July

July was the month of our annual trip to New York.

We started out with a week in my brothers neck of the woods.  This whole trip we didn't really get many pictures.  We officially vacation without phones. The pictures I did manage to get were basically of food.
Tyler and Katie are amazing hosts!  They had so many fun activities planned and we all had a blast.
We also thankfully got to see the other Ticonderoga family :)  I'm so thankful the kids are now the age to have a blast together every time they see each other.

After our week there the kids went off to spend some time camping at Grandma and Papas while Caleb and I did a mini getaway for our 10 year anniversary.
Jo's favorite part was definitely the fishing.  Arya tells me hers was the smores.

Caleb and I enjoyed some time in Burlington.  We realized a few things on the trip...Vermont may not quite be for us, the more time we spend away from home we realize how much we love living here in Virginia, and lastly, we do a really really good job of continuing to date each other here at our own home.
The fancy dinners were nice and getting to walk around places without worry about the kids was pretty good too, but our favorite times together our the weekly dates we have here at home picking up our favorite snacks and staying up late playing our favorite games.
We had a 10 year anniversary trip and literally got zero pictures of us together, typical us.

After the quick trip to Burlington we headed to pick up the kids.  We had a really nice night with my parents.

Then we made our final stop at Caleb's parents.  Arya unfortunately got sick and puked almost every day so the first day we just kind of stayed low and hung out playing games.  The kids got to go kayaking for the first time with them the second day.  Caleb and I were back up at camp so I wasn't able to grab any pics.

Caleb and I spent another day up at Blake while kids enjoyed the kayaking.  We had a blast at camp...even got to enjoy the icecream truck ourselves.  Again, didn't have my phone, but thankfully Katie snapped this pic.

And then after over two weeks, we headed back to our new home.

I still don't have any pictures of it.  When we moved into our last home in Henrico, I jumped the gun just trying to get the whole place decorated and after it was finished I realized I didn't love a lot of it.  So, this time, we've been slowly searching for pieces we want to look at for a long time.

So far...it's just some wooden ducks :p  Tony, Fred, and Daisy fit pretty perfectly into our home.

So....maybe sometime in the next 10 years when I get it all done, you'll be able to see our new favorite place to be :)

June

I think June may have possibly been the craziest month we've ever had as a family of four...hence the major lack of pictures.


The kids had their last day of school on the 14th.  We officially have a first and fourth grader!

We celebrated Father's Day and my 29th birthday.

And on June 24th our Henrico house officially sold.  I think it was the smoothest closing that possibly could've happened.

The new owners of the home allowed us to rent it back a few days as we packed up and closed on our new home.  My mom flew down to help us with the move.  Thank goodness, because i'm not sure we would've been able to get any of it done without her here.
The closing for the new home didn't go quite so smooth, but we officially owned a new home on June 26th.

We are loving it so much. It's currently still stacked in boxes and i'm waiting for a whole bunch of decor to come in.  The house was a full flip like our last so everything is brand new.  The flippers of this house went with a much different style than our last, this one a bit more Joanna Gaines.  So, complete house pictures to come when I get it all in order.  We couldn't have asked for a better location.  We're on a really quiet road surrounded by our woods, but we're 5 minutes or less from literally anything you could possibly want to go to.

And last but certainly not least, Jo turned 9.

He requested a Harry Potter birthday and out of all the options we gave him as far as celebrations, he chose going to Wegmans, picking out a ton of snacks, and playing Mario Party as a family for the night.

Uncle Pat and Aunt Karen got him an actual letter from Hogwarts

And he chose going to get ice cream over having cake.  

May

To say May was a big month for us I think would be quite the understatement.

We started out with Mother's Day.  The kids made me super sweet cards.  And you can always count on your kids to have one of these gems thrown in the mix :p

Caleb surprised me and took the day off so I could take a night off from painting and enjoy some pizza and wine.

Speaking of painting, behind the flowers you can probably tell the kitchen is starting it's sad transformation back to beige. 

Which brings us to the most important news of May.

Caleb and I have been talking about moving for I think over 2 years now.  We loved our home, but we've found some things we'd probably change.  We were hoping for a little more land.  But most importantly, we needed to move before the kids would be in middle school.  Their elementary is amazing and we've had a great experience there, but the middle school, not so much.  In less than 2 weeks Casen will officially be a fourth grader (I can't believe it either,) so we realized we were starting to get down to the wire.
We met with a realtor and he said the area we lived in happened to be in really high demand and we would have no problems selling.  We took it with a grain of salt, but pushed ahead in the process.  The first one being, paint my kitchen.  We got it all ready to go, had the professionals do all the video and photography work

....and less than 24 hours after our house was put on the market and 16 showings later, our house was sold.


And then Caleb and I had a bit of a minor freak out. 

We had no idea the house would go that quick.  And we now needed a new house.

We had three counties in mind that surround the one we currently live in so we would still be close to Caleb's work.  We looked at a few houses and thought we found the one, so much so that we almost didn't go look at the last house of the day.  But we walked into the last house and I told Caleb, this is our home.  And we're really really hoping it is!  Just waiting on the lovely inspection madness on both ends to finish up and the moving shall commence.  It is the perfect location.  A little bit off the beaten path, but super close to everything we've grown accustomed to. The closest commute we've found yet to Caleb's job. It's quite a bit more land than we're used to and the square footage is even more than our current house.  Last but most important, really good schools. 

I mean how can you pass up a house with a secret room :)

So the month of June will be spent doing lots and lots of packing.  Leaving the home where we celebrated Arya's first birthday, Casen's first day of Kindergarten, and Caleb becoming a police officer.  We'll be heading to a quiet house in the woods where we hopefully will make lots and lots more memories.

The June update may be a little late. 😋

April

Our April was busy from beginning to end.  It flew by!

It started out with spring break and a visit from Caleb's parents. After they left I told Caleb I didn't have  a single picture because I never really had my phone on me.  He said he didn't either.  I think that's the sign of a good visit.  Thankfully I got to borrow some from our trip to the park :)

 

Arya had her first daddy daughter dance.  It's a yearly thing at their school.  She was so so excited to get a new dress and go out with Caleb.

 

Next we enjoyed more visitors.  My brother and his family came down for a long weekend.  The kids are finally all at the age where they just go off and play together and it was awesome.  Since it fell on Easter weekend, we fit in some egg activities as well.

Easter morning they enjoyed baskets and breakfast and then our guests had to head back home.  We had our first try at dying eggs since Jo was a baby.  They actually turned out really well. 

Next, Arya had her very first school concert.  (If you click on my name under the first video on youtube, it will bring you to the others.)

Casen found a little friend in our yard

And lastly, we finished off the month with a  quick trip to Williamsburg.  We all got a little stir crazy. The weather has been so warm. A little shopping, a trip to the beach, and our favorite restaurant.  It was perfect.

 Onto May!

March

March has actually been kind of pictureless.  We've spent a good share of the month doing spring cleaning.  Room by room with over 10 rooms in our house has proven to be a pretty long process.  It has been rather nice though.  We're in the, throw it all away! mode.

The beginning of the month we kept the kids a day out of school and booked a pretty fancy hotel to stay at.  Any hotel with free happy hour drinks and made to order breakfast, count us in.  Unfortunately, the entire reason we went there, the pool, was closed for maintenance. We were super bummed, but the manager was awesome and gave us a night for free to be able to come back and let the kids actually enjoy the pool.  We still got to enjoy all the normal Williamsburg shenanigans and the kids loved it.

Caleb and I have still be really really enjoying our day dates while both kids are in school.  Any day he's not working we go to the gym together and then at least once a week we have a lunch date, usually sushi.

I got a hottie for a husband!

And other than that, we've just been enjoying the super nice weather!  We should be having a much more exciting April.

February

Besides Arya's birthday, we had a pretty quiet, but pretty darn awesome February.

I can't really make a February blog without putting in writing that we got to watch our team win the superbowl! :)

The kids helped me make some football shaped rice krispie treats the night before.  And after the picture at the table was taken we somehow added even more food.  Football season is the best season!

Then came Valentine's day.  Caleb's really good about...actually amazing about bringing me home flowers and little treats all the time, as you can probably tell by my pictures.  He gave me the sweetest surprise on Valentines day this year :) 

Since Caleb's worked midnight shift for the past 5 years, we sleep in different shifts for over half of the year.  I hate it.  I never sleep well when he's not home. I don't think I ever have, and if you know our family, you know we've spent a lot of years with work separating us.  But midnight shift really does work the best for our family, so we make do.  Now, I have a little squishy sleeping buddy for my nights alone all the way from Vermont.  It's even more special because we're pretty sure Vermont is where we're going to take our big 10 year anniversary trip!

Thanks for making my years so sweet, Caleb.  This has definitely been my favorite year of all for us.

I think that's about it for our short and sweet month.  We got some snow days, a birthday, some date days, and some movie days.
I'm so thankful!