Kensington Jane Reeves

Our new friend, Kensington Jane Reeves, was born this last Wednesday, February 27th. She is beautiful and already so loved. I was lucky enough to be working that day and got to see her right after she was born. Her parents, Rachel and Sean, have been our good friends since the BCHS days- that's right, folks, another Brethren couple. =) We couldn't be more thrilled for them and can't wait to get to know little Kensington. Watching them experience those first moments of parenthood brings up so many memories that I wish I could go back and re-experience every once in a while. These babies grow up way too fast. I often times miss the little person Kate was at all her stages. Seeing Kensington so tiny being only 8 oz. smaller than Luke was just 8 months ago makes me want to freeze time! How did they get so big so fast?! It's just torture to us parents and they need to stop it!
Check out Rachel's blog to see pictures of their precious little girl. Congratulations, Rachel and Sean!

Tea time...

We went to our friend, Rebekah's, birthday tea party today and had a lovely time. Her mommy, Emily, did a wonderful job making all of the girls feel so grown up. Kate was most certainly in her element surrounded by pink with the hat, gloves, and purse (with real lipgloss inside) that were provided.

Bekah was a wonderful hostess but got a little overwhelmed by cake time. These are my favorite pictures of the day. Click here to see Emily's blog for more.

Happy 4th birthday, Bekah! Thank you for including us in your special day.

Such a big girl...

I was bursting with pride last night when, while I was making dinner, Kate ran in and said, "Do you need help, Mommy?" She heard me getting ready to set the table and wanted to do it. So here is what she did all by herself... Another "all by myself" moment she had today was getting dressed. She has been dressing herself for a while now but usually something is on backwards or something is missing but today she came out looking like this...

The packing has begun. And I'm not afraid to tell you all how much I hate it! My only saving grace is that I have gotten rid of a few things and I do love that. My kitchen and living room are basically done except for the things I will need for the next couple of weeks. I don't think I've quite wrapped my brain around the idea that EVERYTHING is going to be packed eventually. That is just way too overwhelming to think about. So far, assuming all goes as planned, we are going to close escrow on our old house on March 4th (which gives us until the 7th to get out) and close on our new house on March 6th. So our prayer is that everything goes smoothly and concurrently so we can just move from one place to the other with no hiccups. Here's to the next couple weeks of feeling unsettled because nothing is in it's place and finding more stuff to throw away! =)

Unbelievable...

So, you'll remember in my last post when I said the offer we made on our first choice house (we'll call it house A) was turned down...guess what! They called back and said they'd take it! What?!! We're in escrow on our second choice (house B) already! We've had an inspection done! We've had pool fences priced! We've made plans! We can still back out...and we did. And now we are going to get our first choice, as close to our dream house as we can get on our budget, and we are elated! We went into this whole process with the mindset that God will provide and we will end up where we are meant to be and He has proven to be faithful beyond our wildest dreams. I'm still not sure why we were meant to be turned down on house A, on the house we LOVED, and start the purchase process on house B and end up with the house A after all. I can only venture to guess that it was all part of a very humbling lesson. None of this would have happened without God's divine intervention. Even when we "lost" the house we fell in love with, we maintained that God had our future in His hands and knew what was best for us- something that is not easy for this type A, must control everything personality. So when everything worked out for house B, we figured that was where He wanted us. Ha! With every obstacle that has incurred during this buying and selling process (and believe me there have been plenty), it has been driven home that God is in control and will take care of us better than we could ever take care of ourselves. It is truly overwhelming to think of all of the ways He has guided us to this place.

And to answer the question of the day...we'll still be in east Long Beach. Look for "Just moved" announcements around the second week of March with our new address. =)

SOLD!!

Well, after only 21 days on the market our house is sold! I have to say, this whole experience has been the most stressful thing we have dealt with to date. But we survived and will be moving in just a few weeks! It's been such a whirlwind of activity since we went into escrow on Thursday, February 7th and probably won't settle down very much for quite a while. After we accepted the offer on our house we had 7 days to find a "replacement property." Of course, we had been looking and had our 3 choices. We made an offer on choice #1 and just couldn't come to an agreement with the sellers on a price so we moved onto #2. We made our offer on Saturday morning and it was accepted! Yea! We're very excited and are working on getting a short escrow so we can be in by March 1st. Until then, our days are going to be full of construction on the wall on our current property (many of you know all about it but for those who don't, I have two words for you...zoning violations-oops), inspections, paperwork, and packing. On one hand I'm dreading it but on the other I'm looking forward to all of the throwing away I get to do. =) Okay readers, let the comments roll in with advice on packing, moving, where to get boxes, etc. We are not expert movers seeing as how we each only moved once and moving a bedroom from our parents' homes was nothing.
The new house is great. It has 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms (one outside by the pool with a shower!), fireplace, almost everything remodeled.

Quick update...

Well, nothing new on the homefront. While we've had a lot of activity with open houses and realtor "walk thrus", we're still waiting for an offer. In the meantime, we've tried to stay busy out of the house in an attempt to keep it neat just in case. Here are a few pics from the last few days. We went to Disneyland with Brenna and Brooklyn the other day. The babies were so good and even stayed in the stroller the whole time. Everyone assumes they are twins. =) Can you believe Brooklyn is and Luke is almost 8 months old?!
Luke is officially crawling. He's been refusing to for so long and has finally given in. He would still much rather be in Mommy's arms but we have created a fun little game with some cups that he loves so he'll happily crawl during that. He even went up the step today!