We Closed!

Just a quick post to let everyone know we closed today! I may be more excited than Phil. This is the first house I've ever owned! This is his second. So, we're off to celebrate. Busy night. We are going to a good friend of mine's surprise birthday party and then rushing off to catch the last half of my ten year reunion. (I decided to go.) Just wanted to let you all know escrow closed all right. We start moving on Tuesday!

One More Day!

We are supposed to close escrow tomorrow if everything goes smoothly! We did our final walk through last night and met the family we're buying the house from for the first time. They are really nice people. The kids know our kids from school and the mom is good friends with Andy's teacher, small world. I have to share something about this family that made me smile. My father-in-law drove by one day after we had signed papers and had been in escrow for a while and saw the husband outside on a ladder painting the trim. We realized when we did our walk through that they had given the whole outside of the house a fresh coat of paint. They said the old owners did it for them and it made them so happy, so they did it for us. Isn't that sweet! It's nice to know there are still people out there that think of others. Makes me sad we won't have time to do the same for our old house...

Pictures, Pictures, Pictures...

Hi guys! I finally got the film in my camera developed and I had pictures from Christmas! Guess I haven't picked up my camera in a while. Well, since I needed the practice anyway, I posted quite a few here. Hope you enjoy them as much as I did...

Smokey (Our 5th Child!) 

Christmas Goofballs! 

Opening gifts (finally! after posing for a hundred pictures!) with Grandma Peggy watching in the background. 

Christmas with friends: Wes, Jackie, Vickey, Ryan, Kayla & Mike.  

More Pictures

Here's one more from the fishing derby a couple weeks ago...

Fishing Derby 2005 

BBQ With Friends

Here are some pictures of our weekend. We spent some time at the parks with our friends Vickey, Patrick & his kids, Elias (4) and Andrew (18 Months). They had a blast. The playground even had a water feature. They were soaked! You may recognize Vickey from our wedding pictures. She was my maid of honor. Great girl. We've known each other for...hmmm...about twelve years. Where does the time go!! Anyway, after that long we really know each other. It's nice to have a friend who I can completely relax around and be myself 100%. And someone who I can always depend on and always trust! Love you Vickey!

Wes swinging 

Vickey Swinging 

Kayla, Andrew & Elias 

Playing Hide & Seek (Jake counting & Elias hiding right in front of him! Cute!) 

Andrew Swinging 

Vickey & Andrew (And she says she's not good with kids!) 

Patrick, Andrew & Vickey 

Water Fun 

Phil BBQing 

Andrew (18 Months) 

Vickey & Patrick 

Another New Blogger

Hi everyone!
I just wanted to let you all know my mom has joined our little world. Check out her blog! I love the name: Grandma's Kitchen...

http://www.grandmaskitchen.blogspot.com

Enjoy...

Hooray! We're Renters Again!

Escrow closed on our old house yesterday! We picked up our check and can now breath a little easier because we really do have the down payment money for our new place. With one less thing that can go wrong we may sleep a little better tonight. We're supposed to close escrow on our new house in 16 days. We can hardly wait! Yikes, not much time to finish packing!

Enjoying The Weather

We had a fun weekend. Friday afternoon Kayla, my mom and I finally got together with my cousin Leah and her kids. We took the kids to the park and had a nice time chatting & letting the kids run. Kayla and Trevor had a fun time together. You wouldn't guess there was an almost three year age difference between them. And we finally got to meet Autumn. She is absolutely adorable! What beautiful dark eyes and hair. She sure is a cutie. She was cooing and smiling the whole time. Precious!

Today we woke up at the crack of dawn to take the kids fishing. Every year Gardnerville (a town 10 minutes south of us) holds a fishing derby for the kids. It's free and the kids have a blast. They stock a section of the river with trout and the kids get an hour and a half to catch up to two fish each. This was the first time Kayla had ever been fishing and she loved it. They actually had a hard time catching anything for the first hour. When they announced we had twenty minutes left Andy and Jake had both caught their maximum but Kayla and Wes hadn't caught anything. I was beginning to worry they'd run out of time. And I know my daughter. She was bored by then and if she didn't catch anything she'd never want to go fishing again. Well, wouldn't you know it, both kids caught two fish in the last ten minutes. Kayla caught her last one right as they were announcing the time was up! Thank God! Anyway, I've posted a few pictures below... Phil's parents went along with us to help, too. We had a blast!

P.S. We close on our new house in three weeks! Can't wait!

2005 Kid's Fishing Derby 

The Kids with Phil and Grandpa Jim at the 2005 Kid's Fishing Derby