we're officially in!

Wow- what a crazy busy week this has been! We closed on our house on Wednesday, painted & cleaned all day on Thursday and Friday, and moved in on Saturday! We love our house, it's so much fun being a homeower. I felt so grown up parking in our garage, and I am going to spoil myself everyday by parking in the garage. ;) It makes a huge difference because of how hot it is outside, especially putting Maggie Claire in her carseat, because it's not scorching hot!!

Here is me & Mags during her lunchtime yesterday. She is such a cutie and loves our new house too! :)

Being in my new living room is seriously like a fresh breath of air. The color of the walls is relaxing and I just want to sit downstairs, relaxing while writing blogs & drinking sweet tea all day long. It is very spacey and it's nice because the little babe has lots of room to crawl everywhere. She is like lighting speed towards the stairs too. That is another whole world to her, and it scares me to pieces.

Here is our wonderful living room. There is nothing on the walls yet, and the curtains aren't hung up, but it is so nice!

I've been looking at baby gates, but I can't decide on one. I would like to just have one and move it to wherever we are. It'll either be in the hallway upstairs, or at the bottom of the stairs. I'll probably end up buying one this week after I look at a few more. Anyone have a baby gate that they love?

Here is my cute kitchen. My mom came over and organized it put all of my stuff on top of my cabinets for decor. I love having that space up there!

I got some sticky hooks to hang up my aprons. too cute! :)

On top of all of our moving fun, Mike is going out of town for a few days and when he returns we will be heading to California!!!! YAY! We are going to visit with his parents for a week, and I am sooooo excited. It's also our anniversary which is exciting because we went to CA on our honeymoon too. It'll be so nice to go back 3 years later. We get to go on our anniversary date night while we are there, so we are going to do something fun! We are kind of nervous about flying with Maggie Claire because we have a 5.5 hour flight! I'm hoping she will be her cheerful self and have a good time on the plane! :) And possibly take a nap! We can be hopeful, right?

pool girlfriends

Yesterday I met a couple of my girlfriends at the pool. My friend Carissa, has a little girl Sage, who is 4 months older than Maggie Claire. These girls are so funny, because they are both BIG TIME mama's girls! They sat at our feet the entire time and if we got up, they were watching our every move! Of course, I had to snap a few pics!

pool cuties

lunch time!

{carrots, strawberry apple puffs, and a slice of an apple}

I gave her a slice of an apple for the first time. I think she liked it because she thought she was a big girl. She chewed on that thing forever!

leftover carrots on Mags face. hehe.

I am loving all of these summer playdates! Invite us to a playdate and we'll come play & bring snacks! :)

Proverbs 17:17a
"A friend loves at all times"

miscellany monday: moving edition!

It's closing and moving week!!! I drove by our house today and snapped this picture on the way home from a play date this morning with some wonderful ladies! It feels so good to see the SOLD sign! The landscaping needs some lovin' but that will have to come later! hehe

Only 2 more days until closing! It's Wednesday at 11am, so pray for it to go fast and smooth! YAY!

Last week, we went to lowes and picked out paint colors for our house! The cotton candy color will go in Maggie Claire's room, the serendipity will go all throughout downstairs {living room, dining room, and kitchen} and the gray frost will go in our bedroom. The bathrooms and extra bedroom will have to wait, these are on top priority right now!

Our living room is looking more like this, all boxed up, but there is still a lot of packing to go!

Last night Mike and I decided that we are going to give the BIG OLE' tube tv the boot. If you want it, come and get it, it still works! It takes up too much room, and it's pretty heavy. We already planned on buying a flatscreen tv on black friday, so until then, we will be tv-less! It'll be one less thing to bring into the new house. :) We don't have cable, so basically the only thing we use the tv for is to play the wii and watch DVDs. We can watch DVDs on our computers, so we'll just be without the wii for a few months. It'll be weird not having a tv in our new living room, but I guess it'll just be a sitting area until the end of November!

SO thankful for our new home! Now... I better get back to packing!

Link up your miscellany over at lowercase letters! :)

summer fun with mags

Summertime is my ultimate favorite season of the year! {minus the 100+ degree weather we are having!} I love everything about the beach, pool, sundresses, getting a tan, popsicles, and slushies! Just trying to stay cool! I just wanted to post some of my favorite pictures that I've taken recently with my phone & a few from my camera!

I love getting Maggie Claire dressed in the morning. Her hairbows normally don't last all day in her hair, so I like taking sweet pictures of her playing in the morning after she gets dressed! ;)

She is definitely my baby girl, lovin' her some banana popsicles!!! We just came in from a walk in the stroller, and the poor girl was all sweaty, so I decided we needed some popsicles! I have a huge package of these banana ones, so I started feeding it to her and she just loved it! Then I was videoing her and she just took it from me and started going to town with it! hilarious!! She was so excited! I uploaded the video on youtube, you can watch it here!

Mags is at the baby food age right now and introducing solid foods is fun, but I sometimes get stuck and don't know what to give her! This normally means she ends up eating puffs or cheerios! Here she is with some little pieces of bread- she liked it, but then I think it was too dry for her, next time I'll do cheese toast! ;)

Last week we were suppose to have a playdate with some friends at their pool, but we left Maggie Claire's carseat in Mike's car that day which means we were left without a carseat to go anywhere! So... we packed up our pool stuff in the stroller and headed to the pool down the street! Here is Mags getting her sunscreen on! ;)

Our apartment pool is always SO DIRTY & packed with people who don't even live here, so we go to another apartment complex's pool across the street where there is NEVER anyone there and it's SO CLEAN!! {Hopefully no one will know that we don't live there!} :) hehe

We had so much fun and no one was even there! awesome- the entire pool to ourselves! :)

Do you like Mags' little hat? hehe- she somehow threw her hat out of the stroller on the way to the pool, and I didn't even notice until we got all the way to the pool, so I had to make-shift a hat out of her onesie. {We found the hat on the way back home by our apartment door}

What a little pool cutie!!!

Another fun summer outdoor activity we like to do is swing on the porch! We are going to have to find somewhere to hang our swing ASAP in our new house because of how much Maggie Claire loves her swing! Do you see her little baby doll that she's holding? She loves all her baby dolls right now, it's the most precious thing ever! :)

Here's our beach pics from last week when we went with a bunch of other ladies and babies for a beach playdate. Maggie Claire had the best time even though it was her naptime- she'll skip her nap anytime to go to the beach! She actually fell asleep the minute I put her in the car before I even had everything packed up! We had the best time!

This is Maggie Claire with her new friend Anson Mae at the beach. They were so cute playing together.

ahhh, I'm soaking up all this sweetness of me and my baby at the beach! ;)

So here's some of my favorite things that me and mags have been doing this summer! What are your favorite things to do in the summer?!?!? I'd love to get some more ideas!

9 months

Happy 9 months to my baby girl!

WOW- time is just flying by and I just want to freeze it where we are right now! Maggie Claire is growing up soooooo fast, I can't even keep up! She is already 3/4 the way to being one year old! As much as I am excited about throwing her a 1st birthday party, I love love her baby sweetness and don't want her to grow up at all!

Maggie Claire is 18 pounds and 29.5 inches long!

She is in the 95th percentile for height, and the 45th for weight. She is one tall little lady!

What a fun, personality she has! Always smiling, "talking", and waving at people. Her favorite thing to do right now is clap. If we say "yay!" she'll start clapping. When she wakes up in the morning or from a nap, and we go in to get her she starts clapping. It really is the sweetest thing. When she is eating and she sees her food or after she takes a bite, she starts clapping.

In the past few days she has started to "dance" by swaying back and forth when I'm singing around the house or if she hears music. She gets so proud of herself for that too!

Maggie Claire is officially a crawler! This means she gets to move up to the crawler room at church. I'm sad, but I'm also excited that she is learning so much! She is getting into everything at the house. Yesterday I was charging the wii remotes on the charger and she just starting darting for them full speed! hilarious!!! I had to move the charger on top of the tv!

Her schedule hasn't changed much:

still taking two naps a day

eating three meals a day

nursing 4 or 5 times a day

Sleeps from around 730pm-8am

Still in size 3 diapers

9-12 month clothes,mainly in 12 month clothes though

eats a lot more table food, she likes black beans, brown rice, steamed broccoli, peas, and more that I can't think of! Oh, yea, and ice cream, crackers... ;) LOL. She wants whatever we have!

Taking pictures of her keeps getting harder and harder with all of her squirmy-ness! She is soooooo busy!

Maggie Claire, your dad and I love you so much. We laugh at you every day because you are so silly, and we love that about you! You love for us to play with you, and you are at the stage where we can't really leave you without you getting worried! You are such a big girl and you are growing up so fast! With you crawling everywhere now, we are in a whole different world, and have to watch you extra careful! We pray for you everyday that you will grow up to love the Lord and have a servants heart for Him! Keep staying cute & remember we love you!

love, mommy :)

"I will praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made!"

Psalm 139:14

we're moving!!!

I wanted to share with everyone our exciting news of our NEW HOUSE that we are closing on at the end of July! It's a perfect house for our little family, and possibly an excuse to get pregnant again?!?! hehe, I'm totally kidding! We'll wait a year or two!

Anyways, it's our beautiful 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath, with a 1 car attached garage. It's only 2 miles away from where we live now, which makes for an easy move.

Did I mention it has a huge fenced in backyard?!?! With a cute little shed and lots of trees! I'm eyeing a few for a hammock one day.

Maggie Claire's new room is BIG compared to her little room she has now! Plus, she has a walk-in closet for all of her clothes! This is a big room for a little girl! ;)

Here is our kitchen with black appliances! yay! Do you see the refrigerator/freezer that has an ice maker?!?! No more cracking ice trays! yay! It has a flat top stove with a warming drawer under the bottom of the oven! I am just super excited about it!

Here is a full view of the kitchen, and the window above the sink looks out to the backyard.

We had an inspection last week, and everything looked great! There are just a few minor fixes that we will get fixed, but the house is move in ready! The only thing that we need to do before we move in is get the carpet cleaned. It's in good shape, I just want to get it cleaned before we bring furniture in. I am so ready to get out of our apartment and into our new home!

Be on the lookout for more pictures to come in the next few weeks! :)

Also, pray that our closing will go smoothly!

beatin the summer heat!

I am loving this sweet summer girl! We are soaking up all the time at the pool & outside that we can get! Maggie Claire loves being outside, even if it feels like 100 degrees! Our 4th of July weekend was so good! I bought Maggie Claire this little pillowcase dress from a friend of mine who makes clothes, it is so cute! It says "Future Miss America"! hehe, precious!!

Maggie Claire thinks its so funny when Mike puts on his sunglasses... she was just laughing at him! She cracks us up!

We had a family 4th of July party at my moms on Friday night and it was so cute seeing Maggie Claire play with her cousins, Jack and Tate. Tate and Maggie Claire are 4 months apart, and he is a lot faster than her, but they are so cute playing together! Here is a picture of the 3 of them... they are all VERY busy, we couldn't get a good shot! hehe, but they sure are cute in their red, white, & blue!

Our family 4th of July picture!

me & mags

She loves the outdoors! As you can tell in the picture with her cute grin & chubby cheeks!

This next picture is my favorite from the entire weekend, because we went on a family bikeride! We bought one of those baby seats that attaches on my bike, and we rode to our new house!!!! {I'll post on that later this week!!!} The house is exactly 2 miles from where we live now, so that was quite the bike ride this afternoon of 4 miles! Maggie Claire seemed to like it, I think she was a little nervous about the whole thing after I took her over the curb which made her bounce and she didn't like that! I tried not to drive too crazy with her on the back! I'm sure I'm going to be sore tomorrow from riding! Can't wait to take her on it again!

All weekend, we wore red, white, & blue to celebrate our freedom in the United States!

God Bless America! :)

"So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed."

John 8:36