Bubbly

My girly girl
My ornery daredevil
I really need to change my blog background to something other than the winter wonderland background so I figured I'd go ahead a post pics from today. It was absolutely gorgeous out! I don't know what the temp actually was....but the car told me it was 70 degrees! The girls were in t-shirts and we probably could have even been in shorts! Love it! Anyway, we just ran some errands and then came back home and played outside (bubbles, running around, slide, sand table). It was fun. I love watching the two of them interact. After that we met up with their cousins for some play time at the park....


Allie is such a good helper!
I guess it rained at some point this morning and it rained some last night so it was pretty muddy in our back yard and at the park. Needless to say, the girls definitely needed baths tonight. I surprised them with pink water....it would later turn to another.
{CAUTION}{CAUTION}

Avery kept saying something and motioning that she needed to go potty and I could tell by the look on her face as well. So I asked her if she needed to go potty and she gave a nod and said 'kay. I got her out and sat her on the toilet and she grunted and said 'kay. I said are you done....she gave a nod and said 'kay. That's her new favorite word! So, I put her back in the bathtub and she proceeded to stay in a squatting position and had that look on her face...."Avery, do you have to go to the bathroom?" Nod, 'kay. I get her out again and we do the same thing over. Still nothing. I get her back in the bath and hurry up and scrub her down. She smiles and I say okay, ready to get out? NO.......it was because she felt better! Hmmmmmm, GROSS!! Allie gave her a lecture about where to go potty. I was really surprised she didn't jump straight up and scream!!

Wonderful Weather

The weather has been absolutley beautiful that past 4 or 5 days!! I'm loving it and am sooo ready for spring. Unfortunately, I think it's going to rain for the rest of the week, but at least it's starting to warm up.
We've definitely tried to take advantage of the warmer weather by going on walks, going to the park and we even went to the zoo! It was busier than I thought it would be, but I guess it was a Saturday and the sun was finally out so I'm sure doing something like that was on a lot of people's minds. There really weren't a whole lot of animals out, but enough to satisfy the girls. I was just happy to be out!
riding in the "dragon"


Today we went to the outlet mall. There were some pretty good clearance deals! I probably bought more than I should have considering we're in the process of packing up and don't need more stuff........but Allie is starting to run short on shirts that fit her (and it was a good deal).

Well, we've got a lot we want to get checked off of our "to-do" list before we leave on April 30th so Bring On the Sunshine!!!

What Do You Think?

We're faced with another dilemma, well several actually....but we'll just leave it to this for now. Okay, so when Derek went down to Texas to look at the other house it obviously wasn't going to work for us. He took advantage of the time he had while he was there and looked at TONS of other homes. We narrowed it down, weighed our options and decided on one that fits us pretty good according to our main wants (which are good schools and safe area). We signed a contract and everything. It's another bank owned property, but in good overall condition so we wouldn't have to do a lot to it. The bank is taking their sweet time in getting everything finalized so it's not officially ours yet (but they accepted our offer and we signed all of the paper work and what not.) It's not our favorite, by any means, but we do like it.. A little bit about this house:
1. 2700 sq ft
2. 4 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, HUGE game room
3. big fenced in backyard
4. close to shopping
5. community is NOT gated, but seems to be safe
6. community has club house, pool, basketball courts, tennis courts
7. school is rated a 10/10 and is right down the road from the house
Here are some pics of this house:






Anyway, so in the mean time Derek has been looking at other homes. He came across this one which is on the lake. Before we even knew where we were going we were looking at homes on this lake because we knew we wanted to go to San Antonio and would like to live on the lake, but figured it could never happen because the prices were just too much for us. Well, this home is in our price range and just 6 grand more than what we are going to be paying on the other home. We plan on going to the lake a lot anyway....and it's only a 10 minute further drive to work for Derek than the other home.
Here's a little bit about this house:
1. 3200 sq ft
2. 4 bedrooms, 3 baths
3. no garage, but a carport
4. no fenced in yard, but it's an acre so no wonder
5. community is gated so we know it should be safe
6. schools are 8/10
7. community has clubhouse, pool and fitness center
8. community also has it's own drop in access for the lake (so we won't have to pay every time we go)
9. HOA is about $100 cheaper here too.
10. we'll be in the "country" which we like the idea of this, but it would also mean a further drive to all of the conveniences of shopping/groceries etc (about 15 min)
Here are some pics of this house:





For pics of the community, pool, clubhouse, lake etc you can go here to look: http://www.dancingbearranch.com/texas-hill-country-photo-gallery.php

Overall, I do like the lake house better but there are also perks to the other house as well. (being closer to everything is just convenient...but we do like seclusion as well) The biggest perk is just that we already have a contract in and do we trust our realtor to take good pics of this lake house and give us a good description of it. He's already failed us once with doing this. The bank that we signed our current contract with also is in charge of this lake house and so we've already talked with them about everything and they said we would probably lose our earnest money ($500) which we don't really think is fair since they haven't finished the paperwork yet or taken the home off of the market.
What do you think??

Missing Daddy

Derek has been crazy busy with his thesis, soccer, scouts, basketball etc so we see very little of him. I'm probably selfish in thinking he should cut an extracurricular activity to be able to spend more time with his family, but I know he needs a break from school too. Anyway, it's almost done, THANKFULLY! It really has felt like he was deployed or I'm a widow so I'm excited for the change....he defends March 11, I think. When we do see him at home he's usually asleep on the couch. Last week, the girls and I went grocery shopping and when we came home he didn't even budge when we were making all of the noise bringing the groceries in. After Allie and I put everything away I jumped on the computer really quick and came out to find her up on the couch with her daddy, fast asleep! Note the sticker that she gave him as well!

Sewing, Museum and Sledding

Time is quickly running out for us here. It's going to be bittersweet....we've made a couple really great friends that we don't want to leave, but we're also ready to start anew(more time together as a family, new things to do, new home that is actually ours...etc). We're trying to squeeze in as much time as possible with our friends before we all start to move away. It's been tough with sicknesses and lots of other activities. We were able to finally get us all together for some sewing at my house a couple weeks ago. Thank you, ladies, for teaching me how to sew!!!! I now have two projects done and am hoping to find some time to do more....it's quite rewarding when you see the finished product.

Next up was the Boonshoft Museum. Our membership is going to be expiring very soon so we've got to take advantage of it and the sweet discounts we can get at other area musuems. Our girls LOVE this place!!

Adeline

Jail Time!
Shopaholic


Then yesterday we went sledding. It was fun for the first 10 minutes and then Allie had had enough. We don't have the best gloves for her so I guess I can't blame her. These girls are just so stinkin' cute together...

cute little Norah all bundled up

here you can see Allie was cold...Adeline was content with eating the snow!

JUNK

yeah, the house we have our contract on.....is junk. No wonder I had such a bad feeling about it! Derek is there right now and it would cost us a good $30k for it to even be liveable really. Even then, Derek said it's very apparent the guy is a smoker, from the smell and the wall and ceiling discoloration...we wouldn't be able to tolerate that! We just barely made it within the 12 days to only lose $100 (I thought it was going to be $1500 so I was livid w/ our realtor man for telling us it was by far the best house).... we had 2 days to spare though, thankfully!

I'm done with the idea of getting something to fix up!! Not worth it, plus we NEED to have time together as a family again. It's been a long time :(

Cabin Fever

We finally got out of the house for a little bit yesterday after being stuck inside for the past week. Today, while Avery was napping, Allie and I made a Princess Castle....and now we're freezing so we probably won't be out again for another week!!

San Antonio House

Well, we have a contract on a house. We're supposed to close on it mid March.....Derek is going to fly down this weekend for the inspection to make sure everything looks good with it since it's 18 years old. He'll also be looking at other houses while he's there....just in case.
We've been looking for a house basically ever since we found out we were going to San Antonio. We're so excited to finally own a home (and for the sweet tax return.) This house, like I said earlier, is an older home and could definitely use some updates. The thing that attracted us the most to this house was the fact that it is in a gated community and the schools are the best in this area. We really want our kids to have a great education and want to feel safe so this was perfect for us. It's also in the highly sought after Hill Country, which could be good when we go to try to sell it in four years when it's time to move again. It's within a 20-30 minute drive to EVERYTHING - work (LAckland AFB), Sea World, Six Flags, shopping, downtown. The biggest downfall to it is the fact that it's older and needs the updates. Okay, maybe not needs.....but I want them. I've been really down about the house since we bought it. Just because all of the other houses we were looking out were absolutely gorgeous (granted, a lot that we were looking at were about 100,000 out of our price range)....which brings me to another point about why this house is good for us. We got it for a great price! Derek knows a lot of people that live in San Antonio from work and they are all amazed at the home we got. They say that is an incredible price and the BEST area to live in hands down. They all think the house is really nice too. Now I just need to see it! Which, I really am starting to. We've been watching a lot of the DIY network and so I've started to really see the potenital this home could have. So I'm excited to see what we can do! Anyway, here are the pics of the house. Stay tuned for the updates (which will hopefully be done by the end of the summer). Our main focus will be the kitchen and bathrooms.