Happy New Year Everyone!

I hope everyone has a very Happy New Year!!!  May 2013 be a great one!!

This Year is Coming to an End

Well 2012 has been a really busy year for our family!  We have had many changes in our lives.  They have all been good changes.

1.  We started out 2012 in February by signing the contract on the new house we are now living in!  We were so excited about building a new house in a new town.  We moved in our new house in November and love, love, love it!!

2.  We found out during the year that Jenny, our youngest daughter and her husband, Kevin were expecting their second child in April of 2012!  What wonderful news!!  Owen needs a little brother-they will be naming him Jack.

3.  The end of October we moved in with Megan and Ken for 1 month while our house was being built.  John and I were very appreciative of Megan and ken's hospitality!

4.  We had a wonderful visit from my parents in the beginning of December.  My parents had not seen Owen since he was 9 months old.  What a great visit we all had with them.  My parents really loved the new house.

There were many other things that happened in our family during the year, but these were a few of the highlights.  We are all looking forward to 2013!  Hopefully it will be as good as 2012 was.

                                                    Happy New Year Everyone!!

What a Great Christmas!!

All the presents have been unwrapped, visiting for Christmas is done, Christmas dishes are packed away for next year and now comes the time of relaxing a little!  Christmas Eve we had dinner at Jenny and Kevin's house and then we went to the 11:00 p.m. service at our Church.  Christmas morning everyone arrived around 9:30 and then it was present opening galore!!  What fun we all had watching Owen open his gifts.  He loved every one of them.  Poor little thing has a really bad cold though!  Santa was very good to everyone at our house!  I spoke with my parents and sisters and they all had a great holiday too! They had a white Christmas in northwestern NJ!  Today they are suppose to get even more snow.

I hope all of you had a really great Christmas too!  Over the weekend I will be de-Christmasing (if that's even a word) at our house.  I am already starting to think about paint colors for some of the rooms.  January 13th I'm having my knitting group over to the house for a small housewarming party-so I want to get as much done as possible for that!

Everyone have a great day!

Almost done with the Shopping!

Hi Everyone!  I have been busy, busy, busy this holiday season as usual!  The visit from my parents threw some of my Christmas shopping off, but I have managed to still get almost all of the shopping done.  I have a few more things to get-nothing really big just a few more small things and the Christmas dinner shopping but then I'm done.  I have to say with all the moving, visits, etc. going on in John and my life, I think we have been able to enjoy the season maybe even more than we have in the past!!  That is a Christmas miracle in itself-LOL!!

I hope how ever you are celebrating the holiday season that you take time to relax and enjoy your surroundings!!  For all of you who are traveling-be safe!  ENJOY!!!

What a great weekend!

My parents arrived on Friday around 11 and stayed until this morning around 8:15.  We had such a wonderful visit.  They loved our new house and was just so happy to see us all especially Owen!  They hadn't seen him since he was 9 months old (he is now 17 months).  We went shopping, had lunch out on Friday, breakfast out on Sunday (all 9 of us!!), visited and just plain relaxed and chatted.  It was really great!  My Dad's hand and elbow is doing really good from his surgery.  He is able to open and close his fingers now!  It looks very ugly, but he is healing very nicely.  Late Friday afternoon Jenny and Kevin dropped Owen off because they were going to Kevin's office Christmas party.  We had him overnight.  They came to visit around 10:00 on Saturday.  Megan and Ken came over on Friday night to visit and they came on Sunday too.  This was probably the best visit we all have ever had!

I had Ken, my son-in-law and Megan's husband take a 4 generation picture.  Here it is:

We were all laughing so hard for this picture because Owen would sit still so John kept lifting up his vest over his shirt and Owen thought that was just hysterical!!  We all did too!

Fun times, many great memories!!

The Parents are arriving Tomorrow!

I won't be posting until Monday.  My parents are arriving from New Jersey sometime tomorrow.  We have lots of things planned and will be busy, busy, busy!  We are going to a Christmas Shop in Matthews, NC (near our new house), Daniel Stowe Botanical Gardens to see the Christmas lights, visiting with Owen, Jenny, Kevin, Megan and Ken, having breakfast/brunch out (hopefully), going to some local shops and just plain relaxing and catching up.  My parents have decided to do the trip in 2 days.  With my Dad just having the arm surgery and the 11 hour trip from NJ they needed to break it up into 2 days.  It will be wonderful to see them, it has been a long time (4th of July weekend was the last time we visited them).  I can't wait for them to see the house-I'm sure they will love it!

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend and I'll see you Monday!

Here are the long awaited pictures of the new house inside!

Everyone has been saying they can't wait to see pictures of the inside of the house, well here they are!  Well the first floor anyway.

Come inside and take the tour!

First look at the old sled and skates I put on the porch.

 This is the Dining Room from the front hallway.

This is our console table with one of my favorite oil paintings we have.  This is in the front hallway.  I need to have John lower the picture though, he hung it too high.

 This is an upclose shot of the Butler's Pantry.  I love having this again!!

 Butler's Pantry

 Breakfast Room

Cubbie Bench when you come in from the garage.

Another photo of the Cubbie Bench.

 Dining Room looking through the Butler's Pantry into the kitchen and breakfast room area.

 Hallway leading to the powder room and garage.

Kitchen looking into the Breakfast Room.

This is the kitchen from the living room.

 The Library/Office-we need to reorganize this room and get more bookshelves.

 The Living Room from the kitchen.

 Living Room from the Breakfast Room.

 Kitchen looking into the Living Room.

 Kitchen looking into the Breakfast Room.

Kitchen.

I have really been loving decorating our house.  Hope you enjoyed the tour!!

Getting ready to decorate for Christmas!

(Photo via Pinterest)

Last night after work John and I had dinner and then the unpacking commenced.  John decided he wanted to start putting the Christmas tree up.  We have an artificial tree, but this will probably be the last year we use it.     The tree is over 10' tall and is just so heavy!  John started with the bottom section of the tree but we decided it was just too full and big for the area we are putting up the tree.  So we decided to skip the bottom section and only use the next 4 sections.  That worked better!  It is really exciting for us to be decorating the new house for our first Christmas in our new house!!  I probably won't start until Friday night hanging up the Christmas/Winter pictures and getting out all the Christmas decorations we've collected over the 33 years we've been married.  It is so much fun-I love this time of year!!

Taking the Night Off

I took the night off from unpacking last night.  I made an apple crisp for the office and then watched TV with John.  It felt really good to just relax and take it easy!  Tonight I will be taking the night off too!  I'm going to knit with my knitting group.  I miss going and hanging out with my knitting girls!  The boxes will still be there tomorrow night and sometimes you just need a break!!

Alot of broken dishes and alot of tears!

I am sorry to say alot of my platters from Maine, bowls, pottery and some of John's great grandmothers china got broken in the move.  It wasn't the movers we had this time, it was the movers that helped John move everything into the storage space.  The last movers told us they were hearing alot of broken pieces of things rattling in the boxes and didn't want to get blamed for it.  I think I am the most upset about the huge platter I had bought in Booth Bay, Maine that had handpainted lupines on it!!  John and I rented a house from our friend in East Booth Bay and we were there for an entire week checking out all the potters in the area.  We had such a wonderful vacation, such lovely memories.  I don't know if we will ever get back there again. Thank goodness my 2 boxes of Green Depression Glass that I have collected over years and years came through unscathed.  I could tell by the way everything was broken that the movers had just dropped the boxes straight down.  I guess they also didn't see that I had written FRAGILE in huge letters and put orange stickers that said FRAGILE all of these boxes.  I was able to glue with Loc-Tite my pottery utensil holder that I bought in Sea Grove, NC back together!  Nothing else was salvageable though.  I am glad this is hopefully one of our last moves because every time we move there is something else broken, but this time was the worst!!

Sorry to sound so down after being so happy with our house and living here, but these things had meaning to us and when that is gone it is just hard.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!