Sunday, December 31, 2017

Year in Review

I think 2017 may have been our hardest year yet but we pushed through and look forward to 2018.  The house was a huge deal and a lot of work.  Kevin did really well with his businesses this year but was extremely busy with that.  My work load took me all over the country and a lot of trips to Utah.  Most importantly, we had a wonderful year with our Molly Anne!  We can't get enough of our girl.  Here it is by month:

January - house construction began in full force and I met my new cousin/niece!

February - I got to ski in Park City and we celebrated Kevin's birthday!

March - Molly Anne and I went to Maryland and I got to see cousins in Idaho!

April - Molly Anne had her first haircut and she was baptized on Easter Sunday in the church I grew up in!

May - Kevin and I went to Chris Stapleton for our anniversary present and we had an awesome trip to Pawleys with family

June - we were back in Maryland soaking up those free flights under age 2 and Kevin and I went to Marco Island, Florida.

July - Molly Anne turned two and Mills had ACL surgery

August - we lived at the pool every weekend mostly all summer and Mills turned 5!

September - Kevin and I went to Amelia Island , Molly Anne began playing soccer and we saw Jack Johnson in concert later in the month.

October - ehh October just wasn't a good month in our little world so I'll leave this month out. 

November - Kevin and I had a fun weekend of festivities , Thanksgiving and we met 10 years ago

December - we moved after building a house all year and enjoyed Christmas in our new home!

We are REALLY looking forward to a fresh start in 2018!  I think 2017 about zapped us mentally and physically but we have officially built a house together while we both worked full time and had a little toddler running around!  

CHEERS to all of you!  Thank you all for reading along this year!    

Saturday, December 30, 2017

Christmas Round Three

On Wednesday, my brother and his family came to visit!


We had a little Christmas that evening with them!  We opened presents, the three girls went wild, we had a nice dinner and we hung out.


The boys broke in our outdoor fireplace which was fun.  We sat around that, drank red wine and ate 12 layer cake after the girls went to bed.  


Thursday (after I dealt with the movers again that morning) we took the girls to Sky Zone and they had the best time!




They all did flips into the foam pit.  Watching Sarah and Molly Anne's was hilarious.  Anna Kate had hers down pat!  



"Ridin' dat horsey" was a highlight!



They went back home Thursday afternoon and we had some Inizio for dinner.  Simple and tasty.  

Uptown Festivities

The day after Christmas we went uptown and took Molly Anne to see the gingerbread house at the Ritz and the bears at the Bank of America building.  We do this every year but we hadn't gotten to it yet.  Honestly, going the day after Christmas was so much fun and not many people were there!






She was easily the loudest child there by far!  She was just so excited and loved the bears.  She was singing and dancing along with them.



2015, 2016, 2017





Friday, December 29, 2017

Christmas Day

Christmas morning!  Molly Anne was up at normal time, about 6:45.  


Santa left her a blue clock which was all she wanted!


She was just so excited!






She loved her PBK Sleeping Bag and she lays in it every day on the sofa!  





The Jeep was a huge hit too but it's been sooooo cold this week to be outside with it!


That afternoon we had some visitors including Kevin's parents.  We take this picture every year too.  Molly Anne is a lucky little girl to have all four of her grandparents!


First Christmas in our new home!


My parents!


We had our traditional Christmas Day dinner - crab soup!  And Mom made this batch so it was extra good!


Christmas Eve

Saturday was Christmas Eve so we tried to make it seem like Christmas Eve for Molly Anne!  We were a little delayed on our Christmas traditions this year but we made them happen!  

My parents and I took her to Ballantyne Resort to look at the gingerbread houses and Christmas decorationgs!




I take this same picture of her every year!




We also hung our stockings and put up our 2' fake Christmas tree!  Ha!  I really wanted to do a real tree but in the end, it was a silly thing to do for one day.  And Molly Anne thought our little tree was magical there was that!  

Poor Mills, he was the one that took the move the hardest!  He was restless the first couple of days!  Finally started calming down.  


We had our first meal in our new home.  We grilled filet, had green beans and a baked potato.  




After dinner, we drove around looking for Rudolph's nose!  And we found it!  It was a flashing red light.  If you don't do this with your children, I highly recommend.  We did it growing up and Molly Anne loved it!




Mills supervised while we put together Christmas gifts!


The frozen jeep!




Santa came!




She has really enjoyed playing with her train set.  It's this one from Amazon!  I got it on Amazon for $50 on Prime Day in July.  It is usually $100.  


Next up, Christmas Day!

The Move

Well, we moved!  Sorry for the radio silence.  Last week Molly Anne had pneumonia and we moved and I was trying to work so yeah it was pretty much crazy.  But, we all survived and I'm SO glad we were in our house for Christmas.  We loved being here!   

We spent a lot of quality time at home on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday last week.  She was seen at the doctor every other day because they (and we!) didn't want to mess around with that!  Another little boy at Ms. Becky's had it the week prior so it wasn't a huge surprise but it was not ideal timing the week we moved.  ANYWAY.  




On Thursday she was good enough to go to Becky's and she was the only child there so Becky kept her low key and we had packers come pack our house.  Best money we've spent in a long time. I highly recommend.  Out of all our stuff, one little decorative ornament was broken and that was it.  Not to mention the time packing, we also didn't have to live in a sea of boxes for a month prior to moving.  JD Movers is who we used for packing and moving and they were WONDERFUL!


Needed to clean out the liquor cabinet.  We had no clue the amount of junk we had in there.  The movers won't take opened liquid so we ended up having to transport most of this.  


My parents drove down on Thursday and arrived to a packed house.  And we basically lived on Door Dash for meals for Thursday and Friday ha!




I couldn't have survived Friday without them.  Actually I couldn't have survived this whole move without them!  Having them as a second and third set of hands was amazing. 


Let the show begin!  The guys showed up on Friday at 9am!  They didn't finish until almost 9:30pm.  Actually we had to have them come back again yesterday to get more of the garage stuff.  Never a dull moment!  


Friday night in our new house!  


By Saturday afternoon, we didn't have any boxes left in the kitchen, Molly Anne's room or playroom.  We tried to get those areas finished first to keep some normalcy in her world.  Next up was our den area.  

We had some visitors on Saturday - Brad and Sarah came by and Regina, Jeff and Ava brought Molly Anne a bitty baby outfit for Christmas.  She was so tickled!

By Sunday most of the boxes were gone.  We maybe have 5-7 left in the house?




My next post is about Christmas Eve!  I'm going to try to fit in a bunch of posts this weekend prior to 2018!  I want to be sure I have everything documented and catch back up.  


Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!