We're Moving!

Anyone who knows me well knows that when I put my mind to something, I usually make it happen. This all started a couple of months ago when I was browsing cbshome.com like I tend to do every now and then. I have a passion for real estate, and I love to dream! I found a foreclosure for sale in the Saddlebrook neighborhood for a really cheap price. We went to see it a couple of times and ended up deciding it was going to be too much work to fix it up. I have to admit that I was really heartbroken.

A week or so later I found myself browsing cbshome.com again and dreaming even more. We started kind of looking at houses and called a mortgage company to see if we would even qualify for something on Cory's income alone. With interest rates being so low right now we found that we could really upgrade for not a lot more money per month than we're paying now.

And so the real hunt began! After switching realtors, switching mortgage companies twice, and spending some money and time getting our house ready to sell, we finally put our house on the market on October 2. We continued searching for a new house, but we didn't want to fall in love with anything until our house sold. We went back and forth on whether to build or to buy pre-existing.

After 5 house showings, on October 22 we had our first offer. The offer was a little lower than what we wanted to accept and after debating back and forth on whether or not to counter, we ended up accepting the offer. We had some knowledge that the people would likely walk away if we countered, and we figured it would be an easy and quick transaction so we decided to lose a little money to be able to move onto our dream a little sooner. We close November 30.

Since we still hadn't really found a new place to live we spent most of last Saturday searching for houses. We found NOTHING that we liked as well as building for the same price. We felt like we could spend months searching and still find nothing.

On Tuesday night we ended up paying our deposit and picking out everything for our brand new Charleston Home in the Saddlebrook neighborhood. We seriously couldn't be happier with our decision! It doesn't quite seem real yet because it's so far away until the actual move in date. They've given us a projection of April 22-May 13 for the closing date. This obviously can change, especially due to our lovely Nebraska winters.

Here is what our house will look like and the floor plan of the house.


For now, we are busy packing and trying to figure out what things we will and won't need for the next 6 months. We are moving into my mom's basement while our house is being built. She was gracious enough to offer this to us, and we took her up on it. It will be a huge money saver for us and will be the most comfortable solution for the girls. We are renting a POD and storing most of our furniture in it for 5 months. This is proving to be extremely challenging. It is so hard to guess what any of us will need, especially since we will be in the middle of seasons changing.

It's going to be a very busy next 4 weeks of packing and moving for us, but it will so be worth it in the end! Wish us luck!

It's been awhile!

I have admittedly been horrible about updating this thing regularly. I always say I'm going to take 30 minutes and update, but I just don't do it. Some big things are happening in our lives right now so I thought it would be a good time to get back into blogging. For this blog though, I'm only going to focus on Madison's birthday, which was 2 weeks ago.

Every year on her birthday it always hits me how far we've come and how much she's grown since October 11, 2006. I cannot believe that my 3lb 15oz premature baby is now 35lbs.

We took her for her 4-year-old check up, and she has grown a ton! I could tell by her clothes that she had grown a TON over the summer, but the measurements really showed it. She is 38.8" tall (30%) and 35lbs (51%). It took her almost 3 years to actually get on the growth charts, and now she's 50th percentile for weight. That is just crazy to me!

We had a party for her at the Kids Body Shop and had 14 friends and their parents join us. The kids had such a great time swimming and doing gymnastics. Madison chose a Hello Kitty theme for her party, and my friend Patti made her cake. It was really a great party, and super easy for mommy to plan. No clean up involved - the best type of party!

The big 4-year-old!

Everyone playing in the pool

Climbing up the rope

My little monkey, Macy, swinging from the bar

Opening presents

Blowing out the candles!

On her actual birthday we went to The Amazing Pizza Machine - at her request. The girls had a blast, and so did mommy, daddy, and grandma.

The birthday princess at the Pizza Machine

Another fun thing we decided to do for her birthday was to get her ears pierced. She has been excited about this for awhile, and I had told her she could get it done when she turned 4. There was only one lady at the store in the mall where we went to get them done so she had to do each ear one at a time. Madison freaked out! She really only cried for about 3 minutes, and then she was okay. She's done a great job of taking care of her earrings since then and is anxious to get to wear some of the earrings she got as birthday gifts. After being so brave with the ear piercing we headed to the nail shop for her first ever "real" toenail painting. She was in heaven sitting there with mommy and grandma like a big girl!

After getting her ears pierced.
She was not happy at all!

We had such a great birthday celebration, and I'm still in shock that my baby is already 4 years old. Happy Birthday Madison!