Good Hair Day

I took pictures of Julia when her hair was long enough to put in a pony tail, so I thought it would be good to take some of Lydia's pony tail as well. (Too bad I don't have the pony tail pics of Julia on my computer to compare with Lydia's pics.) Anyway, without further ado, here they are:

And, I decided to add a few of Julia with her hair in a french braid.
I love how this braid looks in this picture...if only it would stay like that.

:) Tootles, Amber

Home Sweet Home

We got to go to our new house on Saturday while the house was being inspected. We were so excited to visit the house; we'd really only seen it inside one other time. This is our fireplace in our living room. The Master bedroom is to the right of this room. I would like to add a mantle and redo the tile on the fireplace someday, but for starters, we'll paint all those white walls!

Our backyard is right outside the living room and Master bedroom. We plan to spend a lot of time back there! When I first told Julia we were going to live in this new house, she said, "And I can have my sandbox back again." That's right, kid! You certainly can!

I'd also like to plant an herb and vegetable garden. I figure you can grow things year-round in Houston.

The girls are going to continue to share a room. They love each other's company. They will be able to see the pond from their window. Right now the pond behind our house looks kinda like an oversized puddle, and the trees behind the house look all scraggly, but, I hope that the green that comes with spring will make everything look fresh and beautiful. It shouldn't be to long before all that starts. Heck, it already has!

Here is another picture of the pond. We walked around the pond quite a bit on Saturday, and saw all kinds of wildlife. (Ruth, you might want to stop reading this for a moment, and pick back up on the next picture.) We even saw an alligator with his head poking out of the water.

Here is the playground that you can walk to if from behind our house. You have to walk by the pond a little bit. But, there is a walking path about half the way, and it only takes a few minutes to get there. This playground is right by the small neighborhood work-out center, a covered patio pavilion type thing, and one of the neighborhood pools.

The girls love to swing...

With the other two bedrooms of our house, we would like to have a guest bedroom and a future nursery. Dave and I are so excited to host people! There is also a small game room upstairs with a large closet that I want to use for crafts and the like. I didn't get any pics of the kitchen or laundry room or dining room this time because I was interrupted by our inspector wanting to give us his report. :) Nonetheless, I can't hold anything against the inspection crew because they were very thorough and did an excellent job. We really appreciated that they checked every last detail, even telling us that the soap compartment in the dishwasher didn't work correctly.

We are so excited about this blessing of a new home! I get butterflies just thinking that we will be in it in about a month. I can't wait to start making wonderful memories with family and friends there. Dave and I stayed up too late last night organizing and packing, and this time, we were happy to do it. :) Blessings, Amber


"Bye, bye."

Under Contract!

The bank has signed everything and we are ready to get inspections done!! Praise the Lord!

Random....

Dave wasn't really in trouble. He was at the gym and had only been gone for a few minutes when our realtor called with the good news. I just wanted to scare him a little before I let him know that our offer had been re-accepted. (He deserved a little pay back for leaving his phone at home. I almost called him at the gym.)
Dave is still a little worried about all this house stuff, because we haven't officially heard that the bank has signed all of their documents for us to be formally under contract...but I am choosing to be excited about all of this regardless of that minor detail. I just feel so strongly that God is blessing us with this house! I can not WAIT to get painting and organizing and planning and decorating. It all seems fantastically surreal to me. We were talking about all of this crazy stuff tonight, and Dave said, "I just feel like we're gonna have our life back." I couldn't agree more, and I am so joyful!
In other news...I am also excited about some ribbons that I got tonight at hobby lobby. I am going to make some hair ties for the girls and would love to start making bows sometime. If any of you would like to see some pics of them, let me know and I'll post some when I get them done.
In more other news...Julia and Lydia are at challenging ages for me right now. I remember when Julia was 18 months, and I was going crazy. Now I am at that stage with Lydia and I have a 3 year old asking me so many questions constantly that it keeps my head spinning. Lydia is old enough to know what she wants, but not old enough to verbalize it correctly, so, everything is in a whiney voice "that, thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat, that" while pointing in a general direction. She is not quite old enough to understand my reasoning for telling her no, and it seems that when she does get what she was pining for, it doesn't give her satisfaction for long. I guess she gets that from me. Maybe I'll grow out of this stage one day soon, too. :)
And then there's my big girl Julia. She came with me to Hobby Lobby, and she can not help but ask me and every other living being hundreds of questions. "What's that? Why is she doing that? What is she doing, Mom? Is this the girl's bathroom? Why is it the girl's bathroom? Why is he going to the bathroom? Why do you want me to come over there? Can I flush? Can I not wash my hands?...." Plus there's the not touching things rule that she has not chosen to grasp yet. Plus, we always go to the bathroom AT LEAST twice in every store. Good grief!
Additionally, nothing gets past her anymore. Today, the girls had their well-check visits, and she asked Nurse Tara about one hundred times if she had gum in her mouth. Nurse Tara tried to distract Julia so that she didn't have to answer the question, but Julia was very persistent. (She doesn't have ears to hear me telling her to "Shhh, be quiet" in times like these. Needless to say, we're working on this.) Finally, the nurse said she did have gum, and brought some to Julia later. She thought the girls were "so cute" and had trouble denying them anything.
But, I do have to say that I am proud of myself for holding Lydia while she got a shot today. Moving to Houston has made me grow-up and be stronger than ever before. Previously, Dave was always the one to go in with the girls, and hold them down while they got shots, and I tried to keep from crying in the waiting room. But, it's just not feasible for us to do that now that we live here. We can't go to the Doctor after he gets off work because he gets off so late, and it's just not realistic for him to drive forever to come to their visits. However, I am pretty sure, that I'm gonna have to work something out with him for Julia's 4 year old shots. I'm not that strong.
Sorry for rambling, but this is our life right now, and I was in the mood to share. I will post pics of OUR new house when we get some. Love to all of you! -Amber

Another House Update

The Bank re-accepted our offer on the Sienna Plantation House last night!!! Praise the Lord!! More info. to follow soon! Love, Amber

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

Well, we had that house for about 10 hours. Hopefully we will still get it, but according to the bank's realtor, there was another offer made on the house and so they said they wanted our last and final offer by this morning at 9 a.m. We gave them the same offer that we did last week, except that we added in the extra time they asked for. Our realtor told the bank's realtor that we feel like it is wrong for them to entertain other offers when they had already accepted ours. We refused to get into a bid war. We felt God's guidance to stick with our offer as is. However, we don't know what will happen. Of course, we didn't hear back today...so we'll wait another weekend. Dave and I are heart sick, but desire God's will to be done in all of this. We both still feel like this house is suppossed to be ours, but we are trying to be ready in case it's not. To God be the Glory! -Amber

New House

We are so excited to announce that the offer that we made on the house last week has been accepted!!! I am so happy and emotional about it all! Julia was very concerned that I was crying, but I kept telling her that I was really happy. Thank you to all of you who have been praying for us. We will be closing on or before March 2nd. We'll post some pics of the house soon, but we haven't taken any yet. Can't wait to start hosting anyone and everyone who will visit! Love, Amber

Quick Cutie Update

I forgot to mention in my last blog that Dave and I got all dressed up and went to his holiday party for work. It was fun, except for leaving the girls. That's right, we left the girls here. (Of course! Yes, there was a qualified babysitter present.) Hallellujah, and praise the LORD! The girls were in bed when we came home and it only cost us a small fortune. (We miss their grandparents.)
But, I am not writing this post to talk about that right now, I wanted to write a quick update on my girlies. Julia has started guilt-tripping people into staying with her. She does it to everyone, and it is cute, but can make the other people involved sad and speechless. She said, "Okay Mom, bye, I love you, but DOONNN'T GOOOOOO..." about a hundred times last night. It rips your heart out.
Also, Lydia has all of her molars and is working on getting her eye teeth (or fangs or whatever you want to call them). She mimics almost everything that Julia does. I usually tell my girls something, and end it with, "okay?" Lydia has started responding to this question everytime, and it is adorable. She says "kiiaoao", meaning: "k".
I need to video these two cuties saying their new words. I want to remember these times forever. Good night everyone.

Floaters

Well, last week was interesting. We decided that it would be better for our family to go ahead and rent an apartment close to Dave's office and close to Houston's First Baptist Church. Our realtor sent us our lease contract and we were getting the information together to submit it. I had thought about what furniture we would put into storage, and what we would bring to the condo/apartment. I had a basic decorating design in mind, and was feeling positive about going to the church often. (I even decided where I would put some of my Uppercase Living Expressions.) However, on Wednesday morning, while the girls were watching "Wonder Pets", I decided to check har.com one more time. I was just plain bored because I had already checked my email, my facebook, and the blogs I usually read. (I was really sad at noon when I realized I could have been at MOPS instead of staying home. I just got my days mixed up.)
Anywho, I found a house in our price range, so when I talked to Dave later that morning, I let him know. He seemed ho-hum about whole thing, and I figured we would talk about it when he got home. I know it doesn't look good to be talking to your wife on the phone in the corporate world, so I try to keep the calls short for him.
About two hours later, Dave called me back, and said that he had set up an appointment with our realtor to go see the house...and he asked me to meet him in Sienna at about 5.
"Well," I thought, "I guess it's a good thing I didn't go to MOPS. That would have been a long time in the car."
And then I thought, "Our poor realtor; she must think we are the craziest people in the world. We just float from one option to the next. I bet she's ready to get all of this over with."
It wasn't until I was on my way there that I realized how excited Dave was about the whole thing. He had been so excited about living in an apartment because it was close to work, and less expensive. However, I guess he had crunched some numbers, and found out this house was about the same price per month as the condo would be. It's farther from work, but has everything else we were looking for.
(And by the way, our realtor is super sweet and seemed genuinely excited for us to have found this house. If she doesn't like our floating, she's good at hiding it.)
So, we put an offer on the house that evening. It was submitted Thursday. And, we haven't heard anything yet. However, we do know that there are no other offers on the house as of Friday, and it was just put on the market Tuesday! Woohoo! We have a good feeling about this one.
Okay, I just realized that that was a really big intro that ended with virtually no news. Sorry! I guess I just wanted the world to know about our situation. Hopefully some of you will keep us crazy floaters in your prayers! Thanks all! -Amber

Come to Mershin

This video was taken on a day that the girls and I had taken a sick day. But, Julia was feeling better and in the mood to sing. This was right before dinner. The song she is singing is "Come to Mershin" which is to the tune of "Come to Worship"---(The actual name of the song is Angels From the Realms of Glory- but Julia only knows this part). :) Her lyrics: Come to Mershin, Come to Mershin, Feel so great, great, great, great, great. The real lyrics: Come to Worship, Come to Worship, Worship Christ the New Born King. There are some other cute moments as well. Lydia is very slighted in this video, but the camera ran out of space, so her limited time was unintentional. Please enjoy! Love, Amber

If You Play with Fire, You Might Get Burnt

When I was young, my Grandma Mitchell used to tell us that "if you play with fire, you'll wet the bed". I'm not sure what the logic is behind this old wives' tale, but I always assumed that it was some sub-conscious type thing. If you play with the fire, later you'll feel the need to put it out...hmmm. Anyway, there is always something about fire that is exciting. It's beautiful and dangerous. I'm sure this is why so many people love to take the opportunity to shoot fireworks and spend a ton of money doing it too. Last night, our neighbors were very excited to exercise their right to celebrate New Year's by shooting fireworks. It was not just one family and the fireworks lasted a looooong time. The booms started at 8 p.m. and lasted well past 1 a.m. Dave and I peeked out our window at them several times, wondering what all they were doing, trying to see if they may be done soon.
We didn't do much in the way of celebrating last night. After putting the girls to bed, Dave and I watched a movie and then were planning to go to sleep, however, it was very hard to sleep with people setting off fireworks from the cul-de-sac right by our bedroom windows. Like I said, we peeked out several times, and I actually saw a kid run from his house with a flaming piece of newspaper to light fireworks. After he got to the cul-de-sac, he dropped the paper and teens and kids ran to the paper to light their fireworks. This is when I noticed that there were tons of teens and kids and only 2 adults. I know that these adults were not the kids' parents and I said..."that is so dangerous!"
At about 1:20, the fireworks began dieing down, and Dave and I were so excited to have some peace and quiet. However, there were a few more blasts in the next few minutes.
Then, as usual, we heard a siren drive by on the busy street next to our house. I soon realized the lights flashing outside of our windows. (We really do hear and see everything from up here.) I looked out, and realized the ambulance had come to our street. Then the fire truck came. Dave and I watched to see what may have happened. We were saddened even more when we saw a four or five-year-old little boy being taken out on the stretcher. The mom took FOREVER to get into the EMS vehicle so that the ambulance could actually drive off. She seemed calm the first time she came out, but I could hear her wailing the second time. So sad. Dave and I were worried for them. After a police officer came and filed a report, and the flashing lights were gone, Dave and I went back to bed to finally get some sleep at about 1:45.
This afternoon, Dave and I asked some of the neighbor kids what happened to the little boy who got taken to the hospital. Evidently, he had been hit in the leg by a rocket. The kid said the little boy had to have his bone taken out, but I highly doubt that is true. It's such a sad story that a little boy got hurt because these people weren't being more cautious. If you'd like to pray for the little boy, his name is Daniel. We are just glad that he wasn't more injured, and on the bright side of things, Dave and I had some entertainment we weren't planning on. We are a little tired today, but we'll shake it off.
I hope you all had a wonderful New Year's too. What did you do to bring in the new year? Did you have a quiet night at home, or go out? Did you have an unplanned fireworks party with neighbors, or have a planned party with friends? Do you have any traditions on New Year's Day? Do you have resolutions this year? I'd love to hear from you! Happy 2010 to all of you!!!! I hope that for those of you who had a bad 2009, that your 2010 is amazing! God Bless!