Smiles

For a while the girls went through a phase where they just wouldn't smile for the camera. Jordan just made these weird faces, and Madison would just turn her head. I couldn't get a picture of them smiling for ages! But it seems like they might finally be growing out of that.


I got this picture of Madison this weekend. It's kinda a silly smile (she says "Cheeeeeeese") but it works for me! :)


This one is a good smile from Jordan.


And Madison again. So adorable.


And this is one of Madison's favorite things right now: dancing.

We really have some seriously cute little girls.

Some pictures I missed

So I was recently going through all my pictures from 2010 and I realized that when I first got my camera, I was so focused on getting pictures of the girls looking at me and smiling that I completely overlooked some candids.

I love this one because of the look of just complete curiosity on Jordan's face.




They probably could use some editing, but I just thought I'd share them. It's pictures like these that make me proud to be a photographer. To be able to capture children in just one moment. I absolutely will treasure these forever. My babies have grown into little ladies too quickly.

We are never ever ever...

...ever ever going to close on this house. Well, that's seriously how this feels. I keep getting my hopes up and they keep getting pushed down. Again and again. This whole house-buying process has felt like this and I am just so over it.

It's not that we are never going to close. We are like 99% sure that we are. The problem is when. We don't know. We keep getting told that it will be this week. Then by the end of that week they say, "Next week." And part of me just wants to scream! We were supposed to close last Friday, then it turned into this Wednesday, then Thursday, then Friday. Now we're thinking next week. But I'm tired of telling people that this will be it because it keeps not being it. Plus what's also really frustrating is we have plans and we can't do anything to this house until we close. We were supposed to move our stuff out of our storage unit to the house this weekend so we could get rid of the unit. But now we're going to have to pay another month for that, too.

I am just so ready to start this new life. To finally be able to be our own little family. I love my parents and my siblings, but there comes a time when you just need to be on your own. I did everything in my life out of order. You're supposed to graduate, get a good job, move out, get married, then have kids. And I am not complaining, because I love my life. But I just want to reach that "move out" stage so I can finally start feeling like a real adult. Right now, I still feel like a child. And I hate that.

I am sorry for the rant. Today has just been a frustrating day.

Quick Post...

So the house has been FHA approved! We're basically just waiting on some final paperwork and we should know by tomorrow if we are closing this Friday or next Monday. SO EXCITING! I cannot wait to get to work on this house, and make it our own :)

In other news... My dad got this computer working so while it isn't new, it's newer than my old computer. And now it has internet so that is even better. I can now upload some new pictures from my camera and post them so you can see our temporary cabinet in the house, among other things.

I need to go to bed now. This is going to be a loooooooong week...

Disney

We went to Disney today, and I thought I'd share a few of my favorite pictures :)


Our little princesses.

This picture is blurry (Yay my mom's camera) *but* Madison's expression is just so darn cute I had to share it.

Cheese!

Sitting and waiting to talk to Crush. They love each other :)

Mary Poppins is one of our favorites!

::hugs::




Madison has this new obsession with Chapstick (hmmm I wonder where she got that from?), or as she calls it: "Lips." I can't pull Chapstick out of my purse without her begging for it. She's so silly.

While we had a nice day, just hanging out with the girls, we definitely missed Daddy. We can't wait to go back again with him soon. We need to go a lot the next month and a half, because our season passes expire in March, and we aren't planning on renewing them.

A Quick Update

Right now it is looking like we will be closing on the house next Friday, the 21st. The dry wall is going to be repaired, and we are just going to make a plywood and curtain structure to replace the cabinets that are now missing, which should be enough to make the house mortgageable. Home Depot currently has the cabinets we have our eyes on on sale for 20% off so that's good timing. We will buy those and have them ready to put in for when we close :)

We are getting so excited that this might actually finally be happening for us!

Couting to five, and other amazing things...

So, bedtime, tonight, started off like any other bedtime...

...undress the girls, let them wear themselves out with the naked dance (them, not me), sit on the potty and read the potty book (I brought this back from when Jordan was about the same age, now for Madison), then jammies, story and lullabies... then, out of the blue, Madison grabs my hand and counts my fingers... nine, two, three four five (okay, not exactly perfection, but for a girl who usually greets me with "nananana" when I ask if she missed me, pretty bloody impressive). I started her again with one, and she counted up to five three more times. How cool is that? Being a new dad, I've often worried that Madison wasn't quite meeting the same milestones Jordan was, or that she was being slowed up for some reason, then, out of the blue, starting on Christmas Day, she's surprised me left and right. On Christmas, she said her first sentence ("I got it back"), she's started jumping (that was a little before Christmas, maybe Thanksgiving), and she just keeps surprising us day after day. Madison has come a long way in the last couple of months, and its a lot of fun to watch.

Jordan, on the other hand, is like a little adult. She speaks so well (and I'm not doting on her, I am an expert now in child development, thanks to my job, and she is miles ahead of the average 3 yr old in speech). Jordan makes up stories, tells jokes, and has conversations that last from the minute she wakes up to bedtime.

I'm sure I've bored you all with the bragging, but its what daddies do, so deal with it... until next time...

The House Saga Continues...

So. This house is a bank owned house. There is the bank that owns the house, and then the mortgage company that we are getting our mortgage from (I don't know the names of either). The mortgage company is basically requiring all the repairs that need to be made to the property are completed *before* we close on this house. The bank had agreed to take care of the big stuff (mainly- the mold) and most of the other things are stupid and stuff that we don't care about. However, we want the house so even though it is against our better judgment, we decided yesterday to go on ahead and just invest a couple hundred dollars and a weekend into these improvements.

So we went by the house last night to take some measurements and got in to discover that the people that were there to fix the mold didn't finish the job. This is what we saw when we got there:


They didn't replace the dry wall in the kitchen, and now some of the kitchen cabinets (which were broken) are completely gone. We can't just go put another one in because then they won't match, and we are not going to replace all of them.

So now we are waiting to hear back from the bank again to find out if they are going to fix the cabinets. We need to hear back from them asap because if they are we still have other repairs we need to start on that have to be done by Tuesday if we want to close on the house next week. But we don't want to put anything into this house if the bank is just going to tell us to shove it.

I really am so completely over this. I just want the stupid stuff to be behind us so we can have our house! It's like, nothing can go right in this process.

I'll keep you posted.

I'm not slacking...

I promise!

Due to some technical difficulties, I haven't been able to blog recently. I tried to switch into my dad's old (but still newer than my old) computer - but we're thinking the network card isn't working right. A replacement is on it's way, but in the meantime we finally got frustrated and Joey switched back to the old computer so we could at least have access to the internet. *But* all my recent pictures and my new photo editing stuff is on the newer computer. So I guess pictures will have to wait.

With that said.

Christmas was wonderful this year! The girls got a million billion toys, which we have put some away so they will have some new toys to play with in the new house. I got some new lenses for my camera, and some gorgeous jewelry from Joey and the girls, and Joey got a tv from my parents and a blu ray player and some movies from me :)

We have also learned in the last couple days that the bank that owns the house we are trying to buy has finally agreed to fix some of the problems with the house (mostly just things because it has been sitting not lived-in for so long) in order for our mortgage company (which has approved us) to approve the house to be mortgageable. So we're hoping that this is the last of the speed bumps and once that is all done we can close! I am starting to feel again that there might be a light at the end of this tunnel... so we will see how that turns out.

Here's to 2011! Starting the year off with everyone catching the flu - so things can only go up from here! ;p