February was another busy month - we celebrated Hannah's 1st birthday and we MOVED!
Thankfully our house was only on the market about 2 weeks before we received and accepted an offer. We had actually found our new (and current) house back in November. In the negotiations we asked to close on the home after the new year to give us some more time to put our house on the market and hopefully sell it so that we wouldn't have two mortgages. The timing on everything was perfect - we bought our new home and closed on our old home within a month of each other, giving us a little time to clean and paint in the new house before moving everything over. Drew's family offered to fly out to help us with the move, which was so incredibly gracious of them! We loved our time together and really appreciated all of their help! And since the whole family (minus James) was out, we snuck in a birthday party for Hannah so that we could have the entire family together for that. Very special!
Hannah's Birthday:
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| Hannah turned 1!! |
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| Such a happy birthday girl! |
Unfortunately, we lost a lot of pictures from Hannah's birthday party, moving, and pics of the new house due to the camera flash drive corrupting.
Drew has tried a few things to hopefully retrieve the pictures on the flash drive, but so far nothing has worked. Thankfully we have some pictures from her party thanks to family members who shared the pictures they had taken.
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| Hannah's owl themed birthday party. An owl themed party just seemed perfect for Hannah - maybe because her sweet glasses make me think of owls. :) My cousin made the cake and smash cake and did an absolutely beautiful job on them! |
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| Singing Happy Birthday to her so she can "dig into" her smash cake. She didn't seem to know what to do with the cake and just kind of batted it around a bit. We tried again later and she did a better job of digging into it, although none of the cake made it to her mouth. :) |
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| Snuggles with Daddy |
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| Second time around with the cake. :) |
Hannah's 1-year pictures:
A good friend of my sister's took Hannah's 1-year pictures. Hannah was still not able to sit independently and had poor head control, which made capturing pictures a little more challenging, but she was great and worked with me to come up with ways to help position Hannah. I think we got some good ones! :)
Moving Day (and house pictures before we moved in):
So I took some pictures the day we gained occupancy to our new house. We did quite a bit of painting, so the house looks a little different now than in these pictures. I'll try to update with pictures of our furnished home here soon.
Just some back history on why we moved...
We liked our "old" home, but we were starting to look for a little more open space than what we currently had. We watched the market daily always looking online at new houses for sale for over a year. We toyed with the idea of possibly building, but weren't sold on that quite yet. I was envisioning my "dream home", which included a beautiful staircase inside that led to a 2nd floor. I had found a house with the exact curb appeal I was looking for - a beautiful two-story home with a big, grand porch. But then as we were learning more about Hannah's disability, we started realizing that a two-story home was probably not what was best for Hannah. We wanted a home where she can get around in and is not inhibited because of stairs or the floor plan. Then this house popped up in our email one day and both Drew and I were excited about it. I realized I needed to change my thinking from a two-story home to a ranch with an open floor plan. We walked through the home. Drew LOVED it immediately, but I still struggled with letting go of what I had envisioned my home to be. We went back to see it a second time and I was sold on it. It.is.perfect!!! And now that I've been living in this house now for the past five months, I'm even more in love with it. It really is a perfect home for Hannah. We're all sleeping on the same level, there are no stairs she has to climb in order to get to her room (like in our previous home), the doorways seem wider, and it's very open. There's plenty of room for all of her current equipment and equipment to come. We love it! Hopefully you can get a feel for the layout of the house with my (amateur) pictures. :)
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| View looking into the great room (and kitchen to the left) from the entryway. The stairs to the left go down to the basement and there's a doorway to the right (across from the stairs) that leads to a hallway to the kids three bedrooms and bathroom. |
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| View of the kitchen - it was very red! |
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| View looking toward the entryway from the kitchen. |
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| View of master bathroom and closet. |
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| View of entryway. The room to the right is the study. |
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| Hallway to the kid's bedrooms and bathroom. |
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| Study |
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| Kid's bathroom |
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| Grant's room - windows looking out the front of the house |
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| Hannah's room is next to Grant. Her window looks out the side of the house. |
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| Jenna's room is at the other end of the hallway and her windows look to the backyard. The kid's bathroom is between Jenna and Hannah's rooms. |
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| Standing in the great room (basement stairs to the left, kitchen to the right) - view looking down the hallway to the master bedroom with laundry room and garage door to the left. |
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| Laundry room leading to the garage. |
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| Master bedroom |
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| Whirlpool tub in the master bathroom. The kids call it a "jet bath." |
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| Looking down the basement stairs - the door straight ahead at the bottom goes into the unfinished/storage area. |
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| Unfinished/storage area (the door straight ahead is the door from the previous picture at the bottom of the stairs) |
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| The basement is HUGE - it's just big and open. The kids love it! One side of the basement. |
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| Opposite side of basement. The open doorway leads to a 5th bedroom. Then to the right is another big room that we made the toy room. |
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| Bar area in the basement |
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| Toy room - it is no longer painted the Ohio State colors of red and gray. |
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| A full bath in between the toy room and 5th bedroom |
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| Fifth bedroom in the basement |
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| Moving day! |
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| We bought some new furniture, so it's strewn all over the floor. |
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| Study filled with more boxes |
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| We found out during this trip that Natalie was pregnant, so she did a wonderful job of entertaining Hannah while we carried boxes and unpacked. Cathy also helped with Hannah and then helped me with the unpacking as well. |
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| Our good friend (fellow Cedarville engineering grad, co-worker of Drew's, church friend, and neighbor) Jeremy put the new furniture together. It was a HUGE help!! |
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| Brian was also a HUGE help with the move! He worked hard all day, carried tons of heavy boxes and furniture, and made multiple trips with the U-Haul. Again, these are all pictures from other people's phones (I imagine it's Drew's moms phone), so I don't have any pictures of Drew's mom working, but she was also a HUGE help with the actual heavy manual labor. |
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| After work, my dad came over to help with the move. He also worked very hard after a long day at work. Plus he had already spent some time the previous week helping to paint bedrooms. |
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| Jenna being a helper...sort of. |
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| We went out to eat after a long day of moving. We can't even begin to express how much we appreciated all of them flying out to help us. It was a great excuse for a family reunion, although I vote that our next family reunion needs to involve relaxation instead of so much sweat and sore muscles! :) |
I have to mention a huge thank you also to my sister, Kelley, and brother-in-law Brian for (literally) shopping for furniture for us (I'm not much of a shopper, nor do I have the "eye" for it) and then staying back while we went out to eat to unpack, decorate, and organize things. They worked very hard and also did so much to help us get moved. And my mom watched all 5 kids (our three, plus my sister's boys) while we were at our house working - so, thanks to you too, Mom!
Random February Pics:
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| Grandparent's Day at Jenna's preschool |
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| Sweet smiles |
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| Love this picture of Jenna softly kissing Hannah on the head |
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| Jenna's dentist appointment |
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| In the unpacking process, we had a lot of empty boxes, so the kids had a blast making them into a train, filling them with their toys and then decorating them with crayons and stickers. Great entertainment! |
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| Hannah snuggling with her birthday present from Uncle Brian and Aunt Natalie. It sleeps next to her in her crib every night! |
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| A view of our home from the outside. We were wanting to get a picture with the SOLD sign, but it was picked up earlier that day without our knowing. |
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| Our last picture in our "old" home. Sad to say goodbye, but excited for the next stage in our new home where we'll make even more great memories. |
