2018 A Year in Review~ Part 1 (January through April)

January

• Continue Preschool
• I get my first stitches after wiping out on a concrete curb
• Celebrate St Sebastian's feast day courtesy of uncle Bill and Lucy
• Lots of weekend hikes (Shenandoah River and Sky Meadows being the favorites)
• House in Signal Hill goes on market and Mom walks with me to check it out just for fun

Whyyyyy 

Crossing the creek to go look at a house that is for sale

 February

• All the sickness (hand foot and mouth, strep, pneumonia, flu)
• Start working on bathroom demo (no satisfying wall/vanity destruction, but lots of time intensive exceedingly painful wall paper removal) Also don't you feel inspired to paint your master bath deep dark RED?
• Lots of coffee, lots of kid snuggles
• Texas continues his puppy class
• Kateri turns 5 and has a zebra birthday party
• Consider building an addition on the current house, Pat starts getting quotes

He may be sick, but he's still in good spirits!

Off to the doctor

Wow. When I look back I really wish I would have done this sooner! Before pics

Typical dog class pics

March

• Continue fixing up house
• Quotes for addition are absolutely appalling 
• Decide buying a new home is best bet, start looking at houses
• Snow storm and a few days later, mudslide in the back (gotta love Virginia weather!)
• Kateri teaches herself to ride a bike

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  Before painting and adding edging, but an enormous improvement. Bead-board wallpaper is incredible. 

  
  

  

  You go girl!

Wall paper gone! holes spackled! Time to paint with my helpers

Laura helped me paint the basement and we were able to knock a significant portion out in 3 hours. Thank you LU! And mom for babysitting! And Pat for bringing food!

Pat and Mike replaced the light fixture in the kids room with this one, which I LOVE, and wanted to steal when we eventually moved.

I painted all around this side, but eventually opted out of painting the brown peanut butter wall on the left

Marie Kondo would have a heart attack

Epic photo bomb, couldn't resist including it! 

April

• Easter! We find out we are expecting Holy Saturday, glory be to God. Visit gravesites of Joseph and Mary to ask them to pray for the new pregnancy
• Put offers in on several houses, everything sells too quickly, no one is interested in a contingent offer, and we aren't interested in a bridge loan. We head into gridlock, until we finally give in and decide to sell the house before having a house to move in to (high stress, especially for Pat!)
• April 12~ put our house on the market 
• April 16~ house sells for over asking
• April 20~ Celebrate 6th anniversary at Chez Francois, Pat's mom notices a "coming soon" sign on a house on the same street as *both* our parents. Also, Sebastian breaks cabinet door, splitting wood from top to bottom. By the grace of God, the previous owners left the exact size replacement in the garage and we were able to replace it
• April 21~ We tour house on with coming soon sign, LOVE it
• April 22~ Put an offer in, and offer accepted
• April 27~ Inspection of new house
• April 28~ Farewell DJ party

Happy Easter!

Our garden, which I miss. The invasive mint, which I don't!

 

Split from top to bottom. The wood cracking and breaking was one of the worst sounds I have ever heard!

What a grace that the exact door we needed was in the garage, and Pat was able to put the handle on perfectly. 

Happy Anniversary!

New backyard :)

Final DJ party

A Little Twin Update

Ahhh it never gets old, seeing the word "twin" and the excitement that comes with it! I still can hardly believe twins are on their way. That is, until I look at how big and fast I am growing, and then I can rather quickly believe it! This pregnancy, I'm trying to take a few progress pics because I *love* seeing other peoples progress pics (even though I have always felt severely emotionally allergic to them in the past).

Are you ready for this? Because it is really crazy how fast twins grow! I can hardly believe it myself.

15 weeks, visiting an urban flower farm 

15 weeks 

18 weeks (SO MUCH CHANGE in just 3 weeks!)

21 Weeks . . . growing more

Now I am 23 Weeks and looking full term already! 

The twins are growing well, and the doctor commented yesterday that they are "very close together". Which did make me wonder how it could possibly be otherwise since there is so little space! He ended up ordering the glucose tolerance test yesterday (as well as a few other things) because of some recent symptoms (nothing to worry about). I am also starting on iron 3 times a day, which is very tricky to take because it is supposed to be on a pretty much empty stomach and I eat pretty much all the time. How can we make this work?!

Do you want to see the amazing twins nursery? 

Prepare yourself! 

To be entirely underwhelmed!

BUT at least we have the cribs set up and the dresser (perfect for boy/girl twins) from the previous home-owners. I am thinking about doing a Narnia theme for the nursery, and my mom suggested framing some black and white Narnia images, I love this idea! Any ideas or suggestions on that front? We also need to repair the walls and paint the room, so our work is cut out for us! (poor Pat!) 

Here is a quick shot from right before the little gender reveal party we had. 

Kateri was veryyyy hopeful to have at least 1 younger sister. Sebastian was absolutely certain that there was 1 boy and 1 girl, and would practically dissolve into tears when we told him there were 2 other possibilities. Thankfully for his emotional sake, he was right and we didn't have to deal with the fallout!

The one set of outfits I just couldn't resist buying.



Now that we know there is one boy and one girl, I am having such a hard time resisting buying baby clothes. It seems like such a long time ago that Chiara was a little baby.

And, last but not least, isn't it crazy that this cute little number is about to be a big sister to TWO?!