Sunday, May 25, 2014

Kyler's 1st Birthday party!

How did he turn one already???

We made it one year, baby!

Birthday boy chair

Blues, greens and grays was the "theme". And the hope was that everything would eventually become a decoration in Kyler's new bedroom.

all his stats 
(and then a few days later i was able to fill in that he weighs 22lbs)




Monthly pics from belly to one year

The food 
We did a sandwich lunch buffet. Simple and perfect.




He got right to business and knew exactly what to do. His strategy was to suck all the frosting off like the cupcake was a bottle!

and was pretty distraught when he thought it was all gone

He had lots of great helpers for gift opening!

A boy and a truck

Happy 1st birthday, Kyler! We are so blessed by you and your playful and adventurous spirit!




Welcome Home!

After what felt like a long wait we were given the keys to our new house on April 4th. This was perfect timing for us because that was the beginning of our spring break. My parents had come to town a few days before and helped us do a few repairs on Lanny's house to make it look just like it did when we first moved in. Then my mom helped me start packing up our things for the big move. We had a picnic dinner on the kitchen floor that night to celebrate!  (sadly didn't get any pictures to prove it) 

We then spent the weekend painting! It started out that we were going to paint just the bedrooms. We recruited Keith's family to help on our painting day and my parents stuck around an extra day to help as well. We also had to take out several valances and do some cleaning.There is no way we could have finished without all the help!! Kelli is a master painter! We finished the bedrooms with the plan being to come do touch ups and second coats on Sunday. But I wasn't really happy with the color I picked for Kendall's room. Keith couldn't see the difference between the blueish mint color and the greenish mint, but to me it was huge and I just couldn't see myself pulling out the furniture again to do it over in the summer. It had to be done right then. The new green mint color is fabulous and matches everything in her room perfectly! It was also decided that what we thought was a tolerable yellow color in the family room off the kitchen was indeed an ugly peach and needed to be painted after all. So Keith and I tackled both of these additional projects on Sunday. Nothing quite like additional painting projects to refine your marriage! Luckily we splurged for the super nice paint with the primer in it and I do believe this cut down the number of coats we had to do.

Mint Green in Kendall's room
With a pink accent closet door (the bottom pic has the blue version that we painted over). It wouldn't have been my top pick to do this bold of a statement but every time we talked about the house Kendall would say "I'm wondering if my room will be pink?" so this was my compromise.


Light gray for Kyler's room 
This room had wall to wall "built in" closet storage that my dad took most of down.

Dark gray for our master bedroom (it's called Elephant Skin by Behr and it is, in my opinion, the best color! )

 A nice neutral tan that Keith selected for the family room (he wasn't about to let me to choose the wrong shade of tan!)

Monday was MOVING DAY! Keith has the best friends on the planet. Jon, Adam, Alex, Matt, Joel, KJ, and Kenny were incredible movers!!!! Then family helped out at the house as we started to unpack and put things in their new places. We didn't want to waste time as we had a big 1st birthday party to host the coming Saturday!


Don't worry, we fed them all Taco DelMar for lunch!


First nap in the new house

Kendall unpacked her own toys and LOVED getting reacquainted with all the things that had been living in storage. 
 Mommy helped her quickly find homes for everything! 
Here she is sleeping her first night in the new house. Both kids did shockingly well adjusting to new rooms. I was nervous since we'd most recently all basically lived and slept within 10 feet of each other! 

Kyler loves having his own room! Everyone sleeps better here. YAY!

The bedrooms and family room were my first priority for getting settled in. We bought a rug for the floor and baby proofed the rooms right away. Kyler is quite adventurous so we needed  a safe place to occupy him while we worked at unpacking.

We had several neighborhood visitors our first few weeks. Some people we knew from work and life, and some just super friendly and generous neighbors! We ate our weight in cookies,  all in the name of being good neighbors, of course!

 I even squeezed in a few craft projects

And had a little girls night out!


And a spring break Easter egg hunt with the Rettele's



isn't she pretty?

When we sit down and relax...

We love the backyard view of the trees and park.
 And we love family walks to the neighborhood playground.

It's been a crazy year and we are incredibly grateful to be in our new home!