Life in our new home

To say it's been crazy the past couple months would be an understatement. If you had told me 6 months ago that I'd be having a baby, packing to move cities (back to my dream city), living with my parents with two kids for almost a month, and buying an amazing new home I would've laughed in your face! Never in my wildest dreams would I have believe that Alan and I would move back to where we began. But now that we're here, I can honestly say I never want to leave again! We're slowly getting the house settled - we have most of the boxes unpacked and put away, we just need to finish unpacking the last few boxes and figure out how to organize the kids rooms and our room and we'll be all set! It had better happen fast, though... Elizabeth is turning two in a month and we're having her birthday party shortly after that!

I've been busy updating the blog all afternoon/evening, so this is just going to be another picture post. Hopefully I'll soon be able to get back to regular blogging!

Love these mirror pictures!!

coloring!

Fascinated with looking at himself in the mirror

Watching Mickey Mouse while Mommy gets
E's breakfast

posing like Mommy

helping unpack/load the dishwasher

"feeding" Bubba's monkey from her belly button. :)

She loves playing in Bubba's crib after he wakes up!

First night with a pillow

Hanging out in the Bumbo

E and Pops

Using a "big kid" glass

"Peek-a-boo"

What's been going on...

Well, Alan and I thought David was our only big news for 2012, but we were wrong... way wrong! 

Our house is officially for sale! And you will never guess where we're moving to...

Yup, that's right, we're moving right back where it all began... Aggieland!! And we couldn't be more excited.

You see, it all started a couple months before David was born. We missed living in a smaller town and for a while toyed with the idea of moving back to College Station and having Alan commute to work every day. That was a very short-lived idea, though, once I remembered the super early times Alan left in the mornings and him not arriving home until 7:30-8:00. 

Fast forward a month or two and we find out our church is opening a campus in our area. We got all excited about helping build the Cypress campus and the potential of meeting more families in our area and the thought of moving quickly faded into the background. 

Well, to make a long story short, right around the time David was born, Alan found out about a company in College Station through a friend that works there and ended up interviewing November 2. He was offered a position and accepted after we talked it over (although we didn't really need to talk, we were both excited about the potential of moving back to our favorite city).

Alan will be starting sometime in the beginning of January. He's going to try and find somewhere to stay in January while we're waiting for the sale of our house (he doesn't really want to commute daily), and I'll be visiting my parents for a couple of weeks (so if you're in Texarkana, let me know! I'd love to catch up!!). Our Realtor has said that houses that she lists average about 31 days on the market, which is what we're hoping for! We actually can't close until January 28 (we took advantage of the first time homebuyers tax credit and don't really want to have to pay it back...), but we definitely hope we have a contract on the house much sooner than that. In the meantime, we're looking for houses in College Station! 

So, that's our big news... :) We'll miss all our friends in Cypress, but are also so excited about moving back to our favorite place!

No fun day...

I had to call in sick to work today. I hate missing work! I have the most incredible assistant, but it is so hard for me to not be there to teach my kiddos. Hopefully, I'll be better tomorrow because I'm really wanting to go work on cleaning this place!

I want everything completely cleaned by Saturday when we start moving in our big furniture. I know I'll have to clean again once we've moved everything in, but I'd feel a lot better once the first run through is done. I also want to start unpacking stuff into my pink teaching room. =) Especially all of my books. I have tons of books that I take to preschool and I can't do that when they're all packed up.

I still need to figure out how to upload pictures from my our new camera that we got for Christmas. I've been loving taking pictures, mainly of my students, and want to e-mail some of them to the parents. I've seriously got the cutest class ever! Soon, though I'll have many pictures of the new house. I can't wait to get it all set up!

Jen

It's Ours!

Sorry for the lack of updating. I have been extremely busy lately with my mom and with the start of A&M. I've got to remind myself that this is my final semester! WHOOP! I can't wait to be done. It is very fulfilling to know that in just 4 short months, I will be graduating with my master's degree in early childhood education. I'm very glad that I went ahead and started grad school as soon as I finished undergrad because I know that I wouldn't want to go back at a later time.


As of Thursday, Alan and I are home owners! What should have taken about 30 minutes, though, took us over 2 1/2 hours. Got to love the government changing paperwork and being the guinea pigs with the new info. We sat with the previous owners for about half of the time. We learned a lot about the house (all good, thank goodness) and found out that she is an Aggie. How crazy is that? Apparently, a lot of Aggies live in our subdivision, with at least one of them being on our street. 


My mom has been a huge help this past week. She packed all of our china and crystal, so I didn't have to worry about messing it up. She is also helping clean tomorrow. Speaking of cleaning, I finally got the mop that I had been salivating over eying (does this word look funny, or is it just me?). We got the shark mop euro pro, which looks awesome. I'll be sure and let y'all know once I've actually used it, though.  I've also got some odds and ends for the house already, much to Alan's dismay. I just got so excited that I had to get a couple of things. 


I'll close with a picture of our new fridge, which is coming next Saturday. I've gotta get back to doing homework. Two assignments down, 1 to go.

(Our new LG, 25 cubic foot beauty!)

Jen

New Year, New Home =)

We had a wonderful Christmas break in both of our home towns! We got to spend a lot of time with our families and enjoyed doing all of the "Christmas-y" things that we normally do. We spent about 4 days with Alan's family and then 7 days with mine. We had a blast, but are definitely glad to be back at our own home. Alan and I got this fancy new camera for Christmas, so I'm going to be teaching myself how to use it over the next couple of months. I also want to get Photoshop while I'm still in school because I can save about $1400. It's still pretty expensive, but at $1400 less, I'm thinking it'll be worth it.

Before Christmas, we put an offer in on a home that we really liked, but nothing came from it. We didn't know much about short sales at the time and thought that we'd be able to negotiate terms with the seller. Much to our surprise, it wasn't like that. The bank is actually doing the selling and just picks the highest bidder. That definitely wasn't us... Haha. Well, at least it was a learning experience. We went again yesterday and I'm pretty sure we've got a home! It's still pending on the home inspection and the sellers signing the final contract, but I think it's safe to say that we'll be homeowners by February! Good-bye Alan's commute... Hello Jennifer's. :)

More pictures to come later... after I figure out how to upload pics from our new camera.

Changes

Well, as promised, I've got news to share. Alan and I are house hunting! =) We're hoping to move the Houston area sometime next semester. Instead of Alan commuting, I will be the commuter in the relationship. My last two classes before I finish up my master's are both online, so I will be driving to College Station on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays to teach my preschool class. I'm on the job hunt, as well. I'm hoping to find a preschool position with a local church for the upcoming school year. Needless to say, I'm stoked about looking for our first home. It will be so nice to own a home instead of rent one. I'll keep you updated on the house hunting front...

In other news, we're headed to visit Alan's family on Thursday this week for Christmas and cabinet building. Following that, we're on our way to visit my family to spend Christmas Day with. I absolutely LOVE Christmas and getting to see family! We've had our decorations up for a while (but we didn't get everything out this year), so I'll post pictures later.

Jen