lay with her. I feel horrible that she is so upset, but at the same time I don't want her getting use to me laying with her until she falls asleep. Last night however I did, poor thing is so tired that she has bags under her eyes. With her not taking a nap and then being up until 9pm(we have her in bed by 8 but she fights the sleep)and waking up around 7:45am, she is exhausted. So last night after her crying and calling for me for probably 20 minutes I went in and layed with her. It didn't take long as she was so tired that within just a few minutes she was in a deep enough sleep that I could sneak out. We also let the girls sleep together for the first time on Friday night. We have tried this before but they always talk so much that they don't fall asleep and we have to separate them. Friday night they both wanted to sleep in Claire's room so we had them in bed by 8pm and by 9pm they were quite and asleep. We didn't let Paige sleep in there all night as they would have been up at 7am, so when we went to bed Cory carried Paige to her room. It was so sweet Paige felt Cory picked her up and said "no, no daddy, no". Claire woke up just enough to say "good night Paige". Here are a few pictures I took of them sleeping together.


A new friend that I met is going to take both Claire and Paige for me Thursday morning. She has a daughter that will be in Claire's kindergarten class and a son who is the same age as Paige and will go to preschool with her. This works out perfectly, now I will be able to go through their rooms and pack while they are gone. I tried to start going through Claire's toys over the weekend, however, she was home and saw me and we had some tears. Some of the things I thought she could definitely throw out she felt differently about.

Saturday at the lake!

Cory the girls and I went to Lake Sherwood this weekend with Cory's parents to have some fun in the sun and ride the boat. I don't ski, never learned even though my parents offered to teach my sister and I several times, I was just too much of a chicken didn't like the idea of getting pulled behind a boat. To tell you the truth I think both my sister and I were more afraid of getting into the lake with all those HUGE fish and who knows what else. Anyways, I don't ski, but Cory does and he is very good as well as his brother and dad. I am more of a pool girl, where you can see the bottom at all times! :) The girls had a really fun time playing in the sand, riding on the boat and jumping off the dock. Here are a few pics of our day.






On your mark, get set, go..........

Paige wouldn't jump by herself at first so daddy went with her! She did end up going on her own but only if she could jump to me, so no picture!
We had to have fun too, it is so hard to give a good smile when you know if just a few seconds you are going to be hitting the water.

SOLD!!!

That is right we sold our house, we got a contract the day after Cory's birthday on June 25th! We were told on his actual birthday that we would be receiving an offer the following day, he couldn't have asked for a better present than that! We are moving in less than 3 weeks, close on the 26th. I have started the joys (ha ha) of packing this week and so far have our dining room and living room finished. Later today I will start tackling the basement as that will take me several days with all the toys and storage we have down there. We have already purchased some furniture for our new house as our rooms will be bigger and we don't quite have enough furniture to fill it all up. We also got a new stainless steel fridge to match the rest of the stainless steel appliances in our kitchen. I am so excited, ready to move onto the next phase of our lives and get to decorating the new house. Luckily all the colors are neutral just beige and tan throughout the whole house so we don't have to paint or do any wallpaper removal. The first floor has all hardwoods so we don't have to worry about replacing any carpet and the second floor has what looks like brand new carpeting throughout. Cory doesn't know what he is going to do with himself as their are no projects, this house is move in ready!!! All we have to do is paint the rooms once we decide we want to and put in some new ceiling fans as the ones that are in the house now are older (I have to admit that we are snobs when it comes to our ceiling fans) :).
Thank you to all of you who prayed for us! We are very excited and I will try to get better about blogging and keep you all posted on the process.