We bought a house

As of October 25, we are homeowners! Just 9 days after Piper was born, Jared drove out to Iowa to close on our house. We waited a couple of weeks to actually move, which was definitely the way to go. I'm not sure which version of me is more useless: 9 months pregnant, or juggling a newborn. But I felt so much better not being pregnant, that if I had to do it over again, I would do it the same way. I cannot take any credit whatsoever for how smoothly it all went. Jared's sister, Rachel, flew out to help us and she is a machine. She and Jared loaded and unloaded the appliances, furniture, beds, everything. We could not have done it without her.

This move to Iowa has been at least 9 months in the making. We have been looking forward to it so much, and once we finally got approval from Jared's job in late August, we jumped on it. We drove out to look at houses in September and made an offer the next week.


Our house needs lots of small finishing touches (new bathroom floor, removing the cow wallpaper, etc) but we feel like we got a great deal and we are so excited to not be renting anymore. Hooray for getting to put holes in the walls and painting whatever color we want!

But most of all, hooray for not living (quite so much) in the middle of nowhere! I'm so excited to have a mall (mostly for the indoor playground), a selection of grocery stores, lots of parks, and an airport nearby.

I'll post pictures at some point. For now, while both babies are sleeping, the bathtub is begging to be cleaned.

Halloween 2012

The chickens in the family went trick or treating around the neighborhood and got lots of compliments on their costumes. Jared encouraged Libby to say "trick or treat," "thank you," or "bawk bawk" at each of the houses, but she froze and was too shy. In between houses, she could say "more candy" just fine!

I was a little sad to miss seeing Libby trick or treat, but it was too cold to take the baby out. Piper and I stayed home to hand out candy and do some much needed cleaning and laundry.

We went for a walk this morning and Libby kept trying to walk up to all of the houses. How do you explain to a child that they have to wait and entire year to do it again?