October, I Love You

We have been enjoying October so much. The last 3 months of the year are the very best. The weather gets nicer and there are so many festivities and fun events. Here's what we have been up to this month. And there is still more fun to come on Halloween!

We visited 7 Acre Wood.

We found a spot to hang the hammock.

Went to a Pumpkin Patch on Market Street. 

We visited several churches and are still trying to decide where to join.

We decorated cookies and Cambry learned about royal icing

We found a fishing pond 5 minutes from our house.

The girls bedazzled pumpkins.

We have spent lots of time outdoors, at parks, playing with our neighbor, and collecting leaves.

We went to the Mattern family reunion in Dobbin. Greg's cousin (who is an awesome photographer) took a bunch of pictures throughout the day so when I get those I will do another post on this.

We also celebrated Laine'y and Colton's birthdays but that will be a post of it's own.

I have been eating honeycrisp apples like crazy and buying all the pumpkin things. I am sad that October is almost over. It's been a good one!

Around the House Vol. 7

Top left: I am trying to step up my braid game. It looked good immediately after I did it but didn't stay neat for very long. I am not even sure if I did this right? I think I need to watch a youtube tutorial. Hopefully she will let me experiment more. Especially since she is going to be Rapunzel for Halloween.

Top middle: He was 50% nervous and 50% happy to be carried around in a basket of warm fresh clothes.

Top right: Dress up time for Lainey.

Bottom left: Sisterly love. Lainey is very affectionate and Cambry is sweet to allow the choke hold.

Bottom middle: Double trouble. See below for more trouble from these 2.

Bottom right: The boys doing manly things.

Learning the Woods

I can't believe we have been here almost a month. Time has flown by. I expected things to be fairly slow since we have so few commitments here but our house is keeping us quite busy. And with Colton and Lainey's alternating nap rotation it is really hard to run errands during the day so I have been doing some in the evenings. I have also spent a ton of time lately browsing the web for furniture, bath mats, art on Etsy, Halloween costumes, you name it. Here is what we have been up to the past few weeks.

1. Greg's parents came to stay with us last weekend. They were very sweet to help us with house projects and watch the kids while Greg and I went furniture shopping. We enjoyed spending time with them. Cambry was so sad to see them leave. These kiddos sure do adore their grandparents.

2. We are slowly learning our way around. It is hard because the roads look so similar since they are all just lined with trees. You can be 30 yards from a Target and be yelling in your car where is the stinking Target??

3. I really love Cambry's school. It is a small church and all the teachers and staff are so loving and sweet. Cambry does gymnastics there on Friday and seems to really like it. Car line is amazingly convenient. The only downfall is I don't get to see and talk to the other parents so I haven't made any friends through her school except for meeting/talking to a few of the moms a couple times. I did go to the first monthly play date and will try to do some volunteering so hopefully over time I will get to know some other moms.

4. We have lots of little projects to do around the house. With 3 little ones, everything takes way longer than expected. Greg has been super handy and has done a lot of things around here lately. He always has little helpers. I love when things start to feel like home.

Other than that we are just doing the usual thing. We are trying to get speech therapy going for Lainey. Colton is all over the place and I cannot believe the birthday buddies are about to have their big day coming up soon. And here we are upon October, my favorite month!

House Remodel

We started this remodel toward the end of June and it was finished up by early September. Greg and I are both very indecisive so all the selections took us quite a long time to think and research and ask friends and family. But once we made our decisions the major work got done rather quickly. We had a great contractor and we are very happy with the end results.

When you first walk in you see the stairs. We love the look of wood stairs but were nervous about them being so hard with kids and potential falls (even with baby gates). We were going to keep the existing carpet but then at the last minute decided to change it because it was pretty worn and dirty. I'm sooo glad we did. I love the herringbone pattern. The walls are all painted a lighter color than they were previously which really helped brighten things up. And all of the slate floors were taken out downstairs and replaced with wood. One of the little things I love is that the floors are SILENT. I loved the original hardwoods in our old house but boy were they squeaky. Take one wrong step and 1-3 children could be awake. But now we can sneak around our new house like ninjas.

For the living room we had the fireplace step taken out (aka the chin buster), the stone redone, added cabinets on the left to make it symmetrical, added wood paneling above fireplace and behind shelves, and added trim and molding all painted white. This made such a difference! Now I need to buy some pretties to put on the shelves. And I need someone to tell me what kind of pretties to buy. Hello Houzz and Pinterest.

The kitchen was the biggest project and we are so happy with the final results. The kitchen is always the room of the house where people congregate and we spend a lot of time here (especially me), so I am very thankful to have such a nice, big kitchen. I am really enjoying it. Everything was taken out and we started from scratch. We have way more cabinet and counter space than before. The subway tiles look almost white in the pictures but they are a light gray with a touch of beige.

This house didn't have any closets besides bedroom closets (no coat closet, linen closet, etc). So we had a nice big storage closet built at the top of the stairs where previously there were just cabinets (strange, no?). Storage space is invaluable.

We haven't put on the door knobs yet.

Overall the remodel was a good experience. It did take a considerable amount of time and many trips x 1000 to home depot, stone yards, tile places, and flooring places, It also took 2000 man hours of googling things like best greige paint color and where to place cabinet knobs ("in the corner" really has multiple options). But it was mostly fun and now I kinda want to do a remodel on the next house. Although I also kinda never want to move again because of ALLTHETHINGS.

I will probably post pictures of other rooms later as they are decorated. That could be months and months though!

Colton 11 Months

Wow your hair looks extra fluffy laying down

I can't believe my next post will be your ONE YEAR post. Gosh, it always goes by so fast. I want to freeze you just as you are and yet I know there is so much fun yet to come. You are so irresistibly cute. You have the best smiles and I love how you are my little koala bear hanging tightly perched on my hip.

Size: I have no idea. The batteries on our scale are dead and since we are still trying to unpack our house and get settled, changing scale batteries is low on my priority list. But blogging is not, apparently. Boxes can wait. Because look at this cuteness. It must be documented.

Eat: You still nurse about every 3 hours during the day and eat purees in between. Plain, whole milk yogurt is still your fave (I mix it with purees too). You still aren't on board with solid foods. I have offered you scrambled eggs, more avocado, a variety of fruits, cheese, turkey, sweet potato fries, but you are like NO THANKS. Hey it's cool. We can wait. I'm sure you will jump on the solid food train eventually.

Sleep: You sleep through the night some nights and others wake up for a feeding. I don't mind though. If you wake up in the 6's you usually want to go back to sleep a little longer after I feed you. But if it is in the 7's you are up for the day. You take your first nap around 9:30 or 10:30 depending on when you wake up. Second nap is around 2 or later depending on length of first. You go to bed at 7:30pm. The lovie bond is still strong.

Likes/Dislikes: You love to stand, get into cabinets, pull up on toilets (gross), take baths, pull things out of the dishwasher, throw/roll a ball back and forth, play in splash pads, and chew on shoes (why??). I have to hide shoes from you. You like to be held and of course you still love your lovie. 

Skills: You pull up on everything and can take a few steps holding on. You can stand on your own for a few seconds at a time when we let go of you. You feel SO PROUD. It is the cutest thing to see the look on your face when you realize you are balancing on your own and beam with pride. You also love to climb up the first step and hold on to the baby gate. That makes me so nervous. You babble mama and dada a lot and make lots of other cute sounds. Cambry is really good at making you laugh. You have developed the funniest fake cry/whine. You scrunch your nose real hard and pout your lip and try to sound upset. Cracks me up every time.

I think this will finally be the month we get your hair cut. I am just so worried about accidentally getting a bowl cut. How do I ask them to trim it up but still keep the rockstar swoop? And what about the duck tail sticking up on top? Certainly we can't cut that off. It's too cute. Maybe just a teeny trim. 

Oh little boy, you are a joy. Tonight after I finished nursing you, you were being so sweet and silly. You would give me the best smiles then grab my face and pull me close. I could eat your up. Happy 11 months precious one.

Home Sweet Wooded Home

We are in our new home in the Woodlands! We have only been here a week and a half but with all our people and stuff it is already feeling like home.

I actually wasn't super sad moving out of our old house. I think the sad part was all the goodbyes to friends and neighbors, which we had already done. I will definitely miss our old house though and all the sweet memories in it. It was the first house Greg and I lived in (besides apartments), and the house we brought our 3 little ones home to. I wonder if Cambry will even remember it. I moved houses when I was 4 years old and I do have some memories of what our old house looked like. Good thing we have 200,000 pictures over the years for the kids to remember it by. On our last night at the house we went to get ice cream at Ice Cream Robins (as Cambry calls it).

Moving day was overwhelming. Thankfully we had wonderful help from both sides of the family. Greg's parents kept the girls in Waco for several days. They were thrilled about this. Cambry had been counting down the days until she saw her Waco family. My parents kept Colton all day on moving day.

The actual move went smoothly with the movers, but then we were left with a whole house to unpack and clean and several immediate projects to do (install baby gate on stairs ASAP, install clothes rods in closets, install light/fan, put up some temporary window shades, etc.). We worked non stop for the 3 day weekend and got a lot done! Colton was busy exploring the new house and "helping" us.

Found this box packed by Greg, obviously

The girls came home on Sunday and were excited to see the new place. Actually Cambry went straight to the playroom and started playing with the new toy we bought the girls. She was content to play for quite a while before even wanting to see the rest of the house or her room. She eventually saw the rest of the house and was excited about everything.

So far I really like our new area. We visited a cute nearby park and splash pad. Lainey has finally discovered the joy of the splash pad! She has been scared of them in the past, which we couldn't believe since she loves playing with water. But she has gotten over her fear and now delights in them. This was Colton's first time to go and he loved it. I had to continually pull him back from putting his whole head and face right in the water.

We also discovered a "secret trail" on our street in between 2 houses. Everything here is hidden behind tons of trees so you always feel like you are in the middle of nature. It is so fun walking to a park on such a wooded path. I am looking forward to some cooler weather and less mosquitoes. They are fierce here.

We went out to eat over the weekend in Market Street, and then let the kids play in the splash pad there afterward. They had so much fun.

We tried out a new church Sunday and really enjoyed it. We plan to try out a number of others as well. It is so strange being the visitor. But at least we get to take advantage of visitor parking!

Today we went to the Children's museum. It is much smaller than the one in Houston but was fun and was only 7 minutes away! And I didn't have to get on any big roads! Such a difference from Houston. Cambry even saw a friend from her preschool class there and they were so excited to run into eachother. They grabbed hands and ran off to do their own thing.

We still have lots to unpack and nothing is hung on our walls and our living room is empty. Like, really empty. No couch or chair or coffee table. And so is our dining room because we didn't have a dining room before. So I need to buy some furniture soon and my mom has been helping me brainstorm some decorating ideas. There are a lot of projects I want to do around here but it will just take time. I'll post some before and after pictures of the remodel soon.