Kids, Kids, Kids! ;)

Well, Eli and I are in NC for a few days for Wade's birthday, and this afternoon after Sunday lunch, Mom asked me for a picture of all the cousins, so here is our little attempt... Jacob was fine until he got scared right before the picture, so I can't believe we got a pleasant look from him even after crying! Such a happy boy! Anywho, this is about the best of the bunch! ;) Plus there is one of Haylee and Jared that makes them look about 12!

Hope y'all enjoy!

Jared - 5 years, Jacob - 15 months, Eli - 20 months, Haylee - 5.5 years, Wade - 11.5 months

Daddy and Eli...

Just thought I would post a few pics of post-op Daddy and Eli comforting him... :) Ryan had surgery to remove his tonsils and adenoids and correct his deviated septum on the 9th, and has not been loving life, but thinks he might finally be on the road up to feeling a "little" better... I can speak from experience that this recovery is extremely painful, so Eli and I are trying to be on our best behavior while Daddy is on the mend...

So, here are a few pics of Eli sitting with Daddy while we watch Survivor... :) Eli thinks Sandy is annoying too just in case you're wondering...

Cheeseball father and son... (Ryan is loving not shaving just in case anyone is wondering!)

Ryan being silly and Eli investigating this "beard"

Daddy couldn't keep pretending... :)

Kisses for Eli...

Eli eating...

Which is pretty much his favorite pastime... :) The first is him eating yogurt... He ate the first cup with very little mess and asked for "more"... He ate about half of the second cup and then just started playing... He had fun and then got to have a bath too! ;)

The rest are of him eating a little spaghetti... He was just so cute I couldn't resist... Hope y'all enjoy!

He is such a sweet little boy...

He loves the camera

Playing is so much more fun than eating...

On second thought...

yumm...

such a cheeseball

our happy little boy...

Eli having a little fun at the park...

Since the weather has been so unseasonably warm, I've been itching to get out and take some pictures of Eli before he completely grows up on us! So, today after his nap, We left Daddy resting in the recliner and headed to one of our local parks... He was much more interested in playing than taking pictures, but I got a few fun ones... Hope y'all enjoy! (He just got a haircut today, so that's why his hair is extra short!)

I'm having problems uploading the pictures, so here is the link to my Facebook album...

I think this is gonna work now... :)

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=59373&l=43b2d&id=500022158

(Added these to my Shutterfly account for those of you that are interested...)

Our "Sweet" little boy...

Well, Eli has begun a fascination with my shoes of every style and type, and this morning I caught him wearing some flats of mine, so I thought I would take the opportunity to be able to embarrass him for years to come, so here you go... :)

They were taken with our new inexpensive camera, so sorry for the blurry pics... I just didn't feel like pulling out my D300... :)

Oh, and he had a mouthful of frosted mini-wheats in most of these!

Our New Home!

Well, owning a home is something we've wanted to do for a while, but were nervous about the process and what we could afford in this area... We contacted a realtor about possibly buying a home and asked about seeing some properties we had found ourselves. We were quickly awakened that pictures do not always speak a thousand words! It was very eye opening to see what homes REALLY look like up close! We knew we wanted to find a place that was updated and required a minimal amount of work since Ryan works long hours and doesn't enjoy that kind of work, and I'll be just a little busy with a new baby and Eli... Well, after a couple weekends and weekdays of looking we found our perfect house and went home and slept on it... We called the next day and decided to put in an offer... We had a little false information from our replacement real estate agent (not on purpose) which led us to give a lower offer, but after a day of back and forth counter offers we were able to agree upon a $2,000 decrease from asking and $4,000 in closing costs, plus they are going to complete the privacy fence in the back. Well, Ryan wanted to go look at the house one more time and after looking at everything again, our agent called the listing agent and verbally accepted their counter offer. Then Ryan decided to pull the car in the garage to see how that would work. Well, as I directed him in to within 2 inches of the wall, we realized the car WASN'T going to fit! There was literally 1.5 feet of the car hanging out the back! We immediately told the agent to call them back and tell them this needed to be fixed before we went any further... The problem was there was a little drywalled room built in the back right that housed the washer/dryer and water heater... Well, because of this you lost about 3 feet of parking space which means only a tiny compact car could fit. My heart sank when the car wouldn't fit, and I just knew that the seller was going to tell us to hit the road since we had been a pain in the neck during the negotiations! ;) Well, the next day the seller came out and looked at the property and got in touch with our agent and said that they wanted to meet with us to discuss the layout we wanted, and that they would fix it to our specs! We were so relieved and honestly had started looking at houses again because we were just sure they weren't going to be willing to do anything! We ended up meeting them the next day and explained how we wanted everything and told them if this was changed to our specs we were ready to accept their offer! We signed our contract on Monday, and because of our lease situation we don't close till March 15th, which should give us a little bit of time to get everything settled before Reagan gets here! ;)
Here are some pics of our house! It's a 4 bdrm2bath 2 story home in one of our favorite areas... It's been completely remodled and freshened up and all we have to do is buy a Refrigerator, but otherwise it is move in ready! After taxes, insurance, interest, etc... We are still going to be paying about $100 LESS a month than we pay now for rent, which is of course great news...

I LOVE this kitchen! Pretty much everything has been updated...

All we have to do is get a fridge

This will be Ryan's bathroom since the "Master" will now be the guest bedroom/office

Now the Guest bedroom/Office

This will be Ryan's "Man Cave" ;)

Our Massive Master Bedroom... We're also gonna put a loveseat and recliner along with a Tv up here for those late night feedings. :)

Mine and the kids bathtub...

Our Living room which should have plenty of room for our big sectional...

Our Backyard... Imagine a privacy fence here... (It's barbed wire right now!)

Mine and the kiddos upstairs bath

Hallway leading to the guest bedroom/office

Eli's bedroom... :) Still figuring out what we'll do to his "big boy" room! ;)

The back of our house...

Stairs looking down... (These pics all came out yellow, but it's really a beige)

Our very green breakfast nook... I just need to figure out an acceptable paint alternative...

This will be my Master Closet since Ryan is going to take the HUGE downstairs walk in closet in the Guest Bedroom/Office... ;)

Reagan's room... So excited to get to decorate this!

Another view of Ryan's Man Cave! (The little boy comes with the house!)

I really like these stairs! ;)

They put quality fans in which is such a nice alternative to the shaky fans we have in our apartment!

The Breakfast Nook's light fixture...

I love the moulding, just not the green... :)

The front... :)

Nikon is sold!

Thanks everyone who contacted me, but the camera is sold! ;)

Nikon D70 DSLR

I’m planning on selling my first Digital SLR camera because I bought an upgrade camera a while back and haven’t gotten around to selling the first one. I tested it and everything works great… Would be a great camera for someone wanting a lot more control than a typical consumer digital camera or someone interested in learning a little photography. Has full manual and automatic settings. Used it for my first wedding shoot with great results. Has 6.1 mega pixels, but don’t let that fool you, this camera up against a typical consumer digital camera with 10 mp is still a considerably better camera.

Included is
1 - Nikon D70 DSLR Camera Body (with cap and strap)
1 - Sigma 28-70mm f/2.8 lens w/ front and back cap
1 - Sigma 70-300mm f/4 lens w/back cap (front cap is missing)
1 - Nikon Li-ion battery
1 - Synergy Digital Li-ion battery
1 - Charger
1 - SanDisk Extreme III 2.0 GB Compact Flash card (with case)

You can download the manual off of Nikon’s website because I have NO IDEA what happened to it! ;)

I can’t seem to find the USB cord since I use a memory card reader, but it uses a standard photo USB cord. If I find it or anything else I’ll include it…

I’m asking $150 which is quite a deal considering I can get more selling it online, but thought I’d see if anyone I know would like it. Paid over $1,000 in June 2005. I understand now may not be the best time with the financial situation where it is, so if no one is interested I’ll just sell it online. :)

Just leave me a comment or contact me on Facebook if you are interested… :)

Everything that is included...

Here are a few sample images that I took the last year or so with the D70...







Let me know if you're interested... :)

It was Santa time again!

Well, we finally had the goofy cast off and we decided we needed to go get Eli's picture with Santa cause it's just a fun thing to do... :) He was fine walking up to Santa and waving at him, but not so much sitting in his lap... He started crying right away, but calmed down within about 15 seconds... If she would have given me another 15 or so seconds I could have had him smiling, but they were not there for good pictures... Just to get you through and on your way... :( Ryan tells me to relax and that it's fine, but it just annoys me cause he could have been smiling... Oh well, maybe next year! ;)

Hope y'all enjoy!

Here's his pic from last year at around 6 months old...

And this year at 18 months old! I can't believe how big he is! :(
(I just love his little red socks peeking through!) ;)

We found out what we're having!!

I announced this on Facebook, but completely forgot that I need to post it here because there are a ton of people that don't have Facebook, and I might not have gotten a chance to tell yet...

We were the first ones in for an ultrasound on Monday, and the baby was NOT wanting to cooperate! It was moving all over the place and wrapping their legs up so you couldn’t get a good look, plus the umbillical cord was going between their legs... I was so sad cause the tech kept saying that it wasn’t looking good to find out the sex... I just laid there and prayed that God would let us see because I just didn’t know if I could handle going home without knowing! The tech looked for like 10 minutes and then finally said that she thinks she sees something and that she was 90% sure it was a girl, and that she hadn’t seen any evidence of any boy parts... Then our little girl spread her legs for us and plain as day we saw the 3 little lines! (What they look for on ultrasounds to identify if it's a girl) No boy parts this time!!! We are sooooo excited and I cannot wait to go find some cute girl clothes!!

I honestly get excited everytime I think about it and cannot wait to see what she'll look like and who she'll take after... We are just so thankful that she is healthy and everything seems to be going wonderful!

They put the pictures on CD's instead of print outs and I totally forgot to go back and pick one up, so hopefully I'll get to that tomorrow... The stills weren't really that great anyways, but I know y'all will want to see something! :)

Oh, and her name will be Reagan (middle name still undecided) Stroud... :)