Busy

Lately, we've been busy. Really busy. In addition to the normal Christmas season craziness, we've had a more demanding month than normal as far as new house decisions are concerned, and we're getting our current house ready to put on the market in January. Add on to that a variety of illnesses on the part of the kids, and it's been flat out hectic. So, my usual blogging is kind of being put on hold for a bit, but I do want to keep up with the house, for my own sake as well as anybody else's who might be interested.

Here are the latest photos:

Front of the house, as of Sunday

Kaeden, under the front porch

mud room

Ryan's favorite hiding space - play room closet

Front entryway/stairs

Great room with trim!

From Great Room, looking at kitchen/pantry (with hardwood floor & beadboard walls), doors into dining room, front entryway

And finally, the front of the house again today, with some grading and front steps begun!

A few more house photos

We went out to the house after church today for a picnic, and I can't resist sharing a few more photos. They have done so much just since Wednesday!

The columns/arches are going up in front... what I've been waiting for, finally becoming real!

View of the great room from the kitchen

Ryan's bedroom, with trim!

Our closet has shelves! This was a shock to us, but pretty cool.

House update (finally!)

It's been a long time since I've posted an update on the house. For quite a while, there wasn't much of interest to share. We've had a lot of electrical, plumbing, etc. going on and I didn't figure anybody really cared to see pictures of wires and pipes!

Recently, siding and brick have been going up and they have finished putting up drywall, so it's been a lot of fun to see the progress (not to mention the fall colors!) Oh, and they have built our deck. We love it!

Here are some pictures from last month, when the trees were just gorgeous:

Pretty view of the trees

partially completed deck

View of the creek from the deck, after a big rain

Mason & Kaeden

Ryan, on the steps from the deck back to the house

And here are some pictures from this week. The brick is really coming along!

view of the deck from the Great Room

B.A. (our AMAZING architect), Mason & Kaeden, on the deck

What the house looks like on the inside now! This will be the nursery.

Things seem to be moving more quickly again now, so hopefully I'll have more pictures to share soon :)

Thanksgiving/Meeting Gwen

Thanksgiving began for us with a celebration/feast at Ryan's preschool. This is pretty much what Ryan looks like during any performance. He gets a little stone-faced in front of large groups. It was still cute :)

This was the place-mat that he made for the feast. Even though the name is spelled wrong, it's super sweet that when asked what/who he was thankful for, he chose to say his little brother.

The boys & I were fortunate enough to spend 10 days in CT with my family over Thanksgiving while we had some work done on our current house and Mason stayed home to supervise & work. Unfortunately, there was a fair amount of illness in my little family, but we had a good time anyway!

An extra special part of this trip was getting to meet my precious niece, Gwendolyn. We weren't sure if we would get to meet her at all that trip, as she wasn't due until the Saturday after Thanksgiving, but she made a surprise appearance (in true daughter-of-two-actors dramatic form!) a month early, so we were anxious & excited to meet her... not to mention photograph her!
Gwen, at 3 weeks old

Proud parents:

Kaeden is very into babies right now, so he was especially thrilled to meet his little baby cousin. Maybe he's just glad that he's not the youngest anymore!

Thanksgiving day itself was wonderful, as we had our traditional dinner with my grandmother, aunt & uncle, and my cousin Sara. Aunt Monica was happy to give Kaeden his first taste of pumpkin pie. He liked it more than his brother, who put himself clearly in the pecan pie grouping.


Gwen's first Thanksgiving

All in all, it was a great trip and a nice opportunity to get away and escape the chaos of home. And the sunsets? Awesome!

Birthday Celebrations

Since Kaeden's birthday was on a Wednesday this year, his birthday celebrations ended up being spread out across many days.

For his birthday morning, I made him a special breakfast of french toast (with syrup!) - he was a fan :)

One of Mason & Ryan's favorite treats is to go out to frozen yogurt, and poor Kaeden would often tag along and be deprived. So, since we had no other plans for his actual birthday, we decided to take him to frozen yogurt and let him try it himself!

He didn't like it all that much - I think the cold kind of bothered him, but the rest of us enjoyed his little birthday celebration :)

After my parents arrived on Friday, we decided to do presents. Ryan was (not surprisingly) more excited than Kaeden, but Kaeden definitely enjoyed his new toys and even figured out the whole unwrapping thing a little bit as time went on.

Practicing his standing/walking

Learning to open :)

Clothes may not be that exciting to a one-year-old, but some day he will appreciate the AWESOME owl sweater that his Nana knit for him!

Playing with his new music toy - probably the biggest hit of the night.

This was another of his favorite new toys: a walker! As you can see, he was pretty enthusiastic about it.

Saturday was Kaeden's party. I was very thankful to have my parents there to help with preparations. Even Ryan helped to get our "owl s'mores" ready for the party and he had a lot of fun doing it too!

I have known since he was just a few months old that I would have an owl party for Kaeden. His favorite toy as an infant was an owl and when he started to coo, his most common sound was "whoo whoo". I was excited to find some really cute party supplies and decided to model the cake after them. I was really pleased at how it turned out.

Kaeden's favorite part was, by far, the balloons. Ever since, every time he sees a balloon, he points at it and goes, "ooooo". He loves 'em!

The older kids were definitely excited about cake time:

The sequence of events:

I think he liked it!

Happy, happy birthday to my big one year old!