The Inside

Aedan and I went up to the new house today to do a walk through with the inspector. I took a few pictures of the inside, so I thought I would share. I just had my phone with me so the quality is not the best, but you get the idea.

The house is mostly one story, with 4 bedrooms and an office on the first floor and then a bonus room and a third full bath upstairs. It is an awesome floor plan and at just under 2400 sq. ft., it is double what we have right now!

We will be able to use the bonus room for so many things, including a guest space or a game room. It was definitely the part that we fell instantly in love with.

The kitchen…right now, I have 3 drawers and 3 upper cabinets compared to the 9 drawers and 9 upper cabinets I will have.

The living room…not the best picture, but basically the kitchen, eating area and living room are one big rectangular room so it is super open. This one thing we have right now and love, so it was a must have for us.

The backyard…this is just one side of it. It is pretty big and comes complete with a full sprinkler system and big covered patio.

The master bath…probably another of my favorites. Compared to what we have now, this is a huge huge upgrade. I cannot wait!!

The master closet…along with good size closets in the 3 other bedrooms, we also have a downstairs hallway closet and two closets in the bonus room. Love love love the storage!

The study…it is at the front of the house, away from the bedrooms and living room which will be great for Jon. Hopefully his conference calls won’t be filled with the sound of Bob the Builder and Popper!

Then the bonus room…you can’t really tell for this picture, but it’s a pretty big room. The bathroom and closets are off to the side.

We are super excited! Now we just need someone to rent out our house and we will be good to go! Fingers crossed; we had someone turn in an application today so hopefully they will work out. If not we have a couple of more showings this week/weekend already scheduled.

-Lauren-

Christmas Cards

I love picking out Christmas cards to send out to our family and friends each year. I equally love receiving cards. It’s so fun to see pictures and get letters from people we don’t get to see very often.

This year I am getting my cards from Tiny Prints. Their selection is huge! I am trying to decide if we are going to do a family picture or if I am just going to do a few pictures of Aedan…or maybe both…

Here are a few cards that I love…

What are your favorites?

Another thing I love is displaying all the picture cards we get. Two years ago I hung them all on my homemade bulletin board.

Last year I hung them on a wreath made of clothes pins, that I apparently didn’t take a picture of. Opps.

This year I am thinking about trying out this idea…

(source)

How do you display your Christmas cards?

-Lauren-

I was selected to receive 50 free Christmas cards from Tiny Prints in return for this blog post, however my opinions are my own. I have used Tiny Prints for invitations and Christmas cards in the past and always been very happy with them. :)

Black Friday Shopping

We did a little black Friday shopping and here is what we got...




It is totally my dream home! It's the house we walked away from last weekend...the builder came down a little more and our lender found a great option for us. We are all set to close on December 28th as long as our current house rents out. We are so excited!!



I'll post some interior pictures soon!

-Lauren-

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Thanksgiving!

We had a lazy morning around the house, building block towers, playing outside and watching the Macy's Parade.

Now Aedan is down for a nap, my caramelized green beans are cooked and Jon and I are just hanging out until we head to my cousin's house this afternoon (my camera battery is currently charging so hopefully I will come back with lots of pictures).

I have so much to be thankful for and I am so looking forward to all the time we are going to be spending with family.

-Lauren-


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Happy Thanksgiving!!

Apparently one post a week is becoming my normal! Things have been pretty busy around here and I have a feeling they aren't going to slow down with the holidays right around the corner! How can it already be Thanksgiving week?!?!

I'm not too sure where to begin with an update...

Aedan is been doing much better and totally back to himself. I'm glad we are all feeling well and I hope it lasts though the holidays.

Work has been going well, and I only have one meeting tomorrow, then I am off for the week! My goal is to get some Christmas shopping done on Tuesday and Wednesday, then we will be hanging out with my side of the family Thursday and Friday and Jon's side Saturday and Sunday. I can't wait!

The other big news is that we put our house up for rent. We have been saving up for a new house for awhile now. We love our house, but it's a little small for our two parents working from home, one loud toddler and one big dog family.

We started causally looking about a month ago and we found an area we really like. It's a new neighborhood and we feel in love with one of their floor plans. It is totally my perfect house. As an added bonus the schools are excellent.

They actually had a spec home with everything we wanted and tons of upgrades, up for a quick move. We came really close to putting in an offer, but ultimately decided it wasn't the right time. The builder came way down on the price, but it was still at the top of our budget. We could have done it, but it wouldn't have been the best financial decision.

So for now, we are going to see if we can get our house rented out. We are pretty excited that we will be able to keep it as a rental since that was our long term plan when we bought it five years ago.

We are going to keep looking at options, but right now we are leaning towards building (although we keep flip flopping so who knows, we may end up staying here for a couple more years and then moving).

My goal is to write some posts with pictures this week, but if I don't, I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving!!

-Lauren-

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:An Overdue Update

Yikes, another week without a blog post...

We have a tough week around here, but it's Friday again and things are looking much better!!

Jon headed up to Colorado, for work, last Sunday and just got back about 30minutes ago. I wasn't too excited about spending the week as a single mom and as luck would have it, my sister was able to skip some school and come down to hang out! And I am so glad she did!!

Monday, when I picked Aedan up at the sitter's house, she told me that his cough (which he has had for awhile now) had gotten much worse. So on our way home, I went ahead and made an appointment for Tuesday morning with the doctor.

Monday night was rough. Aedan was up from about 9pm-3am just coughing. I tried everything I could think of to help him, including us sitting in the bathroom while I ran a hot shower at about 1am. I'm pretty sure Aedan thought I was going crazy.

We headed the doctor Tuesday morning and they sent us home with a few prescriptions after doing a chest x ray and a WBC. I figured we could stop by Target and pick up some groceries and his medicine and then head home for the day to rest. I was wrong...

First, the pharmacist told me it would be at least 30 minutes before it was ready. So I tried to grocery shop slowly, which is hard with a sick baby in the cart. Finally 30 minutes was up and I waited in line to pick up the medicine, only to find out they needed me to activate a coupon card my doctor had given us. I got to sit on the phone for another 10 minutes to get that activated. Then we got our medicine, only to find out they didn't carry one of the things we needed...would have been helpful for them to tell me that at the beginning!!!

From Target, we headed to Walgreens to get the missing item. Get to Walgreens, in the rain I might add, and find out we need the prescription for the item, which is still at Target. I think I almost started crying. The pharmacist there was very nice, called the doctor and got us what we needed pretty quickly.

Aedan and I finally get home, I lay him on the cough and get the first dose of medicine out to give him, hoping to give him some relief from the coughing. Apparently it tasted pretty bad and he promptly threw up all of me, himself and the couch. Awesome. A quick bath for Aedan and I put him to bed so I could get everything cleaned up.

My sister arrived Tuesday night and was such a huge help for the rest of the week. We ended up having to go back to the doctor Wednesday morning since Aedan was still not breathing well and cough a lot. He got a steroid shot and just a few hours later, I could see a huge difference. He still has a bad cough but is able to breath and sleep so much better.

We had a lazy end of the week, just hanging out around the house. My sister was awesome and ran a bunch of errands for me along with helping with Aedan. I am so glad we were able have some sister time and I am so thankful she was here to help while Aedan was sick.

Now I am off to enjoy the weekend!!!

-Lauren-


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Being Sick is No Fun

Happy Friday!

Considering I felt like Tuesday was Friday, I am really happy it is finally here! We have fun family night out planned as soon as Aedan wakes up from his nap.

I was looking through my edited pictures and realized I never posted these…better late than never right?

My little laundry helper can be pretty expressive. :)

-Lauren-

Children’s Museum

I have been wanting to talk Aedan to the Austin Children’s Museum for awhile now. I did a little research and found out that on the first Tuesday of every month is No Tour Tuesday, so no big groups. I marked it on the calendar and this past Tuesday, we visited for the first time.

Aedan had a blast.

There was the train exhibit…

The construction area…

And the big train table…

And of course music playing…

We had lots of fun and I am sure we will be going back soon!

-Lauren-

Halloween Weekend Recap

How was your Halloween weekend? We had a blast!

Friday night, we did our normal errands/shopping and out to dinner. We went to DSW and checked out some shoes. Aedan loves all the mirrors and had a blast. Haha! I found a pair of shoes I wanted, but they didn’t have my size. I ended up coming home and ordering them from Zappos and they got here on Monday. I love that website!

Saturday morning, we got up and went to breakfast at our favorite place and then came home and hung out until nap time. I think both Jon and Aedan took a 3 hour nap! Then we got ready to head to a Halloween party at my sister and brother-in-law’s house. It was lots of fun! Aedan got to jump in his first bounce house; he was a fan as long as there weren’t too many big kids in there with him.

Aedan was a puppy and this is how he felt about having to wear his costume hood…that face just screams lame. Haha!

Really I am just impressed he kept the jacket part on. He has decided he is not into long sleeves any more. As in he takes off his shirt if I put one on that has long sleeves. We have been talking about jackets a lot and now he thinks those are cool, so I guess that helped.

Blurry proof of Aedan in the bounce house…

On Sunday, Aedan and I hung out at home while Jon went to his soccer game. After the game and nap time, we ran a couple of errands and then hung out at home for the evening. The weather was great so we played outside a lot.

Last night we headed over to our friends’ house for another Halloween party. Aedan got to run around and check out everyone’s costume.

Typical, showing off his surprised face. :)

We came home and passed out candy in our neighborhood for awhile before bedtime. Last year we ran out so I was more conservative on how much I gave each person. We had just a small bag of leftovers…I’m not sure if that is good or bad, but I am sure I will have no problem finishing it off. :)

I can’t believe it is already November! This is my favorite time of the year and I just know it is going to fly by!!

-Lauren-