Showered with generosity

A few weeks ago was the baby shower for our little guy. It was a ton of fun and I owe a big thanks to Megan, Theresa, and Holly for putting it together. The amount of gifts and fun was overwhelming. We had tons of kids and tons of balloons for them to play with :) The biggest hit as far as gifts go was the Wee Blocker - thanks Sara!
Here are some snapshots of the lovely event:


I feel so fortunate to have had my mother and grandmother at the shower with me :)


Megan decorated with vintage baby clothes from our parents. Check out the picture Tawny brought of Heath and Shiloah in the cute baseball shirt!




Hooper checking out the ducky decorations


THANKS LADIES!! (Megan, me, Theresa.....Holly refused to get photographed)

We are really starting to feel like we are ready to bring this kid home, not so sure about knowing what to do with him but everything is as ready as its going to be! The nesting has hit full force for both mom and dad (and grandparents too!). His 0-3 month wardrobe is clean and put away, the baby monitor is up and running, the pacifiers are out of their packaging and put away, etc. Here is a picture of my Nesting Team from last weekend :)


Big thanks to Daddy and Grandpa for helping make the baby's room perfect :)

A little pregnancy humor for you all....this is my cankle after 5 hours of driving to Iowa. Holly thought I broke my ankle - nope, just got knocked up and swollen!


And to end - here is a recent belly picture - 37 weeks/9 months along.

In other news...

Here are a few snap shots of what has been going on with us the past few months:


Dancing Lucy - Her mom takes such great pictures of her that I couldn't choose so here is one from dance class that just makes my heart smile. And the other is from her dance recital which I was able to attend and I just can't believe how grown up she looks in the photo!!

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Heath got a pipe for Christmas and has almost mastered the art of appearing 20 years older than his true age. A personal goal of his!

Brennen turned one year old! We were able to be there for his first birthday as well as his baptism. I can't believe how fast he has grown and how beautiful he is!

Don't worry, we haven't totally neglected our dogs, not yet anyhow ;)We were able to take them to the lake a couple of times so far this year and of course they loved it! We are so fortunate to be near such a nice big lake (only ten minutes!)

Lightning hit our one and only tree. We hope it survives since we can't plant any trees in the back yard due to the dog destruction.

Heath and I celebrated our first year of marriage on May 23rd. He got me this beautiful rose bush. I love it! I'm trying my best to keep it alive...the neighbors have wagered their predictions as to when it dies and what that means for our marriage. I don't know why they don't have faith in our green thumbs...hum....

Umbrella Medical Systems had a few events in their office and they decided a fooseball table was needed, along with a pop-shot basketball. Priorities.

In photo: Kurk (tech), Trent (business partner), Andrew (business development), and Heath (stud).

The stork has nested

As many of you know in November we decided to try start a family. So on December 4th I decided to take a test in the wee hours of the morning to make sure I was not pregnant and could indeed drink freely at my company Christmas party that evening. And low and behold - the letters Y-E-S appeared! Of course I freaked a little as it was unexpected to be successful so quickly that I then understood the reason for the second test. Except I didn't 'plan ahead' and had a bit of a problem completing the second test. Wow - I hope I'm ready for this!

I went back to bed and slowly woke Heath up, checked his mood to be sure the timing was right, and then let him in on the news and that I would need a lot of help 'faking it' at the Christmas party that evening. He was very sleepy-excited. Being newly pregnant during the holidays is a tricky task. We had three weekends in a row of parties and the lack of drinking on my end would be a dead give-away. Plus seeing family was tempting to share our news, even if a little early.

So once the morning sickness began (all day, every day) at six weeks along there was definitely no hiding it. We slowly told friends and family starting on Christmas Eve. It was really fun and exciting, even though I felt icky. We told Heath's family by hints through their Christmas gifts and it took Heath's mom and sister-in-law longer than Heath's dad and brother to figure it out! We had a good laugh over that :) And we told my family in the car on the way to grandma's funeral - ah, the circle of life... (5.5 months along in photo)






















All check-ups have gone smoothly, morning sickness is long gone, we have a healthy baby boy (go team BLUE!)growing rapidly and he loves to kick and punch. It took Heath six months and two rum and cokes to finally get enough nerve up to feel him and boy was it worth the wait! His reaction was priceless. We are in the middle of labor and delivery classes right now (2 beer requirement for Heath before each class begins) and we are learning a lot! (YIKES)





















Heath and his parents surprised me Mother's Day weekend by getting the nursery going. I left for Iowa on Friday to a lavender guest bedroom and returned Sunday to a slate blue fully decorated baby's room! It was such a wonderful surprise and fun to know Heath painted, shopped, decorated, and cleaned for me :) I'm a lucky girl! My dad made the cradle and my grandfather made the piece of furniture being used for the changing table (previously a TV stand).
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As you can see, I love to lay out all of his clothes that we have acquired as gifts or hand-me-downs and imagine him in them. So far we have 19 newborn-3 months outfits, 15 3-6 months, 6 6-9 months, and 2 9-12 months. I have no idea if this is enough or not! Its just fun to get them :) Also - the 'vintage' outfits that belonged to Heath and me as babies are fun too, here are a few examples.




Now we are entering our 7th month, third trimester. ALREADY!

Fresh Air

One of the things we love the most about our new diggs is the location. You know how in real estate they say "location, location, location!" (always followed by an exclaimation mark....point...mark? whatever... too much pistachio cake today)

The best way to describe our new environment is to imagine taking a subdivision out of the center of Overland Park and dumping it into the middle of fields, pastures, cows, and gravel roads. We live in a community called Forest Oaks and when you venture out of the neighborhood there is nothing for miles. It's great. The black top road to the entrance has no road markings and it is long and winds back and forth. It is like a fantastic mix of suburb and the area I grew up in.

Here is the view from the road on our way into town:

I love the random white horse in the middle of all the cows :)

Not only does the location seem perfect for us, but it is also perfect for our dogs :) There are plenty of places to take them to run free and play fetch (Abby needs lots of room for fetch!). The best part is look how close it is to our house! No excuses now ;) The arrow is pointing to the house, not Heath's arm.

I had to add this picture, how opposite are our dogs? Abby looks like a lion/cheetah and Satchel looks like Gilbert Grape.

Heidi-Ho neighbor!

We have successfully met most of our neighbors. To add to the list we now have next door neighbor Rob and his two kids who drew us this wonderful picture and put it in our mailbox:

Thanks Megan! (age 6)

Megan's dog Lucy (not to be mistaken with my friend Megan and her daughter Lucy) loves to dig holes under the fence and come play with her new neighbors too! Lucy is a very little dog but she likes hanging with the big dogs in our yard. Of course this encouraged our female Abby to venture into her yard which is not so cool.

We also met the neighbors from across the street and were invited over for a fun evening of Pineapple infused vodka, and great conversation. I got a lesson in Mexican tequila, we shared stories of wine festivals, and we learned the ins and outs of Smithville and the neighborhood. They also let us know that they watched our house being built six years ago and assured us it was well done ;)

I am so excited for Spring/Summer!

Home at last

Well we did it! We moved into our new castle a week ago today. We closed on the house at 10:00 Wednesday morning and had all of our belongings in the new house by 10:00 Wednesday night. It was an intense day! Many thanks to the boys that helped us move the big stuff, Trent, Tanner, and Josh.

This is what we had to look forward to come Thursday morning:















YIKES!

But we have been working hard, Heath's parents came up and spent the whole day with us on Saturday painting over the very BLUE kitchen. Now it is "Song of Summer" (green) and we LOVE it. Many thanks to them for their hard work, paint donation, and a perfect paint job!




















We even had our first neighbor visit on Saturday, the family from across the street came by to give us a card and a massive cookie!




















As you can see I didn't get the picture taken until after we dug in! (Lucy got most of it!)

Thanks for all of your support, it was totally worth all the stress and waiting. COME VISIT US!

Pity Party

We were supposed to close on our wonderful, exciting, big, new house on Thursday last week. Less than four hours before closing we got the phone call from our realtor - we are delayed. We tried for the next day, but no, the appraiser that seems to not need a job in this economy, didn't come through....again. Then the weekend came, then the holiday, then the underwriter had a death in the family. So we have been throwing ourselves a pity party ever since!

It is quite depressing, I think we both went through all of these stages of grief. We went from being dumbfounded, to super angry (Heath), to super sad, to needing a stiff drink, to getting the stiff drink and having a few laughs over it, to sleeping all day because there was nothing else to do.

Everything is in a box, all that we kept out of boxes and in an overnight bag are those few items we needed to get through the weekend of moving. Moving clothes, toothbrush, toilet paper (for new house), dog bones (to keep them busy), etc. So we have no food, no utensils, and no clothes (or work clothes!). The rooms echo and time has stood still.

We also had a desk that was delivered to the house on Friday, so we had to drive 30 minutes up to a house we didn't yet own, and take the massive 90 pound box off the porch and take it back into the city. Praying our new neighbors saw us.

In order to keep ourselves busy this weekend we went for drinks with friends (happy engagement Ben and Alysia!), we purchased a fridge, we let friends make us dinner and played games all night at their house, and we ordered pizza and pasta and ate it out of the containers they came in with plastic forks for dinner on Sunday AND Monday night.

It was really a blessing (in disguise) to be able to have one last weekend to do our favorite things as West Plaza citizens.

The many phone calls to reschedule the rescheduling, utilities, U-haul, friends to help move, new furniture/appliance deliveries, etc. Everyone has been really accommodating and friendly. We have been paying for the utilities on the new house since Thursday and there has been a washing machine in my car for the past ten days. What a mess.

Our landlord showed the house we are currently in multiple times throughout the weekend, I can't imagine that was a good selling point as far as lack of space, as there are boxes everywhere, packing materials all over the floor of the basement and porch, and we haven't cleaned in two weeks. ICK.


We are scheduled (for the fourth time) to close tomorrow at 9:00 a.m....anyone want to hold their breath?!

Dreaming....

So Heath and I have spent the past week dreaming of how wonderful it will be in our new castle. It will certainly feel like one compared to the past 8 years living in Kansas City at various apartments/town homes/bungalows.

A little background on the previous renting experiences. I have lived in an apartment, a town home, and two small houses in Missouri. In Kansas I have lived in two apartments. Heath has lived in an apartment and two small houses in Missouri and in Kansas he lived in an apartment and rented a room from a friend in a suburb. Our credit reports are many pages due to our many addresses.

Now we will be moving into something we actually own. It also has more than one bathroom and a garage that you can fit a car into! In fact, you can fit three! We are most excited about the master bathroom, our own sinks, means our own toothpaste. Heath likes Crest, Mikayla likes Colgate. We can have guests stay with us and they can actually shut the door to their own room AND their bathroom! Its AMAZING!

There will be no more talks about landlords, or rent is due and its already the 5th! Our dogs can have a decent backyard to play in, and we have a mailbox, in front of our house on the curb. Not attached to our house so the mailman freaks me out every Saturday when I hear him on the porch, I don't have to go down the street to the community mailbox to get the bills, and we can put our name on the mailbox! Heath and I can get drivers licenses with our current address knowing that it will not be outdated in a few months.

Here is a start to our new house resolutions:
1) Heath will have all of his vitamins in his drawer by his sink and take them every morning
2) Heath will put the coffeemaker in the bathroom (because we have room!) so he doesn't buy coffee every morning.
3) Mikayla is going to cook dinner more often now that she can see the living room from the kitchen and feel a part of what is going on in the rest of the house.
4) We both will take our dogs for walks everyday on the walking trail or on the access road.
5) We will sit on the front porch as much as possible to get to know our neighbors
6) Mikayla will bake cookies to encourage them to come see us.
7) Heath is going to exercise more regularly
8) Mikayla is going to do push-ups everyday until the wedding now that we have enough carpet to stretch out on (excuses!)
9) The dogs will NOT be in the house at all, garage and basement at the very most.
10) The window blinds will rarely be drawn, we now live in a safe neighborhood and can feel safe letting the sunshine in!
11) Heath will run MJ a bath when she needs her much appreciated baths.

This is what we have been doing since we heard the house is ares last week. We sit on the couch and dream. We also force each other to choose our favorite part of the new house. We never can choose between the front porch, the master bath (TUB!), the neighborhood/location, the layout, the many walk-in closets, and the garage.

We close February 12th and will be totally moved in that weekend :) It is going to be a long two weeks...

"home ownership is a wonderful... trap"

This is one of the responses I got to the exciting news that our offer has been accepted on the house we bid on exactly 63 days ago! Yippee!!! We are so excited, and relieved. It is so frustrating and slow buying a short sale home. But the benefits are worth it. Which is why we are able to buy a much larger/nicer home than a typical first time buyer at our age should! We don't feel worthy:( Here she is...
What do you think?? The front porch is the entire reason we even considered looking at it. Definitely one of our top five favorite things :)

Tomorrow both sets of parents are going to do a walk through of the house with us, it was already scheduled since the Iowa set of parents were planning to come in town so it worked out just right to hear back from the bank today! We can't wait to see it again....well inside that is. Heath and I have been quite creepy lately, doing drive-bys and yesterday we managed to really cross the line by taking the dogs there to try out the walking trail. You know, like we live there. I'm sure we are already labeled as the creepy people with the dirty old jeep and two big dogs that randomly show up. Watch out people - here we come! Just look for us on the front porch :)

Big Decisions

Today we are placing a bid on a house. I think this cartoon illustrates the massive amounts of confusion we are going through. It is, of course, not your typical situation where we offer $$ to the seller and they counter with $$$. Oh no - we had to make it complicated. We are placing a bid on a pre-foreclosure home. First time home buyers and first time bidding, the perfect storm, and we are jumping in with two feet. But I guess we are better off than the sellers at this point :(


Heath and I are learning so much by the moment, the real estate business is a fierce one. Heath is sure that I have jinxed the whole thing because I have been talking about it non-stop and I have been really excited. Doesn't he know me at all? When I get a new shirt I wear it three days in a row and once a week for the next 8 weeks - I get excited about things! He is such the synic! So here I am - announcing it to the inter web - all three of you! Please pray for us!