A new beginning

We bought a new house in June of 2009. It was a whole mile away from our existing house, but seems like a whole different part of town. Here are some pictures of the house and the condition it was in when we bought it (including the old owners furniture).
Our acre and a half lawn.....only took 2 hours to mow the first time, on a riding mower.


Big back deck, patio from the walk-out basement, and balcony off the master bedroom.

Front of the house, not a lot of curb appeal, and don't mind the ladder from our home inspection in the picture.

Finished basement, but not finished well. We have plans to tear it all out and replace it.

Extra bedroom in basement. We won't be needing this room, so we plan to tear down the walls and make a larger living area/rec room.

Master bedroom balcony.

His walk-in closet.

Hers walk-in closet.

It's hard to get pictures of the master bathroom, but here was one of the tub.

Master bedroom sitting room.

Master bedroom, it's been a long time since I have seen a water bed (again this is all the old owners furniture and belongings.)

1st bedroom - to become Bella's room. There are a total of 4 upstairs bedrooms, but I didn't post all the pictures.

1st floor rec room, with pool table that was left for us.

Family room.

Kitchen.

Dining room.

Formal living room.

Main hall entrance.

Hanging with my puppies

Just another day, hanging out on the floor with my two big black dogs. Sometimes they pay attention to me, sometimes they ignore me. But their breath sure does stink!

Things are looking up

Bella is still teething, but she has been in a little better spirits the past couple of days. And for the first time ever, she slept through the night last night without taking her benedryl. I don't know if it was a fluke, or if it means she might actually be able to sleep on her own. Maybe we will try it again tonight. Granted she is currently napping on the couch, since she decided she didn't want to nap earlier today. At this point I don't know if she will just go ahead and sleep for the night, or if she will be wide awake and well rested just at the point that we are ready for bed. Speaking of bed time, I wanted to share a few photos of our normal bedtime routine. Here we were working on some more head control while looking at our books. Always have to sneak in the working whenever we can.

It's been a long weekend with Bella

Bella is at this very moment laying in her new "playroom" otherwise known as a formal living room. She is in there all by herself as she has worn out both Jesse and I. Bella ran a fever Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. We assume she was teething, although nothing ended up popping through. During this time period she didn't sleep very well, and neither did the rest of us. She also had trouble eating.

This morning the fever broke and she seemed to be in better spirits. We headed off to church, were she went into the nursery for the first time. Luckily we have a friend who works in the church nursery so we felt confident leaving her in there. She did fine and hopefully we can use that more often, as it beats having one of us out in the lobby with a very talkative Bella during church service.

This afternoon we decided to run some errands and took Bella with us. She fussed the entire time we were in Home Depot. So then I ran into Target by myself while Jesse stayed in the vehicle. We got home and assumed she was hungry.........but refused to eat anything. So then we gave her a little time to lay on the floor, and she got fussy again, so we tried feeding her again. And again nothing. Then we tried giving her some milk....and she just kept spitting it in our face. So needless to say, she has exasperated both of us, and is having her alone time. And currently she is content. It might be teething again, I don't know. All I do know is it is very frustrating that an almost 2 year old can not tell us what she wants, and she is still teething, and probably will be for the next 2 years, being that she only has a total of 5 teeth right now, and most of them don't even seem to be all the way through.

Well that's my rant at the moment. And here is a picture of Jesse imitating Bella's favorite way to pass time, which is to stare at her right arm. Which is what she is currently doing in her "alone time".