New House and Paige's Visit

At the end of February we moved into our very own house(we are still renting, but it is a house to ourselves). We absolutely LOVE the house and all its perks. We have 3 bedrooms 1.5 bathrooms, a totally fenced in backyard, a big basement that has a laundry room, a storage room, and then a big main area that is going to be a playroom/tv room. ALL the yard maintenance is taken care of and the yard is beautiful! It has central AC and plenty of closet space. It has all been painted within the past 6 months and we love the colors. Overall we absolutely love the house. We are still working on getting pictures up and all the last little touches done, but here are a few pictures of what it looks like as of now. We really want to make it just how we want it since we will most likely be here for the next 5 years or so.

Love the red door and the beautiful flowers outside

A little reading corner in our master bedroom. We'll eventually get a chair or something to put there.

The rest of the master. There's a cool little nook to the right that will be perfect for a newborn, we could put a pac n' play and a rocking chair and a changing table-(this is not an announcement, just whenever we have a newborn in the house again). Then to the left is a big walk-in closet and a bathroom. So nice.

"Newborn nook"

Grant's room

Guest bedroom

basement-such a fun place to hang out as a family(Grant has a big stash of toys that is just out of the picture to the left/ He loves all the space to play!) I think we will eventually get a big area rug to go down here as well. Notice all the brand new hardwood floors throughout most of the house...

dining room(we now have a nice big picture of downtown Spokane on the wall in there. It looks great

living room

kitchen

love the countertops and cupboards

main bathroom

back porch

backyard

flowers all around the house

backyard again

Just a week after we moved in, my sister Paige came to visit us. She is living in Florida right now doing an internship with Disney World. We did lots of fun things with her and really enjoyed having her here. We took her to Washington DC for a quick trip as well. Cameron and I had both been there before, but knew that Paige would really like it so we decided to go. We left here early on Friday morning, picked Cameron straight up from work and then got on the road. It is about a 6-hour drive which isn't too bad. About an hour into the trip Grant threw up ALL over himself and his carseat. We had to pull over, completely change Grant's entire outfit and scrub his carseat the best we could. There was no way we could get it that clean at a rest stop, so we put a towel over it and put him back in it. He didn't seem to be fazed by it at all and acted totally fine. This was the first time he has EVER thrown up and we really still have no idea why. We made it to DC and went straight to check into the hotel and then the plan was to get to Arlington NationalCemetery since that is somewhat out of the way of other things we wanted to see. That way we could spend the whole next day just doing downtown things(which is A LOT to do in one day by itself). Well, that was the plan, but once we got in the car and were maybe 20 minutes closer to DC, Grant threw up again (and it was WAY more this time than even the 1st episode.) So at this point we had nothing with us in the car since we had unloaded everything at the hotel. We stopped at target to get some medicine, laundry soap(since it was obvious that we would need to do some laundry when we got back to the hotel), a new outfit for Grant, and some more towels just in case. We decided to just call it a night at that point and get an early start the next day. So we went back to the hotel where Cameron and Grant actually went swimming(like I said, Grant never acted sick at all and seemed generally happy and normal). He loved swimming. We ordered some food into the hotel and just ate and went to bed.

The next day was crazy. We booked it around ALL day so we could see as many things as we could in the short amount of time that we had. In all, we really did a ton and saw a lot for only one day. We saw Arlington National Cemetery and the changing of the guards, we went to the Capitol, the National Gallery of Art, the Library of Congress, the Holocaust Museum, the Washington Monument, saw the White House, The WW2 Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial...Whew, makes me tired just writing all of that. Grant did really well and actually stayed in his stroller for most of it. He slept for a bit during the museums which was nice too. At the end of the day we drove to Maryland to stay the night with some Spokane friends who we have known forever. Unfortunately we didn't have much time to hang out with them since we packed the day so full, but it was really nice getting to chat with them for a while and it was SUPER nice of them to let us stay at their new house(loved it!)

Sunday we just jumped back in the car as soon as Grant woke up and drove home. There were no getting sick incidents on the way home which made it much easier and quicker than the way there. Overall, it was a great trip. Really fast, but I think we got to see pretty much everything that we would have wanted to.

Out to eat on the 1st day Paige was here. Paige captured a very somber looking Grant. Really most of his pictures are like this, but I promise he smiles all the time. In fact, last week we had a babysitter come over and watch him and when we got home she could not stop saying how happy and crazy and NOT shy he was. She had only seen him at church until that point and he seems to get pretty shy in public so she was shocked to see how he was at home.

haha- a little less shy at this moment

he loved aunt Paige

fun at the park

Right as we were getting in the car to leave for DC Paige noticed that Grant and I matched!

On the drive, after throwing up incident #1. Changed into pj's and sitting on a blanket.

watching endless Backyardigans

Beware: puke picture coming up! Scroll down fast if you don't want to see it....

Happy and covered in puke

Hanging out at the hotel at the end of day one. Despite a day full of puking Grant was in very good spirits.

this kid loves the water. Although what he loves even more is running on the outside and jumping in. He slipped and hit his side so that was the end of swimming for the night.

The Next Day:

Paige

Metro Station

The Capitol(Grant sleeping)

Eating some gelato at a DELICIOUS pizza place called We the Pizza!

Arlington-Always a favorite of mine

A security guard at the library of congress stopped us and asked if we were twins... I had never gotten that one before. I said to Paige, "I bet that was the best compliment you've ever been given" (:

On the metro headed back to our car. Then we drove an hour to our friends house and left early in the morning. Grant is quite a bit loopy and tired here. He had everyone sitting around us laughing. 09=