May Recap

Not including Savannah’s birthday party and the family vacation to Navarre Beach, the rest of May was a very busy month. I felt like we blinked, and it was June before we knew it. Here’s the recap:

Gabby has slowly started becoming much more tolerant of Brooklyn over the last several months. Probably has something to do with the fact that Brooklyn has *mostly* stopped roaring at her and chasing her around ;)

Savannah’s 2 year checkup was on May 2nd, and I decided to take the girls to the playground at Dublin Park before the appointment. Savannah found a bunch of popped balloons on the ground (I guess from a birthday party?) and wanted to show them all to me :)

Time to slide!

The appointment went well. Savannah had to get one shot (I believe), but other than that, things were easy! Travis normally tries to go to all of their checkups, but he couldn’t make this particular one. It was a girls’ only outing!

That afternoon, Brooklyn was invited to “Bring a Buddy” day at Triad Martial Arts. One of her friends at church, Mason, does karate there, so we joined in on the fun.

None of my pictures turned out great because the lighting was so poor. Brooklyn is in the pink shirt on the far end.

The session lasted about 30 minutes. Basically, they made it fun by doing stretching exercises and races across the mats. There weren’t a lot of karate moves involved, but I could tell they put a lot of emphasis on listening and following directions (which is good for someone like Brooklyn who has a hard time with that…haha).

Brooklyn had a lot of fun, and we were glad we went! Savannah wasn’t too happy that she had to sit on the sideline, but we managed to make it work for the whole 30 minutes. Who knows…maybe we’ll try out karate again one day if they show an interest!

On May 3rd, I was 18 weeks along!

May 24th – 21 weeks along

May 31st – 22 weeks along

We spent a lot of the month of May cleaning the house, so it was perfect that Savannah got her own cleaning tools for her birthday. She had fun helping me sweep and mop :)

My little helpers!

The Melissa and Doug watering cans that the girls got at Savannah’s party were another gift that got a lot of use during the month of May. Not only are they super cute, but they provide lots of entertainment too. Savannah enjoyed watering the grass, driveway, rocks, sidewalk…basically anything she could find to get wet :)

Everything in the flower beds was well-watered during May!

Snuggles with my big girl. Brooklyn is definitely big on physical touch. She loves to be tickled, always wants her back rubbed before she goes to sleep at night, and loves to cuddle with me in the mornings when she wakes up and comes crawling into our bed. I’m trying to cherish these moments because I know one day she’ll be “too big” for all that!

Bloopers! :)

Craft time at the library—Savannah has gotten to where she wants to make her own craft every time we go now. Thankfully, Brooklyn can do the crafts pretty well without too much help from me, so I’m able to help Savannah with hers a lot easier. We love the library!

Cici was a lifesaver during May doing so many things to help us out while our house was on the market. She came over to help me clean at least once a week among doing many other things. On the day before we left for the beach, she brought nail polish and painted all of our toenails (including mine!). This was Savannah’s first pedicure, and she did surprisingly pretty well at sitting still :)

Brooklyn’s turn! We were all set for the beach when Cici was finished :)

Saturday, May 20th was the day after we got back from our trip to Navarre Beach. It was also the day Jenn graduated from medical school. It was such an exciting day, and we were all so proud of Jenn!

Not only did Jenn graduate, but she was ranked #1 in her whole class!

Yay!

Congratulations, Jenn!!

Brooklyn wanted me to help her draw a map one day, so we worked on it together. I was so impressed when she colored the green butterfly and stayed in the lines so well! She is growing up fast.

Savannah loves ice cream just like her big sister and her mommy! Just like Brooklyn did at this age, Savannah can use either hand to hold her spoon and fork. We all thought Brooklyn might turn out left-handed, but I’m pretty sure she’s a righty. Time will tell about Savannnah!

More fun with the new watering cans!

Two cuties with pigtails! :)

May 26th was a big day for us – we got an offer on our house!! It came from a buyer who had come to see our house two days prior on the 24th and only stayed for about 10 minutes. I always assumed that people who came through that quickly were definitely NOT interested, but her realtor texted me when they left and said, ” They really liked the house, but we do have a few more houses to see on our list.” My first impression was that the realtor was just being nice…they couldn’t have really liked it, right?

Well, that realtor texted me later that same evening of the 24th saying they wanted to come back and see the house again, so we scheduled the showing for the afternoon of the 26th. She also wanted to know whether the swingset and fridge would stay with the house. We were definitely planning to leave the fridge and had mixed feelings about leaving the swingset. It was NOT a cheap swingset and was only 1.5 years old. But, we knew we might not have a place to store it in the meantime if we didn’t move straight to another house we bought, or it might not be the best fit for our new yard. So, we decided we would plan to leave it with the house if we got an “acceptable” offer.

Fast forward two days to the 26th–I tried really hard not to get my hopes up. This was probably our 12th or 13th showing (although it was the first time we’d had a second showing for the same buyer), so I’d been riding that emotional rollercoaster for a whole month by this point. (We’d listed the house officially on April 26th). I was getting really burnt out on cleaning the house over and over, but I tried my best to get it looking as good as possible, and Cici came over early that afternoon to help me with some cleaning too, which was so nice. When it came time to leave the house, we decided to meet Travis at Tropical Smoothie Cafe for a free smoothie (we have a year’s worth of free smoothies with a punch card he got at their grand opening), so we hung out there during the showing. This time, the buyer was there a whopping 40 minutes…but I guess it was 4x as long as her first visit ;) When they left the house, the realtor texted and said something like, “Thanks for the cookies…they were delicious. The showing went great. Offer coming your way soon!” Whattttt??? We were thrilled—even though we didn’t yet know if it would be a good offer or not. So, we tried not to get TOO excited just yet. Sure enough, within the next hour, we had the offer! They offered us full asking price and wanted 3% in closing costs paid, the swingset, and the fridge. We had actually been considering dropping the listing price on the house before this buyer came along, so we were excited to get a full price offer and figured we probably wouldn’t get so lucky again—so we accepted the offer that same night. *Technically, after paying the closing costs and realtor fees, we lost about $10,000 in equity…but I think that probably would have happened regardless unless we tried to sell it ourselves. Our house just didn’t appreciate in value while we had it. In the end, we were just happy to finally have an offer!

The next day (May 27th) was the Saturday before Memorial Day. I ended up taking the girls to the lake to spend the day with Paw and Rae Rae. Travis stayed home to have a “mental health day”. I think he spent the whole day trying to catch up on finances, but he said he definitely enjoyed the peace and quiet :) We enjoyed our time at the lake! We swam in the lake for a little while. It was pretty chilly, but we got used to it after a few minutes.

We ate grapes on the screened-in porch…

…and fed the fish at Rock Creek Marina!

The fish didn’t seem overly hungry for our saltine crackers :) I think they’d already been fed by a bunch of people before us in the day!

We ate ice cream bars for a pre-dinner snack and had hamburgers after that before it was time to pack up and go home.

Life at the lake is always filled with good food and lots of fun!

Luke and Barrett are getting so big! It was so cute to see Brooklyn interacting with them Sunday after lunch at Cici’s house.

Building block towers is serious business! Gotta have those safety goggles on :)

On May 29th (Memorial Day), we went to Clayton’s first birthday party at Monte Sano State Park. We’d never been there before, but it was so pretty! Once the girls are older, I think it would be fun to go on a hike there. The party was held at a big pavilion, and there was a playground nearby too. Brooklyn and Savannah had a blast playing with the Carver girls!

Exploring before we headed home…

Isn’t that a gorgeous view??

Although you can’t tell it by everyone’s expressions, we had a great time celebrating with the Broadwells and would love to explore at Monte Sano again!

Once we had a contract on our house and knew for sure we’d be leaving the swingset behind, we tried to get out there and play on it as much as possible for the last month it was ours…

Travis and Cici restained it back in April, and it really looked great!

Brooklyn decided to build a “birdie nest” on top of the swing set by collecting sticks, leaves, and rocks and making a big pile :)

Wheeeee!

The girls will definitely miss the super fast slide!

Quotes and Notes for May 2017: 

• 5/1/17 – Savannah came up to me holding something she’d gotten from Bible class. She kept saying “Rooof” over and over. It was a picture of RUTH and Naomi. We had never talked about that picture before, so she definitely picked that up from class itself!
• 5/7/16 – Brooklyn’s prayer: “Thank you for making all the animals like hoppy frogs and zebras.”
• 5/9/17 – Apparently I must make a big deal about Savannah’s diapers being stinky, because now everytime I change her diaper, she says, “YUCK!!!”
• 5/22/17 – Brooklyn got up during the night to potty, went to the bathroom, and got back in bed ALL BY HERSELF. Never came in our room to get one of us. Big milestone! Hopefully that will continue :)
• 5/28/17 – I was laying down in bed when Brooklyn came in that morning. She asked, “Where’d your belly button go, Mommy? It used to be so big!” (My large outtie belly button goes flat when I lay down, which Brooklyn astutely noticed…haha).
• 5/28/17 – Brooklyn was sitting on the floor at Cici’s house after lunch with Luke and Barrett. She was pointing out their hands, feet, eyes, etc. and told me later, “I was teaching Luke and Barrett about all their parts!” :)

Thanks for reading!