Goodbye 2013 Hello 2014

Goodbye 2013 Hello 2014

               2013 will always be a year that we will always remember.  We bought a bigger home where we can build our family via adoption.  We went from a 2 bedroom 1 bath home that was 800sq ft to a 1500 Sq ft home with a 500 sqft garage 3 bedrooms 2 bath rooms with a school room/playroom.  We have gained awesome neighbors which was a positive to the new house for the year.  Hubs was kept on with his job when they closed the plant.  Such a blessing in our life.  Getting back on our Debt free financial track since moving and getting caught in all the moving expense's and learning a whole new pay schedule. <--- just threw me off for a month or 2.  Had to retrain myself to what bills came out when.  We had our first home remodel of opening up the kitchen so that I could be in there cooking or cleaning and still see what the child/ren are up to.  Now to just finish the kitchen but that is on the back burning until after the adoption process.

                       Speaking about the adoption process - we are fully funded for the home study.  Huge thing when adopting.  I wish I could say I'm not nervous but I am.  Not loosing sleep over it yet but its not yet scheduled.  We are scheduling by the end of Jan, 2014.  So exciting but so nerve racking.  Goodness I hope this is a normal reaction to having a first time home study done.  K is excited to having brothers and sisters join our family.  This is going to be a huge adjustment for him so we are trying to talk him through the process as its happening.  We've had lots of talks about how he's going to have to share his parents and he says hes fine with that but I know once they are here the adjustment for him will start.  Praying this is our last year as a family of 1 child to love.  We have room in our hearts for as many as GOD feels our family can handle.

My personal goals for 2014 is to

House - Finish the Kids/guest Bathroom, Have Kids rooms painted, Girls room closet put together
Health - Eat breakfast
Family - Go out on a date with the husband at least once a month, welcome a son or daughter or both :o),
Pets - Get Ponce Fixed
Blog - Write more
Baby steps - Fully Funded emergency fund

Stay  posted for more updates on the happenings in the family

Photo's in front of the tree

Some of my Favorite Photo's taken in front of our Christmas tree

 

K's first half marathon 1.31 Miles

 

K ran in this first kids half marathon, the long doggers.  He was super excited but mom and dad were a little stressed as we got a late start leaving in the AM.  Race was at 7:30 and we live an hour away so we had to leave early.  K was all smiles even at 6:30 in the morning.  We made it in time to start the run on time.

 

K wanted his dad to run with him so I got to stand on the side lines and cheer them on as they came in and hand K his number as we didn't have time to get his number on before the race started.

Here they go (don't see K or Isaac) but the buzzer just went off to start the race.

 

K and daddy coming in to finish the race holding his number up so they know who he was

 

Rehydrating after the race with some Gatorade

So proud of his Medal and getting ready for the next marathon.  We are planning on working towards the family run at Disney in Jan 2014

Off to Disney after the Race

 

His stats

 

Place:19    Place by Gender:16  Race number: 2871 Name:   Gender: M  Age: 08 City:   State FL         Time: 10:53.3 Pace: 8:19

 

Way to go Little man!  Keep it up and getting stronger with each and every run

Love you K!

 

You make Mom and dad really proud with all that you do

Easter 2013 in Photo's

Easter 2013

 

Our first Easter in the new house. We celebrated with a local church who dropped eggs from a helicopter 21,+++ eggs were dropped.  Loved the Easter service.

 

Kitchen Project..Part 1

We are opening up the kitchen. 

When we found this house we knew that this was the right house.  With saying that we also wanted an open kitchen which this house didn't have.  Well, we put together a plan from what we wanted and have started the project of opening the kitchen. 

 

K has been asking us to crash something so as you can see he's part of this transformation of the kitchen.

 

From the starting to tear the walls down to rewiring wires needing moved. 

                      Look at how much just opening the walls makes the living area look much bigger.  The part one is completed and just waiting for the arches to be formed and dry walled. 

Stayed tuned as we finish the wall kitchen project.  This will not be a FACT Kitchen project as we plan on doing this with Cash.

Moving in

Moving in

(2/13)

 

Flora has found the best place in the house.  The kitchen walls since that don't go all the way to the ceiling.  Hubs joined her up there.  TV is still on the floor as we have yet to find a TV stand we can agree on.  Spices are finding their new home in the cabinets.

 

Moving is so hard he's crashed on the sofa.  K's bed hasn't arrived yet so it's just the mattress on the floor.
School room is slowly coming together

Our Closing in photo's

Our Closing day in Photos

 

Closing happened so fast as in we found out that we were closing the night before that there was a good chance to close that Friday.  We knew for sure Friday morning when we did our final walk through.

 

As we waited for everything to be finished we sat here with butterflies in the gut.  So what else do you do but snapping photo's.

 

Papers are signed and all cash has been handed over.  Can't say that is when we got our keys though.  LOL!  Our realtor handed them over when we did our walk through that morning along with our gift baskets.  We got a gift basket from our realtor and our broker.  What did we do right after closing?  We ran to the old house grabbed blankets and our dogs and went HOME!

 

Welcome home M. Family!!!

Mom and Son mini vacation

 

St. Augustine with my little man.

 

We had a field trip with our homeschool group up there so K and I made a mini vacation out of it.  Best decision ever!  While relaxing by the pool watching K swim there was just a sweet peace of being away from our every day stress that was just so relaxing.  After we were done at the pool it was time for dinner so we headed to a Pizza joint.  Pizza was so YUMMY!  After dinner K wanted to go checkout the beach.  On the way back to the hotel K asked if we can do this again.  I think it's something I want to do on a yearly basis is a 1 on 1 mini vacation.  We both needed the carefree 24 hours.

Once back at the hotel we snagged some fresh baked cookies when son asked to go swim some more before heading up to the room.  Of course we could swim for a while.  Ended up going back up to the room for a little bit to call daddy at home.  After that headed to the fro-yo shop across the street.  Not the best Fro-yo but we were having a great time.  K wanted to ride his scooter so we headed down to the pier to take a peek.  We both stated that we need to bring Daddy back here.  We are now planning a family vacation here.  We feel bad K and I have been to St. Auggie 3 times in 8 yrs. and hubs has never been here. We have to change that soon.  Enjoy the photo's 

All Homeschool Field trip photo's will be posted on our school blog

New house Tour

As you all know we Moved in February.  With the move and homeschooling I have had NO time for the blog.  As our homeschool year is wrapping up and we've been here for almost 2 months and things are finally settling down. 

 

Lets get down to the tour

 

Row 1: Our garage and sidewalk to our screened in front porch.  Front of the house.  Love the little details like this window combo to give the roof line some dimension.

Row 2: Our front door (Not in love with) Our living room entry way and coat closet.  3rd photo is the Hall way Lien closet.

 

Row 3: Our Kitchen Bay window.  Our closed in Kitchen.  Hello late 80s kitchen.  3rd Photo is our dining room.  Love having a dining room space.
Row 4: Master Bathroom with a HUGE walk in shower.  Love this, family room that is being used for our school room.  3rd Picture is the kids/guest bathroom.  It's a little yellow from the lighting.

it's a 3/2/2 1500sqft house not including our just under 500sqft garage.  With Citrus fruit trees :o)

Well that is our house.  Stay tuned as we move in and make this house our HOME.

Getting REAL here

Getting real here

 

 

Here is one of our kitchen counters about 5 minutes ago.  It's what I call has ground zero.  Unopened apple sauce needing to be put away, a lunch bag,a pile of random papers, a unread news paper, current spring candle etc.  YIKES! 

 

Even this Type A personality has a dumping ground currently ;o)

 

 

Mind you we are still unpacking

 

We've Moved

 

Wow!  It has happened we've finally moved into our new house.  Isaac and I have worked so hard to make the dream of being home owners a reality.  Closing was amazing.  It was quick and so amazing.  The nerves didn't hit until I was about to step into the escrow office to sign papers. 

 

Our awesome Realtor was there to hold our hands..Ha!  No we just all joked around for the most part.  As I stated before closing went fast and guess who forgot to take a picture of the signing paper work.  Yeah, that's right I did. Oops but we rushed to the CB house to grab our dogs and head to the new house for the night.

 

Oh yes we did.  We had KFC for dinner on the floor of our new living room watching wreck it Ralph.  Come bedtime we all crashed on the floor in the master bedroom.  We all had such a rush all day that we were out by 10.

 

 

Kayden's first time riding in a big truck and 1st move that he remembers.

 

Stay tuned for more house updates

The Best email ever

"I wanted to let you know we received loan approval from the lender late Friday! Your loan is approved with the lender, which is great news! And Even better, they are not asking for any additional information from you! " Sent to us from our broker

I read this first thing this morning, and the first thing I did was text hubs to call me.  K happened to walk to into the room and he said "WHAT"  I guess he knew something was up.  I told him and he got the biggest smile ever and gave me the biggest HUG ever.  He's excited to get a bigger house that we can start our adoption journey in.  He than went running around the house laughing.  Hubs called and I got to share the news with him.  I could hear his huge smile over the phone.

The family is excited and now we are just waiting to schedule our closing date.  Sooner than later at this point.  Can't wait to move in and start the journey of making our new house our home :o)


All the glory to GOD

SQUEAL  SQUEAL SQUEAL

Boxes Boxes and more Boxes

The Packing has started as we have FOUND a house. 

 

 I will show the house once we have the keys in hand.  After losing a house due to Seller backing out, Losing to a cash offer, to a bad realtor practice (not ours) and another seller who just really didn't know what she wanted (house on the market 500 plus days)  Yikes and I thought our job of finding a house was hard.  We are just keeping it under wraps for a little while.

 

Kayden has been to the house and he approves!  He's one excited kiddo as we get ready to leave the only house he remembers (12M-8yr)

 

Kaydens room is one of our staging areas for boxes as his room will be the last to be painted back to dreadful basic white. The green things on the walls are labels.  I know!  Who does that?  Yes we can say a little OCD here.  Ha, it keeps me sane to have order esp in this major stressful event.

 

 

 The master is coming apart.  I mean literally.  Look under that window shaker A/C unit.  This house has so much settling happening and when the A/C broke 2 summers ago it all got wet.  Well, the plaster is OLD and was wet so it's just crumbling.  EWWWW!  Yes I painted around the area that needed fixed with plans to paint when it was done.  Looks like that is NOT happening now.

 Our love seat is covered in framed photo's, which all need to be wrapped and packed up.  For now this works as they will be some of the last things in the moving truck so they will be the first things out of the truck.

 Kaydens count down for the move.  Can you see that we had to extend the dates from the 1st house to the house that we picked.

 

Yes this house was the 5th house but it's by far our favorite of the 5 we thought we loved.  This house is move in ready.  Not saying we aren't going to do anything but not right away as we want to settle a little and feel the flow pattern before we do much.  There is only 1 thing that will happen right away but again will share that juicy details later once we have the keys in hand

 

Update of the house hunt

It sucks.  I think everyone is in the same budget as us and looking for the same house as us.  I'm normally really positive but I think the house hunt is bring out the worst for me. 

Seems that every place we want someone else wants more.  We have now gone three offers.

 number 1 was accepted to the seller backing out

number 2 bidding war that ended with the estate taking a cash offer

number 3 stupid sellers Realtor had two offers on the table and told our Realtor that the seller wanted more.  They called the other people and they had the chance to accept without giving us the same chance to make a higher offer.   GRRRRRR

So we are still out there looking.  Don't want to pick something just because we want to stop paying $1,000 a month in rent for a house we out grew when son wasn't a baby anymore.


House I know your out there, please find us I'm tired of looking for you ;o)

We are PRE-APPROVED

                Let the journey start.  Yesterday we met with the lender and did paperwork for getting things on the road for a bigger house.


                 The Journey of Yesterday started with us gathering everything Monday evening.  Being the organized person I am I highlighted dates and put all papers in order and pinned them together.  I almost ran to the store to get a file box just for this process.  Yes, I am getting one this Saturday.  Any how after we got the papers together we just chilled out as a family watching TV.  Tuesday morning it all started to hit me of this HUGE life event about to hit.  I have Anxiety so I just kept myself busy until it was time to get ready to head out.

Long story short Isaac and I met at the lenders office as he came straight from work.  There was nerves but as we walked in the door we were kindly greeted and sat in the conference room.  Jeff Came in with our file and the work started.  We talked numbers and asked lots of questions.  My main question for me was about if there was any penalties for prepayment.  Like everything we do we plan to pay the house off ASAP.  We have been renting for 7.5 years at $1,000 a month and we've never missed a payment.  Our goal is to keep our same motto as before and that's bills first play later.  Mind you that doesn't mean we pay everything we have just means that we pay our bills first and what is left can be used for the fun things in life.  The hubs and I walked out of the meeting happy with a sigh of relief when he told us that we are ready to go and can start looking at houses.

Sorry no photo of us at the lenders office but I will post pictures of the house hunt; which starts FRIDAY

 We are first time home buyers as we just cleared up all the past medical bills we feel God placed us right were we're suppose to be with these low interest rates.  The Timing just couldn't be better really.  We fully believe this is Gods doing.  He's had his hands all over us from moving to FL 8 yrs ago, To giving hubs a job the next day after arriving down here.  Giving us strength to get through the tough first year of having little to nothing.  Finding a house that would sustain us until the day we move into our own place.  We give all GLORY TO GOD AS HE HAS PROVIDED through all of our trials and triumphs.



Will post Friday or Saturday with house hunting pictures

Cream Puffs made with love!!!!!

Last night I was craving something sweet but no one wanted to run to Publix.  So what did the hubs and Kayden do made me some cream puffs.  They were good.  Simple and fast to make. 

Oh update on the allergies I am 100% better today.  Now if we can just turn up the heat here in Florida where we have been getting some freezing weather all week.

We were in a parade

We were in a local parade with SeaRay boats.  K rode in the boat and threw candy at my head.  OK the children but I was walking next to the boat so I was dodging candy left and right.

We went through 200lbs of candy.  How crazy is that?????  We had fun and a great workout for hubs and I who walked the whole thing. 

Enjoy the photo's of our float

On our ride back to the highschool we all jumped on board.

This boat would make anyone HAPPY Christmas morning :o)

270 Slx SeaRay