Are we really related to these people?: June 2008

First of all the news that everyone has been waiting for . . . WE ARE HOMEOWNERS! We FINALLY closed on our house on Thursday the 15th of May. Just a short 104 days since our initial offer. Whew. It feels good. We made it thru and now to the fixing of the house. The day after we closed (Friday), Brian and I went over and tore out all the nasty carpet and linoleum, and trim. Let me just say that it seems Bigfoot may have lived in this house before us. It was stinky, stained and just in need of some serious TLC. But it's all ours! Then at 2am Saturday we left for a week of vacation at lovely Myrtle Beach! We had hoped to get the house worked on and moved in by the time our vacation rolled around, but it didn't work out that way. Myrtle was wonderful. We are starting a tradition with Brian's family , every other year we are gonna rent a condo and go away for a week together. It was so nice to spend time all of us and swim until we were pruney. We had a condo right on the beach and a pool and hot tub in the back. We spent a lot of time in the pool! The ocean was still a little chilly. Our weather was fantastic and we had a great time.
We got home and the marathon begins. Brian has been over at the house everyday in the evenings after work doing stuff, and we had a work day on Thursday with our small group and got a ton done to the place. Oh, I forgot to mention, while we were in Myrtle, we had some wonderful friends doing some work to our little house to surprise us! You guys are such a blessing! Thank you and we love you! Anyway, we have a good bit of work to go, and we are living in a continual state of exhaustion, but it will all be worth it when we can move in this month. Hopefully, 2 1/2 weeks from now, we will be loading the trucks! We'll see.
Renee Byler and I had a garage sale this past weekend and try and unload a few things we didn't want to pack, and the rest is going to be a process to pack. I have started, and I feel like I am living in a blast zone. Ugh.
Now to the little girl . . . she is sooooo much fun! She is really trying to talk, and singing, and laughing and just being silly. She still has to learn more about sharing, but we'll see. Everyday you can see her learning something new. She is learning to clean up her tray on her high chair, and wiping her mouth and hands after meals, throwing things in the trash, ( and then of course getting them back out) she tries to feed herself with a spoon, but likes to dump it on her tray or fling it thru the air. That's fun. We are just really enjoying this stage. When Brian comes thru the door at night, she just lights and and says: "Daddy!" I think I love Brian's reaction to that as much as I love the fact that she is doing that now. She's just getting too big too fast. I better wrap this up before I get too weepy. Here are a ton of pictures and a couple of videos for you to enjoy!