Hello, West Virginia!

We arrived! We are officially here, cramming everything we thought we'd need for the next three months into a two-room hotel suite. :) It is a nice place and we are discovering all sorts of creative storage solutions!

We've already been out on two house-hunting expeditions. We have narrowed it down to two candidates. One is very new with stainless steel appliances and hardwood floors. The other was built in the 60s, great neighborhood, big trees, and a ton of space. It has a finished basement with an extra family room, kitchen, bath, laundry, and two extra bedrooms. It just needs some renovations, so we are meeting with a contractor to check on the possible cost and see if the owner would be willing to factor that into our offer. I really like this house and want to have a place for our families to stay when they visit. The other house is great but not so appealing when you think about cramming in relatives for several days at a time. And I would hate to send them to a hotel for much of their visit! We also have to consider resale within the next three years possibly.

For future reference, for $85 you can check a 60 gallon ice chest full of dry ice and frozen breastmilk! It made the trip, fully frozen. :) Now I just have to keep lactating for a while so I can handle the amount of calories I am taking in with us eating out every meal!

So far, I am loving it here. So charming and beautiful. We've explored some downtown shops and eaten some great food. Noah is handling it all well, although he does not want to let us out of his sight. This week Jeremy starts work and Noah and I have to get used to him being there a lot more! This week I am going to try to find a Mother's Day Out program for Noah and get him set up with a pediatrician.

We had a little fall photo shoot while out exploring the town.

Moving halfway across the country is exhausting!

First taste of sweet pickle! He liked it!

Good-bye, Texas

We had a lot of good-byes to say and with an inadequate amount of time (we knew about this move for about 6 weeks before we actually left, but where does the time go?) we did not get see everyone we wanted or spend the amount of time with them we needed. But here are a few parting shots and thoughts:

Talk about huge truck! Yep, the entire contents of our house and our car fit onto this bad boy. The movers boxed up and loaded everything in about 13 hours. I got a little choked up as we did the final walk-through but I made it. It was just a starter home that was too small and poorly laid out in some areas, but it was our first house and Noah's first home. His room got me the most. I actually felt guilty about taking him away from his security in being there.

So, we had over 20 showings in 8 days. (Word to the wise: trying to sell the house you are living in with a baby to tote around and clean up after is not recommended! It was a pain.) But God is good! On the 8th day we sold the house for the asking price. We were able to recoup about 2/3 of the money we put into updating the house. Jeremy also sold my Civic in about three days, since the moving company would only transport one car for free and he wanted something new anyway. We visited with most of our family before we headed out. Here is Noah with his favorite (and only) aunt, Mandi. Mamaw (Jeremy's mom) came to stay the last night at our house and she was a huge help. We stayed our last two nights in a really cool hotel suite in Lewisville while we were being packed. It was basically a two bedroom apartment with a full kitchen. Would have been perfect to live in while we find a place in WV!

Noah and visited my parents in Paris for a couple of days. He had a great time playing with Papa and Mimi and entertaining all the other family members that visited!

First time in the tree swing!

Papa took him for walks in the stroller and out to visit the friendly neighborhood cows.

A little visit with Pop and Nanna (Amy's grandparents).


Hangin' with his cousin Madison.

Waiting for our plane in Charlotte, NC to take us to Roanoke, VA. Both times I have visited this airport, our flight was delayed. Noah was a great traveler, eating and sleeping through most of both flights. I think the drone of the airplane just knocks him right out. Then he slept through our one and a half hour drive from Roanoke to Lewisburg. We left our hotel about 7:30am Central time, and arrived about 7:30pm Eastern time, after a flight delay of one hour and some issues with getting the rental car set up. Long day!

More to come...

Have Milk, Will Travel

Here's the really hard part of my move, and what has me stressed the most: Does anyone have experience transporting large stashes of frozen breastmilk across the country and keeping it frozen??!

6 Months Old!

Better late than never.

Our sweet boy is getting so big. And cuddly. He insists on cuddling every morning around 5:30am and won't go back to sleep unless you hold him. We're working on it. :)

Here are the stats from his 6 month checkup on October 16th:

Weight: 15 pounds, 12 ounces (25%)

Height: 25.5 inches (25%)

Head: 16.5 (is this centimeters? I don't know.) (10%)

My boy has a small head, interesting considering that his dad and I have such large ones! I panicked a little bit when I got home because I thought he had lost weight since I last recorded it 6 weeks before. However, I just read the stat sheet wrong. But when I called, they said he did actually lose weight in between two previous appointments when we were battling allergies, but he is back on track now. Nice that I noticed, huh?

Noah is now interested in everything. He will dance a little bit by wagging his head side to side. He is starting to figure out how to scoot himself forward when on his tummy by hiking up his rear. He says "Da da da" all the time (which Jeremy loves) and is quite the babbler and squealer. Noah is a pretty happy boy and people comment on that a lot. But boy, can he throw a little fit! He laughs all the time and is really liking Daddy these days. Daddy is quite the comedian. (Noah does wonders for Jeremy's ego as well!) Noah can also sit up on his own for several seconds at a time. Sometimes I just watch him and think, "God, he is Beautiful." Good job!

I am still breastfeeding and am not giving myself a stop date anymore. I will re-evaluate after we get settled in West Virginia. He eats veggies for dinner and fruit with oatmeal for breakfast. I plan to add in lunch after we get settled as well.

Sorry, this is a brief as well as late post. The impending departure has taken over our lives these days.

The Male Ego

Notice how much more fun everything is when somebody strokes your ego...or when your dad cheers you on.

For Sale

Our little house in Flower Mound is up for grabs! I believe it went on the market last Friday and we have had about 9 showings so far and have gotten several compliments. Now we just need the offers to start rolling in! We even had it professionally cleaned today--the first time I've had someone else clean my whole house--and it felt great! Baseboards? Does anyone really clean those things?


I thought I would do a post with a little bloggin' down memory lane. Here are some pics of the place before we moved in, along with some final pics I took. (Unfortunately Blogger is being a pain, and it won't let me rearrange the order of the photos in any way! So, the new ones are first and the originals are after that.)

I'm sure I will get a little sentimental when we say good-bye to the place. After all, it is our very first house as a married couple and the house we brought Noah home from the hospital to. Sigh. My parents still live in the same house that I came home from the hospital to! :) I think Noah's childhood is going to look quite different from his Mommy's very static, change-free one, but I think he will be all the better for it. And hopefully, once he starts school, we will be more settled and permanent. I digress.

We have loved our little house and had lots of fun fixing it up (and spending money on it that probably we won't see back!), even though we clearly outgrew the place 6 months ago when we took up a 3rd resident! Great neighbors, convenient access to shopping, close to the best Wal-Mart ever, all in lovely Flower Mound. Any takers? :)

(Almost!) 6 Month Portraits

We had pictures made of Noah and his cousin Madison on October 4th and here are a bunch of them! (They are the unedited ones off the CD from Portrait Innovations.) Enjoy!

Look out ladies.

So mischevious!

Girl rockin' the attitude!

He was doing this random, sucking in the bottom lip thing a lot that day! Who knows?