5 on Friday

I'm linking up with April today for Five on Friday!

 I received my second Stitch Fix box earlier this week and once again, I was very pleased with the choices they sent me. I didn't get a chance to take pictures, but wound up keeping this blouse and I really like it.

image found here

Click below to find out more information and to schedule a fix of your own!

We're planning on taking Jackson to his first movie this weekend!! I'm so excited and can't wait to see his reaction. 

I've been pinning away ideas for our new house. As I've said before, its a fixer upper. It's got great bones, but its all straight out of the 60's original to the house. To say it needs some updating and a little TLC would be an understatement. Here's a link to my "New House" Board if you'd like to take a look. :-) The first thing we'll be renovating is the kitchen. I'm thinking light gray cabinets, a gray and white glass tile back splash, matching ceramic tile and pretty light blue walls (similar to the wall color and cabinet colors in these pictures below.)

Wednesday night of this week, I finally was able to get the condo completely unpacked! It feels so good to have the first leg of our move under our belt and to be settled into the condo. Here's just a super cute picture of Avery "helping" me unpack, clean and organize. :-)

Target is having a sale on jeans right now. I've been looking for a pair of white jeans all summer and finally found some. They are $10 off, so if you're in need of some new jeans for this Fall, now is a good time to look at Target. :-)

Have a GREAT weekend everyone!!!

To the next owner of **** Flamingo Drive

 Before we listed our home, our agent had a check-list of things he wanted us to do to get ready to put our house on the market. One of things on that list was to write a letter to the potential new owner(s) of our home. So I sat down one evening and wrote a short letter. I thought I'd share it here so that I'd have it to remember. :-)

To the next owner of **** Flamingo Drive,

               At the beginning of 2007, we started looking for the perfect starter home. We would be getting married in July and wanted to find the perfect home to call our own. After looking at several houses, we kept coming back to this one. We loved the finished basement, the corner lot and the floor plan. It had so many things we were looking for and we looked forward to adding our own special touches to make it the perfect home for us. We closed in April, and with my Dad’s help, we started renovating it right away to get it all ready to move in after our wedding. We started with the bigger renovations; enclosing the carport into a garage, renovating the bathroom entirely and adding a new back-splash and counter-tops in the kitchen. We painted all the rooms, added new trim, six panel white doors and new floors. It was so great to move into our home as newlyweds with all of the big projects done.

                

We did a few smaller projects around the house over the next few years and really loved spending time in our home. We hosted several family holiday parties here and loved having family and friends over. We enjoyed taking our dogs for walks around the quiet neighborhood and working outside in the yard.

           
Then, in the Fall of 2011, we brought our sweet baby boy home. We loved decorating his nursery and getting the house all ready for a baby. It was so sweet to be able to bring him home to our first home as a couple. We had a second baby in the Spring of 2014; a baby girl. Our daughter completed our family just perfectly and we've loved every minute spending time as a family here in our home. We've loved taking walks on Sunset Trail, playing on the playground at Mullanphy Park and teaching our son how to ride his bike on the sidewalk in front of our house. The kids have loved playing in the backyard and walking just up the street to get a snow-cone on warm Summer evenings.

This house will always hold such a special place in our hearts. It's the house where our little family started and that's something we will always remember and cherish. We take great pride in this house and what we've done to make it a home. We know you will love it just as much as we have!

                                 
 Sincerely,
  Jake and Amy Smith


** A little update on our move/house**

We moved this past weekend into our temporary condo. We are starting to get settled in there and it's working out quite nicely.

The closing date on our first home was supposed to be today, but as of last night, that date has been pushed back due to some paperwork slipping through the cracks. The buyers mortgage lender has the paper work they need now and it's just a matter of processing it and setting a new closing date, which will hopefully be later this week.

We had the inspection done on the house we're in the process of buying and they didn't find anything earth shattering that would keep us from buying the house, so we're one step closer to buying our second home and making it our forever home.

Five on Friday

I'm linking up with April today for Five on Friday!

Happy Friday!!

 

 House/Move Update:

When I updated you last, we were waiting on insurance to check out our roof and see if they would cover a new roof... the buyers were requesting that our roof be replaced. Unfortunately, insurance denied the claim and we ended up having to put a whole new roof on at our expense... bummer! :-(  But that has been done and we close in less than a week. Yay!! We are moving tomorrow into a small condo, temporarily. 

As for a new house... we've been in negotiations since last week on a house we like in a suburb of St. Louis just across town from where we are now. We finally came to an agreement this Wednesday, so we are excited about that. We will still have to see what comes of the inspection, but as long as all goes well, we will be moving (again) in a couple of months. It's a bit of a fixer upper, so we hope to live in the condo while doing a few renovations first before officially moving in. Here is a picture of the front of the house from the listing. It's a 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath ranch with a walk out basement. It has a fireplace, a 2 car tuck under garage around back and the best part is, it has an in-ground pool!! I foresee lots of summer parties in our back yard. I can't wait!!

This past Sunday we went to Six Flags/Hurricane Harbor with Jake's family. This was Jackson's second time going and he had so much fun. We went last year and he was a little too short to ride some of the rides, but he was able to ride quite a few more this year. He rode a couple of the roller coasters and a few of the other family type rides. He's so brave and I just love that about him.

Last week, July 14th, Jake and I celebrated our 8 year wedding anniversary. We've been so caught up with this move that we didn't really get to celebrate, but regardless, I couldn't imagine going through this crazy life with anyone else and I look forward to many more crazy years together!

The house we are in the process of buying, has a park within walking distance. This is a huge selling point for us. So Monday while I was off, I drove by the park to check it out and see what it was like. I was very pleased to see that it was very nice and the kids really enjoyed playing there. It has the rubber bottom and lots of slides and swings! It's going to be great to have close-by!

I hope you all have a great weekend!!

Avery's 14th Month

Avery,

On June 28th you turned 14 Months Old. (I know, I know, I'm a little behind in posting this. We've been so busy with selling our house, packing and looking for a new house that I'm a little bit behind.)

Size:

At your 1 year check-up at the doctor you weighed 21 lbs. 14 ozs. (77th percentile) and you were 31 inches tall (95th percentile)! I think you're probably very close to being at those stats still.

Clothing:

You are wearing 18 and 24 month clothes.

Shoe Size:

Size 5

Diapers:

Size 4

Teeth:

You have your 8 front teeth (bottom and top) and you've gotten your 2 top 1st year molars in now with your bottom 2 on their way in as well. This probably explains why you're so crabby lately. :-(

Hair/Eyes:

Your hair keeps getting lighter and lighter so I would say it's a very light brown and your eyes are a grayish brown still.

Sleep:

You usually go to sleep between 8 and 9 and you generally sleep until 9 the next morning!You are such a great sleeper and Mommy and Daddy appreciate that. You usually take 2 naps a day that are usually around 1-2 hours long.

Eat:

You love pancakes, toaster sticks, peanut butter sandwiches, macaroni, yogurt, apples, grilled cheese and you love fries and chips. You've got feeding yourself down now and won't even think about eating off of a spoon/fork from us. You have to do it yourself (oh joy!). You generally get one 10oz. bottle of whole milk right before bed and then whole milk and/or water in your sippy cup throughout the day. You drink from a sippy cup and straw very well.

Favorite Toys:

You love things with buttons. You would love to just play with cell phones and remote controls if we'd let you. You also love getting everything out of my purse and making a mess whenever you get the chance.

Milestones:

You love to sing and dance and have been learning the movements to "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed". It is just too cute to watch you do the movements.

Vocalizing:

You have slacked off on vocalizing this month. You like to yell and use your voice, but you haven't said any new words other than "hot".

Personality:
You have quite the personality these days. You are strong willed, very independent and pretty demanding, but you can be sweet at sugar too. You are very much a girly girl and love shoes, purses, chap-stick, baby dolls and brushing your hair. You like to brush my hair too now and I will gladly let you (except you usually hit me in the head with the brush). Speaking of hitting. You are a hitter. We are working on that, but I'm afraid it's not sinking in as quickly as I would like. :-( You love water... bath time and swimming in the pool are a lot of fun for you. Speaking of the pool, you've been going almost every weekend with Grandma and you're getting quite the cute little tan. :-)

I think that about covers your 14 month update. You are such a blessing and we love you so very much Pretty Girl!

-Mommy xoxo

5 on Friday: House Update, Our Fourth of July Weekend and My First Stitch Fix Box

Happy Friday!!

I'm linking up with Darci, Natasha, April and Christina for Five on Friday!

House update:

I last updated you about selling our house here in this post. That post was 2 weeks ago and I'm happy to say a lot has happened since then. It's been a roller coaster of a ride trying to sell this house and it's not quite over yet (I'm quite sure I will have plenty of gray hair as a souvenir from this experience), but we're seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. 

Since my last post, we lowered the price and ended up getting an offer from the same buyer who had made the offer before. We had countered their previous offer and they just weren't willing to negotiate I guess. So when we lowered the price slightly, they came back with their same offer and since we hadn't had anyone else interested, we decided to take it. Since then the buyer has had their inspection and the city has also had their inspection. The city inspection came back with a few minor things that we need to do, but the buyer's inspection came back with us needing a new roof. :-( Of course the buyer is requesting this be done at our expense. Their inspector said it looked like storm damage and that we should contact our insurance company to see if it would be covered. So we have contacted them and we're waiting for someone to come out and take a look at it. So that's where we are at this point. I am just hoping and praying the insurance will cover it and we can move on. We have 19 days from today til closing and I am just so ready for this sale to be final!

We've also been to see 7 homes since having a contract on our current home. Out of those 7, we really liked one of the homes. We have a second showing scheduled for this weekend along with a few more houses lined up to see. :-)

We had a great 4th of July. We started the weekend off by going to a carnival in St. Charles on Friday evening. They have a carnival and fireworks every year on the riverfront so we decided to take the kids again this year. We had a great time. Avery was able to ride a few of the kiddie rides and she loved them!! Jackson rode a majority of the rides that they had and would have ridden every single one of them had he been tall enough! I was very pleasantly surprised that both Jackson and Avery loved the fireworks. Jackson has been scared of them up until now and I was worried that Avery would be scared but they neither one were. This night Avery was wanting to get to them and she would reach out her hand to try and touch them and Jackson cried when they were over because he didn't want them to end!

Then Saturday (the 4th) we met up with Jake's family at a local water park/pool. We had a great time there and the kids really enjoyed swimming. 

Later that evening we went to a BBQ at a friends house. They live right near where our town does their professional fireworks display so we were able to walk down to the end of their street and have a great view without having to fight the traffic. It was perfect! 

Sunday we went to church and then we had our church picnic. Our pastor and his wife have a pool and we were able to enjoy swimming after a wonderful meal and fellowship. It was such a fun weekend!

 Jackson has really been enjoying his bike this summer. He got it from Maw Maw and Papa for Christmas and just couldn't quite get the hang of it until just recently. Now he loves getting to ride in the drive-way and on the sidewalk in front of our house. After having had sidewalks in our current neighborhood, it is definitely a must for our next house. :-)

 I decided to take the plunge and sign up for Stitch Fix last month. I got my first box last week and I was really pleased with it. Here's what I got:

I really did like this dress and it was very soft, but I didn't really "need" another dress and the price was a little at at over $60. So I sent it back.

I ended up keeping this pretty purple blouse along with the long gold necklace. I loved them both and they are perfect for a date night, church or work.

I did like these jeans. They were very comfortable, but again I didn't really need jeans and I wasn't crazy about the color or the price. At nearly $80 for a pair of jeans, I sent them back.

I went back and forth on whether to keep this top. I really liked it, but I ended up sending it back because I just didn't like how it was a little big under the arms. I would have wore a tank under it anyways, but I just didn't like how low it came down.

I am signed up to get a box once a month. I am scheduled to get my next box on July 27th and I can't wait to see what will come next time! If you are interested in Stitch Fix don't hesitate to ask me any questions you may have or you can find out more here.

My Star Spangled Kids!

Today, I'm linking up with Sara @ Running From the Law for the Star Spangled Kids link-up!

Over this past weekend, I took the kids to a local park to take their annual 4th of July pictures. I started this last year when Avery was only 2 months old. Just as always, it wasn't easy and the perfectly posed shot I was hoping for didn't exactly happen. However, I did get pictures of my kids smiling and having fun together, so I'm going to call that a win!

And just for the fun of it... here is their 4th of July picture from last year. (This picture was taken just moments before Jackson decided he was done and let go of his sister. Ha. What we do for a picture. Thankfully Avery will never remember that.)