Father's day

It's a little belated, but I really had to take a moment to recognize Father's day! Of course this was Stanton's first official Father's day, and I'm pretty sure he enjoyed it. Not that we did anything super special, but we did take the time to just play. And if I do say so myself, Chaselyn and I got him the perfect Father's day present, a book from Snapfish with pictures of him and Chaselyn over the last 7 months. Even if he doesn't like it (which I know he does) I love it, so I think we did pretty good.
Chaselyn chewing on Daddy's socks before church on Father's Day.


Stanton is really growing into Daddy mode. As Chaselyn becomes more interactive and less dependent on me, Stanton is right there ready to help. He's a wonderful dad and a fantastic hubby. I can't begin to tell how thankful I am to be his wife.

Now some more random pics for the family.


Chaselyn can pull herself up in her crib if she is sitting in the crib to start with. She can't sit up by herself yet, so unless we sit her up, we're still ok. But it won't be too long before the escape attempts start. Although she seems to enjoy her crib.

Outside our new house (pending closing June 30th).

Taking a nap with Holly :)

She was taking a nap in the carseat facing forward, then Stanton said "Psst, come here" and this is what I saw.


This morning waiting for Daddy in the car. If you don't see her Daddy in this one, you're even worse than me at matching babies with parents.

Our home

Well, when you know, you know, and as soon as we walked in to 601 Eagles Nest Drive, we knew that it was our home.

You can see pictures here. There are some changes to make (like removing the interesting decorations, and toning down the lighting fixtures a bit). But this house has so much that you don't see in the pictures. There's a sprinkler system, an alarm system, speakers wired throughout the house, an extra bonus room (it's actually in the pictures), 3 bedrooms, an interesting little nook in the Master bedroom, lots of closet space, and just so much more than what we thought we would get. I think my favorite part of it is the kitchen! It's so big! And the appliances were actually made at some point after I was born, which is a big upgrade from our current apartment. I also love that it opens up into a big living room :). Another huge part of what we were looking for is a shaded backyard. As you can see in the pictures, it's a good size backyard, and there's more yard over by the driveway. Eventually, we're going to extend the fence out.

We are so excited!! Because of our excellent credit, paper work is going fast and furious. We made an offer on the house last Saturday, we were under contract by Sunday, and assuming everything goes well, we'll close on June 30th :)

I've been excited since last Saturday, but I didn't want to get too excited until the inspection was done. And we got that done today. So now I feel like it's really going to happen.

It will be such a blessing to have double the space of our apartment. Holly will have room to play and run. Chaselyn will have room for her toys. Stanton and I will have room to move without tripping over all the stuff the other two require. And, I get to have my Christmas tree this year!!! And I get to put lights on our house!

We'll have more pictures as we actually get to be in the house.

Thanks to all of you who prayed for us during this big decision.

My Heath!

There are moments in your life where you just have to take a deep breath and think Wow! Sometimes it's a Wow...I can't believe I just did that. Sometimes it's a Wow...I can't believe that just happened. But today, for me, it's a WOW...I can't believe I'm that old. Before I go any further, I want to clarify that I'm not saying that I think I'm old by any stretch. I'm not so much talking about the number of years I've been on the earth, more of a realization that things change so much in a short period of time. What brought about this WOW moment? My Heath turns 30 years old today!

First of all, I must clarify why I call him "My Heath". At some point during my undergrad years, I was talking to Alycia about what was going on and I mentioned something about Heath. In trying to say "My brother Heath..." it somehow came out "My Heath...". We laughed for a minute, but then I owned up to him being my Heath. I mean I'm not trying to lay sole ownership of him, but he's the only Heath I know, so he's my Heath. Maybe you have some other Heath, but my brother is my Heath.

Anyway, Heath was closest in age to me growing up (thus the realization that if he's 30, that means I'm not too far behind). We played together a lot. I most remember playing with G.I. Joes. We would get out all of the G.I. Joes, have some sort of draft to see who got which ones, we also picked from the large accessories (heliocoptors, bases, etc.) and then we would set up our teams for war. I can't remember now exactly how it all worked out. Probably with me crying that it wasn't fair that he just came in and bombed all my people. And then me going to get my Barbies to stomp all over his wee little men. But we generally played well together, as well as can be expected with a brother and a sister. We would often stay up late on weekends watching Cheers and American Gladiators together. As we grew older, I became very jealous of his academic abilities. He was always on a totally higher level than me (I must admit here that I did get some satisfaction in finishing my doctorate before him. Even if he didn't finish due to forces outside his control. For a couple of months, I had achieved something he hadn't.) He welcomed me to the U of A by letting me join in his group of friends. He helped keep me fed through all the various tailgate and game-watching parties. And through all this, he and Stanton became good friends as well. And, I don't want to speak for Stanton and Heath, but I think they've got quite the brotherly bond, which is great.

I miss not having Heath around since we've been in Waco. You know how some of the best moments come when you are just hanging around. And since we've moved away, we don't get to have that bonding time any more.

So, to my little big brother on his 30th birthday, I just want to say thanks! Thanks for putting up with me when we were younger. Thanks for looking out for me when we got a little older. And thanks for being the best Uncle to all your little niblings.

HAPPY 30th BIRTHDAY HEATH!!!

Orphans

Well, it's come to that time in our lives, where we are really ready to find our own home. We were more than encouraged to do so by our seemingly ever shrinking apartment. And not discouraged, but not intensely encouraged by our parents to start really putting down some roots in Waco. But, we've put it off for so long, it just feels like God is saying "This is where you need to be ... just deal with it and everything will be much better." So, we are.

There is a lot (more than a lot actually, more like a ton) of thoughts and emotions and stresses that have come up since we've made this decision. First of all buying a house in Waco, generally means we believe we're going to be here for a while. And we are pretty certain. Like I said, ever since the idea of going for my doctorate at Baylor came up in the early months of 2006, Stanton and I have both been able to recognize that this is where we're supposed to be. But, I thought that we were coming here for some graduate degrees. We finished those up in December. And now we still don't know when we're leaving. It's been a battle in my heart for a while. I long to go back to family and friends in AR. But, we've been able to get plugged in to a church here in Waco and made friends here that we would miss too. I sometimes hate that I'm down here and I can't see my niblings grow up. Madison was just born when we moved down here. And in less than 2 weeks, she'll turn three. And I know it's a strain for our family not to get to see as much of Chaselyn as they would like. I think I've said this before, but my family is a quality time love language family. We aren't very verbal. We don't talk on the phone very much. The best way we connect is to just be together. Cook-outs at mom & dad's, Razorback tailgates, and other extended family gatherings are where we get to spend time. And I miss it.

But like I said, we've branched out and become more of our own little family now. And our family needs a home. Even if it means reluctantly admitting that we're going to be here for a while. Today at lunch Stanton and I realized that we are homeless when I blurted out that I wanted to go home. Neither of us really knew what I meant. I wanted to leave work is what I really wanted, but since we started the house search, our apartment definitely doesn't feel like a home. And we feel so removed from Arkansas now, we can't really call it home either. So "going home" isn't really something we can do.

And already there is stress over all this housing stuff. What can we afford? How much do we want to afford? How long do we want to stay in this house? Is it worth the money to pay for the neighborhood feel? Unfortunately, we made the mistake of looking at a few houses that were really out of our price range. I fell in love with one of them. And had to accept that after looking at our budget, the money just wasn't there. I'm glad that we are smart enough to realize that is too much before we get in over our heads, but I do hate to let that house go. We are very fortunate that we both like similar houses, so there is some stress reduction there. But when it comes to making the big official decision, it's going to be crazy.

I would appreciate any words of encouragement and prayers sent in our direction for making wise choices. We need a home, not just a place to live.

Night time routine

We are finally starting to find some normalcy with our evening routine, at least on weekdays. Up until a few weeks ago, it just seemed too demanding to put Chaselyn on a strict schedule. And any one who knows me knows that it's probably even harder to put me on a strict schedule. And by no means are we planning down to the minute. But, we do have a general idea of how things go in our house in the evenings.

5:00 - pick Chaselyn up from daycare

We usually call dibs on who gets to walk in first and get the first smile.

Ready to go home :)

5:00-6:00 - get home for play time or nap time, Chaselyn's choice

In the back seat. She looks extremely big in this pic.

Playing with dad in the backseat while mommy drives home.

Today she chose nap.

6:00-6:45 - Bowl of cereal (rice or oatmeal) and some veggies for dinner Carrots and rice tonight - Carrots and sweet peas were a hit. Green beans were ok, but not great.
What a good eater :0

7:00-8:00 - play time (occasionally nap time)

She loves the exersaucer!

Kisses!

Playing with the farm toy with daddy.

Sitting and playing all by herself :)

8:30 - Bathtime followed by a kids book with pictures

Yep, it's a RazorDuck.

How fun!

Too sweet! I love the way she looks when she gets out of the bath.

Moo! Baa! La la la!

9:00 - Bedtime meal and a chapter from a kid friendly non-picture book (we started with The Chronicles of Narnia series since I have never read them)

:)

Night, night sweet angel!

And she's gone.

Since we've gotten more scheduled, Chaselyn has too. She now regularly sleeps soundly from 9:30-4:30. Then she gets some milk and goes back asleep until about 6:30. At this time, she generally gets to come and snuggle with mommy in bed until Stanton makes us get up. Sometimes its only 15 minutes and sometimes it's closer to an hour, but it's probably the favorite part of my day.

8 things tagged....

8 Things I look forward to:
1. Heaven
2. Watching our little family grow
3. Going to Disney World with our kids some day
4. Going home
5. Moving back to AR
6. Knowing what I'm doing what I'm doing with my life
7. Making a home for our family
8. Becoming the me that He wants me to be

8 Things I did yesterday:
1. church - Chaselyn stayed in the nursery for the first time :)
2. leftovers for lunch - still delicious even after having the same thing 3 days in a row
3. listen to Chaselyn discover her screaming vocal cords
4. met with Dr. Bradley to discuss the prospects of buying a house rather than rent
5. ate ice cream at 4:30 and ruined my dinner
6. took an unplanned family nap
7. fed Sweet Pea some sweet peas (now that I write it, it sounds cannibalistic rather than cute)
8. read to my sweet baby as she feel asleep

8 Things I wish I could do:
1. read my Bible more regularly
2. have a passion for running
3. believe people when they give me compliments (especially Stanton)
4. be a working mom and still not feel like I'm missing out on something
5. be a stay at home mom and still not feel like I'm missing out on something
6. tell people how much they mean to me
7. regain my focus on my research
8. dress myself and feel confident about it

8 shows I watch:
1. The Unit
2. NCIS
3. The Office
4. Gilmore Girls
5. Seinfeld
6. Big Bang
7. How I Met Your Mother
8. a lot of other junk

8 Friends tagged:
I don't like tagging people. Plus I think everyone I know in the blogosphere has already done this.