Chloe's Birthday

On October 25th Chloe turned one!!!  An entire year of learning, growing, parental mistakes, parental wins, but most importantly learning and growing.  We have loved every minute of our adventure.  Chloe loves hanging out with her daddy, especially playing chase, cuddles, and video games with him.  She is definitely still a Daddy's girl, and she has him wrapped around her finger.

Her newest skill is to babble.  And by babble, I mean full sentence babbling.  She really believes that she is saying something.  She pauses, uses inflections, nods her head, and cutest of all, if you say what? she repeats it.  haha. She also loves to point to things to get what she wants.  She knows exactly how to get what she wants.

Chloe still loves to be outside, and go on walks and hikes.  She loves music - singing, dancing, playing music.  She loves books - reading them to herself, to us, and she loves when Daddy reads her books.  I don't know what it is, but she loves to hear his voice.  I love to see them spend time together, it is so cute.  She still loves her blankies.  When given a choice, she chooses all of them.  She loves her toys, especially her balls.  She loves to throw them and kick them.  Grandma Kari bought her a shape sorter, and she loves opening the box and putting things in and out of.  Grandma Cox got her a lot of cute clothes, and Aunt Raina bought her an outfit.

Grandma and Grandpa Buhler, Great Grandma and Great Grandpa Cox, Uncle Destin, Chel, Aunt Raina, Uncle Danny, Danny's sister Savannah, Uncle Phil, and Aunt Danaca all came over to celebrate.  It was a lot of fun.  We had pizza, cake and icecream, and we got to open presents.  I think Chloe's favorite part was facetiming Grandma and Grandpa Cox.  She walked around with the iPad while talking to them.  I love technology.  It is so nice to have technology so my parents could be with us for Chloe's birthday!

Pictures from her birthday (Thank you Destin and Danny for the pictures):

House

On September 14th, Doug and I bought our keys to our first house!  It was a short sale, and we got a great deal on the house!  We love it!  The previous owners were artists, and messed up the house pretty bad.  There were hundreds of holes in the walls, random paint splotches everywhere, saw dust everywhere, and even peanut butter and jelly on the ceiling (apparently it was fun to throw food up there.)

We got the keys to the house on that Friday, moved everything into the garage the next day, then for 2 weeks we stayed with Doug's parents to clean up the house.  We couldn't move in until our appliances came, so we decided to make the most of it.  We, including friends and family, cleaned up the yard, chopped down trees, pulled a lot of weeds, cleaned the whole house, fixed holes in the walls, cleaned carpets, and painted the entire house.  We finally got to move in on October 1st.  Here are some before and after pictures.

Before

After

Living Room - Befores

Living Room - After

Kitchen Befores

Kitchen Afters

Chloe's Room Before 

Chloe's Room After

Blue Room Before

 Blue Room After

Master Before - We are missing a picture of the giant hole in the wall.  

Master After

 Stairs Before

Stairs After 

 Family Room Befores

Family Room Afters

Unfinished Bedroom

Laundry Room

Basement

Basement

Outside Before

 Outside Afters

We have made so many improvements on the house and we love all of it.  We are excited to continue to make it our own.  We still have some painting to do (a lot of touch ups), and we will hopefully be redoing the kitchen next year (significant water damage to the floor and counter tops).  We know exactly what we want to do with the laundry room, basement, and unfinished bedroom, and hopefully in the next 5-7 years we will be able to finish the rest of the house.