Moving is tiring. Especially when there are two "helpers" to keep up with while trying to do other things. Then, throw in one of the "helpers" getting sick and being up a lot at night, and it's exhausting.

Thankfully, Addison seems to be on the mend. She was up several times last night, so we are hoping for a more restful night tonight. She was also up the night before, and Fischer was up the previous 2 nights (we think he was confused when he woke up in the middle of the night in his new room). Needless to say, we are ready for a good, solid night of sleep. Tonight, maybe?!

Because of all this, I don't really have the energy to post about anything tonight. I did want to post our very first family picture from the new house though! It was taken on Saturday (June 25) , which was also Bo's 8th birthday!!! We are in the guest bedroom in the picture. Our friends, Melissa, Ryan and their baby Logan, came to help us out with moving on Saturday and Melissa took this picture towards the end of the day. I'm not kidding when I say we all hopped on the bed, she snapped the picture, and everyone hopped up within 20 seconds. That's pretty much how it is with two on-the-go toddlers. :) And yes, Bo is chewing on a BBQ sauce mop he found in the kitchen.

I'm back!! We had to go 5 whole days without cable and internet, which for me, is a long time. I like cable, but I really love my internet!

Anyway, we are in our new house!! And slowly getting settled. It's been an eventful few days and I will write about them soon.

Unfortunately, I'm not getting much done today because Addison woke up with a high fever (103.8) and vomiting. And, Fischer woke up ready to start his day at 5 am. At least he feels ok though!

I will post pictures and updates soon!

We celebrated Scott's third Father's Day on Sunday. We had a fun day that included eating lunch out and a trip to World Market to buy our new dishes! And let me tell you, I think going to get stuff for the new house has been the hardest part of this whole building process. With Addison and Fischer in tow, it's almost impossible to make any decisions. It's a miracle we left World Market without breaking any of their dishes on display. Narrow aisles, bored toddlers (even in a cart), and slow decision makers just don't mix.

Anyway, here are a couple of pictures from Father's Day. I took them later in the day, so the kids just weren't feeling it. I told Scott they sort of look like family mug shots (at least Scott is smiling).

Some big things are happening today!

My parents celebrated their 37th anniversary today. 37 years! That's awesome! Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad! :)

Addison and Fischer celebrated their 28 month "birthday" today.  Even though I'm not counting the months like I used to, I still notice the 22nd of each month. In just so happened that their new booster seats got delivered today, so we made the switch from high chairs to booster seats. They look like such big kids sitting at the table like one of us!! They seemed to like their seats though.

Here they are in their high chairs, in June 2009. I think this was the day Scott put them together. The picture of Addison is one of my favorites because of the look on her face.  She's staring at the rice cereal like "You want me to eat what?!"

And lastly, our house was inspected today. And everything went well! So, we got the "ok" to start moving stuff in and we will close next week!! Scott took some stuff over tonight but the cleaners are still cleaning so we don't want to take too much over until they are done. We plan to move most of our stuff Friday and Saturday, and if all goes according to plan, we will spend our first night there on Saturday. We have NO idea how Addison and Fischer will react, but we will know soon enough!

The next few days will probably be pretty hectic, and then we'll be without cable and internet for a few days (I hope I can survive!!), so it will probably be awhile before I post again! I'm sure I'll have a lot of house updates....

Addison is getting better about letting me do her hair. She usually wants to go look in the mirror to see herself, but what girl doesn't want to do that?! :)

Here she is with her pigtails - the most adorable pigtails ever, in my opinion.

And Fischer kept saying "I want pigtails too!!"

Addison has been in a not-go-good mood. Turns out, her 2nd molar is breaking through - just the tiny little corner has come through. That makes 2 in and/or coming in for each of them - 2 more to go for each. I'm ready for all of their teeth to be in and be done with this teething thing, for awhile at least.

And yes, incase you were wondering, Fischer did bust his lip. You can see it in the picture above. He tripped and landed right on his lip, right at bedtime of course. Luckily it wasn't anything a little Tylenol couldn't fix!

Scott took the first load of our stuff over to the house last night. We aren't really starting the moving process yet, but we wanted to take advantage of having a friend's trailer, so he took our porch furniture over, along with a couple of other things.

While he was there, he took this picture. I really love how the house looks at night!

As you can see, we still don't have garage doors. They were supposed to be on this past week. Hopefully they'll be there Monday because we are 99% sure the bank is coming to do the final inspection on Wednesday!

Our days are pretty structured around here. We do things on a schedule, for the most part. We've done this since Addison and Fischer were tiny.

Sometimes though, it's nice to change things up. It's nice to not worry about nap time, play time, etc... Today was one of those days!

We have been looking for some new furniture for our new house. We decided we would go check out the Pottery Barn Outlet in Gaffney. Since we were heading that way, we thought we'd also check out the Greenville Children's Museum, so that Addison and Fischer wouldn't be completely bored the entire time.

So after breakfast, we drove the 2 hours to Greenville. Addison and Fischer slept most of the way! We enjoyed lunch at Moe's, then went to the museum. It was a lot of fun! It's hard to take pictures at those types of places since we are always so busy trying to keep up with the kids.

Their favorite part, by far, was the water table area. It even had a table with booster seats where they could sit and play with the water and the toys. I really wish we could install one of these in our house. It would provide hours of entertainment!  And you can see in the 2nd picture that Fischer was completely mesmerized by all of the water.

Other than that, we did some shopping at the toddler-sized Bi-Lo.

We played in a space shuttle, wind tunnel and art area. We played in the farm area, which was really nice because it was enclosed! While we were there, Addison was "washing dishes" in the kitchen. As she was washing, she kept looking over to the side of the room saying "I'll be right there!" I suppose I do say that a lot....

After spending a couple of hours at the museum, it was time to leave so we could go to the outlets and have time to shop. The kids slept most of the way there. Unfortunately, we didn't find much, but we did come home with 1 thing for our new kitchen. We got a piece that is half cork board and half chalkboard. That will be nice to have to make little grocery lists, post date reminders, and things like that.

Addison and Fischer chattered the entire 2 hour trip home. It was pretty funny! They ate a big dinner, and were quite tired by the time they went to bed. It was definitely a fun family day!

Last weekend, we headed back to Saluda Shoals to explore some more of the trails and to check out the splash zone! We walked past it last time and the kids really wanted to play so we went prepared this time.

I thought they'd love it! They liked it, but they definitely didn't love it. Addison, especially, preferred the playground area. But, they still had fun, and it was a good way to cool off after our "hike."  However, I'm 99% sure that's where Fischer picked up croup, so I don't know if we'll be going there again soon. I know germs can't be avoided, but it's hard to go back somewhere that I know they got sick!

Here they are playing in the water and on the playground. They looked so grown up going down the big slides!

It's looking like our house should be finished next week! Our closing is tentatively schedule for the last week of June! Woohoo!

The carpet should be installed Wednesday, and the garage doors should be on this week. The cleaners will come, and then the painters will do their last touch-ups! And that's it!! Then the real fun begins - we get to move all of our stuff. :)

Here is a picture of the finished kitchen:

And this might be our favorite feature - the "beverage center." It has 3 different temperature zones - 1 for red wine, 1 for white wine and 1 for beer!

In kid news, Fischer said some funny things today.
This morning, Scott said "Hey Fischer! Come here!" Fischer came running over and said "What is it? No! Wait! Let me guess!"
Then, he was talking to Addison and said "Sissy. Come here. Seriously!"

Hehe. I wish I could remember everything funny that they say because they make me laugh all the time!

Here are a few pictures from the first few days of June...

Addison and Fischer's beds all made up with their new sheets, comforters and pillow cases!

We had a "pit-nit" outside for snack one morning. We had to go play early before it got too hot, which is why they are still in their pajamas.

And this morning, we headed to the farmer's market. We enjoyed some boiled peanuts and lemonade while we were there (Scott started that tradition with them, so I had to continue it this weekend even though Scott is out of town!). It is impossible these days to get them both to look at the camera, with their eyes open.

I used to do these slideshows a lot... I was looking at some of them and I just can't believe all of these pictures (June 2009) were TWO years ago. I remember most of the pictures like they were yesterday.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

We are getting closer and closer to moving time! I am packing a box here and there, but they are all pretty small since I am using mostly diaper and wipes boxes...All of our stuff will get moved somehow! :)

We have already passed our county inspection and received our Certificate of Occupancy. Woohoo! We've had power and water turned on for over a week now, and their air conditioning untis are now functioning. There are still some things that need to be done, though, before we start moving stuff over. The carpet is going to be installed next week, along with the appliances. The entire house is getting a very thorough cleaning (not by us, thankfully!) this weekend. After that, it should look like the brand new house that it is!!

In addition, the garage doors still need to be installed and the fence needs to be finished. The fence should be done by Monday! We had our sod and sprinkler system installed last week and it really makes the entire house look different. It's so much prettier than looking out on a sea of dirt! Here's the view from the deck:

The fence will be around the entire grassy area, so it will be a nice sized yard for Addison, Fischer and Bo to play in.

More pictures to come soon!

This video is from a few weeks ago... for some reason, it's one of my favorites! It sort of reminds me of the videos at the beginning of the show The Wonder Years.  I think because it's sort of grainy, and it just shows how we spend our time outside! Also, Addison is obsessed with pushing buttons... on my phone, the camera, elevators, etc... Fischer was busy playing in the water, as usual.

I hate it when the kids are sick. It's frustrating when we try to keep them healthy, and they get sick anyway. Sometimes it seems like anytime we leave the house, someone ends up sick. But, I guess we'll just deal with it because we can't stay home all the time.

We had to visit the doctor yesterday afternoon. Fischer had been feeling yucky for several days, and it just seemed to be getting worse, and new symptoms kept popping up. Sunday, he had a rash on the bottom of his feet. How weird is that?! He didn't seem bothered by it at all though, so we gave him some Benadryl before bed just incase it got worse. The rash was still there in the morning, but again, he didn't seem bothered by it. Unfortunately, he also woke up with a nasty sounding cough. It was dry, deep, and sounded painful. That continued throughout the day, along with the rash.

By Tuesday morning, the rash was fading but the cough was still there, along with some congestion. He didn't have a runny nose, but sounded very stuffy. He also sounded very hoarse when he tried to talk. So pitiful! And, he was in a very bad mood. He was extremely emotional and would scream and cry over the tiniest thing. It was obvious he felt awful.  To make matters worse, he developed a very, VERY bad diaper rash. Sort of out of nowhere, and his stomach was clearly very upset. By yesterday afternoon, we couldn't take it anymore so I called the doctor. The nurse said to bring him in after I described the symptoms.

Luckily, Scott was around so I handed Addison off to him and was able to just take Fischer to the doctor. One kid is so much more manageable in a setting like that! After meeting with the doctor, she said he has croupe (whooping cough). She said the rashes were most likely related since it's a virus. She also got to see his diaper rash first hand, as I had to change him while we were waiting on her to enter the room. I'm sure the whole office heard him crying because he was in such pain. It was awful... and, his diaper was so bad that it leaked out of his diaper, through his shorts and onto my white skirt. I was quickly reminded why I never wear white pants or skirts anymore! :)

Anyway, she prescribed him prednisone and a prescription-strength diaper cream, along with an over the counter cough medicine. He woke up this morning feeling, and acting, like a new child!! I am so happy I decided to take him to the doctor because the medicine worked so quickly! He even felt good enough to play outside this afternoon, and he and Addison played nicely together in their pool for quite awhile.

Now, I just have to be on the lookout for symptoms in Addison, but so far so good!

In toddler bed news, the kids are doing great!! It's been over a week now and I can't complain. They didn't nap yesterday but I think it was because Fischer was out of sorts, which made Addison out of sorts. They are still getting up a bit earlier than they used to, but napping a big longer, so it all evens out!

I am trying hard to keep up with these blog posts. It's hard to keep up with things lately, and this is one of the first things that gets pushed back.

I am finally going to write about our Memorial Day weekend! We had plans to drive to Pennsylvania to visit Scott's family. Unfortunately, our plans had to change sort of last minute and we ended up not going. I was in desperate need of a routine change, so I told Scott that staying home that weekend wasn't an option. I didn't care where we went or what we did, I just needed a change.

My parents were going to visit my Grandma that weekend, and she's only about 2 hours away, so we decided to tag along for a quick visit. We stayed at a hotel with a pool and tried out Addison and Fischer's life jackets! The pool was pretty cold, so our swimming session only lasted about 30 minutes. It was fun watching them go from scared and nervous, to relaxed (sort of) and confident. They even "jumped" off the side several times!

We hung out at my Grandma's some, and the kids made sure to destroy some things. :) They also had fun tormenting her cats, Jack and Killer. Luckily, the cats are VERY patient and let Addison and Fischer love on them a lot.

I did some research and found a really cool place about an hour away. It's called Lazy 5 Ranch, and it's  in Mooresville, NC. You can either ride through the ranch (a 3.5 mile loop) in your car and look at all the animals, or do a wagon ride. We opted for the hour-long wagon ride, and it was so cool! The animals came right up to the wagon, and we got to feed them. There were so many different types of animals. Addison and Fischer really seemed to enjoy it, and didn't seem scared at all of the animals. They did their share of dropping food into the giant mouths too! We will definitely have to go back there, maybe in the fall when it's a bit cooler.

We headed home on Memorial Day, with a sick child. Addison woke up Monday morning and started throwing up, including once about 10 minutes into our drive home. She was pretty out of it that entire day, then seemed almost back to normal on Tuesday. It was very strange, and no one else got sick!

I hope all of you had a great holiday weekend (even though it was a couple weekends ago).

After a very early wake up call yesterday morning, today was back to normal! The kids slept until 7:30, and even slept through the very loud trash truck coming by at 6:00!! I heard them playing and giggling when they woke up this morning, which is such a nice sound to wake up to! :)

We put them to bed last night, and once again, they didn't make a peep. They went right to sleep, and slept all night.  And to make things even better, neither one fell out of bed! :)

Yesterday, they ended up taking a 3 hour nap. Woohoo! Addison ended up napping in Fischer's bed, which I think is so adorable. I asked them when they got up if Addison slept with Fischer and they both said yes. :) I wish I could've gotten a picture, but I wasn't about to walk in there and risk waking them up. I could tell on the monitor they were in the same bed, but couldn't see them well enough for a picture of that either. Maybe next time....

I am so proud of them for how well they've handled this transition. Hopefully it's a sign of how they will handle our move in a few weeks!

Just a few toddler bed updates:

I was wrong about their naps yesterday. After about an hour of playing, they actually went to sleep, and slept for almost 2 hours! I was very excited!

Their bedding arrived yesterday, so Addison "helped" me make their beds. They went to bed last night, we made them "cozy" and they fell right to sleep. Not even a peep. We'll see tonight if that was a fluke or not. Fischer did fall out of the bed once last night, but other than that, they slept great....

Until 5:30 this morning, that is. They decided to start their day very early. I went in there and tried to get them to lay back down, which they did as long as I stayed in the room, until 6. I've been hearing that this is normal and that they will eventually start waking up later again. I sure hope so!

They are in there now for naps, and once again, they are playing. They are extra tired today so I hope they nap or it could be a long afternoon!

Here is what their bedding looks like... I couldn't get a picture of Fischer's from the website, but it's the same as Addison's except it's blue instead of pink. I always go for the blue/brown and pink/brown combinations. Eventually I'll have to do another color scheme!  Each set has 4 pieces: 1 flat sheet, 1 fitted sheet, 1 pillowcase and a reversible comforter! I will post pictures of their actual beds (this is from the website) made up soon.

This will be quick, since it seems Addison and Fischer aren't going to nap in their new beds today! I totally expected this though. They are in there playing and giggling, which is pretty funny to listen to.

Their first night in toddler beds went pretty well! It took them awhile to settle down... Fischer was so excited and we kept hearing the pitter patter of little feed running around the room. We went in several times and got them back into their beds. Eventually, Addison stayed in hers and it was clear that Fischer was bothering her and trying to play. Overall, we ended up having more issues with Fischer than Addison, which I wasn't expecting.

Once they were both finally asleep, the night went smoothly. Fischer woke up once and cried. I think he was confused about where he was. He quickly went back to sleep after Scott went in, laid him back down and covered him back up. About 30 minutes after that, Addison fell out of her bed. She cried, I put her back in, and she was right back to sleep. Then they slept the rest of the night!

But this morning was an early morning. We heard the pitter patter again around 6. Then I heard "Sissy! Wake up!!" They stayed in their room and played for awhile so we didn't have to roll out of bed right away.

We'll see how tonight goes. Hopefully just as well, if not better!!