Novel? You decide.

The last time I posted actual up to date information about our family was in January. A long long time ago. There is quite an explanation for my delay and I plan on letting everyone in on my blog soberness. Beware this posting will be very very long.

It all started in February. As many of you know from first hand experience the economy is bad...very very bad. And being that my husband is in the mortgage industry you probably understand why we had to restructure our lives a bit. One of the ways to do that was to downsize our living situation. We've been very blessed to have been able to live in an amazing home for the first 3 years of our marriage. But yes, we've decided to downsize. Yes, that means co-sharing a house with another couple, my parents. EEEEKS. Don't freak out. My parents are awesome. They have their house on the market and after much praying Ryan and I approached them into splitting a much larger house with us. It was decided, if we found a house that accomodated both families' needs, then we'd be housemates. So we started looking, and within 2 days of looking we found the perfect house for us. It really is just amazing and we are so blessed.



Ryan and I have the whole 1st level to ourselves. It's our bedroom,bathroom, laundry room, wet bar, living rooom and the door to the backyard which leads us to a hot tub and tiki bar and palm trees. One of my favorite things of the house is the kitchen. It has a convection oven and convection microwave....yeepee...faster baking times.



Ryan's favorite part is


Need I say anything else?

Just as we were in the middle of the move, the following happened:
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That's not my car, but that is what happened. Someone broke into my car and STOLE MY PURSE. This was devastating for me.
Cost of this incident:
-Purse
-Vera Bradley Wallet
-Mac lip compact
-Angel Perfume
-Daytimer PLANNER (w/new refills for 2008)
-driver's license
-Big and Sexy hairspray (new bottle)
-digital camera battery charger
-about 5 of my extra fine sharpies
-$100.00 deductible
-$$$$$ to have to replace stolen items
-losing a car for 1 week
-realizing 2 things:
1-if I'm going to leave my purse in the car, just leave the car unlocked, it will save money in the end.
and
2- KDH police can defintely learn from the following:



Up to this day, my purse has not been recovered. I still have very unkind thoughts about the people responsible for this catastrophe. Ok, I might be overexagerating, but it sure felt that way. Especially when 2 days later was my little man's 2nd BIRTHDAY.

I felt horrible. I had gone all out for his 1st birthday. I love birthdays and i love to make the people having them feel extra special. But unfortunately, due to my stolen purse and the gazillion boxes we still had around the house, my baby's bday was reduced to:
-last minute call to family members
-quick trip to the dollar store for goodies
-trip to Harris Teeter for a premade/predesigned cake
-and groceries needed to make nachos

I don't have many pictures at all, bc those horrible people that stole my purse stole my battery charger and after taking about 5 pics....my camera died.

But here you go, enjoy!








Kids are so amazing, because even though I was dying cause it wasn't what I would have planned, he was just so happy. It was a good experience bc it made me remember what is important about our baby's birthdays.

About 3 weeks after we'd moved in, about 1 week after i got my car back from the body shop, after I finally thought things were going to get back to normal and I woke up early a Monday morning, got ready and left the house on my way to work thinking happy thoughts.............when not 2 minutes away from hom.....THIS HAPPENED!




Fortunately I was okay. I was just in disbelief. The guy that hit me ended up being a really nice guy and I felt bad for him, cause I least I knew it wasn't my fault. It was funny cause I had to call my school to tell them I was going to be late. When I called, he asked where I worked and it ended up that his mom was also a teacher where I work...1 month later and I still haven't gotten it fixed. I'm sure I'll get to it.


I'm glad to report that all hasn't been so frustrating at our house. We're healthy(at least now we are, a run of the stomach flu and cold have come and gone), we have a great house, we have a wonderful family. I'm so thankful for my husband and my little boy. They are such great blessings in my life. But most of all we have the gospel. Which lately I've been ever so grateful for, even if I've complained through all of these difficult times.

Here are some of our more joyful times.
We went out to Outback one night...Lukas loved it, not surprising!


Wendi, our waitress (my uncles g-friend, is always our waitress so she always doubles up everything) She broght us 2 loves of "chocolate bread" and Lukas didn't feel like waiting for a slice, he dug right in.


HMMMMM. delicious


Break me off a piece of that....choco bread.

Lukas loves almost nothing more than he loves tomatoes. So wendi brought him out a big bowl of extra tomatoes. Here he is taking them from the bowl and putting them on his plate. By this time, he's already eaten the tomatoes from both Mom and Dad's salads.


Now that's a good tomato.


I also like to play a game called...how many tomatoes can I fit in my mouth.




Hmmm, what does this thing taste like?


A picture speaks a thousand words.

Oh, I almost forgot, I won 2 tickets to go see......


That's right....Tim Mcgraw in concert. I was so excited. Then I found out the date was June 14, that's 2 days after our anniversary, so that means we're going to be happily celebrating our 5th wedding anniversary with the sweet melodies of Mr. Tim Mcgraw.


We decided to randomly do pizza night...someone voted that he wanted it more often.





One thing we love is having Ryan's parents so close by, 3 hours away. Unfortunately we don't get to see them as often as we'd like. So a couple of weekends ago we decided that we were just going to go. No ifs ands or buts. Lukas loves to visit Granny and Pa. He usually goes more with Pa, but this weekend he was all about Granny (or as he calls her, Gwanny). We had a really good time. Our youth went to the temple, so while Ryan and Pa were at the temple, Granny, Lukas and I went to the park. I like to take Lukas to the park alot, but the ones in Raleigh just don't compare. Lukas was in Park Heaven. There were tons of slides. He insisted on having me at the top of the slide and then he'd yell GWANNY for her to wait for him at the bottom of the slie. We are so thankful we were able to spend such great time together. We don't get to do that enough. One of the other things Lukas loves about Gwanny and pas' house is all their rooms and their abundant toys. He found this 1 he really liked.


There's a video of it too, but we'll post that later. It's really funny cause he sees his uncle moses and daddy, ok mommy too, play guitar hero 3 on the wii, so he was doing all the moves. It was hilarious.


I think one of the most special and greatest things that has happened to us in the last 3 months was meeting this amazing little person. As many of you know, Ryan and I are licensed foster parents. Well our spring break was coming around and one of the other foster families needed a sitter for 1 of their foster children. A little 11 month old. I felt too overwhelmed by my life at the time and was a little hesitant to do it. I saw spring break as a BREAK. I knew I was going to be out of school so it would be mostly me and 2 kids...AGH. After much thought though I felt we needed to do it. I was getting excited because for 1 week I was going to see what it was like to be a 2 child mom. I hadn't thought much about it, just babysitting a little girl.

But EVERYTHING changed.









This was lukas' first time taking a bath w/another baby. He was a little weird at first but he ended up loving it.





There was this amazing, unexplainable special connection between us and her that I can't even explain. She is an amazing little girl. Her smile, her eyes and her sweetness captured our hearts. She brought so much joy to our family in a matter of being with us for just a day. After 1 week, it was very very difficult to say goodbye to her. She brought so much to our lives and we'll always have a special place for her in our hearts. Hopefully she'll be able to part of our lives again one day.


If you stuck through this terribly long post, yes it's reached an end.

THE END!