Weekend Wrap Up

Just a few highlights from our weekend.  We are suckers for arcade games.  We went to a 'new to us' local pizza place on Friday night. To our surprise, there were arcade games in the back. The three of us demolished $20 worth of tokens in record time.  Quality entertainment in our book.

Saturday, we experienced a first in our marriage.  I cut the grass...the front yard anyway.  I did a lot of yard work growing up, so when we got married, I gladly bowed out of this chore. I was pretty sure the yard was going to look like it was cut in a chevron pattern since I've never operated a zero turn mower, but it turned out surprisingly straight. 

Today, I wore my hair Kaitlyn style to church...

This afternoon, we visited Darrin at volleyball camp.  My intention was to watch for an hour or so and then leave Miles with Darrin and enjoy the house to myself for the rest of the day.  Like I always do, I got sucked in and before I knew it, I ended up staying three hours.  That's what volleyball does to me.

Miles is FINALLY enjoying being in the gym.  It's taken an eternity to get to this point.  He tossed balls to Darrin during a drill...

...and ran the time clock.  I think he looks like a little DJ in the picture.  Last week, he gave himself the nick name "Money". I have no clue where this came from. He even told me once to call him Money Miles. So, as someone commented on Facebook, DJ Money in da house...

I finally left the gym around 5pm and came home to do a few things.  Laundry, bills, changed the sheets, cleaned out the frig, etc. Slowly our neighbors are coming around and introducing themselves. One couple brought us tomatoes and cucumbers from their garden.  There were a ton of tomatoes, so I made some salsa tonight.

Not at all the kind of things I would like to do when I have the house to myself, but at least I was able to get a lot done.  I will always feel the need to clean, straighten, and organize things on Sunday in order to get ready for the week.  I've been fighting a summer cold, so I'm off to bed early tonight.  Good night!!

The Party & Game Night

The gender reveal party was a success! I was a nervous wreck carrying the paint filled balloons across their yard and into their house.  I had visions of tripping and paint splattering all over my face. It would have been memorable, but not really what we were going for.  It's a boy!!!!!!

Let the shopping and name deliberation commence. Bane seemed totally excited that he's going to have a little brother.

We've been having some intense game nights around our house. Sorry has been a crowd favorite.  This is a perfect picture of victory and defeat...

About one second after the above picture was taken, Miles pulled Candy Land from under the Sorry box and said something to the effect of "look what's next".

We cracked up b/c that is absolutely how I am with games.  If I ever sense a lull in the mood or atmosphere I will try to speed things along to the next game or conversation so that people don't leave :)  Just ask my Thanksgiving peeps...I will trap you as long as I can.

Construction & We Have a Secret

I did a really terrible job of taking 'before' pictures of our house before all the construction began.  I have three pictures of the back of the house, where all the adding on is happening, and none of them show the entire house.  The sun room will be added where the four windows are the following picture.  The windows will convert to french doors and the sun room will be exactly like the sun room in our last house.

This is the patio that will connect doors to the master hallway, the kitchen, and the sun room.  The patio will be poured with concrete and raised to be just a small step down from the doors.  This was a suggestion by our contractor and it might end up being my favorite part.

This is where the master suite will be added on.  There is a really logical place inside the house to break through with a hallway, which will lead to the master, and it allowed us to keep the same roof pitch.

This is another angle of the master.  It steps in slightly from the existing house. That was another suggestion by our contractor. It kept us from having to move the electric meter and will help disguise the difference in brick pattern.  Since our house was built in the 90's, the original brick is no longer available.

How it looks from the back...

Before they framed the sun room...

It's hard to tell anything from this picture, but I wanted to remember what each stage looked like. This is inside the master bedroom...

Inside the master bedroom, looking towards the bathroom and the hallway on the right...

The beginning stages of the sun room...

Looking at the master bedroom from the patio.  The opening on the right will be a door that leads to a hallway.  To the left will be the bedroom, to the right will lead to the kitchen and entry from the garage.

The rest of the pictures are up to date with everything they have gotten done so far.  The shingles are on and it's really starting to tie in with the rest of the house.

Living with construction has been no big deal.  It's fun to come home every night and see what they have done.  They haven't broken through to the existing house yet, so it's no inconvenience at all.  We still have a ways to go, but our contractor has been amazing and we are just trying to stay patient knowing it will be finished before we know it.

Now onto our big secret.  Some of our very best friends are having a gender reveal party this Thursday night. Rachel & Travis...
 

...waited so long for baby #1.  Bane was just born last December. To everyone's surprise, including theirs, they announced that baby #2 is due in January, just 2 weeks after Bane's first birthday.  Wowza!  We were given a very secret envelope today telling us if Bane is going to have a baby brother or a baby sister.  This is before we opened the envelope...I am dying to tear into it...

We were also given some supplies to plan for the gender reveal party...

 

...and now we know if we will be using the pink or blue paint!!!!!!!!!!!

Can't wait to share the news on Thursday.  I told Rachel there will be no talking between now & then so I don't slip up.  We are pumped to love another little baby Bearden.  Here's hoping the reveal goes off without a hitch!

Why We Love Our House

Picking up where we left off....that Saturday our realtor lined up 7 or 8 houses for us to see.  One was the house we bought.  We had originally crossed it off the list b/c it was smaller than we wanted. I actually worked with the girl that owned the house.  I Facebook messaged her when it came on the market and asked her if it had two living areas or just the one that I suspected. She confirmed that it was 3 bedroom, 2 bath, with one living area.  While I realize that we are only a family of three, we frequently have multiple overnight guests, especially during volleyball season, and we like to entertain a lot.  We enjoyed the space we had at our home in Martin so much and I hated to take a huge step back from that.

We looked at 'our' house early in the day. We looked around fairly quickly, noticed the lack of space and some work that needed to be done, and wrote it off again. The land was really appealing, but the house just wasn't what wanted or needed.  We looked at all the other houses that were scheduled and again, the lack of land in those neighborhoods was claustrophobic.  Some of the houses were nice, but not enough to get over the tiny yards. I just knew that if we bought one of those houses, it would be a temporary fix and we would be moving again in a couple years. That is definitely not what we wanted.

We decided to go back to 'our' house for another look. The question was, could we add on and make it the house what we wanted.  We walked around the land and the more we talked, the more we felt like it was worth the risk.  We/I tend to play it very safe with purchases and investments, so the thought of taking on something like an addition was a little daunting.  Since there were no other decent options, we decided to go for it.  We scheduled a meeting with a contractor that week to see if what we wanted to do was feasible.  He confirmed our plan and we made an offer the next day. They countered once and we had a deal.

Here we are with the homeowner, Jessica, at the closing. Her husband, Nick, was unable to make it to the closing.

So....what do we love about our house?  Yes, there is a lot of work that has to be done, including the addition that we are currently in the middle of (more on that another day), but we got so many things that we wanted.  It's a ranch, which I love. We really wanted everything on one level. It has an amazing kitchen, better than I ever could have imagined.  It's not an open concept...yes, I'm the only person on the planet that doesn't love to cook in the middle of my living room. We have five acres, but we are still in a neighborhood. We are just outside the city limits, but are still only five minutes to Walmart.  It has a detached shop which is something we had grown really attached to at our last house. When the addition is finished, it will have a sun room EXACTLY like our other house and it will have a guest room with a private attached bathroom.  And, it has this porch...

....and this swing...

After we had initially written the house off due to size, I drove by it one day b/c we were really struggling to find something and I just wanted to see the house.  The neighborhood was lovely, but the road itself was a major turn off. It needed to be paved in the worst way.  There was loose gravel and potholes everywhere.  The night we met with the contractor at the house to see about adding on, I pulled on the street and it looked as if the road had been grated to be paved.  That night I was praying on the way home about the house and our offer, just really seeking direction.  I asked God to close the door if this wasn't a good idea for our family. It was like he said, "I'm even paving the road for you."  The next day, the road was paved.

Everything with this move has just fallen into place. We were able to sell our house to our good friends, Christa & Jordan.  They seem to be enjoying the house and that makes me very happy.

This move will be a lasting reminder for me of God's love for us.  So there you have our move.  We'll chat soon about living through construction...

Lots of Words & Our House Hunt Process

In our house, when Darrin and Miles talk a lot, which happens often, I say they are "using lots of words".  I feel like I have lots of words to share with you all.  So, so much has happened in the last month with moving, home DIY projects, construction, Lyme issues, etc.....and I still have some vacation recaps to finish. I definitely want to share the rest of our vacation pics even though we are two months after the fact.

So, I thought I'd offer a little recap tonight of what's been going, and then get into details in future posts. Shall we?

I left off a month ago with a sad little boy and pics of his going away party, which was the night before we moved.  The next day we spent a long, hot, STRESSFUL day of moving. You know the story...we've moved a lot.  We should be pros by now, but here's the thing...we thought we were going to stay in our last house for a long time, possibly forever. We moved in and set up shop. We bought furniture and I actually decorated. This is also the first time that we moved out of Martin. It's only 45 minutes away, but it made a difference.  So all these things made for a very long day.  The movers damaged several things and I was completely over it by the end of the day. Besides the emotional stress of moving, it was physically exhausting. Together with our families, we worked so hard.

Another thing...and I'm not even sure Darrin knows the full extent of my thoughts here....when we took possession of the house and actually got to look around without their furniture in it, I was a little taken aback by how much work I wanted to do.  My exact thoughts were "I didn't realize we bought a fixer upper".  I'm sure that sounds crazy, but the house wasn't quite as I remembered.  The decision to buy this house was always about the land and the addition that we were going to create, but I guess I just didn't realize how much work the house was going to need to make me happy and comfortable.

 (the view from our back patio)

With all that said, I know exactly how all this happened. We are so confident that God has lead us to this place.  This job, this house, this neighborhood, this city, this everything.  No doubts. If things change in a year or five years, I will still know that we are where we are supposed to be at this moment.

One detail I will get into tonight is a little about our house hunt.  Darrin and I have always been decisive when it comes to buying a house.  For those of you that may be new here, this is the fifth home we have purchased together. We have literally walked in a house before, walked around a few minutes, and said "looks good, we'll take it". We struggled to find something that we liked in Medina. It's an up & coming town and there are a ton of new homes and neighborhoods. We thought that would be perfect for Miles, but after looking, it just didn't seem right.  We loved the setting of our last house and how safe it was for Miles to play outside. I couldn't imagine when I would feel comfortable sending him out to play in those neighborhoods unsupervised. They were just too big and too busy for that.
 

It seemed that all the houses in Medina were literally on top of each other. Also, the houses were all the same.  One builder accounts for the majority of the homes around there and he uses 3-4 floor plans. Every time we looked at a new house, it felt like we'd already seen it before. It just wasn't setting well with us. We did find one that seemed pretty nice.

It had several things going for it....it was in a slightly less crowded neighborhood...it was just outside the city limits...it had a more spacious kitchen than any home we had seen...it had a nice outdoor space...it had a basement storm shelter...and it was just pretty.  When we felt confident that we had sold our house, we went back to look at the house for a second time just to be sure before we made an offer.  The strangest thing....as I was walking around, it just didn't feel right. I felt bad for feeling indecisive and for seemingly wasting our realtor's time. When I voiced my concern to Darrin, he was feeling the same way. 

We told our realtor that we were going to pass on it and asked her to set up some showings for the following weekend.  There were a few homes that we had crossed off the list without even looking, for one reason or another, and a few new ones that had recently come on the market.  One of the homes that we had previously crossed off the list was the home that we ended up buying.

Since I feel like I've used way too many words tonight, or "met quota" as we also say in our house, I'll cut it off here and pick back up tomorrow night with the decision to buy our house and why we love it so much. Good night, all!

Inpromptu Going Away Party

Taking a little break from vacation pictures tonight.  I'll pick back up after we move.

When we moved into this house two years ago, I was a little concerned b/c our house faces a busy road with fast cars. I never could have dreamed that this would actually be the ideal setting for Miles to play.  Behind our house is the safest spot for Miles and his neighbor friends to run back and forth between houses.  He has grown so close to his friends, Sammie, Chloe, Cambry, and Savannah.

We close on our new house tomorrow, and even though we don't officially move until Saturday, tonight is the last night that Miles will have to play with his friends. Tomorrow we'll be busy cleaning, packing, moving, painting, etc. at the new house.  I didn't know exactly how to break the news to Miles. I really wanted to just pull away and not mention it, but I knew that wasn't fair to him or his little friends.

I told him yesterday that he only had that night and one more to play. He immediately burst into tears and broke my heart. To help ease the pain, we planned a little pizza & cupcake party.

I'm sure there will be tears when it's time to come inside tonight, but he's happy at the moment and understands that tonight is the last night. We will miss these cute little friends!

Mexico - Part II

My days all kind of run together as I'm looking back on the trip, but on this night there was a Disney show. 

At the resort, they had a kids club where they could play indoors in a daycare environment.  At the kids club, you could sign them up to participate in the nightly shows. Ava was in the Disney show. At the end of the show, you could go on stage and get your picture with the characters. When I asked Miles who he wanted his picture with, he said, "only Ava".

She even had rehearsal and hair & make up. She knew all her moves and rocked them on stage.

At the end of the show, they dropped balloons down from the ceiling. Such a little thing brought such happiness.

We played in the gift shop on the way back to our room.

The next day we decided to go into Playa Del Carmen for the day.

I was super happy to find a Mt. Dew.

Miles had $8 burning a hole in his Spiderman Duct tape wallet.  

After much deliberation, he landed with this, which closely resembles Sparkles and Little Penguin McClure. Both of them made the trip to Mexico in case you are wondering.  We now have a little penguin/raccoon family of three.  He named the new one Squirts, which is prophetic considering we bought him in Mexico.

We have visited Cozumel, and several Caribbean cities such as Belize, Dominica, Barbados, St. Thomas, Jamaica, etc.  I have to say that Playa Del Carmen was probably my favorite town. 

It was cleaner than most and had a nice mix of old and new.    

Aunt Crystal hooked the kids up with tattoos. 

As soon as he finished getting it he said, "I want another one."  And so it begins.

Miles broke out in some crazy dancing while we were walking around.  He said, "my moves are full uploaded."  Then he stopped and said, "Now they are downloaded."  We were cracking up.  Usually he gets embarrassed, but he was pretty confident in his moves.

 

Darrin, Miles, and I came back early afternoon to get in some pool time.

Miles developed a strong love for Shirley Temples on the trip.  I loved them at his age too.

The resort was really big...not sure if I mentioned that in my last post.  It was quite a walk between our rooms, the restaurants, the beach, and the pools.  We were able to catch a ride on a golf cart some times. 

Dinner that night was a Japanese restaurant.  It was our second favorite meal of the trip.

Miles tried sushi for the first time.  There were several different kinds and he seemed to like about half of them.  

We all skipped the show that night and just went back to the room for some much needed sleep.  That gets me thru the first 365 pictures.  I'll try to make it back one more time before our move.  Good night all!