Kate - 9 months!

Kate turned 9 months old this past week! Here's a few pictures that I tried to take with her posing with her monkey but that was the biggest challenge ever! It was impossible to get her to sit without reaching for him, so I think there's one or two in the mix that shows you how much she's grown compared to previous pictures I've posted. We're still guessing who she favors most - me or Kyle??? We really don't know! I think she must just be a great mix of us both ; )

At this nine month mark, Kate is not crawling yet - at least she's not moving forward...lol! She does a great job of scooting back when she's on her stomach and moving that direction and she'll also spin around on her belly in circles but regardless of how much we "practice", she's still not getting those long legs up under her yet to get any traction going forward. She is babbling more and more and more...I can't even fathom an actual word coming up but I know I will freak out when that happens! She's learned to wave bye bye, which is adorable! We've also started eating lots of fresh fruits (something I never learned to like) so I'm going to try my hardest to expose Kate to all fruits early on so she will hopefully grow to love them! : ) I think the biggest development is that she now has 4 teeth. In these shots, I think you can only see her two bottom ones but her two top ones have broken through and are starting to come in. We have our 9 month doctor visit in a few days. Can't wait to see how much she's grown and if she's still in the 95th percentile height/weight!

New Home Sweet Home

Well, we aren't officially moved in yet but here's our soon-to-be NEW home sweet home! My last post shared the details of our current living situation and the sewer issues we were experiencing...yuk! Prior to all of these issues, Kyle and I had been contemplating making a move. In fact, we already had our eye on this house but were forced to postpone our plans to move -- temporarily at least - until we could get our current house back in order. Well, that ended up taking far longer than expected since we were displaced for an entire month. After a long wait, finally everything got fixed and we were so thankful that this house was still on the market.

Since it's a buyer's market, we promised ourselves that we would look for a "deal" and not pay top dollar on a house (no matter how much we loved it!). This house had actually been on the market for over 400 days. The builder who built the house filed bankruptcy and it was bank owned. We made an offer we never dreamed they would accept but were hopeful! I guess the bank was ready to sell because we were able to strike a great deal and get the house! We were ecstatic! Kyle and I joke that "we don't belong in this neighborhood" - lol! Seriously, we snuck in by getting this deal on such a great house. We're very excited to make it our new home in just a couple of weeks! We close at the end of this month.

Oh...and we had luck on our side after all the issues we had to deal with leading up to all of this. We put our house on the market and sold it in 2 days for our full asking price! Tons of thanks to Kyle's sister, Carrie Martin, who is a fantastic realtor with Keller Williams!

Can't wait to have friends and family over to our new home very, very soon! Cheers!

A Few Recent Favorites

Life has been crazy for us! We've been displaced from our home for almost a month - just finally moved back in - due to a major sewer issue. Totally gross, so I'll spare the details. Anyway, we're all fixed up now and our home is back in working order. The timing couldn't have been worse for it all to happen. We've been contemplating putting our house on the market in anticipation of making a move to a new home and then, bam....we dump more money than we would have liked into replacing an old sewer system in a home we don't intend to live in much longer. Ahhh! During all this chaos, I had plans for college friends/sorority sisters to travel in town to see Kate and attend our 50 Year Anniversary festivities for my sorority. No friends could stay with us given the house conditions - total bummer! And, to top it off, we had been planning a special vacation back to the place where we honeymooned (Whistler, Canada) as a nice little Five Year wedding anniversary gift to ourselves and despite our fingers crossed that we could get everything back in shape before leaving and have peace of mind, we left with our house still in disarray and uninhabitable. Hence, I'm behind yet again with blogging.

On a much brighter note, we have returned from our vacation and while we were gone, Kyle's dad helped oversee the work on our sewer system to completion and both of our families helped get us moved back into our home by the time we returned from vacation - just this past weekend. yay! I feel like our lives are getting back to normal. In the grand scheme of things, while these issues may feel major at the moment, they really are so minor and will not effect us any further into the future. I'm grateful that everything is now fixed!

I don't have all recent pictures uploaded, edited and ready to post but here's a few that are on my iPhone that are some of my new faves! Kate will be nine months old in just a couple of weeks. So hard to believe! She's what keeps everything in perspective for us! Love, love, love!