New Home

We finally were able to go to NC to pick up the horses and dogs from my parents house this past weekend.  I know they (especially Dad) were glad to be rid of the extra legs and mouths that they so graciously housed for us for almost 6 months.  I am thankful it wasn't longer than that, and I am sure they are too.  : )  Matt and I do appreciate them letting us keep the animals at their house until we had a permanent home.  What would we do without our parents?  I am still very grateful for mine.

I am reminded how thankful I am that God created horses each time I see mine.  I love all animals, but horses will always have my heart.  There is nothing more beautiful to me than to see my horses take off running across a field or to be on top of one when they are running!  Just another reminder of how God loves me!

I had to lead both horses into their new pasture as Matt held Afton.  They were busy looking around at their new surroundings to mind us.  As I let them loose in the pasture they sniffed a little bit and then trotted around the perimeter to see where the fence was.  It didn't take them long to stretch their legs and run and buck a little and then take a good roll (after a long haul of an hour and half from my parents).  I think they like their new home.  I must admit, I do love looking out a window and seeing my horses graze behind that white fence!

We have a small, but nice barn that has several small fenced off areas behind and around it.  The previous owners had goats and sheep, so they left a really nice pen that we were going to put the dogs in until we figured out how the invisible fence worked.  It was a huge pen with a freshly mowed yard.  We were home MAYBE 30 minutes and Salem headed down our driveway and down the road.  We don't live far out enough to let the dogs wander around so Matt had to go get him and put him in the nice new pen.  As I was out checking on the horses one last time, I watched Salem climb over the gate.  I am not really sure why he doesn't want to stay with us, but every place we have ever lived he has wondered off.   My goal is to try to figure out the invisible fence this week so he isn't doomed to suffer tied to the horse trailer.  I feel bad-but he can't go wondering off.  He had never come back home of his own accord and we have had to pick him up at the shelter numerous times so I am really praying that the invisible fence works with him so he can enjoy the big, grassy yard.

Griffin on the other hand is just happy to be with someone.  He stays around the house and comes on the back deck and looks in every now and then to let me know he is still here.  He really is a good dog (both of them are, Salem just likes to try our patience).  He made himself at home pretty quickly.

I am very thankful that all of our "family" is with us, together, now!  I have really missed taking care of everybody-even though it is more work.  I can't wait to get on the horses and ride-now if it would just stop raining!

Back Again

I finally updated our new view-this is off our back deck.  Quite a difference from sand, blue sky way in the distance, and red rocks!  There is green everywhere!!

Lots has happened since my last post in April.  I didn't really have the motivation to keep up the blog and I am not really sure I do now, but I still think it is a great way to document our lives electronically.  We will see what happens this time.

Our most important "new happening" is we bought a house!  Now we "own" two houses - we don't want to own two houses, but the house in Bristol, Va was too good to pass up.  Without sounding like an idiot, it really is our dream home.  Nothing major to fix (no more ripping out kitchens-woohoo!), grassy yard, BARN and fenced property for the horses and an invisible fence for the dogs!  There our some minor adjustments to be made: painting, light fixtures, landscaping-but everything seems minor compared to what we have been through.  I say it is our dream home because it really has everything we were looking for.  Matt has always said that he wanted a living room that was open to the upstairs with windows up to the ceilings in the main wall-what do we have?  Exactly that.  I wanted all our bedrooms on one floor-and they are all upstairs.  I also wanted some place for our animals and we got the barn and fences!

Everything went so smoothly with the offer, the closing and the moving.  We really do love our new home and can't wait to live here for a VERY long time!

After being here for about a week and half, starting to have place for everything, I am reminded once again how blessed we truly are.  I joke about not wanting two houses, but we have TWO houses.  Some people don't have a house.  All three of us are healthy-some people don't have their health.  I could go on and on and on about how good we have it.  I hope this sounds appreciative because we are.  God has given Matt and I so much in the 6 years we have been married.  I can't begin to count our blessings.  I have made it a point to savor every minute of every day.  To relish in our happiness and our joy.  To look forward to the things God has planned for our family.  To be TRULY thankful for our blessings-and not just our material blessings.  God has poured His love over and over on me and my family and I am so thankful for His faithfulness!  I am amazed constantly at how He works in our every day lives-He knows us and wants to be near us and I rejoice in that!  Thank you, Lord, for all you have done and continue to do!  Without Him, we wouldn't be where we are!  He deserves all the glory.

On that note, Afton is such a joy.  I love to see her grow and learn new things every day.  She is a constant source of amusement for Matt and I.  Her new favorite thing is going to the fence at the field behind our house and yell "MOO!" at the top of her lungs at the cows that live in the pasture.

She is also part monkey.  That child will climb on anything and everything!  She scares me because she is fearless.  She can go up and down the stairs just like an adult - this is NOT a good thing!  She loves climbing at the playground and on the railing around our back deck.  I dread seeing what she will progress to.

She is starting to say more words -"walk", "pane" (for plane), chee-choos (for cheerios or any cereal in general), "eat", "wa-wa" for water-that is all I can think of at the moment.  I am still kinda shocked that I can have a conversation with her now and she understands what I am saying and if I ask her to do something, she does it.  I hope I am this way at every stage in her life.

We are hoping this weekend we will have the rest of our family at our house.  Sid, Maggie, Salem, and Griffin are at my parents house and we are excited to have "everyone" here.  Happy Weekend, everyone!

Jelly Shoes

Remember Jelly Shoes?  I do.  I LOVED them when I was little.  (I would say preschool-kindergarten age)  They used to rub my heels, I hated when rocks got stuck in the bottom of them, and being a sweaty kid, I had sweaty feet thus making my feet dirty in the summer pretty much constantly.

Well... They are back.  And I have passed the love of jelly shoes on to my 15 month old daughter.  (along with being a sweaty kid.  Sorry, Afton)  As a matter of fact she will hardly take them off.  Not five minutes ago, Afton wakes up from a nap crying.  What does she want?  Her jelly shoes.  Why did she wake up wanting her jelly shoes?  Because she went to sleep with them.  What did I do?  I put them on her and she went back to sleep.  Sheesh.

Almost every day she wakes up and goes and finds her jelly shoes.  Either Daddy or Mommy will put them on her (whoever is closer) and she will wear them all day.  She wanted to wear them today-so I had to put them on with socks because they were rubbing her little feet.  (Apparently, 25 years after I wore them, they still haven't figured out a way to make them where they won't rub your feet.  Part of the allure?)  She even wanted to take a bath in them the other night.  (after the fact, I thought that might not have been a bad idea. You know the whole sweaty, dirty kid thing)

  

I guess you need to accessorize even a nap.

Long Time No See!

Well, I think this is the longest I have gone without updating "the blog".  A lot has happened in the last 10 years (haha) since I have updated.  We have been busy!  AND I just realized that I haven't updated since Thanksgiving-SHEESH!

Well, Afton's first Christmas came and went and so did her first birthday.  I guess those are milestones that should have been updated on our blog, but most everyone we know has a Facebook and pictures are on mine and Matt's pages.  I will try to do better!

February came and brought some major life changes for our little family.  Matt accepted a job in Abingdon, Virginia.  Even though we were sad to leave beautiful New Mexico and our wonderful friends, we felt God's tugging to come back East.  It has been a stressful but fulfilling journey.

As I type, I am sitting at our table in our new rental that we moved the majority of our stuff into over the weekend.  Moving with a 15 month old is not easy but it can be done!  Thank the good Lord (and I don't say that lightly) that we had movers to pack and move all of our belongings from NM to here!  I realize that once we sell our house in NM and find a permanent home in either Virginia or Tennessee, that we will have to move again, but that move will not be almost 2000 miles!  Hopefully that will be soon!

This is a quick post and will end now because my husband gets to come home for lunch since he works less than a mile away!  That is something that is also a huge blessing!!!  Will write more sooner rather than later!  : )

A Great Weekend

Thanksgiving has already come and gone.  It is hard to believe it is Christmas time again!  I remember this time last year, waiting on Afton to be born.  We were so excited!  She has already celebrated her first Thanksgiving with Daddy and Mommy and we are excited about her first Christmas!

Our Thanksgiving weekend was great.  Matt and I always look forward to extended holidays because he gets time off and time to spend with Afton and I.

Matt had finished tiling and grouting our back splash in the kitchen earlier in the week, so the big parts of the kitchen are finished!  We were both excited for a break from work and kitchen work and some great family time.

The kitchen project has been such a pain, little things just kept (and keep) happening that puts the little projects off.  Example, Matt was going to put the drawer pulls on but was waiting for the template to drill the holes in the drawers.  When we finally got the template, 2 weeks after ordering it, there were not holes spaced for our drawer pulls!  Then when the holes were drilled, the screws that came with the pulls were not long enough!  Sheesh!!!  It was just little things like that the whole time, that weren't really a big deal, but were so frustrating!

So Matt decided no major work on the kitchen the four days he was off for the holiday.  Thanksgiving day was spent playing, putting up Christmas decorations and cleaning the house.  We ate a late Thanksgiving dinner just the 3 of us-and stayed in our pajamas the whole day!  It was great!!  We put up two Christmas tress this year and Afton was very interested in the tree and boxes of decorations.

We also cooked Thanksgiving dinner in our new kitchen!  It was so wonderful being able to cook and not have to go to different parts of the house to find a utensil or silverwear or a pot.  I even had counters to help me!  (it is amazing what you appreciate after you don't have something for a while!)  It wasn't a huge dinner, but we enjoyed getting to eat together.

We had been debating whether to go to Albuquerque on Black Friday.  We didn't want to deal with the crazies, but we had a little shopping to do for Christmas.  We decided to go when we got up and got ready on Friday morning.  There wasn't anything that we needed a deal on, so we decided to go and have a relaxing day of shopping in ABQ.

We got to ABQ about 10:30, made a stop at Lowes and went to the mall for about 45 minutes.  It was still pretty crowded!  We ate at Buffalo Wild Wings and went to Toys R Us to see if we could find any deals for Afton's christmas present.  I wanted to get her a little table and chair set for Christmas this year and we found the one I wanted at Toys R Us and it was the last one!  I was so excited.  We spent a little while in Barnes and Noble, looking at books, drinking Starbucks and letting Afton crawl around the Children's book section.  She loved it!  We had a great day in ABQ just spending time together.

Saturday was another lazy day.  Matt hooked up the pipes for the sink and dishwasher.  We got to do our first load of dirty dishes!  How excited were we?!  (me especially!)

Afton even got in on it.  It was hard to keep her from diving into the sink!

We had some new friends come up for dinner and we had a good time with them Saturday evening.

Sunday morning we went to church and came home to our pajamas (again!).  It snowed several times this weekend and was pretty cold, perfect weather to stay in the house and just be cozy together.

Over all we had a great weekend together.  We look forward to just family time and are quite selfish with it when we do have it!

Kitchen

Oh our wonderful kitchen.  The never ending project.  Will the stupid thing ever get done?  (really this is no jab on Matt at all!)

It has been really exciting to remodel the kitchen.  I haven't really been much help, like in past projects.  Poor Matt has had the brunt of the work and he has done a wonderful job.  It just really seems like it will never end.

As I sit here typing, Matt is in the kitchen putting up our tile back splash.  What he has up so far looks so good! 

If you saw our last kitchen (the Clown Kitchen as we like to call it) you will know how much of an update we needed.  Painted royal blue counter tops (painted!), yellow and lime green cabinets, and a two by four "pantry" (I use that term loosely, and by 2x4 I mean it was 4 shelves made out of 2x4's on the wall) beside the fridge.  Now we have beautiful nice new cabinets, a granite counter top (!!), an under mount sink and soon a beautiful tile back splash!  This is the stuff of dreams (and we never thought we would have it!).

Granted there have been our share (and someone else's share too, I think) of mishaps.  Our window had to be moved because of a wrong calculation of the cabinets (an inch makes a big difference!), shelves didn't come in the cabinets like they should have, cracked crown molding, lights being not where they should be, blah blah blah.  The list goes on, but we can see the finish line!

Through all of this, the Lord has definitely taught Matt and I patience.  Little things have happened, yes, but it could have been a LOT worse.  We are very blessed to even have a new kitchen at all!  All the hard work and trials are going to more than pay off in the end.  Can't wait to finally get everything in the cabinets! 

(Pictures soon!)

Ten Months

It is time to add another picture to the First Year Frame for Afton.  She turned 10 months old today.  Every time she turns another month older I say that it is hard to believe she has.  What I can't believe now is that in two months she will be 1 year old!  I really think this year has been the fastest year of my life, where has it gone?  I thought today would be a good opportunity to update the blog while Matt is working downstairs and Afton is taking her morning nap.  I have a few minutes of alone time (and I have already taken a shower! woohoo!)

About a week after my last update post, Afton started crawling.  It didn't take her long to figure out how!  She never had a weird crawl, she always seemed to know what she was doing.  It was always on all fours and she gets around now!  Nothing is safe.  We really have tried not to rearrange things, but some stuff we had to put out of reach and now all our outlets have covers.  Those were the first things she went for!  I am not really sure why...

She is also a pro at pulling up now.  Anything she can pull herself up with she tries.  She is starting to climb on things too, mainly me or Daddy, but the other day she was standing on some toys to get something off the coffee table.  It was not placed there intentionally just for that, but I don't think that is far off.

"NO" has become the dreaded word in our house, not just for Afton but for Mommy and Daddy too.  Most times when she is told no her face crumples and she cries like we have crushed her or she lays on the floor and screams (literally).  I hate when she cries, but she is getting better at dealing with being told no.  I guess it really depends on the day.  The main "no"s are banging on the computer and pulling cords, pulling books off the shelf, cell phones, the remote, pulling magazines out of the magazine basket and wall outlets.  She has plenty of toys to occupy her, and normally they do, but those things listed are the ones she gets busted for over and over.  The computer is the main no-no.  She can't seem to stop though, so I am sure we will get to be pros at telling her no. It doesn't make it any easier.

Afton will point at things now.  Usually only with her right hand, with her thumb sticking up like a gun. When she is "reading" to herself or to us, she will point at pictures and jabber.  She can point to her nose and to Mommy and Daddy's noses.  Just in the last week we have added mouth to the list.  She is starting to point at things, but I am not sure she fully understands what pointing means yet.

She also loves to play with my hair.  She is usually pretty good about not yanking handfulls out (I really don't have much to spare) and I love for my hair to be played with, so as long as she isn't pulling, I let her play.  She does like to pull on Daddy's beard now that it is grown out a little  : )

She has also gotten her top two teeth in!  They came in within a day of each other and they still aren't fully in, but every day I can tell they are a little bigger.  I wondered when she would be getting more teeth and so far it is just the top two and the bottom two.  She has a little gap between the top, which I think is cute.  (we aren't sure where that came from though...)

Several things we have not yet gotten a picture of are the elusive kiss and playing Peek-a-boo.  Daddy gets way more kisses than I do, but she will give Daddy a big, wet, open mouthed kiss with tongue.  It's pretty cute (not sure how cute it would be for anyone else) and Matt seems to enjoy the attention.  : )  She has also started playing Peek-a-boo when we say "where is Afton?" or just "peek-a-boo!"  She will cover her eyes and laugh, it is her new favorite game!  (we did get the game and where is your nose on film though, finally, but a video)  She also lets us know she likes food (or pretty much anything she puts in her mouth) by saying "mmmmm" whenever she eats it.  I think I started that.  I am trying to get her to say "ahhh" after she takes a drink, but we haven't accomplished that yet.  Also, she loves to clap her hands when we say "Good job" or "yea!".  When she sees other people clapping or hears it on tv, she will clap along with it, too.  

Afton also celebrated her first Halloween.  She got her first pumpkin that was just her size.  She also got to help with Trunk or Treat at our church.  She loved watching the kids and enjoyed the sucker she got (even though by the end her face and hands were sticky and she had fuzz and hair all over the sucker and herself).  I made her costume this year.  She was a tree.  Brown pants as a trunk, I glued leaves to her shirt, she had a birds nest with a bird in it on her shoulder and a bird in her hair.  I really thought she would be pulling leaves off, but she was more interested in what was going on around her than her costume.  It didn't get to be out much because it got pretty cold, so it was covered up with blankets and a jacket.  Oh well.  : )

Afton still loves books.  She will sit and read to herself for long periods of time and she plays with her books more than the toys.  She has several little baskets of books upstairs and it is a great game to pull them all out one by one, read them and then leave them laying everywhere.  I hope she continues her love for books, we try to read to her every day in some form or another.

Afton has grown physically so much in 10 short months, but I think this month has been the one with the most growth.  Not just physically (she was 29 inches long and weighed 21 lbs 6 oz at her 9 month check up), but I really think this month Afton started understanding what we are saying.  If we tell her to do something or ask her something, she seems to know what we are talking about.  Matt and I are both amazed at each milestone that she has achieved.  It is so exciting for us to watch her grow and learn with her.  I know it won't be long and she will be walking!  Maybe that will be the update for next month!