the first few weeks in our new home...

on august 16th, we closed on a new home for our family! we were SUPER excited to finally begin to feel settled after 10 months of being in joplin. the cool thing was we bought our house from lane's cousin, logan and his wife, aanna, who just happen to be some of our dearest friends. i know it was bittersweet for them , but we are up to the challenge to love this house as much as they did. aanna wrote some kind words on the matter in this post from her blog.

this is our home. it's a wonderful house with great bones. it's on the edge of the "tornado zone" and was rebuilt from the studs up last year. most everything is new and it has many great features, such as hardwoods and granite, that make it stunning in itself! one of our favorite things is the natural light. this was what we loved most about our tulsa house. in the morning, french doors that faces east let light flood the living room and in the evening, the front room which faces west is filled with the warm sun. it's about 450 square feet larger than our last home, but feels like so much more than that. i'm so thankful for all the extra space. large closets rock! it has 3 bedrooms and 2 LARGE living rooms (one we are using as a playroom) and fits us perfectly. we are so thankful for this blessing :)

on the friday that we closed, we literally switched places with logan and aanna. they would bring a load of their stuff over and we would then load up our stuff to take to the new house. we made several trips back and forth :) the majority of our things were in storage in muskogee so lane's parents graciously loaded up our crap on a uhaul  and drove it to us saturday morning. we were amazed, though, at how much stuff of ours had ended up at nana's over the 10 months. 

on our last evening at nana's, i was really feeling nostalgic. i felt SO grateful to nana for her being so willing to share her space with our crew for 10 months! i started thinking about all of the sweet memories we made there. knox practically grew up there. he lived there longer than at our house in tulsa. i loved looking outside that evening at these 2 precious brothers who were belly laughing with each other. i LOVE, LOVE nana's backyard! we spent so many hours out there and i'm thankful for all of our pictures of good times spent there. we also were blessed with AMAZING moving weather! low 80's, no humidity, no complaints. we had a big sleepover with logan and aanna at nana's that night. they gifted us with a bottle of wine and gave the kindest toasts!

after a full day of moving and super sweet friends that gave up their saturday morning to help us, we got to work. my mom and chloe ended up coming up that afternoon and we decided we were going to get the bedrooms functioning. in only a few short hours, we had all 3 bedrooms completed. that made the craziness of the rest of the house a bit dimmer. i HATE unpacking! i also hate staring at boxes, but i'm the type that doesn't know where to start and end up just feeling overwhelmed so nothing gets done. 

when we woke up on sunday morning, i could not find my coffee and filters anywhere. i remebered packing them the morning before, but since i couldn't locate them and we were running low on groceries, we ended up at cracker barrel for breaksfast before church. darn the luck :) (side story: i later found them where i put them the day before "so i wouldn't lose them." sometimes i'm so organized that i can't function!)

lane's project that he worked on for a solid 24 hours starting saturday evening was getting the tv hung above the fireplace. it took him FOREVER to drill into the brick with his apparently weak drill! there was brick dust on everything! meanwhile, i slowly unpacked boxes. i ran everything through the dishwasher since it had been sitting for almost a year. it was like christmas morning with a lot of the boxes. seeing stuff that we had forgotten we even had!

by tuesday, we were for the most part unpacked and the house was CLEAN. it felt wonderful! the boys loved seeing toys that they hadn't seen in a year again. the train table was definitely the most missed!

another perk to our great location is living just 2 streets over from our good friends! they moved in a week before us. we've already walked back and forth a couple of times. love seeing them on an almost daily basis!

apparently 2 days of a normal, clean house was just too much. on thursday of that first week, we decided to take on "project living room". painting walls and the ceiling turned into swapping out light switches/outlets into changing out the baseboards and adding crown molding to building an actual built-in! lane kind of reminded me of tim taylor :)

canon was lane's shadow for days. he wanted to help as much as lane would allow him to. and when lane was at work, he would work solo!

on saturday (one week in), our friend, austin, was coming over to help lane build the base of the built-ins. his wife and kids were going to hang out with us while the boys worked. it was clear though that they were wanting us to find entertainment elsewhere. good news is that they have a pool at their house so we had a mommy/kiddo swim party! i guarantee you we had more fun than the daddies ;) (notice the paint in canon's hair...)

sweet buddies, knox and jax! aren't they sweet?!

another form of mommy-keeping-the-kids-out-of-the-way-while-daddy-uses-power-tools! the boys are on a huge narnia kick. lane decided in early spring that at the end of his busy summers, he wants to give the boys a gift that requires him to spend significant time with them. this year, he gave them the "chronicles of narnia" series. they ready a little bit every night. hence, this movie kick! and every battle scene calls for them to have their own armor for a reinactment. i HEART being a boy mom!

this smile is equally sweet and ornery!

we made A LOT of trips to lowe's over 6 days. the boys didn't mind, though! it's only like their favorite place. and look who's a part of our parking lot train these days?! he's turning into a little boy more each day.

early the next week, right smack dab in the middle of "project living room," knox caught hand-foot-mouth virus and canon had a fever/stomach bug. they wanted nothing, but snuggles. i had SO much i could be doing, but i enjoyed that unexpected downtime with those sweet boys more than anything. i'm not a natural optimist, but these days, i'm trying my hardest to find joy in any situation. most times i fail, but i'm learning and trying! (and that hand-foot-mouth virus is bizarre and gross. we've never had it before! hopefully, we're done with that.)

my sweet neighbor and friend, cailee, rang my doorbell with these 2 very necessary items for the situation above! super thoughtful! she's the best :)

smoothies are serious business. (and yes, we had our couches in the kitchen for 5 days! i was going bonkers!! )

and finally, late on wednesday night (there were many late nights), our project was finally completed and it was totally worth it! we LOVE everything about this room. the wall color makes everything feel so light and airy. the trim/moldings look fantastic. we will eventually carry on this look throughout the house as funds allow for it, but now we're just enjoying this room! and can we talk about how i'm apparently married to a carpenter?! he just thought this huge, built-in up and made some plans and went for it! 

we've never had our wedding album out in a visible place, but since the unpacking phase, it's been accessible to the boys. At least twice a day they ask to "ready the wedding book." It's sweet!However, they don't quite understand why all the people they love were there, but they weren't :)

on thursday, nearly 2 weeks after moving in, we drove over to springfield (1 hours drive) to meet lane's grammie and poppa at lambert's for some "throwed rolls"! we'd been talking about doing it for months and finally just put a date on the calendar. it was the highlight of our week for sure. for several nights leading up to our trip, the boys would practice catching rolls (stuffed animals) at bedtime. they thought this was great! they were super proud of themselves for catching their real rolls with minimal assistance. we loved getting to see and hug grammie and poppa for those 2 hours. we're definitely planning another trip!

i had a wild friday night that involved this awesome paint color... can't wait to reveal my finished project that i've been working on!

we enjoyed our first college gameday in the new house complete with our traditional saturday morning donuts! i LOVE this fall tradition :)

this is the boys' breakfast and lunch set-up. saves cleaning the hardwoods! i love that knox eats with his brothers now. best buddies!

the boys and i stayed overnight by ourselves for the first time in 2 years. last time i did that, there was a freaking earthquake! but everything was fine this time and we survived our 48 hours without daddy. however, we were REALLY glad when he got home!

we look forward to the many sweet memories that we will make in this new house. we look forward to slowly making it us. we have already loved having our friends over here and look forward to the community that will occur here. we just feel really happy here :)