"Coffee", Christmas pictures, the zoo and getting ready to move

Recently none of us has been feeling 100% so we've been making a lot of tea with honey. Levi calls any hot drink "toffee" and wants some. I've started giving him some really watered down, lukewarm hot chocolate. He likes to drink it in his mug and sit on the chair.

At church yesterday we took some Christmas pictures next to the tree. The tree is beautiful, but it's mostly because we only have a 4' tree sitting on top of the toy box this year due to the move. Here is a cute one of Levi and one of the three of us. If you look closely you can see my 8-month pregnant belly!

We went to see the zoo-lights last night with some of our church friends. Levi had a blast riding on the carousel and looking at the model train sets. A train set may be in his 2009 Christmas plans! He was really excited about the trains and riding on the horse!

Since we are moving two weeks from today (gosh that's close!) we've been trying to pack up the last few things that are still out and get the house ready for the new owners. Today I was washing the living room wall and of course Levi had to help. "I wash the wall!!!" I don't really know why we have toys - he really just prefers to do whatever we do, whether it's cleaning, cooking, packing (recently), reading the newspaper, writing etc. He's taken to spreading out the entire Sunday paper all over the living room floor. He will arrange the pages (all over the room) for 20 minutes!

Here is a cute shot of him being silly on the chair. He was so proud of himself that he was able to climb on there himself.

Our New House!!

We put our house on the market on October 9th and had an offer on November 8th! Of course we dropped our asking price by 6% the week before we got the offer but who cares - we have a buyer! The couple who is buying our house looked at it at 10am on Saturday morning and we had an offer at 1:30! They are really excited about moving into our house and we are really excited about moving out!

So after we had the offer - we had 5 days to find a new house. We looked at 13 properties in two days. We really debated between about 4 different houses - all of which Andy liked, three of which I liked. We kept praying that God would show us exactly the house to buy and would make it crystal clear where we should end up. None of those four houses where crystal clear to us. So on Monday the 17th I got a call from my good friend Angie who works at MI homes. She said she had a house in Lewis Center (an area we were considering) where the house price dropped by $50,000 and there was a 4.875% interest rate special with MI if you closed by the end of the year on a spec home. A spec home means a house that is 99.98% complete and just sitting, waiting for an owner. So we get a brand new home with a HUGE discount, in a fabulous neighborhood, where we didn't have to pick out any of the finishes (which would have been a totally overwhelming task for me) and we get to move in within 30 days!

The house is way fancier than anything I would ever have chosen and totally gorgeous! Basic stats are: 4 bedroom, 2.5 baths, living room, dining room, kitchen, family room, den, 1st floor laundry, walk-out unfinished basement (with rough-in for another full bath). Cherry cabinets, granite counter tops, 9' first floor ceilings, hardwood floors in parts of the first floor, jacuzzi tub in master bath, good size closets, extended side-load garage - 2350 square feet in all - not counting the basement. Basically our old house fits in the second floor of the new house (which is smaller than the first floor!)

We haven't set the closing date in stone yet as we are waiting on our buyers to see if they can move up the date of the closing - but we are hopeful that we can close on both houses on Friday, December 19th. This gives us six weeks to be in the new house before the baby is due. We won't be doing any Christmas decorating this year but we should be pretty settled before the end of January - in all reality probably mostly unpacked by the end of December if we get the closing date we want.

We are just so grateful that God has made it perfectly clear that this was our time to move up to a bigger house and that he put all the details in place. That's not to say this hasn't been a mildly stressful process - but overall it hasn't been bad. Andy and I do love a good project :)

Two other cute pictures

We were looking at pictures on the camera the other day and Levi wanted me to take his picture. I told him to make a silly face... I, of course taught him how to make this face - I think it's so funny when he does it!

Carrie watched Levi on his actual birthday last week and he can home with this nifty hard hat! He wanted mommy and daddy to wear it but I explained that both mommy and daddy have their own hard hats! Some day we'll get a family picture with all the hardhats :)

Birthday!!!

Levi turned 2 last week! I can't believe that he's already two - and that in about two months number two will be here! We had a smaller family only party this year - which was really fun! Levi spent part of the day chasing his counsins around a house that we were all looking at (Andy and I were considering buying it - but that's the next post!). We had a laid back time back at our place with pizza, sauerkraut and kielbasa (normal birthday party food, right?), cake, ice cream and presents. He really enjoyed blowing out the candle on the cake. We did it twice for pictures and he wanted to do it again!

Levi got lots of books, trucks and possibly his favorite - a monkey (from Uncle Bruce!) his name is Chango (monkey in Spanish).

Here is a cute picture of Levi with Conner and Audrey.

Longaberger

We took a trip to the Longaberger basket factory in Dresdin, OH in the beginning of November with my friend Carrie and her mom and kids. I've seen (and own a few) of the baskets but had not been to the factory. It was really neat to see the people making each basket - by hand. They get paid per basket so they work really fast! Levi really enjoyed watching them make the baskets. He stood there for a good 5 minutes just watching!

The Longaberger factory area is a cute little town that they've created that's all Longaberger . They have a restaurant or two - a number of stores that all sell the same things and a cute little center of town area. This huge basket with apples is in the "center of town". Notice how little the kids are!

Another cute picture from the other week - Hannah and Levi snacking on his favorite - Apples!

Halloween

For Halloween this year Levi was a monkey (thanks Aunt Kristen!!). He really likes making the monkey noise and normally bounces up and down while he say "ooh, ooh!" When we were trick-or-treating he even walked up to a house and said "Me Monkey!!" to the lady at the door. This isn't the greatest picture, but you can see how cute the outfit is.
Our church hosts a "Trunk or Treat" each year where there are games, food and of course candy! Levi and his friend Aubrianna spent at least 20 minutes jumping in the back of my trunk while Andy and I talked to Aubrianna's parents. Perhaps is was all the sugar? They had a blast and for a few days after that Levi kept asking to play in the trunk! I told him we only jump in the trunk at church :)

Here is a picture of our pumpkin from this year. Can you guess who the face is supposed to be?

Our weekend

We had a very busy weekend this past weekend. Levi and I went to Circle S Farms on Friday morning with MOPS friends. Levi got to see some animals, go through a hay bale maze, play in the hay in the "fun barn", go on a hayride and pick out a pumpkin! It was a very fun morning! Here are some cute pictures from the day.

The rest of the weekend was spent at church working on the Help Build Hope House build project that our church participated in this weekend. I got to be the project coordinator for this project and it was really fun to use my project management and construction skills to help people. We framed all the interior and exterior walls for the house on our church parking lot on Saturday. Here is a picture of what the house looks like standing up. After church on Sunday, the entire congregation prayed over the house and then we dismantled it and sent it to it's final resting place in Delaware where it will be a Habitat for Humanity house. The woman who will receive the home was able to come for lunch on Saturday and see everyone who worked on her home. It was such a neat experience. Overall we had over 130 people who helped in some way during the weekend. We framed and stood a three bedroom home in 2.5 hours!!

Here is a cute picture from two weeks ago when Levi and I went to visit my family in Louisville. This is Levi and Aunt Annie jammin' on her new piano.

This picture is from about a month ago when MOPS went to Blendon Woods - this really neat park in Westerville. This is Levi and Hannah - they like to hold hands when they are walking together. It is too cute!

This video is from last weekend - Andy was teaching Levi how to cheer for his favorite sports teams - sorry Mom!

House for Sale!

So we put our house up for sale today!! Andy and I have been working like crazy for the last few weeks to get our house ready to put on the market and we are finally here! We have an open house scheduled for this Sunday. Check out our mls listing http://cbrmls.columbusrealtors.com/Pub/EmailView.asp?r=1920943713&s=CBR&t=CBR If you click on the picture of the house you can see 17 other pictures of the house - it's pretty cool! I'm not sure if it's live yet on realtor's websites but it should be no later than Friday.

We've also sold our green living room furniture and a dresser we had on craigslist so that's been a fun experience also. I put the ads up on Saturday and everything was gone today! It's been interesting trying to get everything ready but if we weren't crazy busy we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves! So if you know anyone who is looking for a really cute 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house in north Columbus let us know!!

Here's a cute picture of Levi that Rachel, our selling realtor and my friend, took when she was taking pictures for the listing. He kept standing in front of her camera and smiling.

Some pictures

I was uploading some pictures of some things that we are going to try and sell on Craigslist and found some cute pictures on the camera. This first one is a picture of the Levi in the Mexican soccer uniform that Aunt Christy and Uncle Bruce brought back from one of their trips to visit Bruce's family.

This is from one day last month when I was watching my friend's son Matthew. Levi got a kick out of playing ball with him!
This is one evening when Andy was calling to say he was on his way home from work. Levi likes to talk to him on the phone. This last one is from today. Our friend Srini was helping Andy with some quick projects to get our house ready to put on the market and they were taking some furniture out to the garage. Levi really wanted to help carry the loveseat up from the basement but we had to satisfy him by letting him carry the couch cushion around the house. It was really funny to see since the cushion was bigger than he was. He could lift if off the ground and carry it really well though. He's really strong!

This video is from about a month ago at this point but it's another talking one. He's talking even more now :)

Visit to Louisville/Words/Moving

Levi and I went to see my sisters in Louisville this week. Christy and Bruce bought a new house in July and did a TON of work to it so we went to check it out. All three of us will be going down again the end of the month to show Andy the house (he had to work when Levi and I went). There house is over 100 years old and has these awesome 10 and 12 foot ceilings. It's great!

Levi is really starting to talk and wants us to have conversations with him - not just talk to hear himself talk. Some of his most frequently used phrases/words:

Where Daddy go? (the answer he'll give is "to work")

I don't wanna (I don't want to)

Mup (milk)

Arf (his stuffed dog)

He's started counting recently also - "one, two, one, one, one". We can't seem to get "three" out.

He's also very good at praying - we pray before each meal and any time he goes to sleep so at least five times a day. He's been saying "Dear Jesus" to start for a while and when we say "in Jesus name we pray" he yells "amen!" most times. Last week I started getting him to help with the actual prayer so I say "thank you for..." and he fills in the blank. Normally we get a Jesus, Daddy, Mommy, Daddy, Mommy, Daddy :) Sometime if I prompt for Grandma then he will say Annie and Bruce. Can't seem to get a Christy or any of the Fouss's without prompting yet but we'll be working on that one!

The other big thing that is going on with us is that Andy and I are planning to sell our house. After much deliberation on whether to rent or sell our current house we've decided to sell so we are madly working on fixing little things with the house and packing up a ton of stuff to make our little house look bigger. There are probably already 20 boxes in the garage and I'm not done yet! I'm sure that once we actually sell it and have to pack up the rest of the stuff I will be just throwing things in boxes without much organization. So far it's been fun though to actually look at all the stuff we have.

Ultrasound last week

We had our second ultrasound last Wednesday for baby #2. The doctor was pleased with everything she saw - internal organs, digits, appendages etc. are all looking good. She calculated that the baby weighed 10 oz and from head to bottom was about the size of her fingers and hand. We didn't find out what the sex is; the doctor didn't even look in the general area because she doesn't want to know if we don't want to know. The due date is still January 30th.

Levi enjoyed looking at the pictures of "his baby". We tried to get him to say hi to the baby but he wasn't quite sure about that one :) Today he and I were looking at the ultrasound print outs and comparing how the new baby has the same body parts he has!

This picture isn't very clear at all but you are looking at the head on top with the body (chest area) below that. Our ultrasound with Levi was much more clear than this one - that was a brand new machine and this one was pretty old.

Baby #2

So you may be asking yourself, why is Erica taking naps and not doing the zip line or ropes courses? Well it's because we are expecting baby #2! We are due on January 30, 2009. Levi will be 26 months old at that point so we'll be smack in the middle of the terrible-twos with a newborn. Not sure if this planning was a great idea or not :) Levi know about the baby and likes to lift up my shirt and give the baby kisses (zerberts) on my belly.

This is also the reason why we put the rails on his twin bed so early. We figured we could start now and we have a while before he actually needs to be in there. He's doing really well so hopefully it won't be an issue when the baby comes. The plan is to rearrange some furniture (yeah! I love rearranging!) between Levi's room and our "closet" room. We'll put a dresser in Levi's room and the glider and a bassinet/pack-n-play in the "closet" room (aka the new nursery). Our hope is that once #2 (our current name for the child) sleeps through the night they will be sharing Levi's room with him.

We have our second ultrasound scheduled for next Wednesday, September 3rd. We are not planning to find out the sex of the baby - Andy liked running into the waiting room exclaiming "It's a boy!!" so we'll wait again.

Here is a fairly awful picture of me - but it shows how I'm showing now (at 18 weeks).

This week

Last Sunday we installed the bed rails on Levi's twin bed. This is a picture of the first night he spent in the big boy bed. He will sleep there about 50% of the time. Sometimes he asks to sleep in the crib. Today is the first time he's napped in the bed. He still cries himself to sleep some nights and even if he's in the big bed he'll get out, pound on the door and then after a little bit (because we don't go get him) he'll crawl back into bed and pull the blanket over himself.

We haven't done all that much this week - I was busy recovering from our annual church group camping trip. Levi spent the weekend with Andy's parents and we went to Butler Springs Church Camp. We slept in tents (well most of the guys slept on the raised gazebo area but the rest of us were in tents), cooked over the fire and had a great time relaxing and talking. On Saturday most of the group did a zip line and high ropes course. This is the group getting ready to do the zip line and Andy on the ropes course. The entire ropes course was about 20' or so in the air. I hope we go back next year so I can try it.

On Monday Levi and I met one of my former co-workers, Angie, and her daughter, Ava, at the zoo. The kids had a great time checking out the animals. Levi even had the chance to rise a carousel for the first time. He liked being on the pretty horses and "spinning!". This is a picture of Levi and Ava on the orangutan statue.

Today Carrie's two younger kids came over while Carrie went to a kindergarden parents' meeting at Noah's school. I'm glad I don't have to deal with school yet - they don't teach kids the way we were taugh anymore! Once Levi wakes up from his nap we'll be headed back to their house to work on some things for our moms group, MOPS.

Last week was a busy week!

Last week we spent the majority of the week going fun places with my friends Carrie and Kim and their kids. Monday we went to Alum Creek and played in the water - possibly for the last time this season. This is Levi and Hannah having fun in the water.

I know we did something with them on Tuesday but I don't have pictures and can't remember now.

On Wednesday we helped Carrie's son Noah celebrate his 6th birthday for a lunch at McDonald's. Carrie's dad bought everyone ice cream after they ate lunch and played on the playground area. It was a big hit with everyone!

Thursday we had a day just with Mommy and Levi and I caught up on my missed naps :)

Friday we went with everyone to Slate Run Living Historical Farm. It is a working 1880's farm south of Columbus that has horses, cows, bulls, pigs, sheep, chickens, roosters and turkeys. Plus they have 1880's toys to play with (hoops, marble shoots, wooden tops, etc.) and gardens. There is no running water or electricity on the farm and it is staffed by people dressed in the garb of the time period, working as if they were living in 1880. It was such a neat learning experience. They smoke all the meat and can their own foods. I'm not sure who eats this food, but it's neat to see! Andy would have loved it and I'm sure we'll go back when Levi is older and he'll appreciate it more. Here are a ton of pictures from this day.

As we were heading back to the cars we passed by a "farmer" who was building a fence - by hand. He was pre-drilling holes in the planks and then would install the planks with nails. The kids all got to help drill a hole with a hand-crank drill. Levi watched the other kids do it and then had to try himself. When Carrie held him so he could try himself he wouldn't look at what he was doing!

Our trip to PA

Sorry I haven't posted in forever. Andy went to Colorado with the men from church and Levi and I went to visit my parents and grandma in PA the first week in August. The first visit on our trip to PA was to see my friends Britany and Amie from high school. This picture is Levi and I with Amie's daughter Jordan. She is about 5 months old now and is built just like Levi was at that age :) Levi had fun playing, especially with Dave, Amie's husband.

The next picture is at Grandma Elsie's house. Levi had a great time

entertaining himself in her house - she has lots of open space which is not what he's used to in our tiny house!

When we were at Grandma's, Dad went horseback riding twice. I took Levi to see the horse up close and personal. He didn't love it...

We also got to spend time with my friend Meg and her kids, Julia and Tommy. Levi had fun playing with new friends at a park we found.

The group shot is right before we left to come back to western PA - it's fun to get generational family pictures. I'm not sure why he had his shirt off in the picture to the right, but this is how Levi has been recently. He'll be playing and then all of a sudden will run up to Andy or I and say "hi!" and give us big hugs. It's sweet!

The last day we were in western PA my mom had all of her siblings over for a get together. My aunt and uncle had been in Australia for about 18 months and hadn't met Levi yet. We had a great time catching up with everyone! Now that all the cousins are so spread out my guess is the next time this many of us will be together is at my cousin Katie's wedding in May of '09. Here is a picture of the cousins that were there.