The funniest part is I still read all the blogs I read back then. I just don't update mine!
We are still here, happy and healthy. A lot has changed since September of last year. Let's start with getting over the car accident. Even though neither me nor my husband were critically injured physically, it really messed with us psychologically. Driving was hard for a while. I didn't drive for a week. Jimmy drove us around. It was hard for him, too, but I was the one driving when the accident happened, so I feel like it was harder for me. We bought a new car later in September, a Toyota Venza, and we LOVE it. It's much roomier than our Equinox, and Toyota is #1 for safety in the US.
In October was Lauryn's first birthday. Since we don't have a lot of baby friends, we decided just to take a weekend in Orlando. We reserved a nice hotel and had my sister, my parents and my husband's parents come with. We had a lot of fun. I still can't believe she is over 1!
End of October was Halloween (of course). I had to work on actual Halloween, but I was off the weekend before, so we took Lauryn to our local Zoo for their "Spooktacular" trick-or-treating event. She dressed up as a little nurse :o) I can't find the picture right now, but she worse little pink scrubs that said "Nurse Lauryn" and had a toy stethoscope and everything. So cute!
We also had Lauryn's one year pictures done. I LOVE how they turned out.
November was filled with work and the beginning of the holidays. Thanksgiving was delicious and I ate way too much, as usual. I was excited that Lauryn was old enough and had enough teeth to enjoy it, as well.
December was MORE work, and Christmas! Being in the health care field, it is extremely rare to get a holiday off. I really got lucky last year though, because it just so happened that Christmas Eve and Christmas day fell on my weekend off... so yes, I had them BOTH off. My in-laws came in town for that weekend, and it was just a really good weekend with family. I'm glad we all got to spend it together, and that my in-laws got to see Lauryn.
Then there was January 2012. Happy New Year, new beginnings... right? That's what I thought. So, we decided in January to move into a bigger house. We had been looking for the past 2 years, just to see what was out there, to get an idea of what we wanted for our next house. We knew for sure that we didn't want to move into a neighborhood that had a lot of fees like our current neighborhood had. We decided we really loved this one neighborhood that we had kept going back to look at several times. It's a new neighborhood, with newly constructed homes. We figured it would be out of our price range and unattainable, but we gave it a shot. When we drove by it for the first time in 6 months, there was a brand new house at the end of a long street, on a cul-de-sac, with a HUGE lot (half of an acre!) and it backed up to a preserve, which means we would never have anything behind us to look at except trees and nature. Oh my gosh, we fell in love with this house, and we hadnt even been inside of it yet! We hurried to the sales center and took a tour of the house. It was GORGEOUS. Granite counter tops in the kitchen and the master bathroom. Double oven and a separate cook top. 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms. 3 car garage. Covered lanai. I could go on forever about this house. Then we looked at the price... $25,000 MORE than the maximum that we could afford. There goes that dream! Just for kicks, we offered what we could afford, and asked them to throw in a stainless steel french door refrigerator and...
They accepted! Home sweet home...
I will do another post in a few days with more pictures of the house. But for now I will leave you with a picture of Lauryn from a few minutes ago. This was shortly before I found her playing in the toilet. Yes, you heard me right. I caught her wet-handed leaning over the toilet. So. Gross.
