One Step Closer

We have renters!! After only a week and half on the market, our house has been rented! Not only has it been rented, but they are renting over what we originally needed!!! Thanks to our awesome realtor we will be receiving enough money to cover our mortgage and the property management fee. Praise the Lord!!

Really we have to praise God for just how He has worked through out this whole process. First, He provided a new job very soon into the process. When at first it didn't seem like a reasonable offer, He made it possible by having the owner offer Jeremy more money. He used a realtor friend to give us good advice and help us decide to rent to save us money. We then got a great realtor that helped promote our rental, allowing it to rent in just 1.5 weeks. While we have one more step (finding a new place to live) we know that the Lord will provide there as well.

Now the packing process begins! If anyone would like to come help, it would be greatly appreciated. :) I believe we will pull out of here the last weekend in June so if you would be willing to help us pack it all up, we would love that as well. :)

Jesse and Emily's Wedding

This past weekend we celebrated another family wedding. This time it was Jeremy's oldest brother, Jesse, wedding in the beautiful mountains of NC. The wedding took place on the side of a hill over looking a huge pond with Grandfather Mountain as the backdrop. It was so picturesque!

Rehearsal
Cousin love
Jeremy's mom made them matching outfits for the rehearsal
Ready for the wedding to start
Family shot (I hate this picture of me..haing a horrible hair day and I have a farmer's tan)
More cousin love.
Mother of the Bride, Jesse, and Emily after the ceremony
Wedding party. There are lots of boys because her 2 brothers and Jesse's 2 brothers were just ushers.
Madison, our niece, the flower girl and her daddy, Nathan at the reception
Owen had a bird's eye view
Beautiful table arrangements
Our menu for the evening
First dance as a married couple
I've learned that it's very hard to try and get good pictures when you are balancing a toddler and a camera. Owen suffered from a case of constipation that day, so we spent a lot of our time going back and forth to the bathroom. It was a beautiful wedding and we wish the new Mr. and Mrs. Cox all the best!

(Emma, I'm sorry there no pictures of you; I had some great ones, but since Morris was in the picture too I didn't want to post them.)

Going to the Chapel

Congratulations are in order again! My little brother Brandon asked Lauren to be his wife and she said yes! It's a very sweet story (guess I should have asked before I shared..BP tell me you want me to remove this. :) ) Brandon works for a boat club on Lake Norman and worked up this whole scam with his boss and wife. First Brandon took her to eat at a place right on the lake. As they were eating, BP said he saw one of the boat club boats parked at the dock. He started looking around for a member. He played like it really bothered him why one of the boats was parked out there. He made a call to the owner's wife asking what was going on. She made up a story about how one of the members got sick and had to leave the boat there. BP conveniently said he could bring the boat back. She thought it was a great idea. What Lauren didn't know was that BP had already planned this with the wife and the wife was in the bar to switch keys with him. She took his car back to the home dock for him. They get on the boat and Lauren thinks she knows what is going on. BP drives around the lake for like 45 mins. Finally he stops and gets down on his knees and washes her feet. He reads her Scripture he had prepared. He then proposed and she said yes. :)

We are so excited for them! Jeremy and I have been praying that the Lord would bring Brandon a Godly, kind, nurturing wife ever since we got married. The Lord has answered those requests and more. We love Lauren and can't wait to make her our sister-in-law! Congrats again guys.. let the wedding planning begin!!

Moving on Up

As if we didn't have enough going on in our lives, we decided to add one more thing. We are moving!
Last week, Jeremy was offered a web designer position at a design agency in Charlotte. He's excited about narrowing his focus (he did web & graphic design along with photography) and the opportunity to work in a small firm along with other designers (right now he's the only one).

There are many great things about this move:
1) More money! :)
2) Bigger city with more to do and more to choose from
3) Closer to Jeremy's family
4) Close to both our brothers and so many friends

We are sad though that we are moving farther from my parents (and they are too!).

As far as the move, we are not sure when it is going to happen. Jeremy is to report to his new job on June 7th, just 2 short weeks. Of course, this is really fast and we have a house here. He is going to have to without us at first and stay in my brother's spare bedroom. As far as Owen and I, we will stay here until we can rent the house out. After talking to a realtor, it looks like the best thing for us is to rent out the house instead of trying to sell it. Since we have only owned this house for a year and half, we don't have a lot of equity in it. We're afraid that we would not break even in the sale so we are going to hang on to it for a while. This also will allow us to be together as a family quicker. Homes here are taking over 6 months to sell at the least and we really just don't have 6 months with the new baby coming.

To help with the renting process, we have found a property management group that will help us. They will collect the rent and be on call for an issues that would come up. Once we rent our house, we can rent a house in Charlotte. Because Charlotte is such a big area, we need the time as well to figure out what area we want to live in.

We are really excited! The Lord has proven faithful in providing Jeremy a new job and we know He will bring us through the rest. We are so thankful for how fast and easy this job search has been this time. Please pray for us that this transition time will be really quick and we can be together as a family as soon as possible.

Messy Eater

Owen has a tendency to wear his food. He loves to get into whatever he is eating and enjoy it to it's fullness.

One day for lunch he had a jelly sandwich. He pulled the pieces apart and licked it first, creating this mess you see on his face, hands, and bib. He gave me this look like, "what? What are you looking at?"

Saturday we made homemade pudding pops. It was Owen's first experience with it and to say he liked it was understatement. As you can tell, it was not a clean adventure.



Poor Jeremy ended up with pudding pop on him too. I think next time we are stripping him down before he gets to eat one.

Sharing The News

To share our news with our families, we wanted to do something more creative than just telling them. So we put our creative juices to work and this is how it turned out.

To tell my parents....

I tried desperately to find some kind of big brother shirt but had no such luck in our small town. Jeremy suggested we just make our own. Thanks to the many years of making shirts for my elementary school kids, I had tons of experience with iron on transfers. Rather than just do a simple big brother shirt, we thought we would do something a little more exciting. My dad calls Owen his little buckaroo. So here is what we came up with...It says, "Papa's Lil' Buckaroo is gettin' a new pardner! -December 2010-." We put the shirt on him one night before we went over for dinner. My parents' chairs sit on either side of the entryway to the living room so we had Owen walk in on his own. He leaned over to say hi to my dad and my mom starts to read his shirt. She said "Owen's shirt says Buckaroo." She asked me where I found it and I realized she hadn't finished reading it. I asked her to keep reading and she was like, "What does this mean? Are you pregnant?" Of course then, Dad picked him up to read his shirt and Mom starts to tear up. I think the shirt was a success! :)

For Jeremy's family...

Jeremy's parents came into town for an overnight visit before his mom's appointment in Durham. We told her we had an early Mother's day present for her since we wouldn't see her for it. She unwraps this.. We tell her there is a slot for every new member of her family that she is gaining this year. For those who don't remember, we have gained 2 new sister-in-laws this year and Erin (Jeremy's sister) will have twins in August. There is a 5th spot for our new baby.

She didn't get it at first. Jeremy finally told her to count and she was like, "Wait there are 5. Are you pregnant!!?" It was really fun to watch her get it! :) We also told her it could be a slot for all her grandbabies now. She is going from 2 to 5 very quickly!

Later she told me that it was funny because she had told her friends that the only way to top last year's gift (a Shutterfly photobook) was to give her another grandbaby. Who knew we would really accomplish it?!

Both families are excited and we are thankful that they are so supportive of us as we become a family of 4!

The Best Christmas Present Ever

Up until now, I would probably say that the best Christmas present I ever got was a sewing machine. Or maybe a swing set. :) This year, I think that will change... this year I'm getting a new baby! That's right.. Owen is going to be a big brother! :)

We had our first doctor's appointment today and Dr. Fisher said everything looks great. She did an ultrasound and found a tiny beating heart. The picture is a horrible quality but you can see the tiny little lima bean.
Here's some answers I have been asked so far..

1. What is your due date? She estimated my due date as Dec. 20th.
2. Were you trying to have another baby? We weren't trying but we weren't always preventing it really either. I probably wouldn't have planned a baby to be born in Dec if I had my way. As being a Dec. baby myself, I hated having all my holidays in one month. Because this one's birthday will be so close, I want to make sure that I make this little one's birthday special.
3. How far apart will the kids be apart? 2 years and 3 months.
4. Are you going to find out the gender. If so, when do you find out the gender? Yes, we are going to find out. It will probably be around July.
5. How are you feeling? I'm feeling ok. I have had some nausea and been really tired. I feel like I've been really lucky.
6. Are your families excited? Yes they are. Jeremy's family is growing leap and bounds this year. There will be 3 new grandkids! My family is excited as well...everyone is hoping for a little girl this time.
7. Do you want a girl this time? Yes, I would love a girl, but I will be happy with a boy too. :)

We are excited about this new little one and can't wait to be a family of 4! Please pray with us for a healthy pregnancy and a baby.