Still not in....

So we've moved out of the Carolina Forest house and put all of our furniture in the new house. We planned to stay with my parents for a few days until the balusters were installed on the stairs. Well, there was a delay in ordering, painting and installing. Finally, they were installed late last week. Installed wrong, but installed well enough to pass inspection. They'll have to be fixed later....

So the inspector came out on Friday and failed us. There were a few minor things with the house that needed to be corrected but the biggie is the stupid road. It's not wide enough for the fire trucks. And we have to talk to the Fire Marshall before we can start cutting more trees. So no CO (certificate of occupancy) until we can do that and have it reinspected... At least a week.

So we're still living with my parents (2 weeks now) and making do until we're allowed to officially move in to the new house.

In the meantime, the kids have started at their new school (more on that later) and we've been doing what we can to unpack.

Unsettled

Hi! Remember me??

We're still a little unsettled. Okay. A LOT unsettled. While we moved all of our stuff last weekend we are still not "in" the new house. There was a delay on the balusters for the staircase and I refuse to move a 2 year old and a 3 year old into a house with no stair rail... not to mention the balcony on the third floor that is wide open!

So, my incredibly welcoming parents have let us bunk with them for the past week while Dave spends most of his time at the old house painting and fixing things so we can get it on the market.

Last I heard, the guy will be here on Tuesday to start installing the balusters so, God willing, we will be able to actually sleep at the new house and not have workers in and out by the end of next week.

So what have I been doing? During every sleeping moment (when the kids are sleeping, that is) I have been at the house unpacking, cleaning and trying to at least have a functional kitchen.

The kids are handling it well. Neither one of them have asked to go home and they're both sleeping great at grandma and papaw's house. They have been hanging out with me this week and start at their new school on Monday morning.

Pictures soon, I promise.....

Almost in...

It has been a while since I've posted a house update.

We're so close I can taste it! A couple of weeks ago we loaded a 14' enclosed trailer with boxes and parked it in the driveway of the new house. Just to get the boxes out of our garage... the kids wouldn't stop climbing on them! Anyway, it sat in the driveway for a while.... today we unloaded it and started hauling stuff up ALL of the stairs (I've counted... there are a total of 32 steps from the ground floor to the top floor).... This is because WE'RE MOVING OUR FURNITURE THIS SUNDAY and we need to use that trailer!!

Yep! You read that right... we're moving out of our Myrtle Beach house and placing all of our furniture in the Pawleys house THIS weekend!

There was a slight delay in installing the stair rail and the balcony railing (the second floor looks down onto the foyer) so we will be sleeping at my parents house for about a week (maybe a little less) but we already had friends lined up to help us this Sunday, next weekend is Super Bowl weekend and then the kids are starting at their new school on the 6th.... so we decided to just go ahead and move on down.

I'll post pictures soon, I promise. The counters are gorgeous, the appliances look great, I'm totally in love with the whole house (especially the oak floors)!

Happy 2nd Birthday Allison!

Wow! 2 years old already! I just don't know where to even start when talking about my sweet little girl. She has always been a snuggle bug and still is. She is such a light in our lives. Now that she's talking and showing her little personality, Dave and I are just completely overwhelmed by how much we love her!

She now says 4 and 5 word sentences quite often! She knows lots of colors, sings her ABC's and tries very hard to count (1, 2, 4, 5!). Her favorite movie right now is Shrek and that's all she wants to watch. She has learned to lie on the floor with her face down in her hands when she doesn't get her way... we just ignore it and she gets over it pretty quickly.

Our house is all about baby dolls, nail polish, lipstick (gloss or chap stick) and pocketbooks these days. She's totally and completely addicted to her binkies. We have about 20 of them (no lie...) and she calls them by name according to what is pictured on them (owl deedee - which was her favorite for a long time - princess deedee, horsey deedee, circle deedee, green deedee, butterfly deedee, etc., etc.). I know we are going to have a very hard time breaking her of her deedee habit but I'm not going to even attempt that until a few months after we move in to the new house.

The other night she showed up at my bedside with a simple "hi mommy!" at 3:00 AM. That was a first as she usually has a hard time with her door knob and knocks to be let out of her room. Not to mention she usually doesn't make a peep during the night!

She continues to do absolutely everything that JD does. Just tonight I talked JD into eating his peas by telling him I needed his help getting Allie to eat them. Sure enough, as soon as she saw JD eating peas she started gobbling them up! Every morning when they part and every afternoon when they first see each other after school they give each other a hug and a kiss. They do it when I put Allie to bed too. It's so sweet and I try to burn the image into my memory because I know that they'll be fighting and will barely look at each other when they're teenagers... in the blink of an eye!

So stats will have to wait awhile. Apparently if you have a sick kid you can be seen in an hour at our pediatricians office.... but if you have a healthy kid and want to schedule a well visit, they're booked for 6-8 weeks! Who knew!??!?! So, her 2 year well visit won't be until February 21, 2012. I did measure her and she is now 34 inches (and has FINALLY outgrown her 18 month clothes - length wise. I have to buy adjustable waist pants and cinch them tight as 24 month pants are way too big in the waist!), which puts her in the 66th percentile for height. I haven't weighed her yet as I don't have a scale at our house anymore but I'm hoping she's up to 25 pounds by now. That would put her in the 30th percentile, though and she's been in the 9th percentile for a while so I'm not holding my breath!

Okay... so on to the good stuff! I have TONS of pictures from her party. It was a Sunshine and Rainbows theme and everything turned out so cute! So let's jump right in, shall we??

This year's invitation was too cute! I found the design on Etsy and the girl formatted it as a 5x7 and emailed the high resolution file to me as a .jpg.... then I just had them printed! So easy and MUCH cheaper than ordering cards through Shutterfly or Snapfish!

I got a  little streamer happy. I made a rainbow or two on the ceiling and a giant yellow tissue pom to represent the sunshine!

Treat bags for all of our friends. Finding little things for the treat bags is one of my favorite parts!

I found out about a week before the party that Merv and Angie would be coming to town so I put a star tip in Angie's hand, of course! She always saves me by helping to decorate the cake!

There's the happy little  birthday girl! She had so much fun at her party! Her dress and hair bow also came from Etsy. Full shot of it coming....

Aunt Angie made this adorable balloon wreath for the front door. I think just about every single female guest asked where I got it! Thanks Aunt Angie!!

BUSTED! Uncle Merv got this shot.... one of my favorites!

Of course we hung the birthday banner!

The cake is all done! Sunshine on top, rainbow on the side and completely covered in a yummy marshmallow frosting... but just wait until you see what's inside!

Because I seem to have an addiction to cute cupcakes... I found these on Pinterest and they were seriously some of the easiest cupcakes I've ever made!



More cute cupcakes found on Pinterest (actually, most of my party ideas came from Pinterest)

rainbow fruit tray (arranged by Angie) and white chocolate covered pretzel sticks rolled in rainbow sprinkles...

 

Yummy pretzel sticks...

Birthday cutie with her cake

BIG breath and....

....BLOW!!!!

 I'm pretty sure she likes it...

 Hmmm... let's see if I like this one too...

 WHOA! Look at that cake!

 JD enjoying his sunshine cupcake

Allie still enjoying the icing..... 

 Then she moved on to other sugary items...

 Ta-Da!  I made each layer of the cake a color of the rainbow! Allie loved it!

 She tore right in to her gifts without hesitation...

She absolutely adores the new baby doll that Grandma got her and the baby crib that Uncle Kent and Aunt Sarah got her.... not to mention all of the other stuff she got... this girl is SPOILED!

Uncle Merv totally got in to playing with the baby doll!

Play time outside. My little sugar addict was slightly wound up.

It didn't take JD long to start confiscating Allie's birthday present. Here he "flying" with her new Tinkerbell lunchbox

Sweet Jasper enjoyed the party. He even took a quick snooze in his big cousin's (JD's) bed! Here are the three generations of Havels

Uncle Merv was sure to introduce Allie to the joys of remote controlled helicopters too!

 

And we ended the evening with the coolest party hat ever! She stuck my tissue paper pom on her head and walked around. I think this is my favorite picture of the entire day!

One crazy, chaotic, exhausting and BLESSED Christmas

I can't even begin to tell you how blessed we are with such a wonderful family. This Christmas was the best yet! Starting about 2 weeks before Christmas, UPS visited my house about once a day with a package from an aunt or uncle for the kids. They are so lucky to have such loving and generous aunts and uncles!

As toy after toy arrived I wrapped them and stashed them in my closet. The kids were content to take the plastic balls off of the tree and I knew they would rip into presents the second they saw them. They didn't give a second thought as to why there were no gifts under their tree. I don't think they knew any better! Boy were they surprised on Christmas morning!

As usual, we did a small dinner with my parents on Christmas Eve. Allie's little dress was made by Grandma Marge for me when I was about 18 months old. She looked so cute in it even if it was a little big (I think she'll wear it for Valentine's Day too!).

Already fighting over presents. This one was for the boys accross the street and both JD and Allie wanted to carry it over there.....

JD eventually gave in but not without some tears... look at Allie's left cheek

Then she was happy

Sitting nicely for about 0.002 seconds

Excited about something... maybe it's that super cute bow in her hair!

This isn't the best picture (focus-wise) but this is me at 18 months wearing the same dress that Allie is pictured in above.

After dinner we let the kids open their gifts from Nanny and Poppy up in PA. Allie banged away on her little xylophone as JD raced battery operated cars on the glow-in-the-dark track. Thanks, Nanny and Poppy!! Both gifts are huge hits! After gifts we put cookies in the oven for Santa and then set them on the table with milk and carrots for the reindeer. Grandma and Papaw said goodnight and off to bed they went!

JD didn't sleep very well that night. He was up coughing a lot so he slept in until almost 8:00 AM on Christmas morning. That would have been the perfect Christmas gift for me if it were not for Allie waking for the day at 5:00 AM.  Luckily she's too young to remember that Santa was supposed to have come the prior night and she was content to hang out with us instead of insisting on waking her brother so she could see her gifts. When JD finally woke they headed straight out to the garage (playroom) and saw all the wonderful gifts. Santa left Allie a baby doll and a ball, just like she asked. He also left an easel with some giant coloring pages, a duplo table and a whole bunch of blocks and a great, big choo choo train for JD. The kind that goes around the base of the Christmas tree, thank goodness. Santa must have knows that JD already has a TON of Thomas stuff. Actually, I was a little surprised that he asked Santa for a choo choo! But Santa came through. JD loves his new train, complete with a "kamote" (remote). It plays Christmas music really loudly and even goes in reverse. Oh! The first thing JD commented on? "Santa ate his cookies!!" Actually, Santa ate most of his chocolate chip cookies. He left about 1/4 of one on the plate, which Allie promptly polished off!

Christmas Morning... before....

JD playing with his new choo choo

So after the initial excitement wore off and JD thoroughly examined his new choo choo, it was time to get down to business and start unwrapping the mountain of gifts under the tree. There was so. much. stuff! Both kids were extremely excited about every single gift! Allie is great at unwrapping gifts and pretty much just keeps moving along. JD has to get every toy out of the box as soon as it's unwrapped so it took him longer to unwrap his pile. Allie walked around from toy to toy with chocolate smeared all over her face (from her stocking) as JD kept unwrapping. It was so fun to watch them this year.

This girl means business when it comes to unwrapping gifts!

I love this picture! Uncle Merv and Aunt Angie got him the Melissa and Doug Pizza Party, which he has played with at friends' houses and loved. He was so excited to have one of his own!

Dave got put to work taking toys out of boxes

Everyone was served multiple slices of pizza in the middle of the present opening

Allie's very own pink laptop. Thanks Uncle Jeff and Aunt Karly!

Christmas morning - after. What a mess! (thanks for the stomp rockets Aunt Deb!!)

So after the last gift was unwrapped it was time to put on our finest and head to Grandma and Papaw's house. I got the kids dressed and, as we were headed out the door, JD said to me "Mommy! Santa didn't bring me my kitchen.", which is the other thing he asked for. I told him we'd have to ask for it again next year and JD said "yeah, maybe it wasn't ready yet." I was proud of him for not pitching a fit or even being too disappointed.

The stomp rockets went right down to the new house. The new driveway is a perfect place for those!

We arrived at my parents house and the unwrapping frenzy continued. Among other things, JD got a doctor kit from my dad that he absolutely loves. For the past couple of months he had been using the dog's leash as a stethoscope and a toy gun to give "shots". He was so excited to have real doctor's things!

Daddy's Little Girl....

She seriously loves her daddy!

And the madness begins again

I have to add the other "hit of the day".  We draw names in my family and my brother Merv drew Dave's name. Boy did he hit a home run with his gift! A remote controlled helicopter with a video camera! When it arrived on my doorstep I had to call Angie and ask if that was their gift or if it was something Dave had ordered for fun. I knew he would love it and boy did he! In fact, JD loves it and so does Kent, who ordered one for himself the same day he saw Dave's!

Neither kid napped that day. My parents made an awesome turkey lunch (they had a turkey in the freezer for Thanksgiving but since my grandma passed a few days before, they spent Thanksgiving in Tennessee and Georgia). Speaking of Grandma Marge, This being my first Christmas without any living grandparents, she was very well represented. We ate off of her good china for Christmas dinner and I wore a necklace that she gave me a couple of years ago (not to mention Allie wearing the dress she made on Christmas Eve!).

After we ate lunch we headed over to our house to check on things. We walked in the back door and were very surprised to see that Santa had already found our new house! JD and Allie were so excited to see their new play kitchen sitting there with a big, red bow! Our builder, Jeff, also left gifts for each kid. Allie was excited about her baby doll that came with a bottle. She grabbed it, led me up to her room, sat down on the carpet and fed her new baby its bottle! So adorable!

It was early to bed for all of us that night. I was pooped! This year has convinced me that Christmas day is the most chaotic and exhausting day of the year for parents of small children but I wouldn't have changed one single second.

But it doesn't end there! The reason I'm so late with this post (okay, okay... one of the reasons...)? My brother Kent and his wife Sarah go to Texas to spend Christmas with her mom so we do Christmas with them on New Year's Day. It was Sweet little Jasper's first Christmas so I couldn't post about Christmas without a few pictures of him! And the present opening frenzy began again! Seeing as Jasper was too little to open his own gifts, JD and Allie were more than happy to lend a hand. Plus, Uncle Kent and Aunt Sarah had super cool gifts for them too! Allie loves her backpack and they both had fun stocking their new kitchen. The Moon Dough will be put away for another day, though. A nice, warm day when they can play with it outside!

So that's it. There are all the pictures of our blessed Christmas. I'm happy to get this very picture heavy post done. Now on to editing birthday party pics.... so surreal that my sweet girl is 2!