Get This (Halloween) Party Started

Kicking off this Halloween in style, we went to our first bash at the Pittmans.  I have to say that Ceylese and her mom really know how to throw a party.  The food is always amazing, and the set up and decorations always look great.  And everyone always has a blast.

The kids all had fun playing in the backyard and decorating mini pumpkins while the grownups  ate and drank carved big pumpkins.

We even celebrated Tytus's first birthday!

"The House" becomes our home.

It's been 3 1/2 months, but we've finally moved into our new house!  And not soon enough because I think my parents were nearly ready to leave the country if we didn't move out of theirs soon.

After referring to it as "the house" throughout the renovations, we can finally say that this is our home.  And we couldn't be happier.

Even though we will be living out of boxes for the foreseeable future (I am not the fastest "unpacker" - think, OCD, hyper-spastic organized, everything-has-to-have-a-place type of gal), we are all thrilled to be home.  And going through the boxes and seeing all of our stuff is like Christmas morning every day.

The girls are loving their new bedrooms, too, and they both love how their bathroom connects their rooms together.  Grace refers to it as the "secret passageway" and prefers to only enter Bonnie's room that way.  Bonnie is still in disbelief that  she even has her own bedroom again and will occasionally walk by it and say "dath Bonnie'th woom."

It's good to be home!

She shoots, they score!

The goal Grace scored in yesterday's game may have been for the other team, but our little soccer star was so proud of herself that nobody had the heart to tell her the truth.

And who really cares when she looks so precious in her soccer "outfit" anyway?!

Before...

I'm just going to be up front and admit that I haven't taken any "after" pictures yet, but I will.  Just as soon as there are no more contractors in my house.  

**The refrigerator, unfortunately, did not come with the house.  That is a new purchase.  On the bright side, I have never had a brand new refrigerator so I am pretty excited about this one.**

Just glancing at these pictures, the cabinets really don't look all that bad.  In person, however, it was an entirely different story.  I'll spare the gory details.  

Anyone and everyone who did work on this house asked us if it was a foreclosure, if that is any indication of the shape it was in.  Quite the opposite, actually.  The previous owners, as it turned out, were about a year away from owning the house outright.  

Corey fell in love with it immediately while it took a little more convincing for me.  We both saw tremendous potential, however, and it was listed for a great price in the right school district (and on a cul de sac, to boot!) so we went for it.  

The Kitchen

The Jack and Jill Bathroom

(aka The Girls' Potty)

All I can say about this bathroom is that there was carpet throughout.  From 1986.  Really.  The carpet had never been replaced.  Or cleaned.  Don't even ask about the drain in the bathtub. Y-U-C-K.

The Master Bathroom

Oh boy.  The thing is, I can deal with outdated.  It wouldn't be ideal for me because I love decorating and interior design.  But I could work around that.  This bathroom, I truly believe, hadn't been cleaned in at least 20 years.  Don't even get me started on the plumbing.  What a mess.  And the smell of pet urine throughout the entire house.  Bet you're wondering why we bought this place.   

But stay tuned!  The (almost) finished product is amazing and, God willing, this is our "forever" home and we are going to take great care of it.

Just a random shot of the upstairs hallway...

Oh, Bonnie.

My mom keeps saying that Bonnie is exactly like I was at this age.  If she means a perfect angel, then she's right on the money.

I don't know what we're going to do with this little mess.  Sometimes I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry at her antics.

She has gotten into a not-so-good little habit of taking a sippy cup of water to bed with her every night.  This is a habit that needs to be broken as I'd like to one day stop buying pull-ups and move to underpants full time.

I decided that Thursday night was the night of no more sippy cups in bed.  That did not go over well with the Bon.  After I tucked her in and left the room she started yelling, "I need wa-yea!  MIMI!!  WHAT IS THE DEAL?!?!?"

Oh, Bonnie.

Just pictures.

I've been terrible about the blog lately.  I know.  And even tonight, I really don't have much to say except that I finally took some pictures of the girls this morning and I played around with some fun photo effects tonight.  Here are the results!

Also, I will post a few before and after pics of the house over the next couple of days...because we're moving in this week!!  Stay tuned!

Monster Fingers

Today was Grace's turn to bring snack to school.  Because Halloween is a big deal at our house (think Corey's birthday!) I wanted her snack to be extra special.

I looked up some fun Halloween snacks for kids ideas online, and found this little "finger food" idea.

I just cut mozzarella string cheese in half, notched out knuckles and a place for fingernails with a paring knife, slapped some cream cheese in the fingernail hole, and topped with a fruit snack.

Voila!  A spooky and yummy Halloween snack.

**Just in case the kids were freaked out by the fingers, I also sent in a box of GoGurts as back up.  Apparently, the kids loved all of it and even named the GoGurt "Ghost Goo."  So cute! 

Picture Perfect

It may have taken some serious bribing, but I finally got Bonnie into her purple dress this morning just in time to leave for picture day at school.  

She is really into this one brown polka dot dress that Santa brought her last year for Christmas (he brought a matching one for Grace), and pretty much insists on wearing it every day.  

If it hadn't been for Grace telling Bonnie that her purple dress "coordinated" with her own hot pink dress, we would have never gotten that thing on her.  And again, a little bribery never hurt anyone.

Both girls have been saying some pretty funny things lately that I must get documented lest I forget:

A couple of weeks ago we were having a dance party in the den.  We just had the TV channel set on some random playlist when "Funky Cold Medina" came on.  The girls cut a serious rug and when the song was over Grace said, "I want to hear that song 'Monkey Hold the Deal' again."

Her new favorite thing to do is to go to brunch at J. Christopher's after her Saturday morning soccer games.  Her current menu item of choice?  Strawberry waffles with "whep" cream.

She is also turning into quite a little rhymer.  I'll admit that we've had a few rhyming mishaps (think words that rhyme with tick and tell).  She started to rhyme words with truck this afternoon.  Seriously!  I thought I was going to have a stroke.  I quickly changed the word and dodged that bullet.

For the record, Grace doesn't have a mean bone in her sweet little body and was horrified that she had accidentally rhymed bad words.

Bonnie's list is a little longer as she is speaking in long paragraphs now (I think that must be a girl thing?)

She loves to randomly say "I don't care."  It almost never makes sense when she says it but it always makes me laugh.

She will often respond with an "I don't know" or a "because" if you ask her any given question.

She loves to play with her big sister's Leapster (which is supposed to be off limits to her) and gets very indignant when it is taken away from her.  She, every time, yells, "Hey!  My Weepsta!"  With her lisp, of course.  In fact, she pretty much starts all of her exclamations with "hey."  Like if you try to help her with anything.  She will yell, "Hey!  That's my job!"

Let's see...she calls the iPad the "WaPad" and says, Hey!  My WaPad!" if she sees anyone else using it.

She loves to say, "I can't beeweave (believe)!"  Insert "it" at the end of  the sentence.


And finally, she says "moothgit" for music and loves to tell "seethgits" (secrets).

The girl is a mess!