Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Happy Hallerween!

Lily and I arrived back from Charlotte this morning. We drove there on Sunday to visit with cousins, Ari and Ashlyn (and Uncle Dan and Aunt Jen =) ) and to avoid any power outages and storms from Hurricane Sandy. Thankfully, we didn't lose power at all so Lily and I headed home in the wee hours of the morning to be home for her first Halloween.

Well, Happy Hallerween from this little mouse!:



so excited!




I think she looks like the Cadbury bunny.  
hiding and giggling.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Family Pictures

Mark's sister, Katie, visited us last month and took our pick-cha.
Love you Katie, you're SO talented.  

Some of the favs:















"the most wasted of all days is one without laughter"
E.E. Cummings

Sunday, October 21, 2012

A Sunday Hike

Today we spontaneously went to Shenandoah National Park to hike. Yay for spontaneity! We packed some lunch and snacks and lots of water and headed out.

It took us about an hour and a half to get to the park. What a beautiful day it was to see the colors of fall changing before our eyes.
We ate lunch in the car/parking lot to get fueled up for out trek.
Lily's favorite food is banana! 

We decided to hike Robertson Mountain. We were told it wasn't as strenuous as the well-known and popular Old Rag Mountain, although it is Robertson Mountain is 5 feet higher at 3296'.

I carried Lily in the Moby wrap to the top. Whoa, baby. 
We did it!
 Man, was it gorgeous!


(a bit windy in the video, sorry)


We did not see a single person the whole way up but after we were at the top for a bit (and I changed shirts), two couples and a dog joined us and they were from OHIO (yeah!) One guy was even a Miami alum. What are the chances?? 
They graciously snapped a photo of our little family:


check out the view behind Mark(!)

 Definitely the most awesome place to nurse a baby!

What goes up, must go down.

Almost to the car and sweet girl fell asleep with Mama.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

where in the world

Where in the world have we been?

Here's what has gone on since I last blogged (2 months ago!?!):

We moved to Virginia, just South of DC, for Mark's job. He is still in landscaping but doing a lot less manual labor and a lot more meeting with clients, designing, etc. He loves it!

Lily is changing before our eyes. It seems like she is hitting new milestones left and right. (8-month post will happen!)

We moved again. Wait, what?
Yep. If you haven't heard through the grapevine, we moved again. For those of you who haven't heard, here is the full story:

Back in August we moved to a townhouse in Woodbridge, Virginia. Mark and I randomly chose this location, mostly because it was cheaper than the other suburbs. Mark saw the townhouse in person while I was still living in Ohio. I'll be honest, I wasn't too excited about it after seeing the pictures. The kitchen looked old and the open-backed stairs scared me with Lily beginning to crawl. I told myself it would be okay and once we got all of our furniture and pictures up and put away, it would feel much more like home. Long story short, it didn't.

We lived in Woodbridge for 6 weeks and 4/6 weeks we had a handyman doing something. For the first 4 days we didn't have a functioning dryer. For the first 4 weeks we didn't have a functioning oven. Then water spewed out of a drain in the laundry room and we couldn't do laundry again for 4 days. Ugh. Did I mention it wasn't very fun?

To the meat of the story..

Once the laundry was "fixed", I caught up on all of our laundry and didn't do laundry again for 3 days. When I went down on a Tuesday night, I found water all over the floor in the basement (laundry room in basement) and the washing machine 1/2 full of sewage. DISGUSTING. A day later, it was COMPLETELY filled and all over the floor in the laundry room. Unfortunately, we were renting from landlords who were not willing to do what was necessary to fix/clean the basement and since they live in New York, our hands were tied. We stayed in a hotel for 4 nights because the air was so bad. Honestly, they are very lucky we didn't get a lawyer. At one point the landlord told me I could get some bleach to clean out the washing machine. Um, no. (In a nutshell, that's the way they wanted to handle the situation).

While at the hotel (Thurs., Fri., Sat., Sun.) we frantically looked at new places to live. Our realtor was very helpful and understood that we needed to find a place within a few days. We prayed and prayed that one of the five places we were going to see would work. The fifth place we looked at is where we live now.  (Big happy face!)

We are so incredibly thankful for all of the help we received from our new church family. With only a few days notice, 15-20 men came on Saturday morning and had us packed up and moved into our new place all within a few hours time. WOW.

I am still in awe of how God comforted me during this awful time. Even when I wasn't sure if the health department was going to condemn the property (and all that implies) I knew God had a bigger plan for us than to be in Woodbridge.

Thank you to Barb and Katie for all of your help(!!) and to all of you who prayed, we are loving our new home.