Quick update from the woman short on time

No pictures this go round, as the camera is somewhere packed away and I can't begin to wonder where it is!! We are in the midst of a 2-week move into our new house, which currently looks like a pigeon farm since we've successfully scraped the ceilings of their horrendous popcorn (or cottage cheese) ceilings. What a messy, messy job.

Ben has been great so far and is trying to help Daddy every chance with whatever he can help fix. He's such a cutie! He's been going on a lot of shopping trips to the hardware store, hardwood store, cabinet store, etc. For the most part he's a dream, especially if the store has those carts that double as little race cars for the kids. He just LOVES steering the wheel.

He has changed an incredible amount over just the past 10 days or so. Not physically, necessarily, since we just went to his 18-month appointment and he still only weighs 19 lb. 5 oz. He is such a squirt!!! Anyways, lately he has really started to learn and copy what mommy says and does. He high-fives (sometimes), plays messenger of objects between mommy and daddy, marches, roars, and has even started to sing a little. Every once in a while I'll get a kiss too, but he's certainly learning what a shaking head is--he shakes no to me quite a bit. :) Ah, the dreaded "no" phase is no doubt upon us soon. Also, whenever he sees a picture of himself now he says "baby." It's adorable, as you can imagine.

Boy, do I sound like proud mama or what? I truly am proud of how smart and well-tempered he is. He's such a joy in AJ's and my life.

Wish us luck with our impending move to the pigeon camp. I'll post pictures as soon as we're a little settled and I can take a breath! Hope everyone is well!

Hopeful for a fantastic 2008!!

Happy New Year! The posts have been few and far between, I know, but I hope all of you enjoy the excitement of seeing a new one!

It has been VERY busy around here for us lately. Andrew and I decided we wanted to move and found a place over Thanksgiving that we wanted to buy and build a house. So, we put our house on the market the first week of December and sold it after 8 days!!! Obviously, we were in shock. The craziness of it lies in the fact that the place we originally wanted (and the reason we put our house on the market) fell through, as did a couple other places we had in mind---all the while our house was set to close at the end of December!

So here is how things stand right now: we have sold our house --yeah, congrats to us!--and are renting it back from the new owners (who plan to rent it out) and we have decided to try our hand in the real estate business. We put an offer on a house in a very nice neighborhood that was a steal and needs a little TLC, so we hope to be the owners of that house next week. We'll use the time we have two homes to get some icky work done at the new house and then move in sometime at the end of the month. The goal is to finish the house in 3-4 months and sell it. Our plan at this point in time is to fix-n-flip a few houses that we live in in the next couple years, then if we enjoy it and it makes us pretty good money, we'll buy a real house and do f&fs on the side. We'll see---but we're really excited about our new adventure!!!!

Christmas was great. Santa came to visit Benjamin and he had a lot of fun opening presents and playing with all his new stuff. He was just so fun to watch---he's learned so much over the past couple months and is really starting to become a real person---gone are the baby days!! :( and :)

Here are a few pictures and a video or two from the past few weeks. I hope everyone had a safe and fun holiday season. I know we did!