Our Home Sweet Home!!

Our first Home Sweet Home all 1486 square feet of it!!!

We bought our house in the summer of 2000.

Just look how we've transformed these rooms, time after time, as our life has progressed!

Brings back wonderful memories and feelings! Love it!

The Foyer....horrible wall paper! More to remove!

1st pic of the living room....I wished I had taken better pics!

Kitchen/laundry closet/garage door/backdoor/ and dining area.

More Wallpaper to remove!

Master Bath

WALL PAPER!!! Why do people do this???? This was a horrible pain to remove!!!

The HUGE master bedroom!

The 3rd guest bedroom. The people before us had this as an office and glued that stuff to the walls!!!! What were they thinking???????

Guest front bedroom...plain...nothing special.

The guest bathroom...more wallpaper to remove! Look at that curtain!

Behind the house...the rail road track.

The Dog Run

The garage & driveway. Not much has changed since 2000 to now.

The back of the house. That Ivy came down quick! Hated that stuff!

LOVED the backyard!!! Still do!

The other side of the yard! That tree was super small back then!!

2000 - New foyer paint job. Faux paint looked like leather close up.

Nov 2000 - Painted John's man room neon lime green! We ended up having to tone it down with a white wash.

2000 - My girly room was painted a beautiful purple! Look at Tabitha looking so pretty in her rocking chair!

2001 - New master bath. No wall paper, just nice normal texture and faux paint!

2001 - It's hard to tell, but we removed the wall paper, textured and painted the guest bathroom a nice bright yellow. Just like the little duckies on the shower curtain. All the happy color got to us though and it was repainted about a year later!

Jan 2001 - Our herb garden planted the 1st full summer we were here. Pre-baby...we had plenty of time to do this kind of stuff! This garden only lasted one year.

October 2001 - The Castor plants! We had to plant these to aid in getting rid of the moles in our yard!

2002 - Brian and John laid the new walk way and a cute little bench for the side of the house. Tulips are planted as well.

May 2002 - Peachy Keen...NOT! This paint color last about a week before it was gone! Too old looking for my taste. It reminds me of my grandma's lipstick!

May 2002 - The man room gone red! This didn't last too long either.

July 2002 - Guestroom/John's man room repainted....couldn't handle the red room.

2002 - New paint job in the guest bathroom. 2nd paint job since owning house.

Feb 2003 - Our lovely new sink!!!

2003 - John made a big o' screen and put it on the fence. We've been watching movies out in the backyard ever since!

2004 - Presley's nursery. We wanted to be surprised with her gender, so we went with Winnie The Pooh! And we got new carpet in this year!

Feb 2006 - Out with the old....

And in with the new. And it's convection!

June 2006 - Start of new bath tub and tile construction

September 2006 - Presley gives her daddy a hand in painting around the house!

October 2006 - New shower/bath! John did an amazing job!

2007 - Presley's nursery became Piper's nursery.

2007 - John's room became Presley's room. And it's blue now.

2008 - The guest bathroom got yet another face lift. It's now painted kind of a blue gray. And the cabinets got some new hardware and a fresh coat of paint.

October 2008 - The girl's playhouse!

October 2008 - The girl's little house in the back even got a new paint job.

July 2009 - Master bathroom got another paint job....pretty!

2009 - Piper's nursery became the girl's shared bedroom.

2009 - Painted antique white from being blue & Presley's room became the girl's playroom

July 2009 - The foyer even got another paint job. Not intentionally either. I was touching up the ceiling paint and messed up the walls, so I had to redo the faux painting.

We stuck with browns.

Aug 2009 - My house's best feature in my opinion, I love my backyard! And the tree as grown so much in 9 years!

Aug 2009 - The living room: polished walls, painted ceiling, cleaned carpet (thanks to Liza!)

I have more pictures, but they are in my other camera and the battery is dead. So those will be posted another day! This was fun.....I just love trips down memory lane! I love our house...always will.

On The Move...

Today is our family's last day in our home without any interruptions! Tomorrow is the start of a new adventure....a mighty scary adventure, might I add! Especially for me! I like stability and don't do well with change! But I am giving it a shot all in the name of getting into a good school district for the girls! We are putting our house on the SCARY market!!

How do I feel about this?

I am Terrified!!! We haven't the slightest idea of where we will go from here. In a perfect world, my perfect world... we'll find the perfect house for us as someone else out there finds this to be the perfect home for them. Then we'd all sign paperwork and have our new home. And the new people that move into our house won't ask us to fix anything or come down on the price or pay any fees! But unfortunately for me, we don't live in a perfect world. Soooo, we'll probably sell after having to replace a few things for the new home owner * we are so picky that it'll take months and months for us to find that perfect home with great schools * and the apartments that we'd really really consider living in for a while probably won't let us bring Maggie Bell since she's part Rottweiler.

I'm Sad!!! I know why we are selling and I can't loose focus on that! When I think about it, I start thinking that this is where our family began. Our first home...the girl's first home. They had all their firsts here. This is the home that John and I planned our future together in. We have a huge backyard with great grass! So that has made for some great parties! The girls had their 1st annual Halloween party carnival style last year! That was great! Piper had her huge garden party this year for her 2nd birthday! That was another great one. And then there are our movie night's under the stars, out in the backyard. Granted we had to pause the movies when the train came by, but those are still great nights! And that trained...the kid's love watching that train come by! We've has pennies and pumpkins smashed on those train tracks!
Back to the girls again...They've shared their 1st room together here. Learned to crawl, walk, run in this house! They've had their 1st busted lips on the kitchen ceramic tile here! So many 1sts! And most of all they have the security in knowing that this is their home. What will they really think when they see people coming in our home to see if they want it! That leads me to my next feeling...

I'm Freaked!!! I asked the realtor if I could leave sanitizer out for people to use when they enter my home. He said that would probably freak people out. So, I have to Lysol everything when I get home every day! I'm gonna be made if my girls start getting odd illnesses due to strangers being in my house! Since Jessica made a comment about hiding her toothbrush, I am a little freaked out! I am now hiding all of ours! And what if I am in the shower and don't hear the phone ring when they have some one to show the house to, or what if I am outside mowing and the kid's are running around the house from window to window to see me and Maggie isn't in her crate! What a disaster that will be!

I'm Tired!!! And beat! When I get up in the mornings...I will have to get the girls and I ready to possibly leave the house. I have to be constantly picking up after the girls and Maggie. I will have to vacuum/sweep every day! That bites! And at night, I will have to clean clean clean. I can't let the laundry pile up now. I have to clean every dish after every meal to make sure everything is clean when we are called to leave the house for a showing. I have to dust every day! I have to make my bed every morning! I hate making my bed! Don't see the point in it really....just gonna mess it up again. And I have to mow/edge/weed eat/and do the hedges weekly! I am tired!!!!! John is tired too. He's having to do all the hefty repairs like painting the exterior and work on the fence!

I am Happy!!! This is my "glass is 1/2 full" feeling. When we do sell, Our next home will be bigger!!!! We live in about 1500 square feet now. That's tiny and we are growing out of it. So It'll be nice to have a bigger house with more closets for storage! And wouldn't be nice to have a pool! Hopefully our perfect house will include the perfect pool! And the girls will have much nicer and better schools to go to. Hopefully Maggie Bell will still have a big yard to run in! And I look forward to out 1st party in our new home where ever that may be!!!

Welp, I have to run. Maybe my next post will be a ton of pics of what this house looked like when we bought it....pretty funny! This house was filled with horrible wall paper!

Fever, The Party Killer!

I woke up this morning to Juliet burning up. I went and grabbed the thermometer and her temp was 102.4. I said out loud, "Welp, you aren't going to your cousin's birthday party." Presley was kinda listening when I said that. Then later this morning I hear Presley tell Piper, "Stay away from me. I have a party to go to, so you better not get me sick! If I get a fever mom won't let me go either!"

Yummy Cookie Soup!

Presley is in heaven!!!!!!! The name of this blog is Cookie Soup and that was created by Presley. This is actually one of her recipe titles that she created last year. Anyways, I am not big on the kids having sugar filled cereals. But I caved on this one. She recently saw a commercial for Cookie Crisp and nearly flipped out. She was ecstatic that someone out there used her cookie soup recipe! It has been all she could talk about every morning as she ate her bland Cheerios and Corn Flakes. So I bought her some and she had a bowl this morning and was in absolute heaven!


Here she is celebrating her Very Merry Happy Unbirthday posing with her very 1st box of Cookie Crisp...A.K.A Cookie Soup!

And Maggie Bell and Juliet also had a Very Merry Happy Unbirthday today also!

Our White Bluff Weekend

We spent the weekend with Liza, Nicky, Zenon, and Ethan down at Lake Whitney at the White Bluff Resort. We had a spectacular time!!!

At times though, we thought...the things we do for our guys to get their brand spankin' new golf clubs! We just had to let them have about 3 hours of our Saturday afternoon to try and talk Liza and Nicky into buying some property. In return, the resort hooked us up with a room/$100 weekend credit/and new clubs for our golfing hubbies!

We've had property down there for years, just never use it! But we took full advantage of every amenity this weekend though! You can check out Liza's blog for more pics too! She has some great ones! http://www.monkeylemur.blogspot.com/

Friday we checked into our rooms and this is the view from our room. Very Pretty!

And Presley...posing...again. She's such a ham!

While we were waiting for Liza & Nick and the boys to arrive, we walked over to the pool. On the way, we came across a skunk! This was a 1st for me...to see a real living skunk!

John and the girls hanging out in the pool!

The next morning, before heading to breakfast, the girls had to check out the view again.

Here's a few pics from when we drove around the property while Nick and Liza had their tour. I forget how pretty it is down there.

And we saw a deer! It ran across the road in front of us!

And after dinner, Liza and I took the kiddos back to the pool while the guys tried out there new clubs on the course! The guys had a great game of golf and the kiddos had a great evening at the pool!

After we had pool time, we headed out to Aunt Deb's & Uncle John's lake house for the night. After we got settled in there, we took the kids to have some ice cream at the cutest little ice cream stand! I didn't get picture sof the stand, but Liza did. Piper had about 4 bites and she was done. With every bite, she'd get brain freeze...

Sunday morning, Liza and I had scheduled some much needed and rare time away from the kids and attention on our poor poor sore and mistreated feet! We had a lovely pedicure! 2 hours of heaven! We missed our 4 monkeys, but didn't worry about them since we left them in the trusting hands of their daddies.

We did catch up with them at the pool after our pedicures. John said that the kids were actually tired of swimming after having been little fishies all weekend long. But you never would have believed they said those words after seeing them in that pool! They were all, "mommy mommy watch what I can do, watch me jump in the pool..." These are things us mommy's didn't let them do the day before.

ON YOUR MARK...

GET SET....

GO....

John and Nick let the kids jump in the pool. I tell you what, those 4 kids are brave! Well, Piper didn't actually jump in, but she did kinda slide into John's arms.

I love this picture!

And the waterfall! They loved this!

My little seal!

And Presley just had to swing on that swing before leaving! She had wanted to do that all weekend long!

On the way home, we stopped by McDonald's for dinner. They had the cutest kid's table with the cutest hamburger stools. Loved it!

It was scary to watch the kids jump in the pool and stuff, but boy oh boy...they have memories to carry with them for the rest of their lives, which is something that Liza and I had talked about a lot over the weekend. They are going to have memories of being with their cousins, laughing, smiling, jumping on the hotel beds, swimming safely with the mommies, swimming on the edge with the daddies, eating ice cream at nine at night, swinging from a tree, sitting on hamburgers, and just being able to be a kid! I love that we can give them that!

I am so glad we took our weekend trip, it was a great break from painting our house!