Our New Home!

Well, we moved! Here is a photo tour for you.

Our home! I love that it has a side load garage. We are going to paint it this spring; color has not been decided yet (might be the same, just fresh).

Laundry and MUD ROOM! To the left of the door there is a closet and a lot of cabinets.

Our office. The only room that is left to finish unpacking and organizing.

Powder room. I don't like how dark it is.

Family room

The view out of our family room. These windows are what I fell in love with first about this house.

Kitchen

And other kitchen view. Except for the desk area and walkway to the dining room, it is very similar to the kitchen we had in Erie.

Dining Room

Living room. We have curtains on our to-do list for this room. It's wonderfully bright and warm during the day but it's going to roast us in the summer.

Front entry

A little sitting area at the top of the stairs. We have a second chair like this one that is in the basement right now. I tried to bring this one up by myself and almost toppled down the stairs more than once, so I am waiting for Ryan to help with the second one.

The loft! I love this! A place for toys to live. It might become a 4th bedroom someday, but for now I love the openness of it.

The view into our family room from the top of the stairs.

The bathroom the girls use.

Maya and Brianna's room. I didn't realize how big it is until we moved their furniture in and all of it fit with lots of room to spare for playing.

The furniture doesn't all match, but it's fine for now.

The guest bedroom

Guest bedroom bathroom. There is a shower to the right of the sink.

Our bedroom.

The other side of our room with a blurry 3 year old.

Into the master bath. We ordered a door to put in here, and Ryan will be installing it soon. There will be a window at the top to make up for the extra space.

This is the view from our bedroom door.

Our backyard! Or at least part of it

I love that we are so close the mountains. On slow days I hope that the girls and I can take a quick jaunt up to Horsetooth Falls on a regular basis.

So there is our house! There is a lot of wall space we need to fill, but it's coming along nicely and we are pretty happy to be here. Ryan has already replaced all of the hardware on the doors. Before we moved in there was brass, silver, and antique bronze. Very mixed and not great looking. He put brushed nickel levers on all of the doors, new hinges, and a nice new front door handle. We have several other projects for the future, a lot of which will start when the weather gets nice. We are excited to have a larger yard and are planning to start a garden this year.

Home sweet home!

Brianna - 18 Months

Brianna is 18 months old! She has a lot of personality, is even-keeled, and even makes me laugh when she's angry about something. She now weighs about 20 lbs.

She was really sweet about Christmas this year. She loved driving around to look at lights, and even helped to decorate the tree in her best toddler-way.

She laughs and is content way more than she cries or throws fits. If I am busy doing something else, she finds ways to entertain herself. 

She is potty training herself. The first time she asked to go (and went) was when she was 14 months old. I am pretty sure we will have an easy time transitioning out of diapers with her! 

She can say lots of words and is always trying to say more. She also signs about 25 words. So far she's got a language only Mommy and Daddy can understand, but it's still fun! 

She enjoys imitating people around her. 

She loves to dance! When we put on music she starts to bop her little head and run around in circles. 

She is starting to be girly! So fun! She knows what it means to look "pretty". Every morning she picks out her bow for the day, and has even started to choose her clothes (and sometimes gets rather upset if I grab the wrong thing).

She is a great helper around the house. She enjoys cleaning up and acts concerned when there is a mess ("Meh! Meh!"). She is the same way about her own self. One day she was coloring on the window with dry eraser markers and got a little mark on her thumb. She started crying really hard and I tried not to laugh as I wiped it off.

When she gets mad she looks me square in the eyes, makes two small sounds, and then a LOUD yell/roar/scream. The warning is pretty nice. She did it at church one week when I stepped into Sunday school class (she is not a fan), and I had time to put my hand over her mouth and leave. Hopefully she enjoys nursery a little more!

She is a very adventurous eater. She doesn't like everything, but she tries everything, and that's the best I can ask for at this point! One night we had a ground beef casserole that Ryan decided to turn into a burrito, so of course Brianna wanted one too. 

Brianna is a fantastic little person! I love being her mommy!

Maya is 3!

Holy cow, how has the time gone so fast? Maya turned 3 in December! According to my bathroom scale, she now weighs about 24 lbs. Little tank, over here! ;)

On her actual birthday we opened presents in the morning as a family and then the girls and I made cookies together in the afternoon. Maya was a big help and it was so fun to have her want to do so much all by herself.

Maya is speaking like a pro now. She has some words that she can't get out quite right, but overall she is easy to understand. 

She loves to sing. Primary songs, Christmas songs, ABCs, and other nursery rhymes. "Silent Night" has become Brianna's favorite go-to-sleep song. A few nights ago she was fussing in her bed and all of a sudden I hear Maya start belting out "Silent Night". She sang it three times and then they both went to sleep (they are sharing a room now).

She can "read" an entire book from memory. (By entire, I mean about 8-10 pages with only a few words per page.) Ryan has started a tradition of reading a book together every night, which involves him reading a few words and Maya repeating him. I think this has helped her speech a lot as well as will aide her in reading in the years to come.

She loves Disney princesses. And princesses in general. She seems to have finally gotten through the phase of needing to wear a dress EVERY day. It lasted a good year.   

She loves to make friends. She is not shy, which is surprising to me since she was pretty clingy when she was a baby. She started Sunbeams at church a couple of weeks ago, in a brand new ward where she knows no one. She walked right into Sharing Time, took her teacher's hand, and sat down like it was no big deal. When we go to the park she loves playing with the other kids. She gets very excited when we have visitors in our home, and she is overall a very friendly social butterfly.

Her favorite color is undeniably pink. And nobody else is allowed to like it. I am working on teaching her that there are some things we can't "own".

She still loves to help me cook and bake. No matter what meal it is there's always a cute little voice beside me asking, "Mommy, can I help? Can you get the stool?" And so I do. :) 

Christmas this year was really quite magical with her. She was so excited about everything about it, from Jesus' birth to Santa to Christmas lights to gifts to the music...to everything! It made it pretty great for all of us.

On Christmas Eve we decorated sugar cookies at my parents' home. She loved getting to put on the frosting and sprinkles and I loved letting her do it by herself. 

She enjoys getting into the theme of things. Our ward Christmas party was based off of The Grinch. She was so excited to see The Grinch come! (Which he did, instead of Santa.) I am finding that ward activities are more fun now that we have kids old enough to get excited about them.

For her birthday party this year we had my immediate family and the Kempton family come to celebrate. Maya had a blast playing with her big boy cousins (who she calls her brothers), opening her gifts, and eating her rainbow cake.

(Iron Man photo bomb.)

She still loves going to the library to look at books. We try to go at least once a month.

She has started liking to help me clean! When I clean the bathrooms she is my mirror helper. She also likes to sweep, dust, wipe the counters/table, and set the table for dinner most nights. At the end of the day she's great at cleaning up all of the toys.

She is my little goofball, always trying to make people laugh. 

She loves the Broncos! She got this shirt from Uncle Ben and a Broncos cheer-leading dress from Papa and Nana for her birthday (she specifically asked for a Broncos shirt). She always wears one on Bronco game-day and enjoys watching the game with her daddy. She is always sure to point out the orange line they have to try to cross and cheers when we score.

Seriously. Goof. Ball.

She has a great love for her sister that I am so grateful for. They play together really nicely most of the time, and have recently started doing a game called "Hug". You can guess what that game is! In the morning she gives Brianna a book to look at so she isn't bored. Maya is quick to tell me when Brianna needs help. She's a fantastic big sister.

She helped me to build her first snowman this past November. The sun was hot and Frosty hardly made it more than a few minutes before he fell over (as is evident in this picture where he's already leeeeeaning), but Maya loved playing in the snow. 

She played a baby lamb (a lambkin!) in a Christmas pageant put on by the cousins on Ryan's side. She was pretty excited about the role ("Mommy! I get to be an animal! I'm so excited!") and played her part really well when it was her turn to go on. 

Maya is a joy to have in our home. My life is so greatly improved by her being in it. I can't wait to see what the next year brings for her!

Down by the wayside

Blogging is something I really enjoy doing but I am having quite a hard time keeping up with it! I have so many things I want to blog about, but instead I'm going to be boring and make a list of what has been happening.

And my phone is dead but since this is a special moment of free time I'm going to type this up and maybe add pictures later.

Or add them to a separate post 3 months from now!

This is what we have been doing:

• Ryan got a new job in Fort Collins at Advanced Energy. He started in October.
• We house hunted for several weeks (toyed pretty seriously with building another house) and then fell in love with a home in southwest Fort Collins right next to the foothills. We have no backyard neighbors and huge windows. I love the open feel of it.
• My brother came home from his mission in the middle of November. We hosted my family for dinner the night he came back, as well as Thanksgiving a couple of weeks later.
• Kent and Lalo stayed with us for a few days during Thanksgiving week.
• We got our house rented to a nice couple.
• Business for LILLEbaby really picked up in mid-November and I was super busy, which was both great and really stressful since we were moving the third week of December. I still have no idea how in the world I got everything done between packing, working, and being a mother. I guess I can only give credit to all the great people who helped me out during those weeks by watching Maya and Brianna.
• Maya turned 3! She had a fun party with nearby family and a rainbow cake that she had been requesting for months.
• After lots of negotiating and almost pulling out of closing on the house the DAY BEFORE we closed, we finally got everything lined up and felt comfortable making the purchase. It was a huge headache and we definitely wondered if we were doing the right thing a few times. We prayed about it a lot, and felt whatever happened would be the best for our family. 
• We bought the house on December 22nd. Picked up a moving truck that night. We spent 7 hours loading the truck on the 23rd with the help of a ward member friend, Ben, Jared, Ethan, and Adam. I finished packing while the men loaded. We drove to Fort Collins, where my dad, Brady, Holly, and Garrett met up with us, and had everything unloaded at our new house in about 50 minutes. 
• Spent Christmas Eve with my family, Christmas morning at our new home with our own family, and Christmas dinner at Brady and Erin's. 
• The following week Ryan and I spent 12 hours cleaning the Erie house to get it ready for our renters. Ryan went back 2 other days, and he ended up ringing in the New Year at a McDonald's drive-thru. But we (he) got it all done! I won't say it wasn't hard leaving that house, and painting the girls' rooms back to the original color was rough. It was where we brought our daughters home to, where we planned to stay for much longer, and where Ryan worked so hard to landscape our backyard. Now that we are in our new home and have started to make it our own, it is much easier to look back on it and realize it was a stage in our lives that will never be forgotten, but is no longer part of our present.
• We love that we are back in Fort Collins. This city is our home, and will always be "home". Ryan has told me that he feels like this house is our forever home; something he never spoke of regarding our home in Erie. Our new ward is great, our neighbors are awesome, and it all feels so right. It is my greatest hope that we stay here extremely long-term, if for no other reason than that I really really really despise moving.

Next week little Brianna turns 18 months old! She is starting to talk a lot, purposely does really silly things to make us laugh, and today I was carrying her cradled in my arms and she said, "Baby!" It made me realize she isn't a baby anymore, which of course pulls at my heart strings a little. 

So that is why I have not had time to blog. Life got crazy and it got crazy fast.