The black spot

The other half of the reason I haven't been up to date with blogging is "the black spot" on my camera.  It has been there since May and I just now took it to get fixed.  I actually only had to get it cleaned and thankfully it's back to normal, and it was inexpensive and that is always great!  I was pretty worried and am feeling super excited to be back behind my camera (even though I secretly would LOVE to get the newer version and only have one lens instead of two, but someday...)!

These pictures are from last week when the weather was like Fall instead of Summer!  We are all really loving our temporary home!  We love having kids down the street to play with, a pool in the subdivision, the smaller ranch style home with NO steps instead of 3 sets, and our flat yard to play in :)  We have Grandma and Pop over for dinner at least 2 times a week.  I go on almost nightly walks around our neighborhood with Cooper and sometimes I have company, like my Mom or one of my best friends Alijeh (who lives super close now!).

Memphis

I have made a sort of tradition to take the kids to Nana and Opa's for a week during the summer.  Since John doesn't have a million vacation days, he sadly doesn't get to come with us.  Its just a perk of being a stay-at-home Mom, I get all the vacation days I want while the kids are not in school.  They took us to a Memphis Redbirds game this year and the kids did great.  We played in the pool, had lots of yummy dinners, and just spent time together.  It was a lot of fun.  And we are happy to report that everyone was very excited to come back "home" to our new home.  I had missed it too and that is a very good feeling :)

Why we have been MIA...

Well, to make it short, we moved! We decided back in beginning of June to sell and spent the entire month getting the house ready. John could no longer stand his 3 hour daily commute and neither could I.  I put it on the market at the beginning of July and got 3 offers in 3 days! We were under contract by day 3. We closed less than a month later on July 31st! It was my 1st sale and I think we did great! It is the BEST time ever to sell and we were so happy that the appraisal was just over their offer (it was also above asking!) We now live closer to Johns new job in Alpharetta. We are only 3 miles from his office! We will miss our friends and neighbors so much. 

It was a very difficult decision and we questioned it up until we moved into our new house, which I actually lived in for 2 years as a little girl. My Mom kept it as a rental home the last 20+ years and now we are renting it. With our home selling so fast, this allows us to take our time and see where we want to buy. We LOVE how much smaller this house is and we have already decided we now want a ranch. Lol. To go from 4 stories, 6 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms....to a 3-2 ranch has been like a dream come true. Lol. Who knew!?!?  We also LOVE the convenience of everything we can think of being so close, including our parents and friends from high school. Grandma and Pop are now only 3 miles away!

Adventures in Babysitting

Amy and Dan (our brother and sister-in-law) celebrated their 10th anniversary a few weeks ago and we watched Miles, Avery,and Will for them while they went away for the weekend.  The kids had a blast and John even said at one point, "see, wouldn't it be so fun to have 5".  To that I laughed out loud and said, we have only had them one full day and we get to return them in 2, there is a huge difference in having 5 all the time :) hahaha

 Grocery Shopping

 Miles said we missed something on the list of meals ;)

 Riding the power wheels

 John teaching Mile's some new skills 

 Catching frogs, lizards, and salamanders 

Everyone is holding a frog!! 

 In case you were wondering Bailey was sound asleep thankfully while we explored :)

 We took them to Strars and Strikes for a while, we got a little interrupted by a power outage from a big storm, but went back a few hours later and had a lot of fun :) 

John made his own GIANT screen and used a projector for fun movie time :)  The kids LOVED it and so did we! 

Mother's Day 2013

We went over to my Mom's for Mother's Day this year and had a great time.  My cousin's Tara, her son Brayden & her boyfriend Phillip and my other cousin Michael came in town to celebrate too.

New Beginnings

We were told over the winter holidays that John's job of 9 years, along with about 550 other jobs on the F-22 at Lockheed would be moving to Fort Worth, TX.  So we had a huge decision to make...to go or stay. I won't go into too much detail, but for our family we made the decision to stay in Georgia.  John got offered a position at L-3 in Alpharetta and after even more debating, he decided to take it.  This has been a rough couple months for our family sitting and waiting and debating the unknown.  It was extremely hard for him to leave Lockheed, the plane he loved so dearly, and all of his friends he had made over the years.  We feel so blessed and I couldn't be more proud of John and all that he has accomplished.  He works extremely hard for our family and I know he can succeed in anything he puts his mind to.

Grass

We planted grass a few weeks ago and we couldn't be happier with the results!!  Our yard had been overtaken by moss and weeds and we now actually have grass!  

Mother's Day Tea and last day of school

I have to back post because our modem broke a few weeks ago and we went out of town and just now got it up and running again! 

Jackson is very sad that Tucker and Kessler are going off to Kindergarten. He will miss getting to see one of his best buddies around school for sure!

 These are his best buddies from his class.  Cole is his "best friend" (to the left of Jackson) and him and all his friends play super heros ALL the time he tells me :)

 Jackson did fantastic for his performance, he was singing and dancing and it was perfect! I was very proud of him!!