Virtual Tour–The NEW Pepper Palace! December 17, 2011

 

Thank you, Lesley, for reminding me that now would be a great time to show everybody pics of the new house! I’m over here this morning waiting on our washer/dryer and fridge to be delivered and I don’t have Miss Priss with me, so I can sit down and blog! She makes computer time much more difficult! Anyway, here we go… tour of our new house, built by Best Homes! I must throw in a few comments on our builder. They were FANTASTIC! They went above and beyond to make sure that we were happy with our house. Especially our foreman, Kent, who was very patient with us and our mind-changing. But most of all, they build a QUALITY product. They don’t cut corners.. we are so thankful and so blessed!!

 

First stop, the exterior! LOVE it! No, there is not a mysterious rectangular shaped UFO above our house, that’s my creeper-proofing.

The shutters are courtesy my very talented grandpa, Bill Mahanay! He made them, and we stained them to match the front door. Here is a pic of Grandpa and I installing the shutters!!

Close up of the front door! It turned out beautiful!

Now, from this point, you have to excuse my picture taking… All of them turned out crooked!

Here is what you see standing in the entryway, looking into the living room, and the kitchen is on your right. One of my many favorites is our three giant windows looking into the backyard!! Sorry, forgot to turn on the lights before I took some of these!!

This is the bar area… We loved this floor plan because of this… open into the kitchen and living room.

The dining area is at the back of the kitchen, this is looking in from the back corner of the dining area. The door to the covered porch and backyard is on your right, then you can see the sink and bar that looks into the living room.

This is the view from the other corner of the dining room..

This is looking into the dining area from the fridge space! Which will be installed shortly!! Yahoo!!

PANTRY!!! We have never had a real pantry before… we used the hall linen cabinet as a pantry in our Lubbock house! Yahoo!!!

This is a view of the entryway from the inside… I LOVE the light fixture there!

This is the room off of the entryway.. It will be an office/playroom with a fold out couch for now… Eventually we can make this into a bedroom..

Laynee’s bedroom..

Guest bedroom…

Guest bathroom..

Guest bathroom shower and tub…

YAY! While I was waiting, my washer dryer arrived… in my bona-fide LAUNDRY ROOM!!! So excited about this, too… in Lubbock, our washer/dryer was in the garage… so I was always either freezing or sweating when I went out to do laundry!

Master bedroom..

Talin’s favorite.. Master shower!! It turned out BEAUTIFUL!!! There is a big window way up high to give us some natural light in there!

Inside the Master shower, through the glass, you can see the doorway into our bedroom

You can see me standing in the shower, looking out of the glass to our vanities… There is not a window above that mirror, just a reflection.

And here is the view from the other corner of the shower..

CLOSET!!!! This is SO exciting for us… We shared the tiniest closet known to man in our Lubbock house, so this is major progress! There are also 2 shelving units in there that go floor-ceiling for shoes and whatever else!

Here are a couple views of our attic!! I wanted to show them so you could see our foam insulation!!!! This stuff is amazing, it is going to save us a TON of money on HVAC cost.. other homes of the same size with this foam have had their HVAC electric bill costing around $50 a month! Guaranteed!! And we’ve got plenty of room to store things up here!!!

 

And that’s all, folks!! I’ll post a few more pics once I get it all decorated, but I make no promises as to how soon that will be. I am so indecisive when it comes to decorating… I’m going to have to stare at it for hopefully many years to come, so I better like whatever I put on the walls! You are welcome to come visit and see it for yourself!!!!! Thanks for coming on my virtual tour!!!

ONE YEAR!!! December 14, 2011

A full year sounds so long, but it sure seems short when you watch your baby change so fast! Laynee is a year old now, and everyday she becomes more and more like a child instead of a baby. It would make me sad if I thought about it for too long, so we’ll move on!

At one year old, Laynee is:

• Saying a few words including Mama, Dada, baby, and uh-oh. Her favorite word is “baby”, she says that several times a day when she’s loving on her baby dolls
• So smart!! She can do a few animal sounds.. including “Ssssss” like a snake and “Roar” like a lion, and also blow like the wind, and she can show you how a bunny hops! (Those two are credited to Bible Class!)
• Signing “more” and “all done”.. which has been very helpful!
• Taking a few steps, but not really walking yet! She LOVES to hold your hand and walk around though. She can do that holding just one grown-up hand in the left, and preferably a baby doll in the right!
• Eating all kinds of things… She isn’t too picky yet! She even ate swiss cheese, which I think smells pretty bad, but she didn’t mind!
• Meddling! We like to say she gets this from her Aunt Nicole.. She will get into a purse and have it emptied out faster than you can say “Bob’s your uncle”. What a weird saying!
• Getting a temper… She will let you know if you are doing something she doesn’t like.. which includes, but is no limited to: changing her diaper, wiping her face, and picking her up if she wants to be walking.
• Pointing at things all the time.. she loves to find noses on Mommy and Daddy, babies in books, any dog, as long as it keeps it’s distance.
• Playing Peek-a-boo with a blanket or scarf
• Talking on the phone… this is SO cute, something it seems all kids do, she puts the phone on her shoulder and leans her face over on it. She’ll use anything for a phone, and pretend to talk on it!
• A “BRIGHT LIGHT” IN OUR LIVES!!!! She has really lived up to her name so far, and Lord willing, for many years to come!

It’s Bball time! We are so excited that we get to watch Jacob play in his Senior Year! Laynee LOVES to go to the games!

Here is Laynee with Uncle Danny at Thanksgiving… If you will notice, she is all geared up for her other favorite sporting event… Cowboys football! Although, she needs to do a better job of cheering so we can get some “Ws” on our record!

We went to Lubbock and got to meet the newest Pepper, Torrey Reann! She was born on October 30 to Lee and Ashley.. She is beautiful, and Laynee loved her!

She loved Torrey so much, she wanted to get as close as possible!

Napping with Mimi…

Here is Laynee opening her first birthday present from Lee, Ashley and Torrey… though I wouldn’t say “opening” so much as “climbing on top of”.

And that brings us to toddlerhood! Sad day for Mommy!!! I’m not ready for her to grow up yet! It goes by too fast!

She ate some cake, but wasn’t too excited about the icing! She doesn’t have too much of a sweet tooth.

And here is a picture of Laynee on her birthday.. standing at the open drawer, emptying it out completely! What a good helper!

1 year birthday pic! These pictures are getting increasingly more difficult to acquire!!!!!

Our next stop in the month of December was to Lubbock for our cousin’s wedding! While we were there, we got to see Mimi!

Then we were off to Carlsbad, NM for a river boat ride on the Pecos river. All of the people who live on the river decorate their homes all fancy like for Christmas. We had to bundle up, and it was COLD but so fun! Laynee really enjoyed her nap during the trip!

With Co-Woah, getting ready to board the boat…

 

We are moving into our house THIS WEEKEND!!!!!!!! I am so excited, I can’t sleep… so that is why I am up at 1:06am finishing this blog post! I’m like a kid the night before you go to Six Flags…. will update after we get settled!

11 months old! November 10, 2011

Pretty much every day, I say to Talin that I can’t believe how much Laynee has changed over the last several months, and how much OUR lives have changed because of her. It’s hard to even remember what it was like before she was here, and even now, I struggle to remember what she was like as a newborn! I guess that’s what baby books and blogs are for, so that I will have documented these times! I really need to print off all of these blog posts before the world wide web crashes like the stock market! Hopefully that won’t happen, but I still need to do some major printing! Anyway, Laynee is creeping up on that one year mark, and I truly can’t believe it! At 11 months, Laynee is:

• standing unsupported quite often
• walking with her rolling walker
• taking a step here and there!
• smiling and laughing a lot, with 7 teeth now! (4 on top, 3 on bottom)
• eating all kinds of foods.. her favorites being chicken, grapes, bananas, ham, cheerios, mexican rice!
• still sleeping great!
• STILL hating to get dressed. This girls HATES to get her clothes changed. It’s a fight everytime
• giving big, wet, wide open-mouth kisses!
• waving “bye-bye”, only when she wants to though!
• loving baby dolls.. she has about 4 of them that she gets really excited over!
• able to concentrate on one activity for a really long time! I was amazed yesterday, she sat and played with only a little toy boat for about 15 minutes!
• Loving Bible Class!! She always gets really excited to go, and has a great time every week!
• Getting into everything.. and I know it will only get worse once she starts walking!
• scared of dogs! mainly only if they bark and lick.. she doesn’t appreciate that! But she is happy to look at them from a distance!

Now for some pictures:

Our little Ladybug…

With Mom and Dad when they were on their way to World Series, Game 5!!

Whoa, Nelly!!  This is a funny story… Dad had brought home a Nelson Cruz bobble head statue… for some strange reason, Laynee LOVED it. She carried it around and played with it, and it was kind of heavy – duty, so we too it away from her and put it on the mantle above the TV. But she would hold her hands out to Nelly and cry for him until we gave it back to her. So, she had him while she was sitting in her high chair, and she dropped him on the tile… he now has a broken leg and head, and turns out, he’s ceramic! So, now he’s dangerous with his pointy, jagged edges, so we put him behind a picture frame on the mantle. She still found him and cries for him! So I moved him to the garage on the work bench so she couldn’t see him… Well, she saw him one day coming in from the car!!! And she started crying for him again!! Whoa, Nelly! Now he’s hidden much better and we won’t bring him out until next October when the Rangers hopefully have attempt #3 at a World Series title!

 

Bath time!

I like to splash!

We got to go and meet Laynee’s future BFF, Annabelle Leigh Cousatte!! We flew to Denver and stayed with Cason and Caitlin for a few days, and had a BLAST! Here we are supervising Annabelle’s spa time:

We got there on Tuesday, and that night they got several inches of snow!

Is she not the most adorable snow bunny you’ve seen??

I took off her mitten and let her feel the snow… you can tell by her face the way she felt about it. She’s a true Texan and truly her mother’s daughter because she doesn’t like being cold!

Field Trip! We took the babies to the Aquarium for some good ole indoor fun!

Laynee loved it! She had that pointer finger out the entire time!

This is a blurry pic, but I had to share it.. Laynee wanted so badly to touch Annabelle the whole time we were there, but she isn’t concerned about being gentle, so I usually made her keep a safe distance… so Caitlin held Annabelle so Laynee could get close to her… Laynee put her arms around the baby and got really close in her face to hug on her, and then Annabelle got upset… Then Laynee was offended that Annabelle was offended… so here we go:

They also liked to start crying matches when we were in the car going places… It’s a tough life!

 

This picture I liked because of her Vampire eyes, in honor of the soon-to-be-released Breaking Dawn, the 4th movie of the Twilight Saga!!! YAY!

Actually, you can see her teeth really well in this pic, and the giant Pittman gap she has between her top two!

Relaxin in our jammies…

Eleven months old!!!!!

 

House Update:  It’s getting close! We now have brick, stone, and walls! The texture people were supposed to be starting today, and they said that they typically close 30 days from texture! So, hopefully we will be in before Christmas!!!!! It has been SO fun watching the house go up. We can’t wait for it to be finished! If you want to see pics, let me know… I’ll be emailing some later to people who are interested!

 

That’s about it for now! We are getting adjusted to our new life here in Burleson. It is different, and we miss our Lubbock people, but we are finding our place here! Thanks for looking at pics of our sweet baby! Have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!

Cousatte Bunch November 2, 2011

Double Digits…… We have a 10 month old!! (Plus House Pics!) October 13, 2011

People keep asking me when we are going to think about #2, but we are having so much fun watching #1 that I’m not ready for that “distraction” yet!! She is getting quite the personality… Here are some things she is doing at 10 months old:

• Crawling super fast!
• Standing alone for a few seconds at a time
• Eating all kinds of table food, some baby food, but she LOVES puffs and cheerios.
• She has started to throw little fits every once in a while… mainly over changing her clothes or taking away the cell phone/remote/camera/paper/other item she shouldn’t be playing with. This usually involves screaming and dramatic back arching
• Sleeping great – 2 one hour (If I’m lucky!) naps a day, and then about 11 hours at night
• She still has 6 teeth – 4 on top, 2 on bottom… The top ones are quite “gappy”!
• Loves to watch and play with other kids
• Waves bye-bye
• She can say “Shhhhhh”, but doesn’t like to do it for Mommy or Daddy… She will do it in church if the little boy in the pew behind us is saying it!!
• No intentional words yet, but she can definitely talk your ear off with all kinds of babbling – and I mean LOUD babbling. Sometimes we can’t even have a conversation unless we yell over her! Her favorite thing to babble is “ma ma ma ma ma ma”. But I don’t know whether to count it because she says it so many times!
• We call her “the bling bling girl” because she loves jewelry.. She won’t take to a stranger unless they have a really interesting accessory.
• She’s gotten really attached her baby doll lately. She has several different dolls and stuffed animals, but she has really taken to this one that she and her daddy are holding in the picture below. It is so cute, when you ask her “Where’s your baby?”, she will look around for it, squeal with excitement when she finds it, and hug and kiss it! So sweet!!

With cousin Jacob in her pink “basketball shoes” he got her.

Sweet face!

Cutest cheerleader!

 

Now for an update on the house… It has started! Here are a few pictures:

Ignore the strange cloud boxes that appeared in the corner of the pic as my attempt to hide a distinguishing characteristic of where we are building so that the creepers who might see this blog won’t come find our house! This might not work, so I’ll just pray for us to be safe, and in the future, I might not be posting too many pics on this public blog. Email me if you want to see pictures of the progression, and I’ll email them!

They were about to pour the foundation when we got 6 inches of rain here! So we have a minor setback in that they are going to have to redo the forms and the dirt work. We are okay with it… we needed rain really bad!! Not much other news… we have everything picked out as far as colors, brick, stain, etc.. Now we wait!

We went on a road trip in September with our sweet friends, the Huggins, to Lubbock! It was great fun!! Here is Laynee with her friend, Truett! She loves him and wants to crawl all over him, so we have to keep a close eye on her!

Hanging out with Mama Jean…

The Dads with the Babies… taking a break from the car

Watch out! Crazy driver!!!

 

Hope everyone has a great October!!!!!

Nothing yet… September 11, 2011

In case you were interested in an update on anything besides the baby….

We have contracted to have a house built in Joshua! Right now, they are waiting on the city for permits, but dirt should be moving this week! We have a target closing date of the end of November… I would have really sweet picture for you of us standing on our lot, but I just deleted it on accident. Boo. We’ll try to take another one soon! But the good news is that when I was searching for the picture, I found several more that we have taken in August! So, here we go:

 

 

Sweet outfit CoWoah gave us:

Hmmmmmm

Crazy after nap hairdo

I like to stand up in the crib!

In her pink basketball shoes from Jacob:

Labor Day fun September 11, 2011

We had a split Labor Day weekend this year. I had planned to have a “Mommy Getaway” with my Lubbock friends. They drove in on Friday and we spent the weekend shopping, eating, and having a fabulous time together! I didn’t have my camera, because of course the camera goes with the baby nowadays… so, you can read about our weekend and see pics at my friend’s blog… just click HERE!

Talin and Laynee went to San Antonio with LaRhea for the weekend! They had a great time at the Wild Oak Ranch! Talin is the best Dad in the world… he endured a very difficult journey to San Antonio from Burleson. What should take no more than 5 hours, took him 8 with Austin rush hour/holiday weekend traffic AND a cranky little girl… But they finally made it and Talin proved to be a super Mr. Mom. I flew to San Antonio on Monday and stayed with LaRhea and Laynee for more swimming and shopping fun!

With MiMi in the Lazy River:

Laynee likes to find things to crawl under and through:

Bedtime bottle pool side, it’s a good life!

3/4 of a Year already!! September 11, 2011

Laynee turned 9 months old a few days ago!! Her 9 month Well Baby reported that she is 28 1/2 inches long (90th percentile) and 16 pounds, 11 ounces (25th percentile). Everything looked great! She has been getting into everything, crawling pretty fast nowadays. She has even started standing on her own for 5-10 seconds at a time! That has been really neat to see! She has 3 teeth in, working on a couple more. Still sleeping great, and doing great in the car seat (if not stuck in there too long). But, the child still HATES to have her clothes put on or off. She has started a little bit of the separation anxiety phase… and not just with Mommy and Daddy. If another person she knows leaves the room she will sometimes get upset. She is making the most adorable facial expressions, and waving “bye bye”. No intentional words yet, that we can tell. If you’ve been around Laynee at all, you will most likely comment on how “busy” she is. She is constantly moving. Which is great, except in church when we are having to wrestle her the entire time!

I haven’t taken very many pictures this month!!! But here are a few:

My 9 Month Picture… I am going to have to start standing for my pictures because I will not lay still anymore!

Boring…..

CoWoah’s here!

Playing in the tunnel that Mommy got at Ikea:

What’s Daddy doing???

Yummy Elmo book…

Smiling for Daddy:

Heading to the pool:

Boo!

Our 8 month Old Energizer Bunny August 11, 2011

Wow… things have really picked up around here! We are on the move and that means no rest for the supervising party! Here are the 8 month facts:

*If your head is turned for even a second, Laynee will likely be pulling a cord, putting a piece of grass in her mouth, or high tailing it toward remotes/cell phones/cameras/electronics of any kind within view.

*Started crawling on her 7 month birthday, and not a week later she started pulling up on anything that is the right height! Now that is her favorite thing to do.

*Loves playing with her Daddy when he comes home from work.

*Loves her PawPaw and Nana coming home for lunch to see her.

*She is interested in dogs… but if they are hyper, she only wants to look at them from a distance. If they are calm, she wants to pet them!

*She’s been a “Star Student” in Bible Class.. always engaged in what’s going on, but with a very serious face!

*Nursing like a pro now, thank goodness! We are nursing once a day, bottle feeding 3x. She’s also eating lots of fruits and veggies!

*She started shaking her head back and forth like she’s saying “No, No, No”… but we can’t figure out why she does it! This just started a few days ago, and it is so cute. She’s done it when she eats, when she watched Nicole play with the dog, and sometimes when she’s just sitting there playing with toys! I might try to post a video later…

*Two teeth have come through! Both on the bottom.

*Laynee FINALLY doesn’t mind the carseat! She rarely fusses anymore getting into it!

*She still does not like getting her clothes changed!

*We are starting to have to use the evil “No” word!

 

Now for some pictures:

Here is what happened when I tried to take her 8 month picture at first:

I’m telling you…. this girl is never still!!! We had to enlist the help of Nana to distract her, and this is the best we could do:

 

We really needed to cool off after we went on a walk, so we used this makeshift pool: 

She must stand up even if it makes no sense at all!

Pulling up on the laundry basket!

Going swimming… yes, we like to do that. You would too if you were in on this hot streak! Today is the 40th consecutive day of temperatures over 100 degrees!

Her sunglasses wouldn’t stay on her head, so Daddy decided they needed to be put to good use.

Visiting Aunt Nicole in Dallas

Laynee got to see Cason and Caitlin at their baby shower!

Clipping fingernails… it’s a tough job on a wiggle worm!

Family pic

Our friends from The Giggling Goose in Lubbock made Laynee a “going away outfit”! So cute!

Visiting with Grandad Jack, Gammi, and Rex!

Visiting Mama Jean at the Bank

 

We are having lots of fun with our sweet Laynee! Can’t believe she’s 8 months old already!

Now for “other news”… We are in Burleson now, living under the roof of Carter and Susan Mahanay. We spent a good month looking at existing homes in the area that we wanted to live, and nothing seemed to be the right fit for us, so we have decided to build with Best Homes! We are looking at a lot in Cooper Valley, which is in Joshua, TX. It is the “halfway point” – about 10 minutes from Burleson (family and church) and 15 minutes from Talin’s job in Cleburne, and they happen to have the best schools around! We are finalizing the plans and the paperwork this week and hopefully things will get started in the next week or so! We are very excited! So that means we will be with my parents for a few months longer. I hope we don’t overstay our welcome! (I don’t think Laynee will allow that!)

Talin is liking his job! He’s getting the documentation system all figured out, and getting more efficient every day! We are all really enjoying Friday afternoons; getting off at noon is really a good deal!

Coming up this month we are going to go meet Mr. Truett Alan Huggins, newborn baby of our good friends, Chris and Samantha! We are also going on our first overnight away from Laynee next weekend for a delayed anniversary trip! For Labor Day, I am going to have a girl’s weekend with the Lubbock girls, and Talin and Laynee are going to San Antonio with LaRhea! I am kind of sad about being away from her for a weekend, but I know she’ll be in good hands! We’ll have lots of pictures to post next month! See you then!

Angel Baby! 7 Months Old July 16, 2011

I don’t know how you can NOT believe in The Creator if you have been fortunate enough to participate in bringing a child into the world. We sit and watch this baby and all of the ways she is changing and growing, and we count ourselves blessed to have her in our lives! She is SEVEN MONTHS OLD! And becoming more fun everyday! Some things Laynee is doing at 7 months old:

* Grabbing, Grabbing, Grabbing, Reaching and Grabbing some more.

* Rocking, swiveling, alternating arms to go where she wants… She started crawling ON her 7 month birthday!!!

* Eating baby food and loving it!

* Laughing, babbling, and flirting. She does this cute head tilt thing that I really need to catch in a picture!

* Sleeping great – down to 2 long naps a day, with short third if needed

* Growing attached to Mommy and Daddy. Dropping her off at Bible Class is fine, being held by a stranger is fine, but Mommy better not dare walk out of her sight at home or she will let you know that she is not pleased! (This drives Mommy a little crazy, so we go on a lot of outings!! She does great in public!)

* Loves the water, bathing and swimming!

* Is getting BETTER in the car seat! FINALLY!!!

* Still hates getting her clothes changed.

* Loves to be outside

* She is getting her first tooth! We felt it on July 8th, so I guess she reached more than one milestone that day!

Here are some pictures from the last month or so:

“I’ve got my workin’ boots on, ready to get down to business!” (Daddy packed his tools, Laynee was helping)

Visiting with Mommy’s friend, Amy, who brought Laynee an adorable outfit! (See Austin trip pictures!)

Meeting future friend Miss Savannah Robyn Fryar, who was only a week old at the time this picture was taken!

Cousin Tyler and Alyssa came to babysit while Mommy went to the dentist!

Playing with Daddy…

In June, Talin had a Continued Ed course in Austin! So we met up with Mom, Dad and Nicole for a weekend of fun!

Here is that outfit Amy got Laynee! If you can’t tell, the shirt says “I love shoes”

“I really do love shoes! They are delicious!”

We went for a day of shopping fun at the Round Rock Outlets. Laynee hung out with PawPaw while we shopped! She did great!

Shopping is hard work!

We also went for a visit at the Austin Botanical Gardens. It was HOT!

We tried out the hotel swimming pool after the Garden Trip, and that was perfect!

We also got to have dinner with some friends from Talin’s PT Class! Brooke and Dave Godino went to Childbirth Classes with us in the fall, and they have this little cutie, Cruise! He is three weeks older than Laynee, and PRECIOUS!!! He is constantly smiling, such a sweetie!

 

So that’s about it! We officially left Lubbock on July 11th. It was so hard to say goodbye to friends there, but we are enjoying our time in Burleson, spending time with family and playing House Hunters-Texas edition. And our house in Lubbock is under contract! Yahoo!!! We are so thankful!