Time for Photos

During Andrew's week off, he picked up the camera and snapped some great shots of our sweet baby girl. I think it renewed his love for it, which hopefully means more and more awesome photos to come....in all his spare time of course ;)

She is growing so much it astounds me. She is now saying Da-da very clearly and actually recognizes Andrew as da-da. And she has a word for daisy which is hard to discern from da-da, but sounds something like daaa----zzzee. HAHA. Still holding out on ma-ma :( She loves playing patti-cake and will vigorously clap her hands whenever she hears the words. She is eating all kinds of regular food now....last night she enjoyed a grilled cheese from Zaxby's! The time change has thrown her for a loop...but a good one! She is sleeping later in the mornings which thrills me and still napping great throughout the day. Still holding strong at two teeth on the bottom. Crawling, pulling up on everything, and cruising all over the place. I doubt walking will be too far off, but I'm ok with sticking with crawling for now :) She'll be 10 months tomorrow...where has the time gone?

Our next move

Since last March, on Match Day, we have been eagerly awaiting the time where we would start making concrete plans to move to Birmingham for Andrew’s Radiology residency. This intern year of General Medicine has been HARD and one of the few things that kept us going was knowing that UAB had a spot waiting for us and this year would end and Birmingham would hold new beginnings.

We started looking at houses seriously at the end of 2009. We went for our first trip after Christmas and left disappointed, discovering that it was going to be much harder to find a house we loved and would fit in that was also in our price range. I have scoured internet listings almost daily and went back for trip #2 with Andrew’s mom in February. Again, we left really discouraged about our findings and hit the internet listings hard. Andrew had a week of vacation in early March and we knew this would be our best chance to find a house and get things settled with both of us involved. We contacted our Realtor and set up showings of near 40 houses. This time we had expanded our location radius and bumped up our price point a little....fortunately we started seeing some houses we could see ourselves living in. At the end of the first day, we had narrowed down our choices to two houses we loved and could see ourselves living in. After dinner and lots of “talking it over,” we decided on one in Hoover, AL based on it’s full brick construction, fantastic location with great schools/shopping, and proximity to Andrew’s work. We went back the next morning for the last look over, took lots of video and pictures, and wrote up an offer. We headed back to Thomaston to enjoy the rest of the week and prayed that it would all work out. Late Tuesday night, we sat in my living room playing phone tag with our Realtor, trying to negotiate a price. At midnight, we were emailing signed contracts and went to bed knowing we had a great house in a great location at a fair price. We couldn’t feel more blessed.

Here are a few pictures we took:

This is the view from the outside. The house sits up on a hill and covers three lots to make up a nice sized corner lot. The driveway starts on one street and curves up and around to exit on the side street.



Front entrance. We absolutely love the beautiful wooden door.



View of living room from front door with dining room at far side.



Living room with large window looking across the street.



Dining room connecting living room and kitchen.



Beautifully re-done kitchen. I would have never chosen the wall colors, but absolutely love them.



This is the den that is connected to the kitchen. I envision this being Peyton’s play area as well as our less formal living area.



Den, again, with beautiful sliding glass doors that look out onto the patio and backyard.



Hall bath that has been completely renovated. This bath has a tub/shower combo with new tiles.



Looking out of hall bath into guest room.



Guest room.



Master. A little smaller than we are used to, but the beautiful hardwoods make up for it :)



Master with master bath.



Master bath, completely renovated as well with new tiled shower.



Office. I didn’t get a great picture of this room, but this will be Peyton’s room after a new coat of paint. It is across from the Master at the end of the hallway.

Backyard.


Shed for all of Andrew’s yard things ;)



Back patio perfect for grilling

We are super excited and can’t wait to have keys in hand. Please pray for a easy closing (end of April/early May). Next task....a job for me and daycare for Peyton!