National Night Out

One of the things we have loved the most about our new house is the neighborhood, and all of our wonderful neighbors.  There is such a great sense of community here...something that Cameron and I haven't really experienced yet in our first four years of marriage.  We have a map of the neighborhood that shows us where everyone lives, along with a list of names.  We have a monthly "Girl's Night Out" and "Guy's Night Out."  It seems that everyone just seems to really value getting to know each other.

Luckily, we moved into the neighborhood just in time for National Night Out.  This is a national (duh) event, that is supposed to raise crime and drug prevention awareness.  Basically, your neighborhood can plan to get together, and ours did just that with a block party of sorts.  Everyone brought their own meat to grill, and a side or a dessert to share with the group.  There were some games planned, and a fire truck making the rounds to all the neighborhood parties came by to let kids look in the truck and hand out necklaces.

The best part, in my opinion, was just getting to really meet a bunch of our new neighbors, many of whom have kids the same age as ours.  I love that my kids will get to grow up around so many other kids. 

Miley was having so much fun running around, and playing with all the toys that people brought out.  She also had fun with the water balloon toss game, although I don't think she quite understood the purpose of it, and just wanted to hoard the pink and purple water balloons...

Landon chilled in his stroller most of the night, making the rounds meeting what is sure to be an entertaining / rambunctious group of boys...there are 5 baby boys in the neigborhood, all born within about 5 months of each other!  It must have worn him out, because he fell asleep shortly after, and we had to make our way home.

We are so grateful to feel so welcomed into our new neighborhood, and we look forward to more fun events like this.  Our only problem now, is figuring out how to get Miley to bed before nine, now that she wants to be out playing with all of her friends all the time!

Landon's First Swim!

One of the many perks of Cameron working for General Mills, is that he gets half-day Fridays in the summer.  I have been pretty spoiled with this, because he will usually work from home in the mornings, so it is like we get him for the whole day. 

Well, Cameron just recently switched jobs within General Mills, and has been really busy tying up loose ends at his old position, while trying to learn his new position.  Therefore, he has been going in on Friday mornings much more frequently now.  As any SAHM can attest, Fridays are when you start the countdown to having another adult around for a couple of days...am I right?  :)

Lucky for us, on one such Friday morning, a wonderful woman from church, Shawnee, invited us over to go swimming at her pool.  We jumped on it!  It was the perfect way to kill a Friday morning, and it is so much easier to take Miley and Landon when we are just going to someone's backyard. 

Miley had lots of fun...the pool was the perfect temperature, and they had some princess toys that she was in heaven playing with.  She was a little scared though, which is something that is happening more and more often the older she gets.  She was like a little monkey clinging to me the whole time.  Maybe it is time to get her in some swimming lessons?

Apparently my girl is eating a PB & J everytime we go swimming?  :)

Landon spent the time hanging out in his car seat.  I don't have a swim suit for him, and he is so laid back that he was happy and content just hanging out and staying in the shade.  Towards the end though, Shawnee suggested that I get him in since he had never done it before.  We started with dipping his toes...

...but that soon turned into him getting in in his diaper.  He was a little surprised at first, I think, but the water was so warm that it didn't take him long to just settle in and enjoy it. 

Looks like I may have to try the swimming thing with him again soon, and see if we have a little water baby on our hands!

Moving and Our First Visitors!

Well, now that we have been in the house for, well, over a month, I figured it was time to recap moving into our house!

On July 11th, we got to close on our house (99 days after they staked the lot...way to keep it under 100!).  Closing, and moving went great!  We were so lucky to have some friends volunteer to watch Miley all day, and tons of guys from church show up to help us move a lot of big stuff (we're talking about 10 guys here!).  I was thrilled to be finally ditching the apartment, and moving into our very own, first house.  To top it all off, my parents decided last minute to come out for a couple of days to help us unpack, and help with some various other things that we needed to do around the house (and I think they wanted to be our very first houseguests!). 

We spent most of the night trying to unpack stuff - till about 12:30 am - but then went to bed because Cameron had be back at work the next day since it was a Tuesday.  This made EXTRA happy that my parents were coming, so that I could have some motivation to unpack and get stuff put away.  It's always more fun when someone is doing it with you, right?  :)

Mom and dad got here at about 11:30 on Tuesday, and they jumped right in helping us unpack, sweeping dust and dirt out of our basement, etc.  They were so great...I definitely wasn't expecting them to jump right into it, especially after driving about 15 hours to get here, but they did.  They kept going for the 2 and a half days they were here, too.  Just to give you an idea of everywhere we went while they were here (keep in mind, this was all in two and a half days, and with a three-year-old, and a five-month-old to work around with naps and such...) here is a little list...

• Target
• Taco Bell
• Noodles and Company
• Wal-Mart
• Ikea
• Eddington's
• Gap
• Gymboree
• Pottery Barn
• Bath and Body Works
• Bed Bath and Beyond
• Lowe's
• Sam's Club
• And they watched my kids while I had a dentist appointment, that I had forgotten about.  :)

On top of all that running around, we managed to get curtains hung, a shelf put up in the laundry room, stuff moved around in the garage and basement, and then all the nitty gritty unpacking.  I seriously don't know what I would have done without my parents here!  Unfortunately, we were SO busy that I only took TWO picture!  I am bummed!

The two and a half days went way too fast, but they had to get back to Wyoming to get ready for my sister's family, who was coming from Arizona.  We are glad that they took the time to come up here, even though it was so quick, and we would have loved to have them longer!  Now we are just working on them to come up here for Thanksgiving...  ;)

The next few weeks were crazy, as Cameron started doing our landscaping...more on that and pictures to come later!   

The Harkers In Minnesota

At the beginning of this month, July 2-7, we got to have Cameron's sister, Cheryl, and three of her kids, Katie, Brooke, and Taylor, come visit.  They were dying to meet little Landon, and so they made the trip out here to do just that, and of course, see the rest of us while they were at it!  ;)

We were so bummed, because they missed us being in our house by just a few days.  It would have been so nice to have them here when we were in the house so that we could have some more space, plus it is just fun to be in the new house, right?  They were great sports, though, about crashing with us in our apartment, and they were SO easy to have, that you couldn't even tell that we had 4 extra people in our apartment!

While they were here, they got TONS of snuggle time with Landon, and Miley was completely entertained.  I think I was the most spoiled while they were here, because I had so much help with the kids!  Miley was in heaven with all of her older cousins around, and loved being the center of attention with Landon.

We managed to squeeze in a few fun things while they were here...on the 4th of July we were able to take in a Twins game against Tampa Bay...

We did lots of swimming (at the apartment, and at the community center).

We took some walks and went to a park to play.

The girls also managed to do some shopping, and Cameron got to hit some baseballs around with Taylor.

We stayed up LATE every night eating Oreos (a favorite of theirs, since they claim that the American ones are WAY better than the Canadian ones) and playing Rage.

As always, it was not enough time with them, and we are still missing them every day!  We loved having them, and now are just trying to think of reasons why they need to come back.  They must come stay at the new house, no?  :)

Thanks Harkers for taking the time out of your BUSY summer schedule to come see us! 

I Know, I Know...

...I seriously need to update on, like, the WHOLE month of July!

It's been a fun one.

We have had lots of visitors, moved into our house, and are settling in.

I am going to get around to it soon, but for now there is still a little bit of unpacking to do, landscaping to be completed, a neighborhood to explore, a driveway to be colored on with chalk, and dance parties to be had in all of our new space...

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

You understand, right?  :)

House - Day 89

We had our pre-walk through at the house today, to see if there were any issues that needed to be addressed before our final walk through.  We were mostly excited to just be able to see things looking really done, now that the carpet is in.  There were some workers there, touching up paint, and doing our sidewalk from the driveway to our front porch, so stuff was getting done. 

Don't mind all the dust and dirt in all the pictures...as you can imagine, there still needs to be some major cleaning done!

We are so, so close!  10 more days!

Don't worry...our columns are going to be painted.  :)