Look who is BACK, with a horrible back!

Sorry for the lack of posting. I have been having a horrendous situation with my back and I will only blog from my personal computer. I'm not so great at typing so much on the ipad. I have a giant herniated disk at l5 (the lowest disk in your back ) that is compressing or squashing my L1 nerve which is otherwise known as the sciatic nerve. The pain shoots from my lower back down the back of my lower leg and into my toes. It has been completely debilitating to say the least. Driving is impossible, cooking is non existant and so on and so forth. I have every pain killer prescribed to man and was even offered morphine which I declined. Isn't that for dying people? Sheesh. Thankfully, my momma is the worlds best caretaker and flew here for 7 weeks to help out in Sept. Her original plan was to help with our big move...yes, we finally bought a house! More on that in a second. She went home for 5 weeks and came back for Christmas, along with my brother who flew in from LA. I finally have surgery scheduled for Jan. 10. I saw 3 surgeons for opinions and will be having a discectomy/laminectomy. It's been a long while since I've had any type of surgery so I'm freaked to say the least! We'll be driving 3 hours away to Indianapolis to a surgeon who comes highly recommended in this area. He reminds of Niles Crane, which means he's got tiny hands. Perfect for a surgeon right?? I'm hoping this does the trick but of course if you consult Dr. Google (I know,shame on me) there are so many horror stories it's unreal. I also have the back of a 90 year old woman and have so much more wrong with me than this problem. So reherniating the same disk is very likely. I'm also a candidate for spinal fusion. This is a MAJOR surgery that involves putting rods, pins, cages and screws in your lower spine. The first surgeon I saw said this was my only option and I was really really scared. Thank goodness we got 2 other opinions. They think I could definitely need it down the road but insisted that they wouldn't jump into a fusion right away. I may need one in a year, 5 years or 10. Who knows. One thing I've learned from this is that people are good. Here we are, brand new to the state of Indiana and I had at least 20 meals brought to my house. I've been prayed for, people have taken my kids to school, overnight even while we drove to Indianapolis for the appointment...it's unreal. It's mind blowing the goodness that I've seen in people. Complete strangers even. Perhaps I'll never know the lesson God has been trying to teach me but one thing goes through my mind continuously. "BE STILL"...one of my favorite verses. Psalm 46:10 "Be still and know that I am God". It's amazing the things that go through your head when you have no control over your life and have no choice but to "be still". You let go of your idea of the perfect clean house. Heck, we MOVED while I layed on a matress on the floor. I had the doorbell ringing all day it seemed. Here we are in our brand new house, after having been in an apartment all summer..and heck a literal barn in CO before that! I had envisioned all the wonderful dinner parties to be had, all the remodeling that we needed to do....how I probably wouldn't invite too many people over until it was all finished and show home worthy. WRONG. I was answering the door in my jammies at 2pm on percocet while friends I"ve known for only 3 months unpacked boxes and saw the underwear strewn about the house. It became comical. You have to laugh right? The house we chose is in Mishawaka, IN...basically just an extension of South Bend/Granger. You don't know where one town starts and the other begins.Ideally, we fudged on our location because we liked the house so much. Almost all of our friends live in Granger..however we are still in the coveted PHM school district which is huge. We were only searching in this district. However the "best" elementary schools are going to be a good 20 minute drive or more for me starting next year. There is a river that runs through the town and our neighborhood is perched right on the St. Joseph river. We are right at the end of a cozy cul de sac on .5 acre lot (that we still need to fence.) The house had a ton of charm. We were kind of over "new" houses...since that last few we have lived in have been brand new. We wanted some character this time. After living here though now for almost 3 months we've realized that when you go for "older and charming" you gain things like electrical issues and the loss of the whole wide open concept we were so used to. Don't get me wrong, we love a lot about this darling house but it's very compartmentalized feeling. And we have yet to do anything to it except hang new lighting. We want to put leopard carpet on the stairs, redo the entire kitchen and paint basically every single room. And the powder bath downstairs needs a face lift. So, needless ot say, when my back gets better I'll be BUSY with this place! It's fun to have something that is "ours" again though. A really great feeling. Erik is loving his job. He's travling a bit but nothing too crazy that we can't handle. I'm hoping to go with him to some places when my back gets better. Claire was the first child a couple of weeks ago to get stitches. She decided to cut an apple by herself with a gigantic serrated bread knife. 9 stitches later....Let's just say that little darling learned her lesson. She and Erik even wrote a book about the experience..it's darling. She drew pictures and dictated to Erik what to say. He had them color printed and bound and it's the cutest thing ever! He thinks he should get her a Linkedin profile as a "childrens book author". Too funny. Now for some photos:)!! These few were taken from the listing, before it was ours.

And for some of our family pics from our fall shoot we do every year! I was pleased with our photographer.

Tons more pics but those are a few highlights! I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! We were so thankful this year to be in our new home that we could hardly stand it:) I'll post a few Christmas pics soon...I really didn't take too many, it was so chaotic. All I can say is that having a 3 and 5 year old make Christmas truly full of magic. I could have cared less if I got anything and actually for the first year ever didn't ask for a thing. Obviously, I got things...I have a husband who goes overboard with gifts every year but really....the best gift was just watching the kids eyes and see their excitement:) Blessed bliss.

The Shiner

Sawyer has a shiner. Not his first, not his last. I did get a picture of this one though. Apparently, he was "fluffing his pillows" in the dark and knocked it on his windowsill. Did I mention that the kids sleep next to each other? It's pretty adorbs. They have their own rooms in this lovely little aparment but they were crawling into each others beds anyway so we made one room the sleeping room and one room the play room. :) They are truly best friends. Inseperable, even in large playgroups.

We picked up some Notre Dame gear for the kids. I feel a tad like the person in Oklahoma who never went to OU or OSU yet goes to Wal Mart and decks themselves out in gear from head to toe. However, it's ND.....I think it's okay if it's Ivy League. Right?

I also did another "girls night" this week. These are a vital part of my sanity:) I've met SO many great girls here already and seem to have a pretty full social calendar. No matter where we live, God has always blessed us and surrounded us with great people. This week we did a Wine Walk in downtown South Bend. No, this did not involve exercise. At all. It involved 12 fancy restaurants downtown, 3 pours of wine at each and 3 pairings of food. Great fun!

On a whim last weekend we jotted down the road to Chicago for the day. We took the kids to Navy Pier. We got hot dogs, ice cream, fancy popcorn and rode a few rides. Somehow I was conned into riding the ferris wheel with Claire. This is no ordinary ferris wheel my dear friends. And I am TERRIFIED of heights. The second we left the ground the bottoms of my feet started going numb. Seriously..terrified. I had a death grip on Claire too. I took pics with my phone and tried my best to keep my mind that we felt as high as an airplanes cruising altitude.We ended the day after a shopping stroll down Michigan Ave at Ginos East...a famous local deep dish pizza joint. It's been years since I had been there. Definitely great pizza but I still think Giordanos is our fave (we are deep dish fanatics in case you didn't know!) Erik was at a Cubs game a few weeks ago and even got one to go for me...that's LOVE.

Saugatuck, MI

Some of the benefits of living here being just a hop skip and a jump to the Lake Michigan area..literally, a very short car ride. Lake Michigan is not what I expected. It's practically an ocean in the middle of the country. I am used to the Oklahoma area lakes which are wildly popular but small and somewhat dirty. We journeyed to Saugatuck, MI a darling little artsy town that would rival Martha's Vineyard in charm and cutenss. Seriously...who would have thought? The quaint little town abounds with art festivals, boutique hotels on the water, tons of restaurants and some of the best shopping I've seen yet! We had a great time. In other news we were supposed to have inspections on the new house on Saturday so we went over with the kids all excited to see the house again ( it had been on the market for 5 days when we put our offer in and we only saw it once!) And the inspector didn't show up. Nice, eh? However, we got to spend about 2 hours with the previous owners who walked us through the entire house and showed us the ins and outs of it all. The landscaping alone is going to possibly kill me! It's Ah-mazing and it abounds with about 10 hydrangea bushes and 4 peony bushes...my two FAVES. My wedding bouquet had both:) Anway, they currently pay a gardner once a week to come in and maintain it all...So, now inspections are this week. We have been busy pouring over ideas for how to redo the kitchen and paint colors. Anyone want to paint? Anyone?? The couple has lived in the home for over 30 years and raised their 3 kids there. They have meticulously maintained it and it's so apparent how many memories they hold there. Very sweet. Enjoy a few pics below of a few happenings!

I'm sure you reconginze our sweet friend Maggie by now:) This was her 4 year old "princess birthday party"

School Days

Well, we are in our second week of preschool and pre-k. I love our little preschool we found for the kids. The class sizes are much bigger than what we left in CO ( C had 6 kids total in her old class!) Her BFF Maggie is in her class this year so she's estatic about that. I've left Sawyer crying at the door 2 out of the 3 days so far but he claims he "loves school" and always wants to go back. There are 2 teachers per room also which I like. Claire has 14 kids in her class and Sawyer has 12 I believe. I'm SO ready for the rest of fall to get into full swing! Bring on the boots and pumpkin lattes and candles and of course my famous pumpkin chipotle chili.
Erik is loving his job which is fabulous. He's traveling more than usual but it's nothing we can't stand and I kind of like the break. Shhhh:)! The company he's with now is run by a local family who all works side by side in the office. VERY different than corporate America that he left. His boss has been inviting us over to her house for BBQ's and swimming and to her lake house. SO nice! Here are a few pics of the first day of school!

Claire on her open house night..Her 2 teachers, Ms. Rose and Ms.Martin

Sawyer and Ms. Julia and Ms. Kristy

HOME sweet Home

I made this beaut today and oh how easy it was! I am so excited to hang this in our new house! It represents the 4 states we've lived in in the past 6 years. OK, OR, CO and IN...I'm on the hunt for tiny heart stickers to place over the actual cities we were in. In other "homey" news....we offered on a house this past weekend and everything was accepted and finalized today! Of course now the hard part starts...inspections, appraisals, etc. Hopefully everything goes smoothly and quickly. We are set to close in mid October. The house just screamed "us". Charming and homey, full of character with a giant 1/2 acre private back yard on a cul de sac. It was on the market for about 5 days. There will be some slight remodeling to do to really make it ours and of course my home builder mr. fix it husband is giddy about starting improvements. We sacrificed the location we really wanted to be in but however this home is still in the excellent school district system that was our real only requirement. I'll post a couple of teaser pics and hopefully this won't jinx the inspection process!

Till next time!

Househunting

At this point we are house hunting pros. I'll tell you one thing that will completely ruin a couple when househunting...building custom homes for yourself in your 20's..yup.Don't do it if you ever plan on NOT building again. After that, you fine someting wrong with everything. There are hundreds of homes for sale here and only one great school district we *have* to buy in that limits us. The cost of living here is very low, so that actually is fun for a change compared to where we've been living.I consider ourselves very blessed and fortunate to be able to buy a home but my gosh...enough already! We decided we really wanted a pool, so that REALLLYYY narrowed our search down. Then we decided we can always put in a pool later. Some schools in the 1 "excellent" school district are better than others and on it goes. With fall in the air, I have a sudden surge of fall fever or something running through my veins. One trip to Hobby Lobby last week and I'm about to foam at the mouth from all my decorting ideas...and let's face it. Our entire house has been in storage now for a long time. As in, a whole year almost. How many people can live for a whole year with the bare necessities? Anyone..I found out that you totally can live with the bare essentials. I should write a book on the subject perhaps:) I swear, unpacking an entire 4 bedrom house out of storage will be like Christmas! Anyway, we are ready. Now we need to just pick something! Erik can make anything beautiful...I'm lucky like that! Here are a "few" of the Northern Indiana beauties we've seen this summer...a couple being on our "top 2" list which may get offers soon. One has a pool and needs a TON of updating but is in a Blue Ribbon school district, the house actually backs up to the school through the trees. House is what we consider very "ugly" but does have potential and it's huge-like 6000 sf huge. Room for you ALL to visit-at the same time. The other is still in the Great school district but further away, in another town even than the rest of these, making everything we do a 20ish minute drive. If you knew us in OR or CO this is nothing and we tend to always end up in areas like this so we can have more privacey. Both on half acre lots. One needs a ton of updating but is in a better location, the other needs very little updating, in a worse location. Decisions, decisions...........

Summertime

We've spent this summer fairly displaced in Indiana, living in an apartment with none of our belongings hardly. However, we've tried to make the most of it and we've been swimming everday, going to the beach and trying to figure out what this area of the country has to offer. After living in CA, OR and CO, this place lives a little or um, a lot to be desired. What you do get here though are great family values that just don't exist in many other places in this country, a fabulous cost of living and some really nice people. I'm still chanting the "bloom where you're planted" mantra daily though. I'm thinking things will perk up when we buy a house and get fall started. The days here are long...I'm sayin'...it doesn't get dark until 10pm. I know the winter is coming and it will get dark at 4 and be frigid so I'll stop complaining. However, with school in the air starting soon I'm dreaming of new boots, pumpkin candles and holiday decorating. Oh dear lord I hope we are in a house by then! Our stuff has been basically in storage since last October when we moved into the 60 acre horse ranch barn. We are so random. I've started to make friends here pretty fast. I was invited to a playgroup and by the end of it I was officially a table leader for MOPS. In Denver we interviewed for that position but hey, I guess they liked me? I'm very ready to get the school year started. We enrolled BOTH kids this year! This will be Sawyer's first year in school so we're really excited. What in the world am I going to do with myself? I was talking to another mom at the pool and said that exact question, "What am I going to do with all this time?" And my sweet little Claire chimed in and said, "I know what you're going to do...you're going to drink wine with dad and have booty time"....WHAT IN THE WORLD? The child knows what wine is, that's no secret ...but booty time? We don't even say the word booty at our house. I am still baffled by that one and tragically embarassed. I'm sure the mom at the pool thinks highly of my parenting abilities. I also had a 30 minute conversation with her in the car today on why she can't have her own cell phone. I am in so much trouble.
In other news I got a new camera cord...holla. No more grainy iphone pics on here! Enjoy some pics from the summa time in ol' Indiana.