Tidbits

We have been enjoying life over here.  Our days are busy, and we are definitely all exhausted by the evening.  Throwing in this time change has been good in same ways (hello, brightness at 8:00!) but it's been a little hard to get used to the waking up and bed times being different.  Hopefully we'll get there soon (I'm mainly speaking to myself... I rolled out of bed at 7:45 this morning!  It is a blessing we live 2 minutes from school.)

Here are some of the fun things we've been doing:

Botanical Gardens:

There is a great park not too far from our house that has botanical gardens, a lake, bridges, swings, and a nice walking trail.  I went there to run last week, and took Parker back this week.  There was no playground, but Parker and I had a good time running from the "monsters".

Crafty stuff:

Remember shrinky dinks?  I found them on sale at Publix, and couldn't resist!

Painting a 3D praying mantis we built.

Random fun:

Totally free Zaxby's dinner!  Woot.

BINGO night at school

Lunch with my sweetie!

Lunch with my other sweetie!

Oh boy... he snuck into my nail polish drawer.

Is it me, or does Taylor look so grown up here??

Stone Mountain, part 2!

The weather has been unbelievable lately!  I am so thankful the groundhog didn't see his shadow.  My friend Ashley and her two boys met me and Parker at Stone Mountain last week to play.  The kids had a great time together, being boys.  They ran in the grass and mud, went in the woods, climbed on big rocks, found good sticks, dug in the dirt, etc.  It was a fun time!

Spring soccer has begun

Both girls started up with soccer again a few weeks ago.  They're both on new teams with new coaches.  They had their first games this past weekend!

Taylor is still the tallest and most go-get-'em player on her team.  She scored 3 goals on Saturday (I think!).  (and luckily, no tackling has occurred... yet. ;)

First practice.

Sydney's team is good- her last coach was super nice, laid back- a great way to start Sydney with soccer.  Her coach now is nice, but a little bit more intense.  Not in a bad way, but she's pretty to-the-point and very knowledgeable about how to teach little girls how to play.  They played one of Sydney's best buddies' team on Saturday, and got beat something like 7-1.  They looked pretty good, though- definitely stronger than last season!

Sydney almost scored!

The enemies, making faces from the benches.

No school!

The girls had this past Monday off for a teacher work day.  It was supposed to rain (which it really never did) so I ended up taking them to a nearby mall.  This mall is kind of random- not a typical mall.  It goes in a full circle and has both stores inside and ones you can access from the outside.  There are a ton... a TON!... of indoor fun activities.  To name a few- bouncy houses, trampoline park, those bouncy things where you're harnessed in and fly up really high, black light putt putt, airsoft gun range, Lego store where you can build legos, a bunch of little ride-on toys, Bass Pro Shop, which has a rock climbing wall, an aquarium, etc.  The list goes on!  We spent 3 hours there and the kids were SO GOOD.  I hardly heard any whining, it was amazing.  Here are some pics from our fun:

Sydney and our friend Landon helped the worker build this plane last time we were here!  See below-

 Back to this visit:

Jumpy houses!  They had the whole place to themselves.

Add on soccer practice for both girls this evening and I had three tired kiddos!  What a fun day, though.

11 years!

Stephen and I celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary on Saturday, the 5th!  It's really hard to believe we've been married that long.  I guess in some ways, it seems long, and in other ways, it has flown by.  Maybe I'm secretly wondering how I am old enough to have been married that long?! ;)

Anyways, we had a great day... that morning was the race, and that afternoon, we headed to my sister's house!  They watched the kiddos while Stephen and I had a date night.  We went to dinner, walked around the cute downtown square where they live, and went to a little coffee shop to get some dessert.  We spent the night at their house that night.  The kiddos had so much fun, as did we!

Here are some of the pictures that were texted to me while we were out:

Apparently, there is some app that applies make up to your picture.  Hmmm...

Looks a bit too real (and too much!) for me.

Oh lawd.

Kerrigan and Taylor!

Beyond blessed to be married to my best friend!

New roof!

We had a new roof installed this week!

Backing up... when our house was built, the shingles the builder used were discontinued within the past few years.  Apparently, some people were then having damage done to their shingles, and since the shingles were discontinued, they had to replace their whole roof (instead of just the broken shingles).  A lawsuit was filed, the shingle company lost, yada yada.  Fast forward to a couple weeks ago... a roofer contacted us about having these shingles- I was a little sketched out, but he knew our builder used them on all his houses- and he and Stephen went to look at our roof together.  It turns out, we had damage.  It explained this mysterious long, skinny brown mark on the ceiling in Taylor's room... water was coming in under the damaged shingles above her room and were causing a slow leak.

We contacted our insurance company, they sent someone out, and bam!  They agreed to cover it.  In full.  We weren't out anything.  2 days later, a crew is on top of our house, hammering away for 14 hours, and... we had a new roof!  Suh-weet!

During:

After:

Plus, they repainted Taylor's ceiling (no drywall damage had occurred, so it just needed new paint.)  It looks brand new!