S-M-I-L-E-!

Sisterly love, poolside.

Hello new house

We did it! With a tremendous amount of help from a lot of family and friends, we moved this holiday weekend. Here's a re-cap...

Before we moved, we had to say goodbye to the old house

(it looks like a sad picture but she was just mad I made her come back to the old house!)

Regan gave us a hand in unpacking, and while she was at it, did some decorating.


Regan's new bunk beds, loved by both girls

We bought groceries with kid-sized carts

Regan helped Grandma Sheri plant flowers :)

while Sidney took a break from all the hard work!

I was busy organizing a new toy room, main floor, just off the kitchen! I might love it more than the girls!

And we've been here 4 days, which means 4 days of swimming! Ryan and I laughed hysterically while we installed the pool light this afternoon. That is NOT an easy job! After getting it started, my job was to hold Ryan under the water while he finished putting the screw in tight. It was quite the sight as you could imagine. But the payoff is definately worth the trouble....
Good night!

Happy Birthday Daddy!

Daddy got one gigantic birthday present yesterday......we signed the papers for our new house (not to fret, we first signed the papers to sell the old one!). I don't think he'll ever get a bigger present than this :) We celebrated with dinner out and of course, yummy dessert (because who has a pan to bake a cake in during the middle of a move)!

Grandma Sheri ruined her diet last night; and she's been doing sooooo well! Well, I believe birthdays are just as much for the mom as they are for the person, so she had good reason to indulge the rest of that dessert!

Moving day #1

It's official, we're moving! Everyday I have packed up boxes, I worried something would fall through and I'd be unpacking them all in the same exact location. Thankfully that's not the case! Thanks to some AMAZING friends and family, day #1 went very smoothly.

The heaviest of items was the first out of the house, our sleeper sofa; took 4 strong guys.

Regan loved every second of loading the UHaul; she helped with everything she could lift (or push!)


Opps! Someone packed up the tote with our air mattress; that meant we slept on the floor. Ryan woke up and said "that floor was more uncomfortable than I thought it would be?" Apparently he thought a hard floor was gonna be comfy!?

All of the papers were signed this morning and we're hoping to get into the new place tonight or tomorrow. More pictures to come!

In full bloom

The peonies bloomed just in time!

Top 10

As a way to remind ourselves about this house in the future, I've opted to do the following...


Top 10 Reasons We Love(d) this house:

10. Hardwood floors are easy to clean and no need to lug out the vaccumm.

9. Every room is just the way we want it; paint, floors and light fixtures have been replaced.

8. Neighbors are great, for the most part! Gonna miss a few of them :)

7. Outdoor space; patio and driveway are perfect play areas for a family of 4. Add a play date and we've officially run out of room.

6. Watching airplanes fly overhead as they took off; we had lots of "pretend" dates to Europe, Hawaii, and anywhere we could think of.

5. Cozy kitchen (my college apartment kitchen was bigger) means everyone helps make meals.

4. Floor plan gave the girls the perfect area to chase each other around in circles on rainy and snowy days.

3. Landscaping, though not over the top, includes a lot of flowers and trees perfect for photo shoots (thankfully 2 of them are coming with us!).

2. Amazing bar in the basement, given to us as a wedding gift, has entertained countless thirsty mouths.

1. The memories, this was our first home together, where we started our family and poured our heart and sole into for over 6 years.

Here's to many more years....with much more space!

Cute jammies!

Though I'm not sure why I tried to take pics of the two together; should've took them separately and used photoshop....

I gave up....for tonight

Things we did during a very humid weekend

We wore very pretty summer outfits to keep us cool

Our hair got curly and wild but we loved it even more (and found more pretty dresses to wear)
We ran through the sprinkler and for the first time, actually went through!
We blew bubbles with all of our might and got excited to see the end result float away

And if it's this hot next weekend, we'll be swimming in our very own back yard pool!

Date morning

I took a break from packing this morning and took Regan on a date. We went to see Shrek and had a great time. She's such an inquisitive child and asks a lot of questions during movies which can be slightly disruptive to the rest of the theatre. I had to remind her a few times to just watch and we'd find out what happened next :)

What's a movie without popcorn and an Icee, even at 10am!

Flashback Friday

In exactly 1 week, we will be taking the contents of this house over to our new house! I thought it would be fun to think back to when we first bought this adorable green house! Ryan hated the color from day one, which explains why it took him only 1 year of constant complaining to convince me it needed a facelift!

It sure had a beautiful blooming white crab tree in the front yard! (not to fret, the new one has a blooming pink crab tree!)

This house wasn't our ideal when we first bought it. So we got to work! We painted....every room in the house, sometimes more than once.


We removed wallpaper from the kitchen/dining room, this might be one of the worst jobs in the world. Note to self, never use wallpaper



And we watched as the tiniest garage in the world came crumbling down in order to build something more appropriate for this generation. I have to admit, I started the process by backing into the side while trying to avoid hitting the house as someone (not so smart) built that tiny garage in a very bad spot!

We truly have loved this house, more on that later.....

Gymnastics session ending

Tonight was Regan's final gymnastics class of the session. She has thoroughly enjoyed gymnastics classes over the past 8 months. She has learned how to do handstands, cartwheels, forward and backward rolls; now it's on to perfecting those skills. Hopefully she won't lose too much ground while we take the summer off.

Working on kicking her legs up high during hand stands

Ta-Da!! "Look at me"!!

Celebration dinner, her choice!
Not to be outdone, little sister needed a moment too :)

First Tball game

Today was Regan's very first tball game. We opted to keep her in Tball despite Ryan's desire to give up citing she was too young. She proved him wrong by paying attention for the duration of the game, running fast, chasing after the ball and.....not playing in the dirt! She smacked the ball each time she was up to bat and ran herself silly around the bases.

She got in the "ready" position....

We found creative ways to keep this peanut entertained for 90 minutes...

She excitedly posed for priceless pictures...

She made friends, waited paitently for her turn at bat and looked absolutely adorable as the smallest member of her 10 person t-ball team!

There will certianly be more t-ball related posts as we

have another 2 months of games ahead of us!

Future Cheerleader

Daddy is so proud

Rough day

It was a little bit of a rough day for everyone today. I think all the boxes, the packing and the stress has started to add up. Sidney was crying in the car, for a reason no one could figure out, and Regan finally said to her "if you don't stop crying I'm going to throw you out the window!".

She didn't stop.

But no, Regan didn't throw her out the window. We were all safely buckled into our respective seats.

Sleeping at the table

We went for lunch today 30 minutes later than usual as we were meeting a friend. In order to distract the kids (who are very in tune with set meal times), we ran a couple of errands and stopped at the park before lunch. Sidney finished her meal, set her head on the table and went to sleep :) Apparently she was exhausted from a very busy morning.

Packing

It's official, we're moving! That sold sign has been in our front yard for roughly 3 weeks now and I'm finally starting to believe that we're moving. I've spent the last couple of weeks packing up all of our belongings and around every corner, you're sure to find a stack of boxes similar to those in this picture (which by the way, is sitting in our living room!). We have 2 weeks to finish packing, load the UHaul and venture a few miles down the road to our new place! We couldn't be more excited.

In the meantime, we're fielding a lot of questions from Regan, who seems to be a little overwhelmed at the idea of moving. She recently asked me if we'd be taking the lightbulbs with us; she moved on to asking about the fridge, and then the shelves inside the fridge. Moving has to be a difficult concept for kids, we're working hard at calming her fears and reminding her we will be moving together (and of course, that all of her toys that she never actually plays with will be joining us at our new place).

I apologize for our lack of pictures these days; we've been a little busy!

And the answer is....

Ryan's cousin, Logan! (see post below for question). It's amzing how similar they look! This is an old picture of Logan with Sidney (poor Sid is a little fearful of new people hence no recent photo). We'll be sure to get lots of pics with Logan in the coming years because she's coming to the metro for college and we couldn't be more excited for her :) She'll be just up the road from us so we plan to see a lot more of her!

One of these girls is not like the other ones....

Can you guess which picture? and can you guess who it really is?

such an amazing resemblence. now we know Sidney will grow up to be beautiful!

UMD gathering

One of Ryan's college buddies was in town from out of state so we did what we do best: get together, share some laughs, some food and of course, a few drinks :) We took some pictures along the way too...

The ladies with the kiddos.

The boys

And daddy lovin' his little girl

Happy Mother's Day!

Here's wishing a very Happy Mother's Day to all you mommy's out there! We've had a great day, headed to Como to enjoy the beautiful May morning! Here are some of our pictures.....

Sidney continues to be amazed at all the sights that Como has to offer.

Regan didn't realize this flower was going to be in the picture, she may not even have known it was there until we pointed it out to her in the picture at which time she thought it was hilarious!

Me and the girls enjoying the sun in the Sunken Garden, smelling the flowers and watching the koi fish wait for their lunch.



After the Conservatory, it was time to check out the animals! Sidney loved being at just the right height to see under all the bars. She's desperately trying to say "zebra", but it comes out a lot like "eba".



Regan was talking loudly to Sparky, asking him to do some tricks since they don't start the shows until the end of the month. He did do one flip for us :)



I didn't get a decent shot, but our favorite for the day was the monkeys again. There's a baby monkey now and it was so neat to see mommy monkey caring for him. Daddy monkey was busy too......yep, he was picking his nose and then EATING it!!! Everyone got a good laugh, but explaining that to Regan while telling her it's yucky and not nice (all through laughs) was not easy!

Happy Mother's Day everyone!!!!