Insanely Cute!

I am in love, again. This is one of Vera Bradley's new prints. It is called Hope Garden. I think this print is soooooooooo cute. I love every bag in this print. I fear for our bank account!

Overwhelmed

Yes. That is me. Overwhelmed. I am still surrounded by boxes from the move. When we knew our settlement date was several days before Christmas, I decided to divide up our move. I knew getting in and getting ready for the holidays in a short period of time would be greatly inhibited if I had to deal with things like Easter decorations or out of season clothing. So I rented a moving pod to store all the "non-essentials" and I was free to move only the furniture, the holiday decorations, and our daily necessities. The pod arrived a few days ago and I feel like the boxes are never ending. Do we really have this much stuff. Before I moved I tried to purge and I did make several large trips to donate to charity. I am in the process of compiling another large trip , thanks to the new prospective I have in our new home. If it doesn't fit where we want to be in this new place, if we do not love it, or if we have not worn it in a year....it goes! Well, except for the all the girls clothes ...and maybe that box of toys that... AGH! Wish me luck!!

I am here. Yes, we have moved. It was stressful. Well, it began with our first set of movers showing up and letting me know they underestimated the job and could.not.move.us. Panic. Then call new movers in yellow pages and ask if they REALLY mean same day moving. Solve mover problem only to find out that our mortgage broker missed a deadline for document release! This equals spending two days bunked up with my husband's family and settling a day later.

Alas, we had a tremendous Christmas and we are very blessed. Everyone is settling nicely into our new home and adjusting to a new routine. Today, I finished painting the babies' "mermaid" room blue. Tomorrow I will get their room back together and hope to take my oldest daughter to pick out her paint color for her new room. I haven't located my USB cable to down load our holiday pics but promise to do so soon. I was able to decorate some for the holidays as well as try out a new garland idea from the Nesting Place. I will never look at my holiday garland the same way.

Anyhoo, time to go soak in the tub.... I hope you all had and continue to have a great holiday!

New House, Broken Nose, Attempted Auto Theft all within 36 hours

We found a house...yippee...my youngest baby broke her nose..boooo...and someone tried to steal our car..... What!

First, we finally found a house, got a great deal and our new settlement date is December 18th.

Yes, that would be seven days before Christmas.

It could have been worse, the other side wanted December 26.

Obviously, that was way out. So we decided to move the date up and we now have 29 days to move our household of seven, hold Thanksgiving for both sides of the family and get ready for Christmas.

Thankfully, I have been shopping for a while and I am 75% done for Christmas.

Sad to say, however, one of our favorite traditions has been to get our tree the day after Thanksgiving, We take the kids to a Christmas tree farm, spend the morning hunting, bring home the tree, have a big lunch in front of the fire and start decorating. We have been doing this for about a decade and we all look forward to it. I do believe it is one of my favorite days all year.

But chin up, we will have to wait until Dec. 18 to perform our altered version of bringing home the tree amidst movers, et al.

We found out yesterday about the house deal going through. So I decided to take the kids after school to show them our new house.

After we got back,I started to make dinner. Everyone was in the livingroom playing except the baby, who was in the kitchen with me. She is just learning how to walk and needless to say took a spill.

It was about 5:30pm. I did not see the fall, only was there for the aftermath. Which was minimal, some crying, some whining but then she wanted to walk around.

Done.

She ate dinner and went to bed with no change. There was no mark or swelling from her accident.

Fast forward to 9:30pm.

Babygirl wakes up fussy.

After several attempts to put her back to sleep, we finally bring her downstairs to tire her out.

When in the light of the livingroom, I notice that her face looks like she was in a street fight.

Both eyes swollen, the bridge of her nose is nonexistent and a bruise is forming over the whole mess.

I look at my husband and say.."OMG..I have to go to the ER"...husband says..."It doesn't look that bad"...but of course never tell a mother that and now panic has set in... I am worried about her eyes, vision, breathing, etc. all the while wondering is this from the fall she took earlier? Why didn't the swelling happen immediately?

So at 10:30 we are in the ER(with my Mom) and she gets x-rayed only to reveal that at one years of age with mostly cartilage making up her nose, she has broken the only bone at the bridge of her nose.

There is nothing we can do, we are told. Because she has so much growing to do, they won't know if her nose will grow in crooked until she gets older! WHAT!

Then, we are told they won't fix it until she is older. AGHHH!

Oh please send wishes that my babygirl heals and does not grow up with a SHREK nose!!

Arriving home from the ER at 1am, I put babygirl to bed and crawl in myself, mind racing from the events of the day and the monsterous to-do-list.

I finally settle in to a deep sleep only to be awoken to our car alarm going off in our driveway at 1:30am. We both jump out of bed and race to the window. We see nothing. We go downstairs and check the car.

The hood has been pryed ajar (setting off the alarm) and the interior alert system reads Attempted Theft. All of our house's exterior lights are on and I literally pulled in the driveway 30 minutes before! My heart was racing. I just could not believe it.

There is never a dull moment here. Which is usually good.

We have sold our house! We are currently looking for a new home! Oh the stress! We are scheduled to close on January 5! It appears we will be moving over the holidays, but I promise the last things that will be packed are our holiday decorations! So I apologize for not being around lately and potentially until we find a new home. But I am reading, if not posting and I do think about all of you bloggers out there! Have a great weekend. I, again, will be house hunting. Sigh. Wish us luck!

A New Love

Beautiful Fall Day + Starbucks New Salted Carmel Hot Chocolate = New love.

How did they come up with this? Who cares. Go and try it.
I tried it with a shot of espresso.
Yummy!

Take the Quiz here!