Lily is here!

So, now that life has settled down a bit, I will finally get to writing again.  (YAY!)  Where to start?

The move went great; better than expected, all things considered. We were very much settled in by the time miss Lily arrived (more on that in a minute).  We still have a few boxes left to unpack, but it's random junk that should probably be thrown out/donated anyways.  When my house is put back together, I will post some pictures to show you how it's coming along.  I've been painting.  Yes, painting with a 6 week old, I am insane.  What I thought were mildly yellow walls turned to a buttery nightmare when we moved all of our dark wood furniture in.  Sitting and staring at the walls for hours on end feeding Lily was getting to me, so I went and bought 2 shades of lovely greige (beige/grey) paint and got to work... so much better.  You can check it on Instagram.

Now to the important part: Lily!  She arrived on 12-20-2012 at 5:24 in the afternoon after 10 hours of labor and 4 horridly long hours of pushing.  Yes, pushing for 4 hours, like a boss.  She weighed 8 pounds 4.5 ounces and was 21.5 inches long.  Tall, skinny girl.  Everything went well and everyone was perfectly healthy.  I cried, a lot, when I heard her crying.  Seeing my baby girl has been a long time coming.  Also, I was so relieved to not be pushing anymore, I was completely exhausted and only managed to keep going because I really really did not want a c-section.  Will power is a beautiful thing. 

The past 6 weeks have been amazing!  Lily Grace is a little spit fire already.  You can't see it in this picture, but she has a natural mohawk (so darn cute!) and it goes quite well with her feisty personality.  She is stubborn and hot tempered - teen years, be good to me - and the sweetest little snuggler.  She will smile at us and coo sweetly for hours, until she's not happy... then  you better put in the ear plugs, because Lily is going to give you a piece of her mind.  Despite her temper, she's very easy to calm down again, and before you know it she's back to smiling at you.  She's most definitely not a morning girl.  She grunts and stretches and pouts and grunts some more until she's had breakfast, then she's as happy as a clam.  It's adorable.  She's going to be dependent on coffee when she grows up, I can already tell :)

Lily loves music.  Her favorite is Bob Marley.  It's hard not to be in a good mood with Marley singing to you.  She also loves anything with a ukulele.  I think she remembers the sound from when I'd play mine before I got too pregnant to hold it.  Her grandpa plays too, and she really seemed to enjoy that.  We're going back to Hawaii when she's about 5; I can't wait to see if she's a beach girl since she loves the music of the beach. 

I am so crazy about this girl!  It's been a blast watching her grow and develop her own personality.  I can't wait to see who she becomes over the next few years. 

Yesterday, I delivered my parents to the airport for 18 days in Scotland with my baby sister who is now 3 days past her due date with her first baby.  I'm a little jealous and missing them all. 

Daniel and I took the tour of the hospital yesterday to get oriented before Lily decides to make her appearance.  I want her to be here, but not too early.  I'm just so ready to kiss her sweet cheeks.  I guess I have to preregister with the hospital, think about what in the world to pack in my bag, figure out what we'll owe the hospital, and write down my wishes for the birth.  I feel like I've done nothing to prepare for her.  4 more weeks, and I can at least prep her room.  Oh, and I need to find a pediatrician.... too much to do.

I guess a good place to start would be with creating a notebook to safely house all of our baby pamphlets and documents in the midst of transitional madness.  I probably ought to start one of those for house documents as well.   Time to get organized! 

A Blank Slate

To mark the new chapter in our lives, I've renamed/redecorated the blog.  Some of my passions include marriage, motherhood, simple living, and creating beauty.  Writing is also a favorite passtime (I am the queen of lists), it helps me process things, so what better way to share my passions than to write about them?

I'm so excited to create a few posts about moving into our new home and the transformations that follow soon thereafter.  I've been collecting ideas to organize our new home.  If you've been reading along you'll know that we are moving from our first home to a nearly identical floor plan in just 5 weeks.  There's hardly any cosmetic work to do to the house.  My sweet friend and the previous owner has good taste (not unlike mine).  It is time for us to start buying grown-up furniture and really settling into a permanent home though.  We have a small museum of hand me downs (blessed but wanting change).  So, stick around to see what we come up with!

I'm also excited to share how insane I am likely to become on this wild ride called motherhood.  So, far I'm hanging in there; I hear it gets a little harder once the baby is born though.  I had my first shower on Sunday.  I'll have to get a picture of the loot posted for you.  The girl is spoiled already :)

You can pretend that adorable cup of coffee in the background is for you :) Hang around and get to know us!

Nesting Phase, Stay Away for Now.

It's coming, I can feel it.  I have this compulsive need to organize everything!  Problem?  All of my things are in a storage unit and the only thing I have to organize is some one else's stuff.  I don't think my parents would mind if I cleaned things up for them, but I only want to set up my home and cannot.  Not for 45 more days.  Ugh!  The nesting phase needs to hold off or stick around until it's actually going to be beneficial.  In the mean time, I will use my high amounts of motivation to bless my parents by keeping things clean for them. 

I was dreading living with my parents during pregnancy.  I can't run around in only my t-shirt and underwear for one thing.  Today, I reminded myself that I need to be looking for the silver lining so here it is.  I'm huge and wear out really quickly, but I have my mommy to take care of me.  Together we are keeping one home as a team rather than me struggling to do it all on my own.  I get to enjoy the beauty of fall in my childhood home with the trees, the chickens, and that wonderful deck to sit and enjoy the mornings.  The woods restore my soul like very little else can; these next 6 weeks are going to be wonderful for making me release some worries about what our future holds.  Silver linings are good: I should look for them more often. 

Home

We're closing on our house today.  I'm not as sad as I thought I would be.  It's funny how you take the things and the people out of the 4 walls you loved and those 4 walls are just walls.  We moved out everything on Saturday, and went back Sunday to clean it... it didn't even smell like us anymore.  Our cute little house was an empty husk, and home was the man loading boxes into a trailer.  I guess "home" never really was the 4 walls, it is the person that shared those 4 walls with me.  

Oh, in all the insanity of the past week I forgot to mention that I am officially in my third trimester!  Oh yeah! 

It's official, we are well on our way to buying our second home.  Well, third if you count our apartment, I was just talking about houses with mortgages attached to them.

My current house is in a sad state of barrenness.  It's pretty much just furniture sitting around.  Even my dishes are packed.  I can't wait to start unpacking and getting rid of a LOT of things; it feels like a clean slate even if it is the same floor plan. 

Lots of Answered Prayers

Allow me to sum up the story of our moving adventures.  In May, we began toying with the idea of moving to save a bookoodle of gas money.  In June, we learn that I am pregnant.  In July, we put our house on the market.  14 viewings and several flopped offers later, we have a winner and a closing date.  Oh, and no idea where we will be living... with a baby well on her way. We would be living with my parents in the interim, but I was not keen on the idea of bringing my newborn home to a house that wasn't mine, even the home of my beloved parents. 

We've looked at many houses, all but one that we loved had contracts on them.  The rest just weren't right.  It has been disheartening and discouraging, but still we searched. 

Fast forward to Friday, September 14.  We have found an incredible home in a great neighborhood. It's sprawling and it's cheap.  We put in a superb offer, and found out that we got outbid on Monday.  I was crushed.  So we prayed, again.  We took a day off from house hunting. 

Tuesday night, the 18th, our beloved associate pastor calls, asking if we'd be interested in purchasing his home.  Just one day after losing the house we thought was perfect for us.  Now, let me clarify something.  We adore our current home.  We love the layout and the size is just right.  I had put a post on Facebook in my frustration that I wished we could just pick up our home and move it to [specific neighborhood].  The pastor and his wife live in the SAME floor plan as us.  It is actually flip flopped with a coveted hall closet, but otherwise, it's exactly the same, just backwards.

So, we agreed that we were interested; when it looks like God has his hand on it, you better believe we're at least going to check into it.   So, Saturday morning, we went to see the house.  First, the neighborhood is fantastic.  Then we walk into the kitchen, and it's painted the same color green as our kitchen, the green we love so much.  Everything is done in our taste.  There's practically nothing to do to this house.  Then, we walk into the room that will be Lily's.  It's painted the exact shade of pale green that I had made up my mind to paint it.  That sealed the deal.  It was a huge neon sign from God saying, this is the house I have prepared for you.  This precious couple had done things to their home we had dreamed about doing to ours, but never did, because we knew we wouldn't be there long. 

We agreed we wanted the home, we agreed on a price, then we sat and talked and prayed together.  To hear their side of the story about how God has so obviously been working in this situation floored me. I could see perfectly how God has been working behind the scenes of the craziness of the last 4 months to prepare this home for our family, and to prepare their family for something new.  So, God comes through in incredible ways yet again, and we will move in 5 weeks before Lily's due date.  More than enough time to get her room perfect.