Thankful for Mimi

I didn't want to neglect posting about what a wonderful time Benjamin had when his Mimi came out to help us move.  She was so wonderful getting up with him, giving Matt and I date nights, giving Benjamin super fun bath times, and just generally being a huge help to us when life was a zoo.  Benjamin is blessed to have such an awesome grandmother (even if she does life in Minnesota!). ;)

 

Thank you, Mimi!

Thanksgiving

Another Thanksgiving has come and gone, but this Thanksgiving we were extra thankful.  For so many things.  Thankful for our ridiculously sweet son (wild as he may be), for the beautiful new house we are enjoying making a home, for family who is kind, thoughtful, and fun, for friends who are hysterical, generous, and always there... we have so much to be grateful for that I often feel silly ever feeling anything but happy.  In the face of so much goodness, I can only recognize that it is such an amazing (and undeserved) gift from God.  And we are blessed.

We started our Thanksgiving out with a little brunch stop at the Westras.  Time is always too fast with good friends!

 

 

 

And by mid-morning we were back at home getting ready to host my dad, Arlene, and Amber for our very first Thanksgiving dinner at the Larsons.  Amber came over early to help in the kitchen (which was a ZOO) while Matt was super dad and helped clean, take care of the beasts (i.e. Lincoln and Benjamin), and managed to get a few handy-man things done while sneaking in a beer with the neighbors.  Music was playing, laughter filled the air, and the smell of a tasty (and well-brined) turkey filled our home.  Ahhh.

Dinner turned out to be a success (the menu included pumpkin dip with apples and graham crackers, cheese and crackers, spinach artichoke dip, mulled spiked cider, cranberry punch, creamed corn, sweet potato casserole, garlic mashed potatoes, pumpkin bread, green bean casserole, corn bread and sausage stuffing, and a turkey that was a tad under-cooked... oops!  Dessert was homemade pumpkin cheesecake!).  You can bet we were full by day's end.  It was wonderful spending time with family and hosting them at our home.  Can't wait for many more fun holidays here!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Benjamin LOVES when dad plays music... Giant smiles when the guitars come out!

 

somebody needed the bark collar...

 

helping with the gravy that we forgot!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

  
And after my folks left, the Van Wylens and Westras came over for a little sing-along in the basement.  When I say I'm grateful for my friends, I really mean it.  Who else likes singing Disney songs, 90s/00s pop songs, and church tunes for hours on end?  We had a great time with them (and somehow Boaz and Benjamin snoozed through it all), and of course I only captured the two loudest singers forgetting the rest of the crew... Either way, we had a blast!  Already looking forward to next Thanksgiving!

Thankful for this guy

So thankful for a happy son who is wild (at heart) ;)  Look at him go!

Back to moving...

So, since the craze of the last few months is finally starting to die down a bit, I thought I'd try to post some pics from our big move (the entire 6ish miles it was across town).  We were so grateful to have friends help us load and unload the rental truck, equally grateful for my folks' giant "new" van that we were able to use for a LOT of things (without which we would have had to rent an even more ginormous truck... where did all this stuff come from?!!), grateful that my mom and stepdad were able to keep Lincoln a little longer so we didn't have to worry about him during all the madness, and especially grateful for Matt's mom for coming to help watch Benjamin and pack boxes with us.  Whew - it was an exhausting endeavor but I can't imagine what it would have been like without all that awesome generosity!

The weekend we packed up was crazy, but we were able to get a majority of the house packed up on Saturday (after Matt and I had a fabulous Baker date night on Friday visiting about five neighborhood establishments), we picked up the rental truck on Sunday morning, loaded it that afternoon, and cleaned the house that evening.  (Insert a lot of blood, sweat, and tears.)

So on Monday (10/29), after spending the night at my folks' place with Benjamin and Mimi, Matt and I drove down to Denver for our early closing on the Delaware house.  It was so sad to say goodbye to our first home, but our excitement about the second closing later in the day thankfully kept us from getting too emotional.  We enjoyed a nice breakfast and ran some errands after officially signing over the house and then headed straight to the new home closing.  Wham, bam, and there it was, we were holding the keys to our new house!

So, a bit of a picture timeline below -

Last walkable date night:

Final walkthrough with our fabulous agent (Carrie):

Packing up the Budget truck on Sunday:

Mimi keeping Benjamin occupied:

Cleaning up for the new owner:

Farewell Delaware Home!

&

Farewell Baker!

Closing! Our good friend Carrie was our agent and our awesome friend Eric hooked us up with his buddy who does mortgages and happened to get us a killer deal.  SO blessed to have these two.

Moving in after closing!

Phew, I'm tired from all this work!  Can't we just kick back and relax for a sec?? ;)

Unpacking, sleeping on the floor in the basement, painting Benjamin's room and our bedroom, and making messes...

Oh drat, we still have to get all the junk in the storage unit!

To be continued...