House pictures at last!

Okay miss anal retentive perfectionist, just get some bloomin pictures of the new house up already! That was me lecturing myself. I have finally decided, pushed by many of your requests, not to wait until my house looks like a page of Better Homes and Gardens to put pictures on my blog, so here you go.It's a 3 bedroom, two full bath ranch style home on an awesome lot! There will never be anyone to the right of the house, the way you are looking at it, and beyond an irrigation ditch is a huge farmers feild that is technically a flood plane, so no development there most likely. There will likewise never be anyone on back of us either, horray! There are tons of very old, very large trees surrounding the development, so even though it's a new neighborhood, we're in an older part of town. The development is plotted for only 40 new homes, so we're not talking mega suberbia, which we like.This picture above is the view out the back of the house (i.e. two of our bedroom windows and our master bath). I took this picture during one of our recent snow storms, notice the deer.This is the view out our side picture window and our courtyard style covered porch. This is looking south, remember the farmer's feild and irrigation ditch I mentioned? This is it. Very country feeling eh!The living/family room. Plans for paint and furniture and more wall decor are all on the hope list, but time and money will be our guide.Looking down the hall at the front door and down the stairs to the unfinished basement. We have nine foot ceilings, both on the main floor and in the basement.The kitchen and dining room. I plan to do a faux finish in the dining room. The dining room ceilings are 16 foot, that's the tower you see from the front view of the house.

Our master bedroom and bath. Excuse the clutter in the bathroom, somehow it and Chloe's room have landed at the bottom of the to do list. I'll be sure to send pictures of completed projects too. Rooms that did not appear in these pictures are the girls bathroom (it has two sinks as well), the girl's bedrooms (they are napping as I write this), and the mudroom/laundry room. I hope you've enjoyed this peek into our home, sorry it's taken me so long to share it with you. Stay in touch!
Love, Sarah

"I can do it!"

This post could also be titled, "Emma's brag box"! That's right, there have been some new accomplishments in the world of our sweet little two and a half year old, she's officially potty trained! Now when I say officially, I mean about 80%. She still has an accident here or there, but she is waking up each morning dry and using the toilet more often than not. If she doesn't make it, it's usually due to the fact that she's engrossed in one of her favorite movies, like "Little Bear's Rainy Day Tales".More exciting news, which I only forgot to mention in my previous post, is that Emma has been sleeping in her big girl bed ever since we moved in to the new house and has been doing wonderfully with it. We have a nice little routine of reading about 10 books, then lights out and a back rub, then it's off to dream land. She doesn't come out until morning, we are just so pleased!I'll be honest, as exciting as it is to see my baby girl reach these milestones, it also makes me sad to think of what's soon so come as she enters school in a couple years. I'm no fool, I know there will come a day when I will look back and long for these days when my children were at home with me all day, full of life and emagination and learning, never missing a moment, being a part of every new discovery. But that's why I don't have much guilt when the laundry piles up or the house needs cleaning and I just haven't gotten to it yet, because this time is precious and I've heard the advice of too many seasoned mom's to know that it will be over in a blink, never to be relived. I highly doubt I will look back with remorse over postponed chores, amen!

Milestones all around!

Here they are , as promised, recent pictures!Can you believe our little Chloe Paige is already 5.5 months old! She's all smiles, and giggles too. Her favorite person to laugh at is her big sister, it just warms my heart to see how much they have grown to love each other.

Chloe in her "happy baby" position, as they call it in Nana's yoga class.

After taking most of her nap in the car, Emma decided to finish her nap on Nana. She must have remembered sleeping on Nana's chest all those times in her infancy.

Two year old bums are cosher, aren't they? Cousin Tayden and Emma are like peas and carrots these days. They can cause quite a tiddle wave in the bath tub.

Cousins, and the best of friends. Tayden and Emma's new favorite thing to do together is throw themselves on the floor in uncontrollable giggles while in their jammies, nearly missing each other each time.

Miss Biddle, as we call her, loving her swing time. She's almost to the weight limit, but Chloe still loves her swing.

After a nice visit with Great Grandma Betty on a blizzardy day, we took this priceless photo. Four generations of women, what a beautiful legacy Grandma Betty has started! We love you "G.G."!

"Sisters...Sisters...there were never such devoted sisters"
It's amazing to me how, already, Emma and Chloe know there's something special about each other. It's almost as if they know that some day, they will be best friends, and rely on each other like honey to the bee as they go through all of life's trials and blessings together. At least, that's what I pray for them.

Putting her best smile forward in Grammy's arms!

Biddle Peep's idea of a perfect bed, Nana's arms! With a little sleep training, Chloe is sleeping so well these days, at least 8 hours for the first stretch, and has even pulled an eleven hour night of solid sleep. We feel like we are among the living again, praise the Lord!

That's right, our baby girl is eating rice cereal already! She'll be 6 months old in just two weeks, after which we'll be adding fruits and veggies to her diet as well. Where did these first 6 months go? Dare I say I'm already catching the baby bug again! But don't worry, we're hoping for about a three year space between Chloe and the next one.

My cup runeth over, what more can I say?!

Emma holding her sister, something she frequently asks to do. Only as she would say it, "I wanna holg my sister". As you can see, "Oh bla di, oh bla da, life goes on..." As we settle into our new home, we look forward to digging our roots in, not just as we settle in to this house, but as we seek the Lord to see how He might shape and mold our family to know and love Him more deeply and to see how He might use us in the lives of others. So as we hunker down for this last stretch of winter, we are everso thankful! God is good, whether our lives are abounding in blessing or laden with hardship. He is worthy of our praise because it is by Him and in Him and for Him that we were created.
Love, Sarah

As the Dust Settles

Before I write anything else, let me first appologize for my long haetis from the world of blogging. While we were living with Travis's parents it was very difficult to find time to blog as their computer was in the room where Emma slept. When the girls are asleep, that's my time to do emails, blog, and anything else I may need/want to do, so it was really hard to find a moment to do either. But now, we are finally back online in our new home and the computer is at the kitchen built-in desk, ahh..., I'm back. So first, let me give you a recap of the past three months or so. After much thought and consideration, we felt that we needed to stop paying rent on top of the mortgage we were paying on the house in Utah. After two different contracts on the townhome fell through, we knew we couldn't just assume it was going to sell quickly. So, we packed up our things once again and moved out of our rental and into Travis's parent's basement. They so graciously agreed to let us live there until our future unfolded. It wasn't easy sharing the space, especially with two bull dogs under foot that Emma gets some devious pleasure from harrassing, but what great lessons in patience, humility, kindness, and trusting the Lord. So then as a huge answer to the prayers of many, our townhome finally sold! To our good friend and realtor nonetheless, so on the 8th of January, "it was finished!" We recieved the wire of money from the sale of the townhome and then officially closed on our new house here that very night. I tell you, the look and jingle of those six shining silver keys was oh so sweet! My mom was able to come up for a few days to help us with the girls while we moved, unpacked, and hung blinds. And now, exactly three weeks later, we are finally feeling more settled and moved in than not. God is so good, I just don't know any other way to sum it up! We are so excited to have many of your over for dinner very soon to celebrate all the blessings this new home brings. And believe it or not, amidst all the caos, we have found/made time to plug in to our new church family, Mountain View Community Church. I've joined the Saturday night worship team and Travis and the girls and I all have an awesome small group (called flocks) that meets every other Sunday night. As we build relationships and study God's Word together, we just know this is right where the Lord wants us. We're just about ready to get plugged in to some accountability groups, Travis with some guys and me with some ladies, so please be praying that this is a time of great growth for us as we sink our roots down deeper with our brothers and sisters here. And I know many of you are anxious to see recent pictures of the house and the girls and hear updates on their growth and development, and I promise, I will be making such posts this week after I retrieve the necessary cable to download pictures from Travis's parents house. It just feels so good to be able to connect to you all again through cyberspace! I also am able to check email at least once a day now, so I hope to catch up with you personally very soon. I'm a big fan of personal emails, I'm not really fond of forwards because I don't have time to read them, but keep those personal letters coming please! I hope to hear from each of you soon with updates from your own lives and ways that we can be praying for and encouraging each of you.
Love always, Sarah

Mysterious Ways!

(Chloe in the POD while Travis loaded it.)
We finally have some good news to share on the house homefront! God works in mysterious ways. Monday morning we got a call from our realtor, Pat. First he told Travis the usual, that he hadn't heard from anyone about the "buyers" qualifying for this third loan. Then he proceeded to blow Travis's socks off by telling him that he and his wife are going to buy the townhome! Travis needed a repeat of this information to be sure he heard it correctly. Apparently, Pat and his wife were planning on buying an investment property beginning of the year, but decided to make their purchase a little early. We definitely didn't see this coming and are completely blown away with how God is working in this situation. Just the night before recieving this news, Trav and I were praying together and really just asking the Lord to give us peace and contentment whichever way things worked out. We acknowleged together that getting this new house was not going to make or break us. God is good, ALL the time, and working His best in our lives, even when things don't seem to be going our way. Some might call this good news the following morning a fluke, but we choose to give our awesome God more credit, amen! Now, if all things go as they should, we should be in our new house the first of the year. We are so humbled and grateful for this undeserved blessing! Thank you all SOO much for your faithful and powerful prayer for this situation. We have learned and continue to learn so much about God's purposes and character through this time of faith and transition. As a Rick Warren devotional put it, "God cares much more about our character than our comfort". Thank you Father, for asking us to step out in faith and then asking us to wait. We praise you for always bringing us to a place where we can't possibly be prideful and think we are the captains of our ship. It is when we are weak that you are strong, when we are powerless that You show us Your power, when we find contentment in the present that You give us blessings for the future, when we surrender that You conquer! Thank you for asking us to take the focus off ourselves, so that we can be used in the lives of others. Amen.
To close this post, I'd like to share an idea I learned this morning from a dear friend and mentor who spoke at our MOPS meeting. The point of her talk was reclaiming Christmas for Christ by diminishing the materialism and busyness and increasing the ways we celebrate the birth of our precious Savior. One of her ideas was advent ornaments. The idea is, each day of December leading up to Christmas, as a family you hang an ornament on the tree that has an attribute of Jesus painted on it. With each attribute, there is a correlating scripture that you read as a family. I thought this was a great idea because it's a daily thing that brings your focus back to Christ during this season of distractions. I'd love to hear any of your ideas too! Talk to you soon!
Love, Sarah

Our Little Artist!

Sorry it's been awhile since I've made a post. We've been a bit distracted and busy lately with all the happenings, or lack thereof, with the house(s). We are currently staying with Travis's parents while we await the closing of our Utah house so that we can finally close on the new house and get settled. But if the Utah house doesn't close withing the next 30 days, we could lose the new house, so needless to say we're a bit stressed out. But thanks to many of our prayers and encouragement, I'm really developing a peace about the whole thing and am nurturing an attitude of gratitude to ward off the self pity and depression. As soon as I have anything new to share about the whole situation, I'll let you all know, but for now, consider no news just that. On to some much overdue pictures and a little bragging. First for some bragging. My little, not even two and a half year old, Emma Grace is already drawing stick people on her magna doodle! Not only that, but she hold the pen just like I do! Her fine motor skills are amazing, it's not even something we've worked on with her, she just started doing it, we can't take any credit. This picture is what she drew today.This next rundown of pictures are a variety of pictures we've taken over the past several weeks. Some from our visit to Pump It Up with cousin Tayden in the Springs, some of Thanksgiving day, and some other random shots. If they need explaining I'll give some.Chloe taking a bath in Nana's new BIG kitchen sink. A five year old could take a comfortable in this thing. Dan's remodel of their kitchen is just beautiful! He made all the cabinets himself, he did the whole thing himself, he's just amazing!At Pump it Up, we had a great time jumping and slidding with cousin Tayden, Aunt Amber, and Uncle TommyWho's big idea was it to put this chunky bow on my head?Emma and Pappa making a play house out of a big cardboard box on Thanksgiving day. Pappa made it complete with three little windows, a door, and even a sunroof she can peek out of, she loves it! Now it's covered in snow and ice, but there will be plenty of warmer days ahead.Eating her Thanksgiving meal with her naked dolly.Sitting up like a big girl! As you can see, Chloe already has a love affair going on with her daddy.

Okay, I could do a bunch more pictures, but the computer is in Emma's room here at Grammy and Pappa's and it's time for her to go to bed. Signing off for now.
Love, Sarah

Trick or Treat!

This first picture was taken last night when Uncle Tyler came over for dinner. It doesn't have anything to do with Halloween or Trick or Treating, but I thought it was a cute one of he and miss Chloe, so I had to include it.

Our little angel was in pure heaven on Halloween! We went trick or treating at Travis's work, which is basically a huge warehouse filled with little cubicles. Nearly every cubicle had candy, it was quite the sugar fest. She would enter each cube and exclaim with glee, "Oh, there's some!" We caped her off at two little pumkins full. We've been doling out the candy ever since at the appropriate times.We had a blast carving pumkins the night before two. Emma helped pull out some seeds and then poked holes in the chunks of pumpkin we poped out while carving. I made her pumpkin with her name carved out, Travis made a little jack o lantern.

Her wings and halo kept falling off, so I guess you could call her an angel/princess/bride, whatever suites your fancy. Either way, she felt pretty and had a great time.