This weekend we took Ada to her first baseball game! There were supposed to be fireworks after the game, so we planned to keep her up late, but we got caught in some torrential down pours. so the fireworks were cancelled. She still ended up staying out late because we were trying to dodge the rain. I hadn’t been to a game in years either and was looking forward to the fireworks but we all had fun though despite the weather and we had really great seats!
I love Mother’s Day! The weather is finally breaking in Buffalo and it’s usually a fun day of flowers, mimosa’s and family. Now that I’m a mom though, I kinda hate that I have to share the day! Plus I want to celebrate my mom and mother in law, but I want to be spoiled a little too, so I told my husband this year I wanted to spend Saturday with our little family and then I wouldn’t mind sharing Sunday with everyone else. (I know I sound like a child). He of course agreed and said we could do whatever I wanted. The weather was so perfect on Saturday, so we ordered lunch and brought some wine and took it to the park and had a little picnic. Little A loved eating lunch on a blanket on the ground and did surprisingly well! Afterwards we walked around and headed over to the Cherry Blossom festival that was in the park. It was a perfect way to spend time with the little one who made me a mother!
On to the most exciting part of this post!! I’m going to be an Aunt!! I’ve known this for awhile, but didn’t want to share anything publicly! We just found out it’s going to be a little girl! I’m so excited Ada will have a girl cousin only 2 years younger!
She had us all over for dinner a couple months back and gave Ada a t-shirt to wear that said “I love my cousin” I of course got it right away, but we put it on her and it took my parents a good half hour, and even then we finally had to start telling them to read Ada’s shirt! FINALLY they got it, it was so exciting!
About 2 weeks ago they had a gender reveal party! I was in charge of filling a black balloon with the right color confetti. I took the envelope my sister gave me from her doctor to Party City and asked them to read the envelope and fill it, I was so proud of myself for not peeking on the envelope!
I had a feeling it was going to be a girl (only because the black balloon was a little bit see thru – ok only if you held up to the light, which I may have done)! I am just so excited that we’ll both have little girls that we can spoil together!
We finally closed on the new house! Moving is NOT fun, and its even worse with a toddler in tow. Every time I packed stuff into boxes there would be Ada two steps behind me unpacking boxes! We had the worst time trying to get a closing date on the old house and the new house to line up, which made it impossible to schedule movers. We had to be out of our old house by Monday and we couldn’t get into the new house until Monday, despite no one living in our new house for the past two years. We tried to get access to the garage so we could start moving stuff in, but they said no. It was complete hell trying to get this coordinated, but we finally decided on just renting a large moving truck and doing it all our self.
We had a crew of friends and family come over on Saturday to help us load the truck up, then there it sat until Monday, when we finally went to city hall to sign our life away. We then flew back to old house before the new people got there and drove our enormous truck over to the new place, where we had another crew of friends and family over to help us unload the truck at 5pm until like 10:30 at night. Exhausting! Ada slept at my parents that night so we didn’t shock her with a new life she didn’t know she was walking into!
The past few days have been very hectic and disorganized. Our kitchen is being renovated right away, so we aren’t unpacking anything, which is making feeding the family really tough. Its also leaving tons of boxes stacked in every corner of our already small house making it feel so cramped. Nothing is child proofed, which is really the worst part. I used to be able to leave her unattended for a few minutes and feel okay she wouldn’t destroy something or kill herself and now its like a free for all playground for her, with stuff she shouldn’t have at her fingertips and oh what fun she is having exploring it all!
As far as renos go, we are gutting the kitchen and tearing a wall down in between the kitchen and living room so it feels more open. We also have to replace some flooring and the toilet upstairs and Dan wants crown molding in the living room, so that’s what’s on the agenda first. Phase two hopefully will be the exterior, with new siding (we have the worst mint green color), new landscaping, since the bushes are going to eat this house alive in the summer, a new front door and hopefully a new patio out back since that is going to be the one thing I miss more than anything this summer! All in good time, for now I just want to get life put back together a little inside!
January and February have been pretty uneventful lately, we haven’t been up to much. Oh, we sold our house! Yes, we sold our dream house, but we are excited to be moving on to a new adventure. We have many reasons for why we did it, but mainly it’s for the financial freedom. So many people stay in situations where they can’t ever get their heads above water and we just didn’t want to ever find ourselves in that boat, so we made some tough decisions and took the first step. We took advantage of a hot market in our neighborhood and sold the house for more than we paid, including all the upgrades we did. We will miss this house for sure, but I always promise myself never to look back and regret any decisions made. You do what you need to do at that moment in time and just trust yourself!
We close on the new house at the end of March. We’re really looking forward to the location of our new place. We have two families that we are really close with that live walking distance to our new home. We all had our first baby the same year, and we’re excited to live so close and let the kids grow up together. While I don’t think this new house will be our forever house, I think it will be super fun to have our friends right down the street, especially while the kids are so young. I don’t think Dan and I will ever have a forever house! I think we are content with change and how life is forever changing, and we are open to accepting that and always doing what is best for our family!
Here are a few pictures of the new house, as is from the real estate listing! Its pretty terrible I’m warning you! We have a lot of work to do to make it our own, but we’re up to the challenge and have some big plans once we’re in!
Happy New Year to everyone! Here is a pretty crappy photo of our sick family!
We were all deathly ill over the last two days. We had to cancel the small New Years party we were supposed to host at our house. Instead we put Ada to bed early and Dan and I watched a movie on the couch until about 11:55, we toasted our water glasses at midnight and went up to bed. By far our most uneventful and depressing New Year’s ever, but fortunately this one happens once every year and we can try again next year! Hope everyone else had a fun New Years and from our family to yours, we wish you the absolute best in 2015!!
Christmas is getting so close and it’s so much fun to do Christmas with a child, I keep talking up Santa Clause, hoping she gets it by the time she comes downstairs Christmas morning. She gets some things, like presents, although doesn’t quite understand what they are for I’m sure. She loves the Christmas tree in the house and all the lights. We’ve been busy trying to fit in all the usual magical holiday stuff. We took her to see Santa a few weeks ago at Kelly’s Country Store, they are known for having the best Santa around, he comes down the chimney and there are real reindeer outside the window. They do a phenomenal job and our friends family grew up with this being a holiday tradition so we decided to start going with them. Ada did not enjoy seeing Santa though.
This photo below makes way better Santa memories then her sitting nicely on his lap! I will forever cherish this photo of her meeting Santa for the first time.
We had my dad’s fireman holiday party the following weekend and she did much better with him, She made me sit with her this time, which was kinda awkward. My dad got an awesome photo though of her giving him a high five!
We had one more holiday party that same day, and went right from one party to the next. Dan’s family has gotten so big that their family party is hosted at the banquet hall his family owns. And since they are too large of a family to get together on Christmas they do it a couple weeks before. It’s always a good time and there are so many kids. We were able to get a great family photo done too!
Like most things this Christmas, she doesn’t quite get anything but is receptive to it. I’m looking forward to the next few years when she is old of enough to really enjoy and understand the magic of Christmas! So far its been a great holiday season!
We’ve of course been busy getting ready for Christmas at our house. We went and got our tree Sunday after Thanksgiving. Every year I say I want to go to the Christmas tree farms and cut down our own tree, but since timing or weather never allows for that I’ve settled on just going to a local place and getting one. At least it’s real, which is the best!
I had to give the tree a few days to fall out, but yesterday we went on a decorating spree, I pulled out all our stuff and while Dan sat on the couch and worked, I put it all together while Ada took it all apart! She had fun with all the ornaments and lights though!
Ada also had a visit from Boo the Elf last Friday. It’s only been a week, but I think she already gets the whole Elf on the Shelf thing. We didn’t bother with the book because she obviously doesn’t understand the concept of Elf watching her, but she has had fun coming downstairs every day and finding her. I don’t do anything crazy, Boo just moves around every night. I’m not into Elf causing mischief around the house like so many of these intense Pinterest ideas suggest. the point is just for them to watch you and report back to Santa so Elf causing drama and making a mess on my kitchen counters seems counter-productive! I think next year will be even more fun with her!
Just a short post and a ton of photos from this past weekend. We are still trying to soak in as much fall fun as we can before the weather turns bad, which around here could be anytime now. Canalside Buffalo put on a pretty awesome Fall Fest last weekend, so we went down and let Ada enjoy more pumpkins and some other fun things. We went with her friend Abby, and the girls had so much fun running around and riding the carousel. Another fun weekend!!
We also had a family photo shoot done at the park and I made Dan stick around after we were done so that I could snap a few. We then spent the rest of our day playing in the leaves!
We’ve been enjoying the fall weather and getting ready for Halloween! We took Ada to the Great Pumpkin Farm this past weekend, and I think she loved it! She’s still a little young for a lot of things, but she is obsessed with pumpkins, so she was really into it!
Hear are a few pics of my little pumpkin obsessing over all the big pumpkins, my favorite is the one where she literally thinks she is summoning the pumpkins to come to her!
Dan and I also had two weddings one last weekend and one this weekend. That makes one more for us this year and that will round out 11 for 2014. Next year is a bit slower on the weddings I think, so far we only have 3.
Just got home from our annual trip to the Adirondacks, It was my 7th year going with Dan’s family and I learn to enjoy it a bit more every year. This year was Ada’s first year, last year I was mega-pregnant! We all had a really great time, she was the perfect age to travel with this year, still young enough that we could relax, but not mobile enough that I had to follow her around. She was happy to just sit on my lap, nap in her stroller and had no problems sleeping, which is always my biggest fear when travelling. She also did great on the 4 hour car ride both there and back!
We took her on a hike, and she loved riding in the backpack with daddy.
We tried to take her on a boat ride, but that lasted a hot second with the life vest. She did okay at first and then wanted nothing to do with it, so we had to leave her behind with Grandma while mommy and daddy went out.
She of course loved the swings at the little playground we have right at our cabins, and was more then happy to hang out there all day if we let her!
She was not too sure about the sand at all. In fact she ended up hating it, I don’t think she liked the feeling of the ground moving under her little feet. I’m sure by next year she’ll be over that though!
And of course with such a gorgeous background, I couldn’t resist doing a little photoshoot with my two loves.
All Kinds of Happy 