A few before and after pics of our new house

Our dinning room before

and after

Family room before....

and after!!

Thanks to all of our friends and family that really helped us get this place in shape!!

Second part to this past year

So after spending countless nights, weekends and thousands of dollars working on our new house we finally moved in over Memorial day weekend. Thankfully we had some help from friends and family members to help us complete the demolition of two bathroom, painting and ripping out floors. As for the moving we hired a moving company!

In June my aunt and uncle and their daughter came out from Utah to visit for a week. My uncle is a building inspector and knows how to do just about anything when it comes to home repairs so he and Ed agreed to stay back and work on the house while my aunt and I and all of the kids headed to Ocean City for the week.. I know not to fair but they got a ton done while we were gone.

So while I'm away Ed calls me to tell me the next door neighbor that had been so extra nice to us since the second we bought the place had just bee arrested! I was completely shocked. Of course Ed being totally non social had no clue why he had been arrested. So the next day the local paper comes out and turns out he was arrested on charges of child molestation.

Let me tell you I was floored. He seemed like the nicest guy on the planet.. mowing our grass, offering to help take a few trees out on our property, filling us in on all of the activities in the area for the kids etc.

So anyway he posts out on bail and is STILL awaiting his trial which was supposed to be in August and has since been postponed until this October.. talk about awkward.

He comes over to talk to Ed the day it hit the papers and never once says "Hey I didn't do this" . Instead he just goes on and on about that the incident occurred 8 years ago and tells Ed not to worry cause we are not in any danger.. gee thanks.. that makes me feel so much better. so needless to say we have cut all ties which makes it so awkward to even go in our backyard when he is in his back yard which for some reason is like every two seconds either to mow the grass.. water the lawn or work in his garden. We are in the process of having a 6 foot fence installed as soon as our permit goes through.

The whole thing makes me so mad... at first i wanted to sell this house immediately, but after thinking it through I guess it's better to have the information then to not know at all...I'm still hoping that somehow he is innocent and the victim recants the entire story.

I'm back.. well sort of!

So it has been over a year since I last blogged. So much has happened since last summer. In August of 2009 we put our townhouse up for sale ( it was getting a little tight with having 3 kids and 3 bedrooms)... we were anticipating a long wait before it sold based on the housing market and were totally surprised when we got an offer in about 45 days So by closing we still had not found "our dream home" so we moved everything in to a little tiny apartment ( and a ton of stuff to a storage place). The apartment was horrible to say the very least, and I think we all went in to a slight depression living there! Finally in January we put a bid in on a house that we really liked only it was a short sale home and let me tell short sale means anything but short when it comes to waiting on the bank to give you and answer on your bid.. in March after some haggling back and forth on the price we FINALLY came to an agreement and settled on March 26th 2010 ( also known as Jillian's second birthday!)

Next came the two plus months of painting, reflooring, ripping out bathrooms etc.. and on memorial day weekend we moved out of the terrible apartment and in to out new home. ( I will have to post some pictures later.

At the End of January Alexis started to feel sick so we took her to our family doctor for a check up, after some blood work it turns out her platelets were over doubled of what they should be.. from there were sent to a hematologist at children's hospital and to an infectious disease specialist.. after some more testing we were told she had Llymes disease.. 3 weeks of doxycycline and another couple of tests with zero improvement, the Lymes disease was eliminated as the cause. Over the next few months there were several more appointments more blood work, a cat scan, ultrasound, 2 genetic mutation tests and a bone marrow biopsy. ( The biopsy for me was the worst) For two days I had to wait for the results hoping and praying that the platelet count was not due to a type of myleoprolific or lymphomic cancer) We were told the odds of it being a cancer were 40% (scared the life out of me literally) After all of that and now we are 7 months in to this we still do not have a firm diagnosis other than that if her platelets remain in the millions for an entire year and they do not ever find any type of cancer she will be solidly diagnosed with a blood disorder call Essential Thrombocythemia or ET for short. In a few weeks we have another appointment and yet again more blood work and then a follow up Marrow biopsy in December. so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that things go well.

So much more to blog about as far as the past year goes, but I will have to do a little at a time to try to catch it all up!

SeeHere Photo Sharing

SeeHere Photo Sharing

Camp

So Marissa left today for her first overnight camping experience!!! She decided this year for the first time to go to sleep away camp. In past years when Alexis has gone she wanted nothing to do with it. She hardly ever sleeps away from home.

Last year she went about 45 minutes from here to stay with a friend from school that had moved out of the district and at about 2am I got a call that she was scared and wanted to come home...so I drug myself out of bed and Ed and I drove up to get her... by the time I got to her friend's house she was dead asleep on the couch!! Could have killed her!

The camp is about an hour from here so I'm hoping she makes it through and stays until Friday as planned! Crossing my fingers!

I told her a million times that once I signed her up and paid for her spot that she would have to go and stay there the whole 5 days. When we were having these discussions a few months ago she was completely fine with it, but as the day got closer and closer she seemed a little hesitant. There were only a few tears when I left her today so I'm hopeful!

We miss her already!

I took my camera today hoping to get some pictures before we left her there, but as we were pulling up tpt he camp I went to set up my camera and realized that the memory card was still at home in the computer! :( (Ed's fault) LOL So needless to say the piture avove is an old one!

Marissa's Tournament

By the time we got a new camera tournament was just about over so these are all of the pictures I got this year :(

It wasn't our best season anyway. Alexis was not drafted this year and Marissa's team lost every single game.

They all played their hardest, but we came in last place which was kind of surprising to me because last year we only got beat once and in the end we finished in second place. Guess that's just how it goes!

Marissa was catcher this whole season and absolutely loves the spot. Guess she is following in Alexis' foot steps!

The highlight of the season for Marissa was during our first tournament game. A girl from the other team was coming in to home when Marissa noticed that the girls foot never touched home. So she turned to the umpire and told him. According to tournament rules the umpire is not allow to assist in telling her what to do so all he said was "what are you going to do about it?" Marissa remembered from one of Alexis' games a few years ago that you could "challenge the play" She told the pitcher to toss her the ball then she tagged home plate and the girl was out, no run scored!

Marissa was so proud of her self and so was her coach. I think she has learned alot over the past few years watching the older girls play! Good for her!

Hope we do better next year!

Finally

We finally got a new camera!!!! Just wanted to throw a few pictures up of Jillian since she is 16 months and I have not been able to take any for so long. I missed all of her being 15 moths!

I can't believe how old she looks in this one just hanging out watchin a little coos coos as she calls it ( blue's clue's) and in these pictures she looks like a total redhead. Sometimes in a brighter place it looks blonde. Hard to tell since she still doesn't have very much!

Looks super red here to.....hmmm maybe she is a red head! I called that as soon as I found out I was pregnant.. both Ed and I have red heads in our family..neither of us have red hair so I figured she would. I always heard it skips a generation.

She is finally starting to talk... some of her words are cacka (cracker with no "r" sound), alessis (alexis), wissa (marissa), up, and sometimes you can get her to say peas (please). and of course coos coos for her favorite show at the moment!

We are also trying to take the bottle away right now which hasn't been going very smooth. the first morning that I tried to put her milk in to her cup, she threw it at me and screamed! So we are only giving her the bottle once a day first thing int he morning. None at daycare and none before bed anymore. That morning one is going to be tough. I think ti would be like someone telling me I couldn't have coffee in the morning anymore... so I feel her pain! LOL