Home

Now we are really setteled in our home and now that Christmas is over, our house is back to normal and all set up!

Finally have a family picture in front of the house :)

Hannah's playroom with our new chairs

Office

Living room

Kitchen and dining room

Looking up stairs from the front door

Hannah's bathroom

Master bedroom

Hannah's room

'Tis the Season!!

We had a wonderful Christmas in our new home! It started with Christmas Eve, we first went to Aunt Kay's and Uncle Mike's house to visit with Nick's family and open presents. Then we were off to my parent's house to visit my side of family. It was a crazy, late night and we finally made it home about 9 o'clock. Hannah helped choose cookies and set out apple slices for Santa and his reindeer, then we tucked her in to bed for a long winter's nap after reading 'Twas the Night Before Christmas book. :) We hurredly got to work putting the presents under the tree and helping Santa out by putting her new bike and baseball toy under the tree. Finally it was our turn to crawl into bed. About 6:30 am Hannah called to us from her bed asking: "Did Santa feed his reindeer, cause if he didn't then I can feed them!" So, we got up and I went downstairs to get coffee going and lights on, then we let her come downstairs. She was so excited and was thrilled to see how much Santa brought her!

Here, she's seeing she got a brand new bike...
New baseball toy, she stepped right up to bat!

She got lots of puzzles, coloring things, hair stuff, remote control car, princess dolls, books... She instantly ripped into presents and knew exactly what to do!!

Totally excited to see that in fact Santa did feed his reindeer and enjoyed his cookies and milk.

Me and my girl during present opening :)

After opening presents we decided to go outside and test out the new wheels, with a little help she sped off!

Later in the morning grandma, grandpa, Aunt Cathy and great Grandma Joyce came over for a big brunch and more presesnts.

Happy about her princess book from grandma and grandpa!

Hannah with her grandma :)

In the afternoon, grandma and Nana came over to cook dinner, open more presents and play with all the new toys!

Hannah got a new doctor set and was being a great doctor to mommy

After a wonderful, long day we finally had a great dinner: prime rib, mashed potatoes, creamy broccoli dish, and rolls. It was so yummy!!

I'm so happy we were able to enjoy our Christmas in our first house this year. We spent the whole day at home and family came to us. It was really nice not having to take Hannah away from any of her toys and just enjoying our day together as a family! I look foward to many more holidays in this house and making many more memories!

This is just as Hannah came down the stairs and saw her new bike!

Home Sweet Home

Let's back up a few days... on Wednesday before we got our keys, we signed our papers. Nick was totally exasperated when I whipped out the camera and asked the title agent to take our picture, but I figured we only buy our first house ONCE and how am I supposed to scrapbook without any pictures?? So this is us about to sign the title to the house...
Nick uses great form when signing...

My form isn't too bad either! :)

Now fast foward to Friday. After blogging and waiting awhile longer, about 1 pm we couldn't wait any longer, so Nick called Lennar sales office and asked when our keys would be ready. Want to know their response???? They said: "Oh, they have been here since 10 am, I thought you were just going to come in when you were ready." Are you freaking kidding me??!! Nick was mowing the lawn and I was blogging out of shear boredom just waiting for that phone call and we could have gotten them 3 hours before?!! Oh well, I guess there's no need to freak out, cause we did eventually get our keys and were able to get a head start on getting our stuff in the new place!

In front of our house with our keys!!

Unlocking the door by ourselves for the first time!!!

After getting a few things we already planned on taking to the house ourselves, I got Hannah from school and brought her to my parents house. They watched her overnight since we were moving Friday night and could not have done it smothly with Hannah running around. By the time I got back to the old house around 4 pm, the movers were already there and gettin their move on!

We used Dimension Moving Company and I would completely reccommend them- they moved all of our belongings out of the old house and into our new house in 3.5 hours! They worked super fast and efficiently and didn't ruin any of our stuff! This was the best moving experience I have ever had, I felt kind of useless, but in a good way!

Once we got to our new place and the movers got some boxes in the house, we got straight to work. Our friends, Andy and Nicole, came over bearing gifts of pizza and soda~ which was wonderful because I hadn't even thought about dinner at that point, but once I saw that greasy slice of goodness I was stoked they were so thoughtful. I did feel bad that the movers were still working while we were chowing down, but I couldn't help myself! So, after getting some grub in the tum, I worked on getting the kitchen put away while Andy and Nick worked on hooking up our t.v.'s. The movers were finished by 7:30, Nick went back to the old house to vaccuum and get any straggling items. When he got back, he moved boxes to appriopriate the rooms and at that point I realized I only had 1 kitchen box left to unpack!! I couldn't believe how quickly even the unpacking was going. So, I finished that box,worked on a few other boxes, and did some laundry so we could have some clean, snuggly sheets to sleep on. By the time the laundry was done, it was 1 am, and we were pretty exhausted so we called it a night. We woke up early on Saturday and got to working. Nick mostly worked on electronic stuff and putting out new desk together, while I focused on putting Hannah's room and playroom together. I at least wanted to get her stuff as normal as possible for when she came home, so it would be an easy transition. Gina came that morning to also help get things done~ she even was the first person to vaccuum our house, she's such a great friend!! Nick's mom came by with lunch on Saturday, Kari and Dylan came over to check out the house, and then it was finally time for Hannah to come see her new house! My parents brought her over after nap and I couldn't wait to see her little face as she saw all her stuff.

Here she is trying to open the front door by herself! (She only needed a little help)

She ran all around the house and could hardly contain herself. She kept wanting to go up and down the stairs between her room and playroom~ it's like she couldn't decide what she wanted to do first! We had a great first night in the house as a family, and putting Hannah to bed wasn't too bad. She had a little issue at first, I think that was just because she was upstairs while we were still downstairs, but now she's used to it, and goes to nap and bed like normal (which isn't always the easiest task, I guess that's because she's 3?) On Sunday I finally went grocery shopping and tried to fill our huge pantry, I had an overflowing cart of food at the store but after putting it away at home, our pantry wasn't even half full! So Sunday night we had our first family dinner in the house and I was able to use our brand new oven!! I made enchiladas and I think they tasted better just because we were in our own house!

Sitting down for our first dinner at home

Our next task is buying furniture to fill our house and work on the backyard.

These are the chairs we ordered to go in the playroom so we don't have to sit on the floor when the kiddos are playing:

Our patio is getting started this week, weather permitting, and I can't wait! This way we can go in the backyard and at least play on the patio for now before we get our grass; it's going to be pretty big so we will have room for our patio furniture, bbq, plus room for Han to ride her bike around. Sometime early Spring we will do grass, I want to create some kind of scrapbook area in the office, and eventually we need to get a futon/bed for the extra room upstairs. For now we are getting setteled in our house and totally loving every minute of it!

Waiting...

Nick and I are sitting here twiddling our thumbs... it's December 18, the day we close on our house. It was recorded with the county at 9:40 this morning and now we sit waiting for Lennar to hand over the keys!! Hannah is at school, the house is all packed up, beds are taken apart, table legs are off, boxes in the garage just waiting to be put into a moving truck and hauled over to our new beautiful home. I hate waiting, especially at this point when the house is officially ours and we are waiting on people that are probably not in a huge hurry like we are! Since everything is done, we ate lunch, Nick is now mowing lawns- purely because he is bored, and I sit blogging about how badly we NEED our keys!! We had planned on movers coming Saturday between 8-10 am, but they screwed up their scheduling and so now they are coming this afternoon around 4 o'clock. It's going to be a crazy, long day once it all gets rolling, but we are stoked to sleep in our new home tonight!! Hannah will stay at my parents house tonight and through her nap tomorrow, to give us a chance to get most of our stuff up-packed and set up, and they will bring her over. I'm way excited to see Hannah's face when she sees her new room and playroom all set-up with her stuff. She might have an adjustment period, but I just know she will love this house and all the room she is going to have!
So, not much more to say now, we are still just waiting... it's 12:05 now, let's see how long it takes to finally get our keys! I hope we have a smooth move and are not too exhausted at the end of this weekend!

Princess Sparkle Teeth

Today Hannah had a dentist appointment for her regular cleaning and they did x-rays for the first time. She was a little nervous cause she didn't know what to expect, but she listened to directions well and got all situated. However, she started to get a really worried look on her face when the dental assistant and I walked out of the room to snap the picture- she must have thought "Hey, where the heck are you guys going?? Don't leave me here by myself!" They just took pictures of the top and bottom front teeth, and said they would try to get the back teeth when she was more comfortable. It was really cool being able to see her adult teeth below the baby ones and it's crazy to think that not too far in the future her baby teeth will fall out and she'll have big teeth!
I thought this cleaning was going to go really smooth since she's been to the dentist before and I have been talking to her about it all week, but as soon as she got on the table for her exam, she got pretty nervous. The dental assistant was wonderful, showing her all the tools, having her smell the toothpast and flavored gloves but it was not working on our girl! Even though nothing hurt she had tears streaming down her cheeks during the cleaning, but 5 minutes when it was all done, she was one happy camper. She was walking around the office talking to everyone, and she was quite the hit. She even walked up to the florist and showed off her pearly whites that had "Princess sparkles on them!" The front ofice ladies could not get enough of her, and kept getting other dental assistants to come see how cute she was! That's our girl!!

New Home

So apparently when you buy a brand new house you have something called a "New home orientation". It's basically an inspection, but we don't have to pay for it! We walk through the house with the guy and he tells us EVERYTHING about our home, writes down anything that needs to be fixed, we point out any scuffs or touch-ups we want fixed on the walls, make sure the appliances work, the toilets flush, windows open and close easily, faucets work, ect. It also gave me a chance to take lots of pictures of our new place!! For the most part the house was perfect, just a few things here and there that will be fixed by next Thursday, which is when we review the fixes and accept our house. Then Friday, December 18th, we should be closing on our house and getting the keys!! I'm really hoping we get keys early in the day, so I can move stuff we will be doing ourselves while Hannah's in school, and then Saturday morning the movers come to move everything else! We have moved ourselves way too many times in the past 6 years we totally deserve to hire movers to carry the heavy lifting... plus I'm sure all our friends that have so generously helped us in the past are thrilled they won't need to help this time! :) It'll be so nice on Saturday when all I have to focus on is putting stuff away and I won't be blown out from lifting boxes all day.

Here are just a few pictures from today:
Standing in the entrance looking upstairs, Hannah's playroom is to my left and our office/scrapbook room to the right.

Our beautiful kitchen, I'm so excited about filling up all our cabinets. There are way more than we have ever had or need right now!! I've also been wanting to cook lately, and cannot wait to use our new oven and stove!!

Standing in the hallway, looking into the great room and kitchen area.

Master bathroom shower and separate tub.

Master bath sink.

Only 8 more days until we move!!! These last few days are going to be so hard to wait patiently!

Our Silly Little Girl

Hannah has become so dang silly lately! Which comes in handy for her when she's acting like a little turd because it makes us laugh and it's too difficult to punish her when she's too cute! Some funny things she says and does:

*At random times she'll say: "Oh mommy, come on! Are you kiddin?"
*She talks with her hands ALL the time... I guess she learned that from me??
*She loves to pretend to be the mommy and then she calls me, and even daddy, girl: "Come on girl, let's put the clothes in the washer", "Girl, you need to get in your carseat and I'm gonna drive us", "Girl, you need to hold my hand, we are in the grocery store"... ect. for any situation we are in at the moment.
*At bedtime she likes to play the "Hannah Game", I know this is stalling a technique, but she's so serious it's cute. She makes me or daddy get in her bed and lay down, she gives us a drink of water, a book, and bunny to snuggle with, then walks out of the room saying "Good-night".
*Another bedtime stalling technique- while in bed she'll put a small book inside a bigger book and yell to the living room that she has a present for Daddy... for some reason the present is never for mommy, which is fine because then I don't have to get up! :)
*She always tells us that she loves us the best! Which is just really sweet. She's such a loving kid and wants to be everyone's best friend.

*She seems to think her parents are artists. Even though she has a billion coloring books she constantly asks us to draw pictures that she can color in, and then gets mad if we color any part of it in.

*She has the goofiest faces and is always pretending something- and if you're around her when she's pretending you better play along, or she'll get upset!

*She's starting to tell funny stories, the other day she said we had to turn down a certain street to see where the dragons live, and that elephants live in the jungle.

*Lastly, we are learning she is always listening to us. In the car one day Nick was telling me a story when she chimes in- Nick: "There were a whole gaggle of hookers dowtown the other day" Hannah: "No, daddy, gaggles are what you wear when you go swimming!" Oops, better watch what we say at all times!!

We love our goofy, wacky girl so much! She keeps us laughing and exasperated at all times!! We couldn't imagine our life without our little love bug, Hannah Grace!!

Holiday Time and SOLD Sign!

Too much going on and not enough time! Thanksgiving was about a week ago and was so busy! Grandparents came into town and Hannah loved all the attention she was getting from everyone! Our first stop on Turkey day was Aunt Kay's, we snacked on yummy food and visited with fam for a few hours, then we were off to Mom's for another turkey dinner. More yummy food and goood visit time with family, and Turkey day was over! Since we had the grandparents in town, mom decided to host a tea party for the ladies (plus cousin Matt), which was wonderful! We drank our tea, ate tea sandwhiches, homemade cheese sticks, cookies, and scones. Hannah was even nice enough to let everyone borrow her tiara's and princess wands for the special event. But of course, no one looked as cute as Princess Hannah in her pink dress and tiara! Her plastic tea set was perfect for her to use that day- she drank her apple juice and snacked on the goods too! Unfortunately, the holiday weekend was over, and it was time for everyone to get back to the grind.
Of course, after Thanksgiving starts the Christmas season- which I love!! One afternoon, Hannah and I were bored so I decided what better time to decorate some cookies! Since we are in the middle of packing our house and most of the cooking stuff is in boxes, I cheated and bought already made sugar cookies and frosting. Hannah had so much fun, she decorated every single cookie, and her fingers in the process!

While at the store getting cookies, I thought it appropriate to get Hannah a Santa hat, she's been asking for one and since it's impossible to find a toddler size one I just bought her an adult hat from the grocery store. And of course she wore it during decorating cookie time!

Hard at work... she did so good at putting the frosting on, and then each cookie got every color of sprinkle and cookie decoration yummies we had!

Now on to the most exciting news of all...

After almost 2 years of looking and over a dozen offers, it's finally our time to buy our first house!! We could not be more excited or feel more lucky! Since Nick got his new job and is making a little more money, our house search was able to start once again. We have always wanted to live in Roseville again, we love the area, Hannah goes to preschool there and we want her in that school district when she starts elementary, and we are always driving out to Roseville for any kind of shopping, so we figured that's the area we have to buy a house in. In West Roseville, they are building a TON of new homes and even the schools are brand new, the high school hasn't even been built yet! We really liked the houses and area of West Park in Roseville, so that's where we decided to focus on. We chose to go with Lennar, all their homes came with all the updates that most other builders made the buyer pay for seperately. The specific house we chose is the Cascade model, it is 2 story, 2,175 square feet, 3 bedroom, 3 full bath, a den (which will be our office), and a flex room downstairs (Hannah's playroom). The house already has granite counter tops, cherry wood cabinets in the kitchen and bathroom, ceramic tile entry, kitchen, and bathroom floors, dark brown Mohawk carpeting everywhere else in the house, faux wood blinds, and the best thing that will save so much money-- solar power!! The specific lot we chose is so HUGE, it's on the corner and the backyard is at least twice the size of other yards in our neighborhood, there are actually only 4 lots that are the same size as ours. One thing I was worried about moving to this area was the yards are usually pretty small and we spend so much time out back, but we got lucky and bought the last lot of this size!! Hannah will love playing out there and I can't wait to host BBQ's all summer!! We will be closing on the house in less than 2 weeks, December 18th! We really wanted to spend our Christmas in our new house and it looks like that dream will be coming true! For awhile there, it seemed like it would never be our time to buy, everyone around us was getting into their own home and it just wasn't looking that way for us. But I'm so happy to say that our search is over and we found the perfect house for our family! We so look foward to Hannah growing up in this house and in this wonderful neighborhood!!!

Time to Brag...

The whole purpose of this post is to brag about our wonderfully smart kiddo. At the moment she is quite obsessed with puzzles. For awhile there, she could color ALL day, now she does puzzles ALL day. Literally, she will put one together, take it apart, and do it again. Nick and I were out Christmas shopping for her the other day and Nick had the idea to get her a more difficult puzzle than she already has, so we picked out a Cars one that is ages 4 to 8, 46 pieces!! We bring it home and bust it out, and she doesn't pause for a second to put it all together. As hard as it was to it back and watch her do it, we did not help one bit and she did the entire thing herself without getting frustrated at all!!!
Hard at work putting her puzzle together.

So proud that our just turned 3 year old did a 4 to 8 year old puzzle... she's pretty proud of herself, too!!

Princess Classics on Ice!

So, at the last minute Gina and I planned to take the families to Disney on Ice: Princess Classics! Literally, we bought tickets Thursday night for the Sunday afternoon show! We somehow convinced the Dad's to come too, and I'm sure they were thrilled they did! The little girls were totally excited to see princesses, but I think the big girls were even more excited!!
Emma's grandma brought the girls crowns and princess wands, but since the little ones weren't into the crowns, Gina and I grabbed them and got in the spirit!

The first half of the show, Hannah was totally into it, and she couldn't wait to see Snow White. When the girls would stand next to each other they would cuddle and it was super cute!

The show was really good, and it was so much fun watching it through Hannah's eyes, I think I was looking at her more than the ice skaters! To see her get excited and clap along with songs was awesome. However, after intermission Hannah got a little restless and was done sitting still. If the show had ended there, it would have been a total success, but I think she was still a little too young to be still for the 2 hour show and she was ready to go. But we persevered and made it to watch Cinderella and the Prince get married in the end.

After the show, Daddy and Hannah with her crown that came with the cotton candy... she was ready to go home!

I was wanting to take her to Disney on Ice in February, but maybe we'll save the money and take her in a year or 2 when she can enjoy it a little more! But, I'm glad we are able to provide her with all these fun experiences!