Property Virgins no more!

Since we started talking about buying a house my new favorite shows have been Property Virgins and House Hunters on HGTV. I love it! Not to worry though, I still love A Baby Story. Heehee!! So anyway, we have un-officially (at this point) purchased our first home. Wahoo!! But we're still in MD you say? Yes, we worked with a realtor and he sent us a lot of homes to look at online, but since the prices on new construction are unbeatable for the amount of house you get we started looking at those too. And low and behold, we found the perfect one for us that we just couldn't pass up. We sent my mom over to take a look at the un-finished home and the models and put an offer on the house that morning. Huge leap of faith by property virgins I know! But, we know the area well after having lived there for about 5 years and my parents have lived there for about 11 years, so that made us feel ok about it. The house is just about finished, we are set to walk through on the 22nd and to close on the 8th of March. Yip yip yippeee!! Here are some pictures below. We are mid move-in fact I am sitting on the floor typing this with the keyboard on a box because the desk is already packed! I will post more about the move later.

Blizzard of 2010

This weekend we have found ourselves smack dab in the middle of yet another blizzard! The weathermen started anticipating this storm early in the week and by Thursday night not a flake of snow had fallen to the ground, but schools were canceling classes for Friday, grocery stores were sold out of bread and milk which people waited in line for 45 minutes for and people were fighting over the last of the shovels. Low and behold, Friday afternoon it started snowing and when we got up this morning we had about 2 feet of snow. It's a winter wonderland out there! Here are some pics.

Friday morning

Friday night around 11:30 pm

Saturday morning

The Mann's are on the move!

As most of you know by now as per the mass email I sent out, Tim has received his orders for our next duty station. We are headed down to sunny San Antonio. He is assigned to the Ft. Sam Houston hospital. We were hoping for Colorado, but are very excited about this assignment just the same. My parents, Mimi and Pa Pa, live in San Antonio, so we will get to see them very often again. And Tim and I are thrilled about all the bike rides we will get to get in all year round. We'll get to go back to getting our butts kicked by my dad the super human! Tim and I have been wanting to try our hands at triathlon-ing, so this might be the perfect place to do it. We shall see. We are also going to try our hand at home ownership. We have actually already put an offer on a house and are awaiting loan approval. We were pre-approved by our own bank, but in order to get some really good incentives we had to go with the builders mortgage company. So anyway, we are nervously waiting for the yay or nay. This whole home buying thing is stressful and nerve racking! But it's funny, I now feel like a grown up. Getting married and having 2 children didn't seem to make me feel grown up, but purchasing our first home, yup, that'll do the trick! So, keep your fingers crossed and say lots of prayers that everything pans out.

When we started talking about moving Brady would ask me every day if it was moving day. So in order to help him understand how long we had until moving day I got a wall calender and put stickers on it for all his activities that he is in now (pre-school and soccer) and one for moving day. I told him we would mark through the day on the calender at the end of each day and when all the boxes were marked through and we got to the moving truck sticker then that was moving day. He was really excited because I let him mark through the day all by himself which meant that he got to use the marker all by himself! Big stuff for a 3 year old! We are at 19 days and counting!

Grayson's latest tricks & other fun stuff

You may have noticed a recent sudden decrease in the amount of blog postings from me. This my friends is all due to our newest mobile Mann-Mr. Grayson that is. I didn't realize how significantly harder life would be with two little ones running a muck! Grayson is now fully mobile. The kid doesn't sit still and I'm not sure he realizes that he is only 8 months! He now is pulling himself up on things to a stand, but hasn't really learned how to fall. So, when he looses his balance instead of bending at the hips and pushing his butt backwards, he stays completely straight and stiff and falls over like a tree! And when he is standing, the kid is fearless. He was standing at the coffee table this evening and had one toy in each hand and was using his elbows to balance. Then he noticed I was still behind him and he dropped the toys, let go of the table completely and turned around to say "Hey mom!". So finally after one goose-egg after another to his noggin, we decided to set up the pack and play out here in the family room so he would have a slighlty more cushioned fall. But I must say, as if this teeny apartment wasn't already cramped enough, add a play pen to the center of the room and it looks like we're all doing the cha cha to walk around the dang apartment! So anyway, here are some fun shots of our little dare devil.

Take a look at this picture and the one below. Can you tell the difference?Again, same age, same picture. Who's who?I took this picture because I knew I had a similar one of Brady at this same age. When they were babies I think they were carbon copies of each other and thought they still were. But after taking this picture and comparing them side by side, they definitely are thier own person. Our kitchen is, as Tim calls it, a "one butt" kitchen, and for some reason everyone is always in there when my big butt is trying to cook-even the dog is in there! So one evening after me continually kicking people out of the kitchen Tim put the gate up for me. Ah-ha!Bed time ritual-bedtime stories. I read Grayson his two then hand him off to daddy to rock him and I read Brady his two and sing him songs then they are off to sleep.

Growin' Grayson

It seems like Grayson does something new every day. He is not only army low crawling everywhere, but he is now pulling himself up on things, kneeling and then taking it to a stand. He's not very stable on his feet yet, but he loves getting up on his knees and feet. When he does, he just squeels away! It won't be long now before this kid is walking! He is right in line with what Brady was doing at this age and Brady started walking at 10 months-that's 2 months from now! Eeeeekkkkkk!!!

Digging in his toy bin. This is a first from his knees.

I put his saucer in his way as a "barricade", but the little stinker did just what his brother did and crawled right through the bottom.

Christmas day pictures.....finally!

Here are the rest of our Christmas day pictures. I know we are almost half way through January, but hey, better late than never!

Here is the tree after being visited by Santa on Christmas Eve.

This is how we found Brady on Christmas morning (notice it is still dark outside-about 6:30 am). Tim came out to the family room and Brady says, "Santa was here!"

Checking to see if Santa had eaten his cookies and the reindeer had eaten the carrots. Brady also left a book out for his daddy to read to the reindeer when they got here. Haha! Too cute!

Grayson discovering his gifts from Santa.

Opening stockings and presents.

Brady "helping" Grayson.

My new scarf--Thanks Mom!
This is so much fun!

Opening our cookie jar from Doug & Karen.

Playing with a new toy. He has only just started playing in the sitting position-I think he started doing this 2 days or so before Christmas. So this was really fun to see and really exciting for Grayson to see a toy from this angle.

Plum tuckered from all the excitement. Lets take a nap Nana!

All bundled up to take brother on his first bike ride.

Getting on.

And he's off!

Coming up the straight away ready for lap # 2!

I love my new Big Boy bike momma!

His first bike ride went great! Even though he fell off about 3 times (pretty hard too), he got right back on after a hug and a kiss from momma. What a champ!

The post office extended Christmas for us and delivered one of the boxes from Mimi and Papa a few days after Christmas. Here he is opening his story book reader. Yay!

Merry Christmas!

We had a lovely Christmas with Tim's mom here for a visit. She arrived just hours before the blizzard, so unfortunatley we spent most of her visit cooped up inside. Both boys loved having Nana here; Grayson got held as much as he wanted and rocked to sleep and Brady got lots of individual play time with Nana. We all love it when Nana comes to visit! We went to the early children's mass on Christmas Eve then came home and had our traditional Christmas Eve meal which is a blend of Quaderer tradition, Cooper (my moms family) traditions and the new Mann family traditions. For as long as I can remember we had salmon soup and finger sandwiches at Grandma & Grandpa Q's and oyster stew at Granny & Grandpa Coopers house. Then when I was in high school, my grandpa Cooper and I convinced my mom to add peel and eat shrimp cocktail to the menu-ymu! Now, since I've been making it on my own (we've spent the past 2 Christmas's away from my family-so sad!), I decided the traditional salmon soup and oyster stew recipes were boring, so I found new ones. Last year the soups didn't come out too well, but this year they were deeee-licious! (If I don't say so myself. Heehee!!) After supper we opened our usual Christmas Eve jammies and figts to the boys from Great Grandma and Grandpa Mann. We read The Night before Christmas and put out cookies and milk for Santa and some carrots for his reindeer. Christmas moorning then came very early. Brady woke up around 6:45 am and I put him back to bed and thought he was asleep, but about 20 minutes later I heard Tim get up and voiced in the family room. Tim had gone out to find Brady on his new bike saying, "Santa was here!" It was pretty funny. So, we got up and got the cinnamon buns cooking and coffee brewing, but I wouldn't let Brady open presents until he got Nana up-now that was a feat! Both boys then had a great time opening presents-even Grayson, which really surprised me. It was super cute! The boys made out like bandits and got lots of fun stuff. Brady was really into Christmas and Jesus' birthday this year and it was really fun to share in his excitment!

Our Christmas Eve spread. It doesn't look like much because the soup is on the stove and I was too lazy to get out my pretty china.

Christmas Eve photo shoot in our fancy Christmas duds.

Nana and her Christmas jammies.