Monthly post and 865 to 2287

Apparently I've fallen into a monthly posting pattern. Hopefully this will change and become more frequent again soon. Big news here is that we are MOVING!! No, we did not sell our condo. Surprise surprise. We decided to bite the bullet and rent it out for awhile instead. This allows us to go ahead and move into a bigger rental property ourselves. And no all you realtors out there, we're not going to buy another place until our other one is sold. Two mortgages are not something we desire.

So finding a tenant was painless thanks to craigslist and a good landlord website that does complete tenant screening for you. Well, I had to do some of it. But anyhow. It's done and we found a really great tenant or so we think at this point.

More importantly we just signed OUR lease yesterday. It was a bit strange to sign a rental lease after being homeowners for so long. I guess we are still homeowners, but now we're renters too. Ha! But I'm over it already. Here's why. We now live in 865 sq ft and are movin' on up to 2287. No, that's not a typo. We found a beautiful condo that someone is renting out for a greatly reduced rate due to the rental market being saturated right now. The place is beautiful SPACIOUS and more than we could have hoped for really. And it's only a few streets south of us so the move will be short. I can't wait to see our new neighbor's faces when they see our strollers and bikes parked in our spot in the attached indoor heated parking garage. :-)

Gabriella is loving school and Mrs. Laura is teaching her how to read. She successfully read the first two pages of Hop on Pop over the weekend. Nicholas has finally mastered peek-a-boo and loves to play it now that he can cover his eyes instead of covering his head. He's also a climber and gets into everything. We'll be spending some budget money on babyproofing devices for sure.

David is working hard and hoping to not have surgery on his achilles before our move. We should find out more info on Thursday when he sees the orthopedist. It's a 4-year old injury that's never gone away and recently became much worse.

I'm going a bit crazy trying to figure out packing, moving detail stuff, child watching and trying to find time to sleep in the midst of it all. I think I need a Nanny for the next few weeks. At least my nights are now freed up from apartment searching. Once we settle into our new home we will have plenty of room for overnight guests so NONE OF YOU WILL HAVE ANY EXCUSES ANYMORE! We will even have a sofabed that we just acquired from some friends and multiple bathrooms from which to choose. AND you'll have a place to park your car if you drive here.

We have plans to get the children photographed outdoors around Easter time and will be having Nicholas's first birthday party Easter weekend if you can believe it. I have just a matter of weeks left to get his birth announcements out by etiquette rules. Emily Post please don't check my postmarks.

We had a nice visit to St. Louis over Presiden'ts Day weekend and Nana was just here visiting us for several days too. Here's a few pics to share with you. More later!

At the park on one of our recent winter-spring days

playing with Uncle Jeff

Meeting Titus with Aunt Marion

The 3 polka-dot cousins

At the park with Nana on the one nice day we had while she was here.