Post from the Past

Recap of our trip to Fredericksburg!

Christmas in Houston

We had a spectacular trip to Houston over the weekend! Our good friends Brady and Cash invited the girls to their house for breakfast with a special guest - Santa! Claire was so looking forward to seeing him, but when the time came to actually talk to him, she wanted nothing to do with it. She wouldn't even take a present from him! And Madeleine was not any better....Looks like the girls are taking after their mother!

While we were in Houston, we decided to try and see as many of our friends there as possible, since this is probably the last time we'll be there in a LONG time. We got to play with Nathan and Nolan a bunch, Emma and Sam met us at the park, and a lot of our co-workers met up with us Saturday night. It was so great to see so many people and introduce them to Madeleine.

We finished off the weekend with breakfast on Sunday with Nathan and Nolan, and when we told Nathan and Claire it was time to leave they got soooo mad at us! They grabbed each other's hand and marched away. Claire was so angry she wouldn't even tell Kellie bye. Those two are something special, and it is so incredibly sweet to see them together.

Click here for pictures of the party and our breakfast with the boys! Thanks, Kellie, for being our photographer!

Happy Birthday, Madeleine!

Oh, Miss Madeleine, how are you already a whole year old???

For now, let's just focus on what you've done over the last month:

You're still in a size 3 diaper, but I think we're down to the last box of those before moving up to 4's. You wear 12-month clothes pretty regularly, but in some brands you need to go up to 12-18 months. I have no idea what you weigh, but I would guess around 20lbs.

You get to ride facing forward in the car! You hate the car, but being turned around has helped a bit. We usually have to distract you with nilla wafers or goldfish while you're riding.

You are a walker! You can go pretty good distances on only your feet, but if you want to get somewhere fast, you still prefer your super-sonic crawling.

You are a talker! You've been trying out lots of words lately: water, book, Aunt Jamey, Jack (Honey and H's dog), good dog, and kitty have all been popping up lately. And you love to sing along in your own little way to songs on the radio.

You have SEVEN teeth!

You have developed quite a personality over the last month: you discovered you had a temper. Or, at least, the rest of us discovered you had a temper, and you figured out how to show us. You are a little hot-head when things aren't going your way, or when Big Sister gets something that you don't. You even tried to bite Claire the other day, which was absolutely hilarious. I know we won't think that behavior is funny if you start doing it regularly, but that very first time surprised everybody.

You still love to eat! You know what you want, too, so now we just open the fridge or the pantry and you point to what you'd like. You're willing to try anything, and the only things you don't seem to like are ground beef or salmon. You discovered yesterday, thanks to Big Sister, that Oreos and Sonic tater tots are pretty darn tasty.

You are able to give kisses and hugs, and they are wonderful!

You're starting to understand basic directions, like putting toys away. But getting toys out is still much more fun.

Happy, happy birthday sweet Madeleine Moo! We love you!

Life in the Fast Lane

Whew, what a Fall it has been! Hmmmmm, where should I start recapping?

Around the middle of October, J and I were ready to meet with a realtor and get the process going of listing our house to sell. We were given a great reference, and immediately started rolling as soon as possible. We had a long list of little jobs to get done around the house, then the stager turned our house into a model home, and we finally were up and running on MLS on the evening of Friday, Oct. 29. Because it was late on Friday when the listing appeared, we were warned that no showings would probably happen that weekend because realtors would have to log on to their computers to find it. We headed out of town for a wedding on the morning of the 30th, with the house ready to show, just in case.

Since we were sooooo lucky in Houston with selling that house, I was naively optimistic that we'd have the same luck this go around. By the afternoon of the 30th I was pretty bummed that we hadn't gotten a call yet about a showing getting scheduled. So, there we are, trying to juggle two little girls in a silent church with the wedding about to start, when Jason leaps up out of the pew, grabs his phone, and runs outside. I thought it must have been his "the world is ending" phone, but he came back fairly quickly with a peculiar look on his face. And, just as the bride is about to walk down the aisle, he whispers, "We have an offer." So, I sit through the whole ceremony (thank you, Methodists, for the 20-min service!) wondering what the heck he's talking about since we never received a call that anyone wanted to see the house. Well, it turns out that somebody randomly drove by, saw our realtor's phone number on the sign, and called her. And, since she knew that we were out of town, they skipped the whole keeping-the-sellers-informed part of the process and looked at the house anyway.

So, in less than 24 hours of listing the house, we had an offer! We all agreed on the asking price by Sunday, the 31st of October, along with a closing date of November 30th. So we had exactly one month to figure out what in the world we were going to do.

J doesn't report in to the Air Force Base in Dayton until February 4th, so we decided to have our household goods packed up and moved to Ohio, where they will be stored until we get there. And, in the meantime, we're living with Honey and H.

I will skip the part of the story involving very sick children and my first ever experience with military movers. Needless to say, I was stressed. Let's just leave it at that.

So, now with our house sold, we need to figure out where we are going to live in Ohio. The housing market is horrible there, and knowing that we'll be moving again in five or six years, I initially voted for renting. But, it turns out everyone has that idea as well, and there's absolutely nothing I want to live in for the next five minutes, let alone years. J had a course to teach in Dayton for the last week, and we figured he might as well look at houses while he was there. Maybe he'd see something worthwhile and we might actually be able to close on a house in January so that we have a place to land when we arrive for real with a cat and a dog and two little girls in the middle of winter. And, as luck would have it, he found exactly what we were looking for in the neighborhood we wanted. So, as of January 25, 2011, this will be our new home:

We're giving up about 1,000 square feet and a quarter of an acre, but we'll be in the best neighborhood in Dayton. It's their version of Rice Village or Alamo Heights, with these huge houses next to more modest ones. The schools are top-notch and there are parks everywhere. Even though we really don't want to leave San Antonio, I think we've done our best at making lemonade.