Saturday, April 26, 2008

sweet spring

Spring has finally come, and much appreciated is it's arrival. Never have I been so excited about the arrival of spring. For the past few years, spring never really meant as much to me. Mainly because the Virginia winters were so mild. There wasn't really a definite line between when winter ended and spring begun. The mild Virginia climate accentuated the harshness of New York winters. Like I said, this springs arrival seems extra sweet. Neighbors are out and about. Garage sales are an excuse for neighbors to spend time together and enjoy the nice weather that turned out to be anything but the stormy weekend as expected. Our back yard has lush soft grass and our tall birch trees are sprinkled with tiny yellow leaves that glow at sunset. Our evening walks are highlighted with a serenade of crickets chirping and the soft click-clacking of sprinklers quenching the thirst of our parched lawns. Yes, spring is fabulous.

Friday, April 4, 2008

It's about time

With Myspace and Facebook, I had forgotten about this blog. (It's crazy how many blog accounts I have too.... the xanga, which is very much neglected, and my livejournal that I haven't updated in probably a year) But, most of my friends know how to keep in touch with me, so it never seemed to matter that I was terrible about keeping up with those millions of blogs I have. Anyway, I decided to start this thing up again. I want to get better about writing eh hem, or typing down current events in our family. It's hard to find any free time for that anymore... but like I said, I want to get better about it. Lately, I've been feeling like I shouldn't make my myspace blogs all mommy-family stuff because a lot of my friends aren't married, and they don't have kids. This blog seemed like the perfect place to just write about family topics. I forgot how therapeutic this is, too!

Anyway, things here are pretty good. We're still adjusting to life in NY. It's been hard to get past the fact that it's SO cold here! I mean, I grew up here.... so I knew what I was getting myself into. I guess it just seems so much colder because I lived in Virginia for 4 years. The weather REALLY is that different there. A typical winter day in Virginia would be around 52 degrees. Here, you're lucky if it's above 20. And yes, it's starting to get warmer here in NY now, but that
"warmer" is a chilly 35 degrees in the morning, and maybe topping out around 45? I think it's something like 67 in Hampton, VA today.

It's funny how I could not wait to move from Virginia, but now I'm really missing my old friends there, and this bark park that we used to take our dog to, along with all of the great people we met there. Sometimes I hate how you have to give up something, to get something else you want. Childish, I know.... but wouldn't that make things easier?

So, back to now. Brian has been working at his new job for 8 months now, and we bought our house 7 months ago. Basically, we've just been getting settled in, and looking forward to the warmer weather so that we can do our several outdoor projects. Our house is only 3 years old, so not much has been done to it. We're going to change that. We've already changed that, for that matter. Within two days of owning the house, we installed new wood floors on one entire level of the house. This spring we're going to build a two car garage, with a 750 square foot addition above the garage, which we will use for our master suite. If that project wasn't enough.... we're adding a front porch, expanding the deck (Brian has serious deck building skills- he built an elaborate-3 tier- 450 square foot deck on our previous house in Virginia) We're also putting "williamsburg" style white picket fence around the entire back yard, and installing a stone retaining wall and stone patio... then our gigantic landscaping project. So yeah, we'll definitely have our hands full for the entire spring/summer... and into the fall.

Well, Owen is getting restless in his highchair, so I'm probably going to take him downstairs to play. Ohhh, one more thing..... Owen poo'd in his potty today!!! Quick story about that: He was just grunting and pulling at his pants and squeezing in his stomach... and just generally looked uncomfortable. So, I took him into the bathroom (he had a clean diaper) put him on his potty, handed him a book and walked out of the room. I left him alone in there for probably about 5 minutes. I started to hear him moving around in the bathroom and babbling, so I went in his bathroom to see what he was doing and he was closing the lid on his potty. He had a big smile on his face and casually walked past me. I lifted the lid of his potty to see what....? A HUGE turd!!! Hahaha! It was the best day of my week, by far! Seriously, 5 years ago I would have never thought that the highlight of my week would have anything to do with bowel movements. I guess that comes with the territory of being a mom. =] I'm SO proud of my little guy!!!! He's becoming such a big boy!