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.