6 months in a nutshell

Oops! I can’t believe it’s been six months since I last wrote! So in short, here’s the last six months:

June:

• awesome trip to Santa Claus, Indiana with our friends the Ziegelmans to play at Holiday World. Adam rode his first real roller coaster and we played hard at the water park. We stayed at a rental farmhouse. Well worth the trip, and we’ll for sure be going back!
• lots of time at the pool.
• Baseball – Adam played on the Cardinals on a team out in Chesterfield. He loves playing baseball and even got a new bag, bat and glove for his birthday.

July:

• spent the first week in Pittsburgh with Andrew’s brother Matt and his wife Beth. We finally met our nephew Nathan who was born last December. Adam drove the duck boat, lots of fireworks, pool time, BBQ, and several late late nights with good drinks and great conversation!
• more pool time and a camp or two for Adam. VBS and the Zoo.

August:

• pool, pool, pool
• Adam started 1st grade with Mrs. Duvall at Barretts Elementary School by our new house. He has thrived in the classroom. It’s so much fun to watch them learn and grow!
• Katie started school at Bonhomme Presbyterian Preschool with Mrs. Kern and Mrs. Harrell. She goes two days a week in the morning. She loves the music and outside play, but especially loves to paint and play in the “house” with her friends. 
• Andrew finished his MBA at Wash U. Woo hoo! What an accomplishment! We are so proud!

September:

• Adam played fall ball this year with his summer team. He continues to enjoy playing baseball and started to follow the Cardinals closely this fall! (a good time to do so since the Cards went on to win the World Series!)
• I started babysitting in August for three babies (all under 1 year old). They were lots of fun and lots of work.
• Katie kept busy with school and playing at home with me. She loves art projects and playing outside. She is one busy girl! Love it! 
• Adam joined the children’s choir at church and loves to sing. He enjoys singing and it’s great to see him (one that didn’t seem to like to perform in front of others) doing so well! He made it through his first performance with some deep breaths and a smile from me in the front row. His little face turned red and he held back some tears. But he made it. Slowly but surely he felt more comfortable performing and by December he made it with all smiles!

October:

• My Katie turned 3. I can’t believe she’s three. She is high-energy, funny, inquisitive, and challenging. She likes to

From the same genes?

Adam and Katie are different for obvious reasons, but their personalities continue to grow and come out in all different ways…

So  – I’m trying to talk with someone on the phone about a bill and the kids are out of control. Of course, in the thirty-plus minutes prior to my phone call the kids were playing fine. No one was shouting or hitting or screaming. In the first few minutes of the call it’s like a signal went out to them and they began to bicker and then they are at my feet. I’m trying to salvage the phone call while showing angry faces and pointing to separate places in the room for the kids to go. When that didn’t work, I ended the call and exploded, briefly, but it wasn’t pretty. Not my best mommy moment. The way the kids reacted is the best….Adam has a scared look on his face and was about to cry, but Katie, dear Katie. She laughs. Straight up in my face laughter. She looks at Adam and he busts up laughing, so what else can a mom do at this moment, but, yes, laugh.

Again this week I had had it with the bickering and such. We have a big house, plenty of room for everyone to have their own space, but somehow the kids want to sit in the same chair, or get into the fridge at the same time, or eat with the same spoon! Seriously kids, urgh. Again, not my best mommy moment, but the kids were arguing at the fridge about who was going to open the door and I yelled. Again, not my best mommy moment. Adam got a big lip and cried, Katie laughed.

And all I could do was try my best to supress my smile as I tried to calmly address the situation. I had a good laugh away from the kids but it still amazes me that I have two wonderfully different kiddos from the same gene pool.

 

And we’re (almost) out

I made one more trip tonight to load up the van with what is hopefully the second to last load to get out of the old house. The only things left are the trash (will be gone Tuesday – yeah!), and a 12 ft ladder. There is also a rake and lawn bags to make one last clean up of the gum balls in the yard. Blah.

Andrew and I were there the other night and we stood in the kitchen and talked about how much we had done to the house and all of the things we enjoyed while we were there. What fun. We agree that it hasn’t been as hard to leave the house because we still own it and we can go to it anytime. Well, as of Friday, we have new renters moving in. We had the walls painted and carpets cleaned and the house looks great.

While we love (LOVE) the new house and we are so glad we moved, the new house just isn’t “home” yet….but it’s getting there. We haven’t even been here a month yet and it’s certainly coming along, box by box. We keep moving things around to find what works. We’ll get there.

This week Andrew has to find a dry day to mow the yard and rake gumballs and then we are officially handing over the keys on Friday.  As of right now I’m glad we decided to rent the house out. We can slowly pocket of all of the memories from that house and build new ones here.

We need to do some painting and such around here, so I’m hoping to remember to post before and after photos. There is some interesting wallpaper in the bathrooms… Change is good.

Whirlwind…

It’s been a bit crazy around here so this is my attempt at documenting some of the happenings….

- Katie has decided to start going poop on the potty. Today she went 5 times. I think she finally picked up on the, I go on the potty, I get a treat. ahhh…no more diapers.

- Adam started and finished a fun soccer program at Vetta. He is now into baseball and basketball…our new neighbor has a hoop on their driveway (and a 14 year old boy to idolize) that he uses pretty much everyday after school.

- Tonight Adam read an entire book to me with very little prompting. I knew it would be cool to see him learn to read, but man, I just can’t get over it. It really does open a whole new world for him!

- Katie has added more sass to her attitude. She put Adam in time out because she said he was in “twuble”. She tells me to leave her alone and close the door when when has to go to the bathroom. She’s not always nice about it either, “cwose the dowr”. “weave me awone”. When I ask her to use her nice words, I hear her say the same phrase, but add in “pwease”….

- Adam got bunk beds and he rotates sleeping on the top and the bottom. I forgot how fun they are! Katie has asked to have a big girl bed, and she wants it painted “gween”. I’m not ready for that yet. However, she yelled out for us this morning, “Daaaaddddy, moooommmmmmy, go potty, have to potty”. This was at 5 this am. Being trapped in a crib makes it hard to go potty on her own, but I’m not ready to set her free from her crib yet! I’m sure it will be soon, but, man this came fast!

- Katie remembers everything. And she repeats it all. She got a pair of crocs and had one of those Jibbitz put on by the sales guy. So now when she wears the crocs she tells us “guy put minnie on shoe”, she tells us about the thunder she heard. I have to get that on video, she does her hands and makes the sounds, it’s quite funny.

- When Katie gets her nails clipped she says “pwick naoils”… sounds more like “pick nose” , again, need to get that on tape. It’s pretty funny.

- Adam has turned into this “boy” overnight it seems. We have some awesome conversations and while he has always been curious about things and has always asked a lot of questions, now the discussions don’t end with my answer. There’s so much more thought going on in his head. Lots of conversations about God, heaven, tornados (because he is deathly afraid of them right now) and pretty much anything that he can think of, we talk about. He rocks at the Wii games we have and he’s just really fun to be around these days. He loves to play catch and makes up adventures “what happens next” type of story that we make up together.

I have thought of things to post here and there, but I can’t get to a computer fast enough!  More later I’m sure….

Dollars and sense

To my dear little ones,

There will come a time in your life that you actually have to say NO. I know, hard to understand, even though you tend to use that word with me now for all sorts of reasons. But I’m talking about when you have to say no to things that you really want. Boo, right?  I’m not always good at it, but thankfully your Dad is.

We have some bills to pay off. Oh these bills are no fun, you know things like a car and college (mine AND your Dad’s very expensive but well worth it masters). We have been taking Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University class and we have tried to shift our (mostly mine) way of thinking about money and how to handle it better. During one of his classes he talks about a “debt-snowball”. Well, Andrew (and I) decided to run from the cheetah (a wonderful analogy that Dave uses) and get out of debt as fast as we can. We made some pretty big changes and I know in the long run it’s going to feel oh so good to have no debt but the house, but right now I’m a bit nervous about it all.

I won’t get into specifics, but we made some changes in the way we are saving and spending and hope to have our debt paid off in a few years. Then it’s time to invest, invest, invest….instead of paying interest, we want to EARN the interest.

I know kids, as always I have gone on too long already, but I want you to know how hard you have to work to EARN your money in your life. Remember that when you spend it…you worked hard, make sure you SAVE for whatever it is before you buy. It’s a new way of thinking in this “have it now” culture that we are living in, but your Dad and I will be sure to teach you what we can about this so your way of thinking about money doesn’t leave you with a bunch of stuff and no happiness.

I write this just minutes after your Dad and I finished talking about the budget. NEVER a fun thing to do, but hoping that the steps we are taking now will lead us to happier budget discussions.

Love,

Mom

There’s this house…

….that we bought. Yep. We did it. Last Sunday at this time we were sitting on pins and needles waiting to hear what the sellers were going to do with out offer.

Our weekends had been full of house-hunting. House after house after house. We were so ready for it to be done.  We were watching one house that was close to Adam’s current school, but there was something about the drive in that just didn’t sit well with me. We kept looking and nothing seemed to be feeling right. I did some additional searching and found this little 1.5 story house. 3 bed. 2.5 baths. Cul de sac. Great yard. Great schools. One small problem…the price. It was out of our price range, which led Andrew and I to an intense series of conversations about it ALL. Good times.

Andrew initially didn’t want me to go see it because he was afraid I would fall in love with a house we couldn’t afford. Actually he said, “I’m afraid you’ll fall in love with a house that I can’t get for you”. How sweet is that!?

We slept on it and with hesitation Andrew agreed that I could go see the house, with a promise to not fall in love with it.

Throughout the whole process we have tried to remain level-headed about it all. We knew that the right house would come along. We talked about how we would know it was right. We had the one house we liked but something just wasn’t right. So I went to see the out-of-our-price range house. And don’t tell Andrew, but I was in love. It had just about everything we wanted. The kitchen was updated, the backyard was big, the basement was finished, there was plenty of room, and and and…it was just about perfect. But the price.

I went to see it on a Friday morning with Adam while Katie was at her toddler play class at church. Saturday we went out (again) with our realtor to see more homes. Like the front, but no backyard. Like the basement, but the kitchen is too small. Like the bedrooms, but the layout is choppy. Being the smart realtor he is, Kenny made our last stop at the one I loved. Andrew liked it. I liked it. And while we were there, the current owner told us that they were moving on Thursday to their newly built home. Good information to have.

So we talked and talked and talked some more. Come Sunday we were ready to put in an offer. So we did.

Offer. Counter. (insert time dragging between each offer) Counter. Counter. Counter. Accepted.  WOO HOOOOOOOOO! We got it. AND we got it for the price that we wanted. Let me be clear here that I was ready to give in to their last counter and just accept it. But Andrew was ready to battle. His MBA classes paid off when we started to get down to the negotiating…he loved it. So I let him go at it and make the aggressive offer. It turned out to be the last offer because they caved and accepted. Well done A!

And now it begins. Lots of planning, orchestrating of meetings, packing, moving and unpacking and oh yes, we need to find a renter for this house.

One thing at a time. We’ll get it done.

We got the house. We got a house that feels good. In a good neighborhood. With almost all of the things we were looking for.

We close March 25. We are going to try to move that next week because there are a lot of things going on around that time and if we don’t just move, we’ll have to wait until mid-April and well, we have a new house, we want to live in it!!!

My running inspriation

Shuffle. Shuffle. Shuffle. Shuffle.

That’s the sound of my Dad when he runs. He was never an elite runner, actually he didn’t start running until he was in his 30s. Now at the young age of 67,  he has completed at least 3 marathons, 5+ half marathons and now he and I are doing triathlons together.  His first marathon was in Chicago and I remember watching him and the other 20,000 runners. There were people of all shapes, sizes, and ages. I thought to myself, “I could do this!” But I wasn’t a runner. I had tried and tried in the past, but running and me just didn’t get along. Something clicked watching that marathon. I joined Team in Training, and completed a marathon two years later.

My Dad runs year round, outside. OUTSIDE. No matter the weather. Heat cold rain. He does it all. I despise the treadmill, but I will drag myself onto the dreadmill to run in too hot or too cold weather. But my Dad goes outside. Always.    I feel like such a wimp. But somehow he always keeps me going, inside or out.

Thanks for the constant inspiration Dad.

Last weekend my dad, my sister and I ran a race out in St Charles. As my Dad and I drove home on a chocolate (the medals were made of chocolate – how awesome is that!) and runner’s high we talked as we always do – nonstop. It’s just awesome that we are able to have something like this to enjoy together.

Thanks Dad for being my push and my inspiration to start running and to keep going!

And hey Dad – pick up your feet!!! I love you!

Who is Mr Shmllow?

I absolutely love the funnies that come from my kids, but I am HORRIBLE at writing them down and remembering them, so I am starting here hoping to be better in the future. Here are the latest from the kids.

Katie:

- In the car on the way home from Toddler Play at church I was asking Katie about her day and she says “no talking, drive”.

- Stop. Her new favorite word. If she really wants you to stop, it’s “stop it, pwwease”.

- She’s getting so independent so we hear “Katie do it” a lot…A LOT. And when she does whatever it is that she wanted to do, she raises her hands and says “ta da”!

- When we are riding in the car and we take a turn quickly or speed up she will say “hold on”, and if she has her blanket (which is a pink hooded towel…) “hold on tight bwankie!” or “hold on tight Pink”

- K says “okey dokey” with a twist -  “obekey dowkey”

- She has started to give fantastic hugs, arms wrapped around our neck, her legs are wrapped around our middles, and she squeezes. “Big hugs” she says. Then whomever she’s hugging she says “My mommy” or “my Daddy”….. the best.

Adam:

- he is learning to sound out his words and was writing a menu on the wipe off board at home, here are some of the things that were on order: Fsh stiks, chikin, mr shmllow, pb & j (he put an ampersand in instead of writing it out), ornges, frnch tost stiks.

- we are getting ready to buy a new house and with the most sincere look on his face, Adam asked if we are going to take his toys with us when we move, then he specifically asked about his Buzz Lightyear. Bless his heart.

- Adam added another career to his “to do” list….as of this week the list includes: fighter jet pilot, police officer, soldier, helicopter pilot, astronaut.

- he used to say diagonal – “dinagonal”. He can say it the right way now. boo.

And just to remember a few top moments of the last few days….

I came home from an early morning workout to find Adam and Katie laying on the floor in their pjs with a book open in front of them. Adam was reading to Katie. Mental note taken to remember this later when they are not as amicable…

Adam Katie and I went to Build A Bear and had a lunch out (which is a rarity these days…) for Valentines Day. We were eating lunch and Adam looks up and says, “Mom, it’s fun spending time with you”. Warm heart feelings all over.

Potty Learning.

So I was corrected awhile back by a child therapist that children don’t potty train, they potty learn. Well, we are in the middle of that with Katie.  Over the last few months she’s been hot and cold on the idea and we just let it go.  But this past Tuesday she decided that it was time.  She took of her pants and diaper and then decided to pee on the potty and not go back to diapers. We had to convince her to put one on at night and sometimes it’s a challenge at rest time for her. She’s doing pretty well with all of this. Marshmallows work wonders. She has gone by herself a couple of times too. Wow.  While was almost 3,he trainined (learned….) very quickly. Katie is only 26 months. Everyone said girls were easier, but this seems a bit too easy.  I was all prepared to wait until we moved, but Katie had other plans, and it’s turning out just fine. Good job Katie! Keep it up, we’ll get there!!!

Order of patience, please

I am one of those people who, when I want something I want it NOW.  Once I decide I want something, there isn’t much that will slow me down from getting it, except for Andrew.  Irritatingly he has a gigantic amount of patience for almost anything.  Maybe it’s more like faith, he has faith that things will work out the way they should. And more so, he has an ability to add logic to the equation and actually apply it.  I know in my head what the logical answer is, but that’s not always what I act on.  I guess that’s why we’re a good match.

Recently we have been seriously considering renting out our current home and moving forward to purchase a new one. We even have a potential renter which makes me guardedly excited. That will be decided in a few weeks, but I’m ready to GO….NOW!  Of course this is not something we can jump into lightly and we have learned SOOOOO much in the last two weeks about renting and all it entails.  We have met with two different mortgage bankers, talked with insurance companies, listed options, researched tax information, discussed it all and we still have questions….talk about draining. Tomorrow I have more calls to make, many more questions to ask, all in hopes that we will be able to come to a decision, soon! I need it soon.

What makes it even worse is that I have my eye on another house.  It’s in a nice neighborhood, it’s the size we want, finished basement, nice yard, and it’s on a cul de sac. I realize that I haven’t been inside the house and could get turned off once we actually go in it.  Sometimes it feels like I torture myself by looking now.  But I’ll keep my eye on that one….this is when Andrew so calmly reminds me that if it’s not that one, there will be another one and whichever one works out was the one that was meant to be.  It’s really annoying sometimes, I wish I could do that.  My brain doesn’t stop, so I’m going to go stare at some brainless TV thinking of all the different scenerios that could be, try to get some sleep and start early on my calls….watch out Mr. Mortgage banker, I’m coming for you! I need answers!