Our New House

Ta-daa!! I'm back with another blog post! Where I have been, you might ask. Well I have been a little pre-occupied with this:

Our new house! Yay! I was very busy during January and February looking for, buying, and moving into this beauty. Now that we have lived here for about two weeks and things have settled down a bit, I thought I would share some photos of our new home. (Which we are absolutely loving, by the way.)

Let's start with the backyard, a place the whole family loves to hang out. Having a backyard is awesome.

The boys love to hang out in their playhouse.

When Howie saw this swing set, he wanted to buy this house. Being the nice parents we are, we obliged, which made Howie very happy. He loves to play outside on the swings.

I love my crepe myrtle! Soon this tree will be covered in little pink or white flowers. 

A nice patio for grilling.

Howie calls this his tree house. Have I mentioned that Howie loves his playing outside on his playset?

The backyard as seen from the back door.

Here are some photos from the inside of the house. You will notice that the walls are bare and the rooms are mostly empty. Give me a year or two and that will all change, but in the meantime here is what the interior of the house looks like:

Terrible photo, I know. This is the kitchen. I love it.

The dining/eat in kitchen area. A perfect fit for our table and four chairs.

Here is the living room. It has lots of windows, a beautiful fireplace, and lots of cushy floor space for driving cars around. A couch is on the way.

My view as I make dinner. I can see the backyard, the TV, and my family hanging out in the living room all at the same time. This is one of my favorite things about this house.

The stairs are a favorite with the boys. Henry is getting pretty good at going up and down.

Howie playing on the stairs.

The formal living room. This room is completely empty except for the piano right now.   

Our bikes are inside, but not in our bedroom! Yay! I absolutely love having a garage!

Our master bedroom. Matt can get out of bed without crawling over me!  Hurray! The simple joys in life.

A laundry room. With cupboards. Totally awesome!

A walk in closet. So nice.

Now this is a master bath. LOVE IT!

The master bathroom.

The view from the top of the stairs.

The fourth bedroom. This will eventually be some sort of office, man cave, art studio, guest bedroom kind of a room. Right now it is the room where Matt plays his trumpet.

A coat closet that only has coats in it! Anyone who saw my previous coat closet will understand how awesome this is.

Henry's bedroom. So sweet and clean!

Howie's room. So big and so pink. First thing I paint in this house will be this room. Howie would like it to be blue.

The boys' bathroom. Howie is very possessive of his bathroom. He got mad at me when I used his toilet. I apologize in advance if anyone visits me and gets screamed at while using the bathroom.

The landing at the top of the stairs. A perfect place to play or launch toys through the air. Yes, toys have been broken. I'm just glad both boys are too fat to fit in between the bars.

And last, but not least, here are some close up photos of the front of the house. We love the magnolia trees and sego palms in the front.

There you have it. Our new house. If you want to see more, come for a visit and see it all for yourself!

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone! We had a very fun month celebrating, eating, shopping, and spending time together as a family. Here is what we have been up to this month:

We Put Up Christmas Decorations

This is just a sampling of the snowmen that Howie made. He filled a whole wall in his room with snowmen in every color of the rainbow.

Howie's nativity scene, complete with a shepherd, a smiling cow, a polka dotted camel, and four alligators.

We got a new Christmas tree this year. Everything is better in pink, right? I love it!

We Saw Santa

We Made Christmas Cookies

Howie likes a lot of sprinkles on his cookies.

We Made Gingerbread Houses

We Ate Gingerbread Houses

Santa Came!

We Enjoyed a Lovely Christmas Day

We very much enjoyed the Christmas season! What a wonderful time to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ and feel the love of our friends and family near and far!

On The Move

Today Henry is 10 months old. It has been a busy month for the little guy. He has four new teeth. He has a new bed and shares a room with his big brother. But if you were to ask Henry, his biggest accomplishment of the month (and his whole life, really) has been learning to move.

Henry started by scooting around on his bum, but that is a pretty slow way to get around. So on November 4, Henry crawled for the first time. A whole new world opened up to him. There were so many new things to explore and get into. Big brother's toys were no longer out of reach. If he got temporarily left in the living room, he could follow after everyone. And no longer did he have to sit and wait for someone to put him within arms reach to grab at the blinking internet lights. Yes, crawling is great fun.

But if crawling is fun, just think how great walking would be! A week after crawling for the first time, Henry took his first steps! It is only a matter of time before he is running after big brother and really having some fun.

The Best Halloween Ever!

Last year Howie wanted nothing at all to do with Halloween. He refused to wear any kind of costume, and he stubbornly resisted asking people for candy. This year Howie discovered Halloween.

Howie spent the entire month of October anticipating Halloween. He knew Halloween was coming, and he knew it was going to be good. He was going to dress up as Spiderman, and people were going to give him candy. Every day he said, "Halloween is coming, right?" and "Halloween is for treats, right?" Needless to say, we had quite a lot of fun preparing for and celebrating Halloween this year.

We made Halloween decorations.

We made Halloween cookies.

We carved a Jack-O-Lantern.

Howie drew on the pumpkin with his markers.

Matt carved the pumpkin, not really following the lines that Howie drew.

We went to a Halloween party.

Henry is dressed as Super Grover

We went to our ward trunk-or-treat.

Howie plays the candy bar walk game. Once Howie discovered they were giving away full sized candy bars, he played over and over again. He won twice.

And here is Henry--sleeping through the whole thing!

We went trick-or-treating.

At the end of it all, there was much candy and happiness and excitement for all. As Howie said when we were walking home from trick-or-treating, "This is the best Halloween ever!"