Yawn and stretch!

Cole is 7 weeks old today (September 19, 2015)!  Here he is, doing something he does several times each day... The yawn and stretch.

She loves her brother...

More tattoos!

So I thought Grace was taking a nap last week… Instead she had found a sharpie and was drawing on the walls, the sheets, the chest of drawers, and herself!

Cole at 6 weeks!

Sweet Granny's 84th birthday!

We had a wonderful time celebrating my Granny's 84th birthday last week! Our family met for dinner at Showmars which is one of Granny's favorite places to eat. We had a wonderful time meeting and fellowshiping and celebrating such a special woman in our lives!

What Isaac wants to learn in school this year...

First day of school 2015/2016!

Dad and his kids!

Birthday party fun!

Any recent birthday party for our little friend Julia, Grace and Elise played games and earned prizes. They had a blast and here they are showing one of their prizes...

A move in our future...

This past month has been a whirlwind for our family. As a little background... We put our house on the market on May 9, 2015. We did that because we had found a house we liked in the neighborhood my parents live in. Three weeks later, that house went under contract with someone else. We decided to keep our house on the market and continued looking for homes for sale. We found one in Mount Holly that was over 100 years old.  It was charming and big with a lot of land and a lot of character! We placed an offer on the house but it was not accepted. We were sad that those two houses had fallen through, but we knew that God had something better for us that we couldn't yet see.  We continued to look, and then had a mutual friend who shared that a house might be available in Coulwood. Since that was where we originally wanted to live, we went to view that house. We placed an offer on the house and had an inspection done. Unfortunately, the inspection came back with many fixes that needed to be done. We did not feel that we wanted to undertake the cost of the fixes and we knew that the seller would not.  The very next day after we terminated our contract on that house, my parents were approached by their neighbors who are also friends of theirs. These folks asked my parents if we might would be interested in purchasing their home. They were looking to move to California and were planning to list their house for sale. We went to look at the house and loved it! A couple days later we took our real estate agent and decided to make an offer on the house. It was accepted and we went under contract on July 27, 2015.  The sellers knew that we had to not only have a baby in the near future but we also needed to sell our house, so we originally set a close date for mid November 2015 to ensure that we would have plenty of time to sell our home. Just a few days later, we had our precious baby Cole unexpectedly early on August 1. After he was born we had several showing requests on our current home. On Saturday, August 8, 2015 Steven and I both felt that we would receive an offer on our house that day. At 7:45 in the evening, our real estate agent received an offer from the folks who had come to view the house the night before. It was quite a low offer but after some negotiation, we were able to come to an agreement with the buyer. As it turns out the buyer used to live in our neighborhood and went through a divorce. She is starting over on her own and wanted to come back to this neighborhood because she loved it so much. In fact her last home was the same floor plan that our home is.  The folks who are selling us our new house are moving to California so they are not taking much of their furniture. They have been so kind and generous to offer some of that to us. Because we have been blessed to have furniture left for us in our new house, we will be able to leave some furniture for the buyer of our current house.  We know that all of this is God's working things out for the good of all of those involved in this process! We are so thankful for the fact that our house did not sell any earlier and that we did not purchase the other three houses we were interested in. This house is a far better fit for our family than any of the others would have been.

We plan to close on both homes on Monday, September 28 if there are no delays. We are in the midst of packing everything up now and boxing up the house that has been our home for the past 10 years. We are so thankful to have lived here for 10 years and had our four children here in this home. We do feel that it is time to move, though, and we are excited about what the future holds! 

In our new home, we will be on the same street as my sister and her husband, we will be around the corner from my parents, and we will be within walking distance of my grandparents and my aunt. We are excited to be so close to so much of our family and looking forward to the adventures that will bring!

Cole is one month old!

*this post is a little late in publishing. Enjoy!

Today marks baby Cole's one month birthday! Because he arrived about 3 1/2 weeks early, it is almost as though we have a one week old baby now… But that is amazing because we have had more time to spend with him as a tiny baby! For the first two weeks of his life, he was not able to nurse well so we had a feeding regimen which included nursing practice, syringe feeding, and then pumping breastmilk (me!) We did all of this every 2 to 3 hours around-the-clock. During his third week of life, he began nursing better and then last week we were able to transition away from this regimen to just exclusively nursing.

For his first 2 1/2 to 3 weeks of life Cole slept most of the time when he was not eating. We had to wake him to feed. I guess it was like he was still in the womb. However, this past week he has had more wakefulness than ever and we are seeing his eyes open quite a bit!  He is so serious when he looks around and studies everything in his sight!

He is so sweet and cuddly!