Caught up!

I am officially caught up on my blog posts!! We are getting the house ready to have family over on Christmas and that is when we will do a walk through with the camera and post an "AFTER" video for all you to see. I can't believe how much we have changed this house- it truly feels like our home now. Currently, the basement is being painted and the primer smells something fierce so of course every time the heat kicks on the awful smell is released throughout the rest of the house. We have found that cut up onions actually takes the nasty paint/chemical smell out of the air really really well, but you are left with the onion smell. Let's just say I have a lot of Scentsy going on in our home right now!! Hopefully the basement will be completely painted before Christmas and then we will have carpet installed shortly after. We are planning for an official open house party sometime in March- it is later because my lucky parents will be vacationing in sunny Arizona all of January and February so I decided to wait. I also just booked 2 trips for our family. One in January to California to see James' family and one in February to spend time with my parents while they are in Arizona. Each trip will be one week long. James is also heading out to Cali right after Christmas to see his brother right before he deploys to Afghanistan- wish we could all go, but flights were WAY too expensive to purchase 4 tickets. At least we will all be back out there in January though to see the rest of his family. Now to find someone to feed the dog while we are gone.. hmmm... i miss living by Rand & Caroline!!!

Isabelle made me a Christmas present at preschool and it is so stinkin cute. It was wrapped so neatly, but she insisted that we were going to share the present so she could be the one to open it- we were not even out of the carpool lane at her school and she had the present out of her school bag and unwrapped dangling it in front of me! She LOVES presents!! Her teachers took pics of her throughout the past month and then they put a little book together with them- i love it!

Kids have been fighting colds for the past week, I worked major overtime at work to get my Christmas bonus, and James is always working way too much and coming up with "awesome opportunities" that I turn my nose up at :) Yes, things are busy & wonderful... and I still have like a billion errands to run before Christmas.