Moving, Father's Day, and a Gender Reveal!

Where to begin...well, two weeks ago, we moved out of our house that we had lived in for over 7 years. We brought two babies into that house. It was a great house, lots of space, one we thought when we bought it that we would be in forever. Ha! Funny how life does that to you. I was fully expecting to be sad when it was all said and done, but I was so not. Actually, I was really surprised at how non-attached I was, which totally reaffirmed our decision to move! I was just ready to move on and so was Joel! And we really have not looked back. The boys have taken the adjustment right in stride. We seriously have the best two little boys in the world (and I am still saying that after a certain 5 year old kicked in a window at my parent's house this morning after throwing a fit because I turned the TV off!).

 

After looking at houses for a couple of months with no luck (well we did have one under contract, but found out it had mold in the inspection so we walked), we moved in with my parents. The following Monday we found a house! And it was not on the market, so there wasn't any competing, no going above asking price, no having to make split second decisions, and it is not a teeny tiny house that needs a complete overhaul--woo hoo! It really is the perfect house for us and we are SO anxious to get in it and be settled! And we are thankful that we were patient through the process. It was stressful at times, and having our rowdy family of 4 move in with my parents in their little garden home is not necessarily ideal (even though they jumped ship and we have the house to ourselves!), but we will survive it!  

 

The move took two full days. It was hot, and exhausting. And clearly we have accumulated way too much stuff over these past 7 years. Everything is in storage right now and we are really enjoying living with less. We had the moving truck come Saturday and at 8 pm Saturday night, they took a final truck load. We just decided we would handle the rest at that point. It took all day Sunday. On Father's Day unfortunately. I'm quite certain it will not go down in history as one of the best Father's Days Joel has ever had!

 

We did manage to have dinner with the boys at the Reed's that night. We were thankful that my mom handled the boys on Saturday, and his parents handled them Sunday.

 

 With all the moving talk, Hudson loaded up all the furniture in my old doll house at my parent's house and put it on the "moving truck" and put it all in "storage" under the chair. Too funny!

 So we put the contract on the new house on Monday, heard back that they accepted it Tuesday, and then Wednesday, Carrie and Andres were coming into town for her best friend's wedding. Which meant mom and dad came back in town too, and our little family of 4 was kindly asked to relocate to the Reed's for the long weekend. :) We knew this going into it, but packing bags again was such a pain!

Since Carrie and Andres were coming into town, right about the time she was 20 weeks pregnant, she decided to wait and find out the gender with all of us! We were so happy she did this! She sent me this envelope a week before she got in town with the results. I'm not quite sure why she trusted me with this sensitive information (I am the queen of snooping!), but I was good and did not look. And she had like tripled enveloped it so you couldn't see through it or open it unless you wanted to open all of them! I didn't want to get in trouble! Ha!

 She invited all of the family over for dinner and asked everyone to wear pink or blue.

 Of course the majority of us wore pink. Morgan was the last girl born and that was 11 years ago! It was high time for another girl!

 And the blue team...mom couldn't decide so she wore pink AND blue.

 Carrie was so sweet and let Hudson sit in her lap for the reveal. He felt so included! He really wanted a girl cousin!

 Andres skyped with his family, who also had a cake to cut into! I thought that was such a good idea to include both the families.

 It's a GIRL!!!!!!!!!

 Harrison was super excited too!

 We cannot wait for this baby girl to join the family in early November. Carrie has had a really tough few years and has been very patiently waiting on this baby for quite some time now, so this is a really happy time for our entire family! I'm seeing lots of trips to Cali for me in the near future! Carrie always said she wanted to be the crazy aunt in California, so now I get to be the crazy aunt from Alabama!

 That was Thursday night. On Friday, I was off work and the boys and I went to the zoo. Life has been so crazy lately that we haven't had a whole lot of time to just have fun with the boys and do what they wanted to do. The zoo is one of our happy places! We had a great time and finished it off with a long time spent at the splash pad to cool off!

 The boys literally took 4 hour naps Friday afternoon. They were worn out. Joel and I took naps too...every day this past weekend! It was glorious!

Saturday, we decided we would try out the new Red Mountain Park and go on a hike. Not sure what we were thinking with the heat, but we had a fun time. The boys (the 3 of them) love them some woods. All I could think about was please don't step on a snake. :)

 After looonng naps again, we went to La Paz for dinner and then came back and caught lightning bugs in the back yard. So fun and such a summer thing to do!

We very much enjoyed our weekend of no agenda. It's been a while since that has happened! We focused on having fun and sleeping a lot! Now we are back and settled at my parent's house and counting down the days until we move again, hopefully, for the last time EVER! Moving stinks!

So there's life over the past couple of weeks!