Birthday Grill

Hooray, I finally got my birthday grill! It looks great on the deck and I can’t wait to do some grilling this weekend.

All Moved In

Tyson and I are finally all moved in. There are no more boxes and we received our brand new living room furniture. As soon as we receive our new dining room table we’ll record the house and do another virtual tour. 

We love having a house but have already realized that it takes a lot of upkeep.  We have had to fix a leaky faucet, a fallen shelf, a blocked dryer vent, sprayed for ticks (gross), some gardening, and fixed the showerheads. We have also done several home improvements projects such as painting brass fixtures to be a nice modern bronze color and updating the light fixtures on the outside of the house. Tyson built himself an amazing work bench for the garage and hung up all the pictures. I love having a handy husband.

The area is nice. The weather has been really great since we have gotten here. We have taken full advantage of our backyard and hot tub. We have started exploring the area. We went to the zoo on Mother’s Day Weekend. It is actually a nice size zoo for such a small population.  The area for sure doesn’t have as much to do as Charlotte did. We still expect visitors but don’t expect anything too fantastic. We can show you cornfields and John Deere facilities though.

Zoo Pictures



Enjoying the Backyard

Above is Lilly's new yard toy

We like the ward a lot. Everyone seems really nice and genuine. We haven’t had our records read in yet and no callings either.   

There are no Mommy and Me classes in this area. They have story time at the library and a really great Family Museum with some classes geared for kids Lilly’s age. However, we have found that both of these things take a summer hiatus.  So, Lilly and I signed up for a summer Mommy and Me swimming class. I hope she enjoys it. We are also getting a membership to the Family Museum and have found some friends in the neighborhood we do play dates with.

We are feeling good about the move and are excited to get settled in to Iowa.    

The Move

The move went fairly smoothly. It was facilitated by Tyson’s work just like our move from Utah was so we didn’t have to pack a thing, which was fantastic. I would highly suggest moving in this style for everyone.

The only hard part of the move is trying to juggle a toddler and naughty Chihuahua on packing day. For this move they had 5 men come and move us instead of the usual 2. I am not sure why they decided to do it this way.  We don’t have very much stuff. Last move they only used 2 men and were able to get everything done in a day. I think they had more people come this time because of all the stairs in our apartment building.  

I ended up taking Lilly and Herbie on a long drive, going on a walk, running some errands, and spending some time at Burger King. It was a rainy day in Charlotte and the hotel wouldn’t let us check in early. It was a long 7 hours trying to think of ways to entertain the both of them.

The next day Tyson and I checked out of our apartment and headed to Nashville, TN. We decided to take two small detours on our way and have a mini vacation. While in Nashville we drove by the Grand Ole Opry and through Broadway Street. Lilly slept during the Broadway Street tour/drive so Tyson kindly dropped me off to go through a couple of the shops while he continued to drive around. We didn’t want her waking up.     

Herbie is posing with me here since Lilly was sleeping.

After our tour of Nashville we headed to St. Louis, MS. When we got there we had a nice dinner at Boston Market (which we don’t have here and it makes me sad) and went to bed. The next morning we went over to the St. Louis Arch. The Arch was really fun and I am glad we took the time to stop there. It has a museum in the bottom and then you can take a 3 minute elevator ride to the top and look out the windows.  

Here Lilly and I are waiting for the elevator. Lilly's hair is a mess.

Now we are at the top. This is an awful picture of me but it is the only one that turned out.

This is what the elevator you ride up in looks like.

The museum is all about settling the west but we noticed it didn’t say anything about the Mormon Pioneers. They did have a wagon that we got a picture next to though.

After we got done with the Arch we made our way to our new home in Bettendorf, IA.  

Lilly did pretty well during the move. It seems she would get really whinny about an hour before we stopped every day. It was like she could sense the end was near. She also refused to sit still in restaurants. She had to sit still in the car but once she was out of her buckle all bets were off. She also refused to sleep in the pack-n-play at the hotels. She could see us in the same room and she was not having it. So she slept in the bed with us. This caused problems such as waking up at 3:00 am and trying to chit-chat with us, insisting on sleeping on top of one of us, or sleeping diagonal with her feet in one of our backs. But overall she did as well as a 17 month old could.  

Herbie also did well during the drive. He didn’t pee in the car once. There were a couple of times he tried to sit on Lilly’s lap when she was eating. Lilly didn’t like that. And he would make sure to sit next to her to catch any treats that fell. He did as well as an ornery old Chihuahua could.

Pictures – Birthday – Easter

Pictures:

As you can imagine, things have been hectic for the last couple of months so I am a little behind on blogging. This is why I am doing a three-in-one blog post.

I have decided to get Lilly’s pictures taken each year during Easter time with her cute Easter dress. I am sure that will change when she is in school and has school pictures. However, until then we will be doing Easter pictures. This year the pictures turned out fantastic. She had a hard time sitting where they wanted her. I would sit her down, she would stand up, I would sit her down again, she would stand up….luckily they were still able to get some good pictures.

Here is a picture you can tell she is trying to stand up in.

After they take the pictures they have you stay and look through them to decide what you would like to buy. I don’t know how anyone manages to pick out pictures and watch their kid at the same time. I would look at the pictures for a second and the next thing I knew Lilly would be gone. I had a couple of the photographers come and ask me “Is this your child? She is getting in the picture.” I was very embarrassed so finally I want and got her stroller and strapped her in. I am sure other family’s had a small child they didn’t recognize show up in some of their pictures.  

I also don’t know how any Mother can manage to spend less than what they were planning on. I am sure they make all of their money off of Mothers like me who think their child is so cute they have to have all of the pictures.

Here are the final results.

Birthday:

My Birthday was nice. Tyson got me balloons and a new swimming suit. Lilly took over the balloons immediately. We went out to dinner and had my favorite cheese cake. We watched the new Muppet Movie. It wasn’t as good as all the other Muppet Movies. Maybe I thought the rest of the Muppet Movies were good because I watched them when I was 6. I guess I’ll have to watch them over again. Thank you for all my warm birthday wishes.

Here Lilly is stealing my balloons.

Easter:

We had so much fun this year. Lilly could find the eggs and put them in her basket. The Saturday morning before Easter Sunday we went to a local Easter Egg Hunt. Lilly was so adorable. I got pretty annoyed with all the naughty older kids that would have 50+ eggs in their basket even though the limit was 9. Seriously – where are the parents to tell them they could only have 9? Just wait…in a couple of years Lilly will be one of those naughty kids and someone will be asking where I am. It was really annoying though and because of it there were only 5 eggs left for my slow little 16 month old to find. It is making me mad all over again just thinking about it.  I guess she didn’t really know the difference though and still had a great time. 

They had live bunnies at the Easter Egg Hunt. It was Lilly’s favorite part. She loved loved loved them. Now I want to buy her some bunnies. She spent a good 10 minutes staring at them. Ten minutes standing still is a long time for a toddler.

Lilly found her eggs from the Easter Bunny on Easter Sunday after church. She had a great time looking for them around the house and she loved the jelly beans that were inside. We have video of both Easter Egg Hunts. I’ll work on getting it together and then I’ll post it on the blog.

Moving day!

It's moving day and the relocation company just showed up with a crew of 5 people and 2 trucks. We are excited to get on the road so let's hope they can get the house packed up quick.

New Layout

We’ve had that old orange layout for about a year now and it’s time to update it. So, here is the new one. I’ve changed the text fonts, colors and background text color along with background image. My goal was to try and create a cleaner looking blog that was still fun to look at. Please let me know you thoughts about it. You never can tell how XML & HTML code will read in different browsers so I would appreciate feedback if it's not reading correctly in browsers other then IE such as Firefox or Safari. Also, since this is coded for computer screens if you log onto the blog with your mobile device (iPad, iPhone, Android) you will be directed to the mobile website instead. Thanks!

Virtual Tour of Our House

About 4 weeks ago Karen and I went up to Iowa with Lilly and did some house hunting. Click here to read about that. In the few weeks that have gone by the realtors, attorneys and banks completed the home inspections, prepared the title and deed and wrote the loan. The only thing standing in our way of ownership was our signatures on it.
Karen didn’t think it was necessary to fly all the way back up to Iowa just for the closing and since it was a savings of $400 in airfare we decided to have her sign a power of attorney; giving me signing authority on her behalf.
Well, I flew up to the quad cities on Friday morning, did the final walk through and then closed on the house that afternoon. I decided that since we wouldn’t be back for a few weeks that I should change the locks and mow the lawn. So, I went to Home Depot and bought a Honda Mower (they don't make Deere walk behind mowers anymore) and new door locks. That evening I setup the mower, put on the new door locks and went to bed on an air mattress I brought in my suit case.
The next morning I got up, mowed the lawn and went back to Home Depot to get a garden hose to wash off the mower. Once everything was done and put away I took video of the house so that anyone who would like to see it can take a virtual tour of or home here.
Note: I increased the frames by 50% so the video is a little jumpy but it takes less time that way.