CABS ARE HEEYAH!

So....they accepted our offer!!!!

Can't believe the price. I know it's not proper ettiquete er whatever, but I have to share it. We got the house for $121k! We hit a little snag today with the VA loan requirements, which I recently learned have a minimum of $144k for subsequent homes...but we visited a great mortgage broker our realtor referred us to, and everything's already in the works with a different loan to close next month! Very grateful and excited.


  Kinda sad that John works so much next month, but it's definitely going to be worth it. I wish family was closer especially during the holidays. I hope you all will take advantage of the room we will soon have to host your visits--we miss you all.

And let's not forget about our Seago friends---we have an actual 'game room' to devote to HOGO game nights!

   After looking at flooring yesterday, we swung by Ikea, just to check out some furniture we might be interested in, but it pretty much turned into a playground for the babies, and a really yummy cheap meal lol. We bought another little extension kit to Lucas' train set---he was so into it last night and with the xmas lights and music, our little kids playing with their trains just completed the Christmas feeling in our living room :)

I don't usually let the dogs touch the babies' blankies, but the dogs have missed us after being boarded, and they also were taken to the groomers so they weren't as dirty :) I thought this was too cute!



Also, here are some pics of my new hair--I have been wanting to show you all, but was too lazy to do my makeup and take pictures til today :

What do you think? I was just very impressed when Shawna took me to get it done. The color is a teeny bit brassy, which is partially my fault because after getting home I used a home kit to try and lighten it a little more, but it turned the brown parts brassy..which I ended up liking because it softened the dark roots to make the contrast less stark. There were a few "cheetah" spots, where the creme didn't totally coat my hair, but overall, the girl did a great job in a short amount of time for a fraction of the cost I expected!

So much to be thankful for this year. We miss our families, but I am so proud of John, and fulfilled being a mom to my kids who are learning so much everyday. Olivia is talking so much and repeating everything we say, which in turn has encouraged Lucas to speak more and he's done very well with potty training too. Not gonna go into my "weight loss" or lack thereof, because that'd ruin this happy feeling lol. Yeah, happy!

here's a little video of Olivia playing at ikea---before I recorded, she was riding the pony saying "yeehaw! cowboy! giddy up!" and she got shy....but she sorta says it halfway through. She's so smart! Not even 2 yrs old yet!

The house...we are hoping to get.

Still haven't heard a response to our offer yet (i'm pretty impatient) but we went to the open house yesterday to get a second look at the house, take pictures and kinda check and see if lots of people were looking...turns out we were the only ones at that point! :)

  I get so ahead of myself and sucked into a ridiculous focus on things we need to do, or want to do, or have to do...any kind of plans we make, I am easily obsessed with details. Even in my blogs, you will notice, I am very long-winded. Can't help it. Which is funny because I am not much of a talker. Rarely call anyone on my phone but for quick conversation or specific questions. Guess that might be because I kinda wanted to be a writer after learning how to write an actual good essay and being encouraged by one of my favorite teachers Mrs. Perry at the prestigious Adirondack Community College when we lived in Saratoga NY. Now, if I could only write songs..

    Well, back to my point of getting ahead of myself, after looking at pictures of the house, I made little "blueprints" for what I would like the house to look like in my "Paint" program. I even matched some colors to Behr paint shades. And we live pretty close to an IKEA (which = awesome cool stuff that's cheap) so I picked out a few things we might get. We have some furniture, but not enough to fill a 2600 sq ft big ole Texan house.

  Here is a quick video of the area surrounding the house--I like driving through Humble/Atascocita:

And the house:

This pic is funny...I was looking at the window from the master bath...wanted to see how big the yard was on this side...it's shaped wierd almost wrapped around the house--pretty big lot. Have to get blinds for this window though..you can see right into the bath from the neighbors windows!

Lucas and Olivia had a blast running through the house--I think they liked it--and I am not as nervouse about these stairs because they can't fall very far...not like the VA house--one long steep narrow spill onto hard floor!

And here's what I sorta imagine the house will look like when we fix it up. We will gradually do more and fix up the yard (its a big back yard but lots of trees---it's sort of a hexagon shaped back yard, we hope to fence off a quarter of it for a dog run).  The only rooms I haven't "imagined" yet are the little room off the game room with the glass french doors---I think it'll be my "music room" lol, and then the downstairs half bath needs to be updated...all the other rooms I have animated:

 We looked at flooring today and decided on a dark laminate wood hard floors all throughout the downstairs, which includes the living rm, kitchen, nook, dining (which will be used as a study), master bed and bath, and downstairs half bath. Most the furniture we already have, if you recognize my drawings lol. The TV will go up above the fireplace. We might get some ikea shelves for either side of fireplace to hide all the TV cables etc.

 This is the front formal dining room--I have no use for a formal dining room right now, so we are making it an office/study. The black stuff on the wall was my lame attempt at this wall decal I wanna get:

 This is the master..not sold on all the lime green...trying to make the room look bigger...again my lame drawing on wall was supposed to be this:

 For the upstairs, which includes gameroom, 3 rooms, and full bath, we decided on a cream colored carpet. Not sure if I will paint the sloped ceiling since it's textured..what do you think? And the decal:

 The upstairs full bath..I don't like that it divided the toilet and tub from the sinks...makes it harder to clean and cramped when I have to bathe the babies..We will probably just unhinge that door. And after looking at it, there probably isn't enough head room for that shelf. We may or may not put the laminate wood in this bath too...not sure. (I put a lot of detail into these sinks huh? lol)

 The "guest" room. I like this room best because of the bay window with a seat. Also, I didn't initially realize how big the walkin closet is--even has a window! Again unsure about painting the sloped textured ceilings..i just feel like it makes the room seem smaller without paint on that part...any advice?

And the kids room...bright huh? Well, I wanted it to be fun for them to play in and inviting.If you ever shop at Ikea, you'll recognize some of the furniture haha. Oh and the decal is pretty cute:

John and I aren't sure about the colors yet, but we will have to look at some swatches. Man I thought I had a rough time painting that 1600 sq ft house in VA one color...can't imagine how hard it will be to paint this one...we have a while to do it, but John has to be home to watch the kids!

I never really decorated our home back in VA...and the experiments with the paints in NY didn't end well. But I think my ideas will work better in this home...hopefully I've developed some sort of style...I'm pretty plain. And cheap.

  Anyway, any advice on color schemes or painting or how to make rooms seem bigger, or distract from textured ceilings are welcomed...I'm not very experienced!

Thanksgiving

John worked of course, but the babies and I were invited to Tina's to celebrate Thanksgiving and it was delicious. I was grateful that I didn't have to cook all that food in my small kitchen, but I did make cranberry bread (that turned out a little too dry) and a lower fat pumpkin pie with graham cracker crust. Tina was cooking all morning and afternoon, and she made everything imaginable :) And it was so good, we took lots of leftovers!

   The kids ate a little but were too preoccupied with fighting over Noah's toys. I forgot to bring my camera, but I did get this picture of the leftovers she gave us--yum!:

 I kinda tend to forget/ ignore holiday celebrations when John works, especially since the babies are too young to really know. So it was nice to still feel like a normal American who stuffs themselves on holidays. John's work did cater t-day meals for them though, so don't feel too bad lol.  Since John is almost working every single day next month, we are celebrating Christmas on Christmas Eve morning so he can see the kids get their presents before going to work on Christmas. I haven't bought presents for Christmas for years...we bought each other stuff our first year of marriage 7 yrs ago, and were always going through some transition/ordeal in Decembers, so we kinda stopped. This year ironically, we are buying a house, but it's actually going to be saving money so I got to buy some toys for the kids...it's SO FUN! and even funner to wrap them! wish I could show you, but the babies might see the blog lol. This is why you have kids!!! The excitement of getting them to understand the Santa Claus concept is so fun--and Lucas is just about at the right age to get it. But when you think about the stockings and tree etc, it is a pretty wierd idea to explain to a toddler. But it helps that I threaten that Santa isn't bring him toys if he's mean to Olivia or whines all day. It works sometimes. Pretty soon we'll be going to the mall to see Santa---Lucas cried the first year, then smiled the second, Olivia screamed the first year, so let's hope she doesn't this time. But I've noticed she is scared of men at first, so I predict it will be another screaming photo...oh well, still cute.
  Here we are putting up decor:

Lucas was drawing "Christmas trees" :)

This is our little fake tree. Next year we'll have a big enough living room to get a real one...thats real big!

The babies loved the lights, and I connected them to some color ones in their room to softly light their room as they go to sleep---it was a great idea because since it connected to these, the babies don't have access to the plug!

Dollar store is great for holidays!

I was looking for a Christmas calendar to countdown the days, but couldn't find one, so I got my dollar store crafts to make one! I also got the cutest wrapping paper there, with the classic xmas movie characters. Here's my make-shift Xmas countdown board. I hope it will help the babies understand when Christmas is. We picked out these stockings at the dollar store too. :)

I think I am finally becoming a "woman"...I started accruing Xmas decor. I mean like little Christmas picture frames, ornaments and knick knacks. It's pretty fun. I hope to do up the house big next Xmas. I love this ornament cousin Ken & Linda bought us last year--personalized is so much better!

Here's the babies dancing to Christmas music--we're really getting into the spirit this year: