10.31.2011

halloween one.

Halloween #1 for Jack was a hit.  One of his nicknames is Jack-O-Lantern, but he was not that this year.  He was a preciously adorable cow!  So cute!  It melts my heart seeing his chubby cheeks in this costume.  The pictures of us as a family turned out so bad, but I've got to share the one of all us- including our dressed up pups!

Jack's Nan was in town for Halloween morning. 

My precious little cow.  So adorable I can't stand it! 

Lady is a bunch of grapes and Eli a happy pumpkin.  

All bundled up for a chilly first Halloween. 

Don't let their faces fool you, they love dressing up. 

Family picture Halloween 2011. 

10.27.2011

what's for dinner.

We are so fortunate that we don't have to pack up everything in our house right now and move it.  It's great!  But I am packing away all of the "things" and extras that don't need to be sitting out for months and look bad as our house is for sale.  That includes packing up a lot of my kitchen stuff - some of my pots, my crock pot, my toaster, blender, food processor.  Although there is plenty I can make without these things, I find myself using that excuse, on top of the whole packing and cleaning thing, to struggle making dinner.

We were given spaghetti to heat up and eat whenever we needed it by a sweet woman who loves my family and has been like our family here.  She always knows just how to help us.  We had some sweet friends come by a couple of nights ago and bring us chili.  The chili was amazing, the visit was so fun, and the gift of dinner for us was awesome.  I love to cook and prepare dinner for us, but it seems to be one of the last things I think of these last few weeks here.  I am so thankful to have these gifts of meals!  And I know Tommy is, too. Tonight, I am actually cooking.



Trying this delicious Penne Pasta with Sundried Tomatoes Cream Sauce  recipe.


10.17.2011

the great move, charlie brown.

So I didn't quite accomplish my week of "featuring our home projects".  In fact, it's been almost a month since I last posted, and ironically we have been working very hard on our home.  But not for us.  We've been working very hard on it so that we can sell it!  Our house goes up on the market on October 27th.

We are selling our house because we are moving!!!  We are moving to Tennessee!  We are beyond thrilled!  This is such a blessing to us to be able to go back to where we're from and be close to our family.  We have missed them, and we want Jack to know them.  We want him to grow up close to his grandparents, aunts, uncle, and great-grandparents.  We have great friends in Knoxville who we want him to know.  And we miss East Tennessee.  We miss the South, in general, but particularly East Tennessee.  And although we wouldn't change it for a minute, our hearts have grown weary living here.

Tonight Tommy and I were talking about how we thought a few years ago that we would move here, spend a bit of time living in DC and doing that thing, and then eventually move away.  Very eventually.  Life has happened differently, and we are so thankful it has.  We never lived in DC [as we quickly learned living in Maryland does not count as living in DC!].  We never did the living in the city thing.  We never walked our dogs along the city streets and lived completely dependent on the metro.  We bought a house, we got a dog, then another, and we had our sweet baby.  Not our plan at all.  So much bigger.  So much better.  During that time, we realized that we were unsettled here.  We were determined to be committed to where God had us, so we really tried to focus on our lives here, but continued to hope we would some day go back to the South.  This is a great place to live- please don't think I'm just knocking on this area.  The traffic and congestion are no good, but this place offers so much, although our most favorite thing has definitely been the people we met here.  And that is what makes this a bittersweet thing for us.

We are so excited about our big change in life, but at the same time that we feel joy and excitement, we also feel sadness- it is not easy to leave.  We thought if we had the opportunity to go back to TN that we wouldn't even hesitate, but it wasn't like that- it wasn't an easy decision.  We LOVE our friends here.  People who have become our family.  People who have been so good to us and loved us so much and then loved Jack instantly, too!  We've been blessed.  We want to share that this isn't easy, and we are truly sad to leave here.  We're both sad to leave our jobs- we have great jobs here!  We're sad to leave people who we have truly come to love.  But we do look forward to what is ahead.  We are filled with anticipation as we wait to see what will happen.