All Things Haley: We Like To Move It, Move It!

Yes, that's the title to today's post. And yes, I know you love it.

First, my apologies (and thank you) for the very long blogging break! It was a much needed step away from this lovely little home for my typing. I'm back now and feeling refreshed and ready to share! I'll be blogging every weekend- on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday each week. So check back on Sunday night or Monday for a recap.

We are officially moved out of our very first home! It's a little bit bittersweet, but mostly I'm very excited at the prospect of selling our house and finding our new home down in Chandler, much closer to my family! The house went up on the market on Thursday afternoon and it looks AWESOME! Our realtors brought in a cleaning service and we hired landscapers, so the place is beautiful right now. :) Of course, none of this could be done without the amazing help from my parents to move us out of that place. My Dad helped Ben move all of the boxes and the furniture into our Uhaul and my Mom helped me pack up the whole place. Then my Dad unloaded everything with Ben (I helped a tiny bit) and my Mom took the kids to her place so they wouldn't be stuck in the playroom the whole time. What made it even more amazing was when my parents offered to watch the kids for the night so Ben and I could actually finish unpacking and organizing our temporary home. We were up until almost 2am but we got everything finished! We're officially in the house and settled, and it feels great.

To be completely honest, this house is better for the current baby phase than our last house. It's a bit smaller, but the layout is awesome for the kids right now and we have grass in the backyard that they can play in!

We've spent the last several days playing with the littles in our big great room rather than being locked up in the playroom in our old house. Grace can roam in and out of our new play room, dragging whatever toys she wants out into the family room. Caleb has all kinds of furniture to pull up on now, too. Oh, and that furniture is a lot more comfortable for Mommy and Daddy to sit on than the floor of the playroom... It's a win all around!

Don't get me wrong, we're still rolling around all over the floor with the babies all evening. It's my favorite part of the day.

Other big happenings from this past week? Let's see- oh yeah, we sold our house!!! Ok, it's not like we've closed escrow or anything, but we got our first offers on Friday night, the first full day the house was on the market. Two great offers from solid buyers, both very similar and close to our asking price. We decided to counter on both because it was the first day on the market, and they BOTH met our counter offers on Saturday! So we had to decide last night and this morning which offer to accept. We made our decision this morning and signed the offer. We're now under contract and awaiting the inspection and appraisal. Pray for everything to go smoothly during escrow- we should be closing on February 20th! Oh, and our buyers are relocating from Ohio, so we've got some midwesters moving into our place. I feel good about that, seeing as I married one. :)

What else? Caleb had his first appointment with his new Occupational Therapist - a friend of my family from church! I'm so excited to be working with someone I know, and she was great with him. She absolutely made it feel like play rather than work, but she kept him pretty focused and had some good ideas. I'm looking forward to working with her! Unfortunately, her company doesn't have any speech or physical therapists available right now so we have to put out a request for the area to find someone to fill those gaps. We were assigned a Developmental Specialist but I haven't talked to them yet, so we'll see how that goes. This therapist will have overarching knowledge of all of the therapies and will be able to tie it all together for Caleb- focusing on his overall development. Should be a great addition to Team Caleb!

We will be doing his occupational therapy (and hopefully at least one or two of the other therapies) on Tuesdays. Ben and I will be trying to work from home every other Tuesday so we can be here for those (and skip the commute every once in a while). Speaking of commute- it's been really easy! We leave every morning at 6:55am and get to work before 7:30. Then we leave work sometime around 4pm and get home usually by 4:30! No biggie! It's a straight shot which is nice, just get in the carpool lane and smooth sailing. Now, if we couldn't carpool...that's a different story.

I started running in the mornings this past week! It's FREEZING outside (for this born and raised AZ girl), but I like it so much better than trying to workout after work and either during baby time or after they go to bed. This way, it's done and over with. Of course, I've been even more exhausted than usual- hopefully that goes away. But after one weekend, I'm feeling pretty good- so I think I'll do it again next week. Fingers crossed this helps get me back into athlete mode again!
The babies are doing great. They adjusted really well and are sleeping better than they were in Scottsdale. They are waking up once at night most nights, but have slept through a couple of times down here! They both have cut a few teeth in the past couple of weeks, so I think that was a culprit of the really bad sleeping a few weeks ago. Grace now has her top two teeth and Caleb has all four molars and a k9 cut! He's rocking 13 teeth already! Little Gracie is feeling good about her four, though. :)

Caleb is really picking up on the babbling right now. He just sits with some toys or examining his hands and sings all about "va va" and "ba ba"! I've heard him do the M sound a few more times, too! And he's pulling up onto his knees on EVERYTHING! He loves it! Still not standing, but he can balance really well on his knees. He also started flipping pages on books which is so fun. He loves to read with us and will flick at the pages and smack them the whole time. He gets so excited when we start to read to him.

Grace is literally running now, and it's so cute. She waddles as she runs because she's still working on her solid balance, I love it! She is climbing on everything and loves to practice that balance whenever she gets a chance. Scares the heck out of me, but she's actually pretty steady. I make sure to not let her practice whenever I can, though. It's too much for this mommy to see her 14 month old standing and bouncing on the couch!

We've gone to see several houses with the prospect of buying, but haven't found the one yet. Some that we thought maybe...but we're not sold on anything. The babies have joined us on a couple of trips to see places and Grace loves to explore new houses. She doesn't want anything to do with being held, she wants down to run! And anywhere there is a mirror, she is completely attracted to. ;) Love that girl.

I'm loving that I'm closer to my best friend, Jess. She came by to see the littles last week and Ben and I got to stop by her restaurant for breakfast as well. We're planning on doing some girls' nights now that we're closer, which is much needed! It's been too long!

We also have had several drop ins from my parents and my brother and sister-in-law (and their whole family came over to watch the kids while Ben and I went house shopping this weekend- it was awesome. Kate and Everett totally entertained the babies for a couple of hours, perfection!). Today, William and Britton drove down to see us, too! We moved much further away from them, but it's great to know that they're willing to make the drive to say hello (and maybe babysit? *wink wink)!
;)

Alright, off to the grocery store. I have to be up by 5:30 for my run tomorrow morning (it's taking some getting used to for this whole early morning workout thing...hopefully soon it will feel less awful).

January 1 - January 13, 2013