A Day at the Park

Yesterday was a lovely day today in Austin...79 degrees and partly cloudy. After church we couldn't resist taking advantage and having some awesome family time at the playground!

We had a lot of fun playing and running and climbing. We are so blessed!

Fun on the slide! On a side note, I have a picture of her in almost the same pose, from when she was almost 2...

CUTE!

Caleb had some fun on the slide, too...until he turned over and started to slide down by himself...

Silly girl

I'm gonna get you!

Swinging time

Daddy and Caleb

Daddy and Olivia!

Mommy's turn!

Smiling boy.

Time to go!

We had so much fun. Hard to believe it's January around here!

Tri, tri, tri again!

A few weeks ago Levi participated in his first (and, according to him, LAST) triathalon! It was a "rookie" or a "sprint" level triathalon, consisting of an 800 meter swim in a lake, an 11.2 mile bike ride, and a 3.2 mile run. He has been training for the last few months, and did great, coming in at just under 2 hours! We are so proud of him!

The race started at 8am with a swim.

He's out there somewhere! They had to swim to the triangle buoy, then across to another buoy, then back.

I missed taking pictures of him coming out of the water and onto the bike...thought I'd missed him all together until he whistled at me while he ran by! But I do have pictures of him transitioning from biking to running...

Look at how happy he is! Crazy man. I know running is his favorite but he just swam and biked a lot...

(FYI, this is now the picture assigned to him on my phone. Makes me smile every time he calls)

About to cross the finish line!

And then we went home and all took a nap...the kids and I were exhausted by association. :P

I think he had fun. He says he's glad he did it -  can cross it of the proverbial "bucket list" - but doesn't plan to do it again! Says he prefers to keep his feet on the ground, meaning sticking to running. :) Olivia says she wants to race with him next time, so maybe we can find a family fun run... :)

We've Moved!

We have been in our new house for over three weeks now, and we absolutely love it. We're still in the process of unpacking (strangely enough, it takes longer with two little ones around!) but have whittled it down to just a few boxes by now. I had so many plans in my "decorating notebook" before we moved in, and am trying to take my time and do them gradually, so that A) I don't spend too much money at once, and B) so that it doesn't look cluttered or overdone. Slowly but surely we're working on them, however, and it makes me smile every time I see the real thing instead of just the drawing in my book. :)

We painted several walls before moving in - again, not too many because we've never had the opportunity to paint before and didn't want to overdo it. I did not want our house to be a different color in every room (been there, done that in a rental!) but rather to have a basic color scheme flow through the house. So...I chose the darkest shade of cream that the builder had as basic paint colors (it still looks very white) throughout the house. Then we painted our dining room a rusty orange:

I love the color (sorry about the glare from the windows). It took a lot of convincing to get Levi to be okay with orange...and he still says we need a big University of Texas Longhorn symbol to complete the look...but the color is perfect with our dark furniture and cabinets. Our dining room table looks really small in our larger dining room...a new one is next on the purchase list!

This is our family room, painted a nice brown (I think the color was called "Burnt Almonds"). We wall-mounted the TV ourselves, quite an accomplishment for two people who'd never even turned on the drill they'd had for 3 years...We also bought a new coffee table from IKEA with no corners for Caleb to run into as he learns to crawl and walk.

Another view of the family room. That hallway in the back goes to our room & the guest bathroom. And of course, you can see the stairs to the far left.

Our room! I told Levi I wanted to paint one wall as an accent, and let him choose between an aqua blue and a deep red. I think his choice was perfect! It looks very lovely with our new furniture and the iron wall decorations. We've never had new bedroom furniture (or two nightstands) before, so this is quite a treat! I am trying to decide if I want to carry the red into the bathroom and paint one of the walls there...

This is my "family" collage in the stairway. Words cannot express how much I LOVE it. The pictures are in old-fashioned style (remember this post here?), in black frames, hung gallery-style. I'll be able to switch out the pictures as the kids grow, too. Every time I walk by the stairway I smile. :)

Our office space in the bonus room. Yes, those are boxes in the corner of the picture. Yes, those are still there today. :P

The kids' playroom area in the opposite corner of the bonus room. Those shelves filled up fast! I still need to paint that blonde bookshelf white...but would like to get the rest of the house put together before tackling a new project. Olivia loves this space. We often find her up there, sitting on the floor with a pile of books next to her or playing quietly with a puzzle. She's such a good girl. :)

Speaking of Olivia...this is her room! While Di Massey (Nana) was visiting, she generously helped to paint the stripes on the wall (and by "helped" I mean that she did it while I held Caleb...) and Olivia absolutely loves them. She calls this her "Princess Room." She also has new bedroom furniture, in a pretty white that looks so good with her purple & pink walls.

On the opposite wall in her room are 3D fabric butterflies.

And some 3D fabric flowers with stems and grass painted on the wall (also Nana's handiwork). It really is a very cute room. :)

Caleb's room! I love how the decal stickers turned out...and so does he! I often catch him staring and smiling at the monkey on the wall. :) 

Our back porch. The kids and I bought Levi a grill for Father's Day! 

Finally, the view from our back porch. Lovely, yes? We may have a small backyard but at least there isn't anyone behind us!

So that's it for now...as I said, it's a work in progress. We still have artwork to put up on the walls in some places, the bonus room to finish (my craft nook), and the guest room to decorate. But all in all, it looks pretty great and we love to call it home!

So....who wants to come visit? :)

Christmas 2011

We had a great Christmas this year, and we hope you did as well!

Olivia was a lot of help decorating our house. She loved all the snowmen and pretty lights!

new baby doll - Olivia has named her "Nina." She feeds her all the time, and though she's not had a stitch of clothing on since Christmas morning, we think Nina is good practice for upcoming little brother! :)

A new bicycle for Christmas! She was very excited. It has a seat on the back for her baby (or kitty) and a basket in the front for her puppy!

She even has her name on her license plate! Stylin' girl.

So proud of her new bicycle.

Grandpa and Grandma (Tim & Kathy Lickliter) came to visit for Christmas, which was lovely. We took them to the Hula Hut for dinner. It's an Austin original restaurant right on the lake. If it had been warmer we would have eaten outside...next time! I think it's our new "go-to" spot to take visitors! Good food, good prices, good view!

Riding on the path. That baby seat in the back actually turns out to be a great hand-hold for Levi to help her slow down on the hills! Olivia is not a fan - she yells back at him, "Let go, Daddy! Let go so I can go fast!" 

...I'm thinking of investing in knee pads based on her love of speed. Maybe a whole-body pad. She hasn't fallen yet, so that's a plus. We've taken her on the paved path by the storm overflow creek in our neighborhood several times, and we're teaching her to "stay on the right!!" so she doesn't get run over by much faster cyclists...she still gets distracted by the scenery and turns her bike whereever she looks, but she's getting better!

New House!

Levi and I are excited to announce that we're buying our first house! It's something we have wanted to do for such a long time, but the circumstances were never right. Now, however, we are able to and are very excited about it!

We're buying a new construction home, so it will take about 6 months...our family is going to be very busy next spring, with a new baby AND a new house!

The really fun part is that we get to choose everything that goes into the house, from the faucets to the floors! I am meeting with the design company this week to get things started in that regard.

About a week ago we signed our contracts and picked our lot. I'm planning to chronicle the home building process in pictures (which I will later scrapbook, of course!), and we thought we share them with you all here, as well!

Our lot! The trees will stay behind the house, so we won't be looking directly into someone else's backyard, which was something we really liked about the development.

I also thought maybe you'd want to see our floorplan...they have several to choose from, but we liked this one the best. It's 2 stories, with 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. It also has a loft/game room/bonus space that will be nice.

First floor. Bedroom 4 could have been a study, which is why it's in yellow. It will be Baby J#2's room until he or she is old enough to have a room upstairs with Olivia! Then Bedroom 4 will become our guest room. Another change from this first floor plan shown is that they moved the Utility Room to where it says "Mud room" to give us a bigger dining room. It makes for a very nice open living/dining/kitchen area! We can't wait to host Thanksgiving and Christmas in our new house in years to come!

Second floor. Olivia will likely have Bedroom 2, since it has a walk in closet. :) Bedroom 3 will be our guest room until we move Baby J#2 upstairs. Also, we're planning on using the Game Room as a mixed space - maybe a couch & second tv watching area, office space, and small craft space. :)

One of the things we liked the most about the development we chose is the style of homes. They call it "Santa Barbara" style; we call it "Mediterranean." Our favorite home styles are Mediterranean and Plantation, but Plantation doesn't really go in Austin. :P Here is a sketch of the what the front of our house will look like:

And, so you can get a better idea of what it really looks like, here is an actual picture of the model home:

Lovely, yes?

As you can see, we're super excited (and so is Olivia, though she thinks the model is our new house, since we've been there so often!). I will post pictures as we go along!





Halloween!!

Happy Halloween!

This was really one of the first years that Olivia knew what Halloween actually was...she had a Fall Festival at preschool where she got to wear her costume, and went trick or treating through the neighborhood instead of at a random Trunk-or-Treat. :)

We made Halloween-themed sugar cookies, and also got to decorate pumpkins together - me with a knife, her with a paintbrush, and Daddy with a camera. :)

(see picture at the top to see our final pumpkin creation!)

She was very cute about the whole costume thing - she'd been saying for a long time that she wanted to be Belle for Halloween, which is exactly what she was last year...

(Olivia, Halloween 2010)

But when we got to the store and I held up several different princess costumes, she zeroed in on Rapunzel. Which isn't suprising, given the number of times we've watched Tangled in the past few months...

Levi even found her a long blonde wig, which she wore for just long enough to take pictures...

Raise your hand if you understand why she's holding a skillet! :) hee hee.

We told her that she could be the Rapunzel-after-she-got-her-hair-cut-off when she didn't wear the wig...I'm not sure she cared either way.

She was really good about going up to houses and knocking...but she wouldn't say Trick or Treat! She'd just stand there, smiling. She did say "thank you" at least. :)

I took her around one part of the block, and then Levi took her around the other part (we didn't want to leave our house unattended during Trick-or-Treating time). With Levi going to the door along with her, she would actually say Trick-or-Treat. I think she had a lot of fun! We did, too.