We have had quite a big month! Ella is officially off of the pacifier, and that was not a struggle at all. She asked for it a few times, and I told her
pacifiers were for babies and she was getting to be a big girl, and that was that! Guess I worried about it for nothing! What else has been going on...Anne Marie had something like the dog croup (apparently dogs can get the croup?). That was a nice vet bill, but she is doing much better and hasn't coughed at all for a couple of weeks. Work has been crazy for John, as always! Only worked a few nights until midnight this month....
Oh yes. AND we sold our house! Well, we have a contract on our house, and will close on it July 10th. Then we move out by the 13th! Our house search has been absolutely exhausting, but we have finally found something that we think meets our needs (and most importantly the dog's needs :), most of our wants (not my jacuzzi tub!), is in a great neighborhood and school, has been kept up very well, and all at a decent price. It has not been an easy search. Yes, there are TONS of houses on the market (and I think I have probably seen everyone in Birmingham!), but most of them are really bad houses! Either something terribly wrong, not kept up at all, or just needed way too many updates. Oh, and one even had a pet turtle swimming around in the kitchen sink.
Tomorrow is the inspection on the house we are buying, so as long as that goes well, we'll close on July 24th and move in the week of the 28th. In the mean time we'll be staying in my mom and David's spare bedrooms! Hopefully will be very temporary, but maybe I can con mom into doing a few loads of laundry for us while we are there! We still haven't started packing and I just keep hoping I'll wake up one morning and everything will magically appear in boxes and in the POD we are renting for the month.
Here are a few pictures of the new house. You can't see just how enormous the yard is, which John is so excited about. But I am quite nervous about keeping up (large front, back, and huge side yard). We are definitely in the market for a riding lawn mower if you know of anyone trying to sell one!
It is 3 bedrooms, 2 baths on the main level, mostly hard wood floors, has an enormous unfinished basement that could easily be 2 more bedrooms, and best of all....has a built in dishwasher! We will not have to roll our dishwasher across the kitchen and hook it up to the sink to run it. That is going to just be crazy. I don't know what its like to be able to run dishes AND run the sink at the same time. That and having 2 bathrooms, its just going to be so luxurious! It's on a double cul-de-sac so very little traffic! Maybe no more cars landing on our mail box! It's still in Bluff Park, but literally a street away away from Vestavia and so convenient to everything. School will be Bluff Park Elementary, which was one of my top choices for schools.
My camera's battery has died and of course in our madness I can't find the battery charger. So, here's all I have on updated pictures of Ella. Sorry!!!! We have taken tons of cute ones (and videos too), but I just can't get them off of the camera yet.
This is before splash day at school a couple of weeks ago. Once a week she gets dressed up in her bathing suit before school and they have little baby pools, sprinklers, and have a fun time playing in the water. She LOVES to go "swimmin".
Few updates of Ella. She is drawing faces and it is so amazing to watch how intense she is with her drawings. She definitely has john's artistic abilities. Last week she drew 3 faces in a row, all different sizes, each with eyes, a nose, and a mouth. She said, one was daddy, one was mommy, and one was Ella! She'll draw them with eye brows, she'll draw some and say that those were funny faces. She would draw for hours if she could. She has even shown her creativity by coloring all over her dresser and night stand while I was cooking one night. She was very honest about it and told me she did it though, which I thought was good. She is doing very well at her alphabet and her letters, words, and sentences are getting more and more clear every week.
We are just amazed at how caring she is. Last week at Sunday school there was a little girl that was upset and Ella took her a doll to try to make her feel better! The other day Anne Marie was jumping over the baby gate and her leg got caught on it for a second and she made a little whimper. Ella ran over the gate, shook her hand at it, and said, "No, No, No Gate!". Then went over to Anne and said, "Kiss it and make it better" and then gave Anne a kiss on her back. She is always asking us if we are ok, and she always seems to know when anything is wrong or someone is upset.
Ok, time for bed. Sorry for such a long post. I hope to get back on track with posts, but I am not going to promise anything until we get settled in the new house! We are looking forward to having a big house warming party soon!
Lots of friends and family
