Moving in!

(Can you tell how hard I'm laughing in the above picture?)

We officially moved into our house on Friday December 28th!  With the help of family and friends we ended up doing the entire move just by trailers (thank you Brad & Dad!!) instead of renting one from U-Haul or Budget like we did with our ATL to CLT move.  We were so grateful for everyone who came to help us move AGAIN, especially our family that drove from Raleigh!  We promise no more moves in the near future!

Here is our crew of strong movers: Brad, Ky, Nick, Cory and Marsh!

And the ladies inside who were helping me unpack each box that came in: Molly & Kerry!

Emery even had a playmate for the moving day, her cousin Caleb!

They had a blast together and we are already looking forward to them coming to visit again!  Goodbye kisses :)

Caleb would get so excited every time Kyle came in the room... too cute!

A picture to show the chaos of our house during the move.  The previous owners decided to take their fridge even though we technically owned it from the contract so luckily our realtor found us a white one from another one of her clients for FREE.  It will turn into our garage refrigerator whenever we get a new one!

We were so thankful that Nick, Mom and Dad stayed to help us over the next few days after we moved in.  One of the first things on our list was buying new hardware & locks for the exterior doors as none of the locks worked reliably and we got locked out too many times to count!  Thank you Dad for doing this for us as well as helping Kyle caulk the kitchen, and being the brains behind the installation of all the toilets and washer and dryer!
Kyle and Nick spent the days organizing the garage, building furniture, moving storage up to attic and installing a new oven.  We really appreciated Nick coming while he was on break from Dental school... loved having you around!

Mom and I spent a couple hours over at the rental house cleaning it so we were able to get our security deposit back!  She also majorly cleaned our new oven at the new house, unpacked a ton of boxes for us, and of course played with her BFF Emery :)

Thank y'all for all the help again with our move.  We are so happy to call this place home!

Still trying to get a picture of Kyle carrying both Emery and I in the house (without me ruining it from laughing so hard), but for now separate pics will do :)

Officially home owners again!

On December 19th, we closed on our new home!  We were so blessed that this short sale process went by so quickly and that we only had to stay in the rental for our original lease agreement of 3 months. We decided to get all of the floors in the entire house (except 2 bathrooms) redone before we moved in, hoping it would be less work that way.  So weeks leading up to closing we had scheduled hardwoods, tile and carpet to be installed right away. Since we only had about a week and a half to get them all done before we needed to move in, it was a little crazy but totally worth it.

As soon as closing was over we headed to the new house where we found the hardwood guys waiting in our driveway, ready for us to open it up for them to get busy!  (We waste no time around here folks!)

So the first step was to take out the carpet in the living and dining room and put in hardwoods!  Here is the before:

During the process:

Done!

Next was sanding the current hard woods so they could get refinished to match the new and then picking our stain color:
And all officially stained!  Can't even tell where the old ends and new begins! We also had the stairs refinished to match as well.

During that process we were also having the carpet installed!  We wanted to make sure Emery was playing on clean carpet, so we replaced it in the whole house.  This was the view our neighbors had... classy!

Padding being installed:

Glance at the new carpet upstairs:

We also had the kitchen and living room walls & ceiling repainted.  Here is the before of our kitchen walls... WOW.  In case you were wondering they left those lovely couches with cabinets & closets full of other things.... all of which we donated!

And here is the after of our kitchen... hello comfort gray!

And an after of our living room.  We LOVE this color (thank you Molly!) and how it changes between a blue/green/gray depending on what time of the day it is.

We also hired out the laundry room and 2 of our bathrooms upstairs to be tiled:

Done!

Then it was officially time to begin moving!  My dad let us borrow his trailer when we went home for our early Christmas, so we took many loads over to the new house ourselves before help arrived.  Thank heavens everything made it in one piece!  More on our moving process tomorrow!

Christmas in Boone!

Since we celebrated Christmas early with our families, we were able to celebrate on Christmas day with just our family of 3!  It was such a treat to not have to travel on Christmas day, and although we missed our families, we had the best time creating new memories with Emery. 

Here are a few traditions that we enjoyed starting/continuing to do this year!  Mailing out Christmas cards, decorating the outside of our home (even did rental this year!)...

and reading the Story of Christmas Advent Calendar Books every day!

Once we got to Boone, we spent the next 3 days creating new traditions of our own!  Starting with a fun hike through the snowy forest!

Lots of kisses to Santa!

Watching a "Elf Yourself" that we made for Emery with other family members pictures... Emery LOVED it and wanted to watch it over and over and over!

Making a gingerbread house with Daddy (and enjoying eating some of the candy while making it!)

Our finished product (thanks Home Depot for the free kit!)

Eating popcorn while watching Christmas movies!

Making cupcakes and singing Happy Birthday to Jesus!

Oh man, our daughter LOVES cake!

Opening new jammies the night before Christmas!

Santa PJs:

CHRISTMAS MORNING -- 2012!

We blew up red and green balloons all over, and Emery had a blast playing with them!

Bubby loved his bone from his stocking!

Making a home made snow globe (thanks Pinterest) and played with our floor nativity puzzle (thanks Uncle Nick!):

Baking a pizza snowman for lunch!

Wrote a letter to Junior (our sponsored child through Compassion) while Emery was napping!

And a park visit in the afternoon!

A wonderful, RELAXING, fun filled Christmas with our family of 3!