Dog Days of Winter

We are thick into the worst two months of the year, January and February. We got our first significant amount of snow, about 5 inches and it's been very cold the last few days! Come on Spring!

One good thing was Maxwell turned 2 on January 8th. Shauna and Brad had about 25 people over for a party. He's kind of shy and not used to a lot of people being around but he did ok though and warmed up after a while. He spent a lot of time watching all the other little kids there play with his toys!

Between Christmas and his birthday this guy has lots of toys!

Levi just laid around being his cute self and hanging with his brother!

He's almost 4 months old and has two little teeth in the front

In sad news, we had out beautiful cat Zoe put to sleep on January 2nd.

She was our loner cat.  She didn't care too much for the other cats and spent most of her time in our bedroom. She would rarely come to us for affection, but if you went to her and gave her love, she was very sweet and affectionate, and she had a very loud purr!

She also had the most gorgeous, sea-green eyes! I miss her a lot!

Until the next time.....

Christmas 2018

Christmas of 2017 I started a tradition of getting personalized ornaments for Maxwell and Levi. We just had Maxwell last year and went to Bronner's Christmas Store in Frankenmuth sometime over the summer to get his. It's huge store with thousands of ornaments and other Christmas decorations.  There was hardly anyone there and it was easy to find a cute one and have it personalized with Maxwell's name and the year. We even walked around and looked at all of the other stuff they have there.

This year between selling our house, buying another and moving we didn't get a chance to go until a week after Thanksgiving. Big difference! We got there about a hour after they opened on a Sunday and ended up having to park at the very far end of the parking lot. Then it was wall to wall people and you could hardly move. I was able to find the identical ornament I purchased for Maxwell to have personalized for Levi and a cute one for Maxwell's 2nd Christmas. Then it was a hour wait to have them personalized! Anyway, here they are:

I don't know why this is sideways!

And here is Maxwell and Levi's First Christmas ornaments hanging together!

This year we are going again in August! If we don't get a chance to I will order them online!

Christmas was nice. I didn't take a lot of pictures. We spent Christmas Eve at my oldest brother Jim's house and Christmas Day we went to Shauna's because they were hosting Brad's family.

That's about it so far. Tomorrow is New Years Eve. We are going to dinner and them maybe the casino and will probably be home by midnight! I'll leave you with some random pictures!

We got Maxwell this teepee and a rocking horse for Christmas. He was not impressed with either one! 

This is my favorite picture of Levi! All ready to go look at Christmas lights with his mom, dad and brother!

Maxwell playing with one of his many, many toys he got!

This little cutie is 3 months old already!

I can hardly believe Maxwell is going to be 2 in a few weeks! Time sure flys!

Until the next time......

Settled and Decorating for Christmas

We are pretty much settled in our new home now. I love that everything is on one level, especially the washer and dryer. No more trudging up and down stairs with laundry!

I do wish this little house of ours was on a piece of land we owned instead of in a manufactured home community but for now, there is nothing to do about that. We'll see how things are in 5 years when our lot lease is up.

The weekend  after Thanksgiving I pulled out all of our Christmas decorations.  I had six totes worth and after I put out everything I wanted to keep the rest of it went  to Shauna and a couple things to my DIL Marissa. I got rid of half of my decorations!

Last year after Christmas I threw away our 7 foot Christmas tree that we would put up in the family room, so all we have now is the small 5 foot tree I used to put in the front window of the Canton house.  I had more ornaments that I could put on both trees so I put all of my favorites on the smaller tree and gave the rest to Shauna!

I never realized how freeing getting rid of stuff can be!

Anyway here are some pictures of the decorating I've done.

This wreath made of bells has been a favorite of mine for a long time. I hung it on the pantry door.

Ceramic Christmas tree that my mom made along with some of the kids santa pictures.

My 5 foot tree that is being held together by the lights strung on it. It will be going in the garbage after this year!

So nice to have this built in. We strung lights and garland above...

And put my snowmen collection on it. 

We put these shelves up to hold pictures but for now they hold my Christmas Tree collection. 

We even decorated our little porch, which we plan on replacing with a deck in the Spring.

We watched Maxwell and Levi on Saturday night so Shauna and Brad could go out. I had to sneak this picture of Maxwell because if he sees my phone he wants to play with it! He was having chicken and mashed potatoes for dinner, and keeping a couple flashlights close by!

Levi is getting cuter and more alert every day! Such a smiling little guy, too! 

Those too boys have me totally wrapped around their little fingers!

Until the next time.....

All Moved In

We are all moved in to our new home and slowly getting settled. For the most part the closing's went without too much trouble. On the day we moved the movers knocked off a piece of the stair banister with our box spring but they made arrangements with the new owners of the house and repaired it.

Finally after months of stress and frustration the whole sell our house buy another one transaction is finally over! Amen to that!

Anyway, I won't be too wordy..just do some before and after pictures.

Before

After

Before

After

It's hard to see but I covered the end of the island with black vinyl cloth and on the other side is this.

The island is huge and all of my bake ware, pots and pans and miscellaneous things are stored under there. Plus I put the vinyl on with Velcro so I can take it off to access what I need on that side.

I had them remove all of the black appliances and replaced them with all new stainless steel ones. The appliances were only 4 years old but they were kind of gross. Besides, I wanted all new for the first  time in my life!

Pantry before

After

Master Closet Before

After

We brought two big book cases from the old house. I was going to get rid of them because I figured we wouldn't have room for them but turned out one worked perfectly in the master closet!

I'll show more in the next post. Blogger is being difficult today! 

Of course a pic of the grandsons ends this post!

Levi's 6 weeks old already!

Sweet boy!

Until the next time!

Levi James, Packing And Other Stuff

I am so excited to show you my new grandson! Levi James Ryken was born on Thursday the 27th, 6 lb 6 oz. Look at all that dark hair!

Shauna had to have a c-section because Levi was breech. Brad wanted to stay with her in the hospital for the first night so Rich and I stayed with Maxwell  at their house.

We got to spend lots of quality time with him!!

They came home on Saturday.

Maxwell didn't sleep too well the first few nights but he's learning to love his little brother! I think they will be good friends!

We are scheduled to close on our Canton house on Tuesday the 9th and close on our Plymouth house a few days after.

I have been packing quite a bit in the last few weeks and I have to say....we have a TON of boxes!

My oldest brother recently moved and he gave us a whole bunch of boxes that he didn't need anymore. There was so many they filled up the whole back of our Equinox, even being flattened. I thought we couldn't possibly have enough to fill all of the boxes but was I ever wrong!

Just packing up my china cabinet and the case where I have my momma and baby animal figurines displayed took up 9 of them!

Of course, everything is fragile (fra-gee-lay!) so I couldn't cram too much in one box, but still!

I have both of the spare room closets packed and most of the stuff in our master bedroom closet packed.

And we have been slowly bringing up boxes from the basement and putting them in the garage so they will be ready to go!

We have a lot of stuff going into a smaller place but I am confident I can store it all and it won't look too cluttered!

I have also been making lots of phone calls arranging insurances and talking to our realtor and banker and have been utilizing this thing we have at work called "The Phone Booth".

It's sound proof so you can make phone calls or have conversations with someone and it's completely private! I love it! It's been really handy with this selling and buying houses stuff I've been doing!

That's where we're at right now. Next time if everything goes well I'll be posting from the new place!

Until then......

Finally

We finally managed to sell our house. Not without some haggling and not without us finally having to say they either agree to buy the house as is or no deal! Ha! We gave them a little money towards closing because they are first time home buyers. I swear you give people an inch and they want a mile! Anyway, we got things settled and now our house is officially sold! Should be closing in about 4 weeks.

I feel kind of bad but not as bad as I did when we sold our first house.

This little 1125 sq.ft ranch was the house we bought in 1978 when were were married a year. We brought both of our babies home to it and lived in it until Shauna graduated from high school. We sold it in 1999 to move to our current house in Canton.

I really missed that house the first month or so after we moved. I kept a picture of it on the refrigerator for a long time.

Now after another living in this house for almost as long, we are moving on again!

This time we are moving into a manufactured home in a MH community called Plymouth Hills. It's about three miles from here and is basically a mobile home park with some manufactured homes thrown in!

Ours is 1,700 sq. ft. 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms manufactured home that is 4 years old.

Its on a corner lot with two big pine trees in front.

It's very open inside.

View from one end

View from front door

It's got a huge open island in the kitchen. We are going to close it off on this end that you see and use it to store pots and pans and other bake ware.

Behind that white door to the right of the island is this. A good size pantry.

I am having them remove all of the appliances and buying everything new! I'm really excited about that because in all of our 41 years married I have never had all new appliance! Once I get them in there the kitchen should look a lot more updated!

The master bedroom has a walk in closet.

 It's hard to tell in this pic but it's large enough to hold a dresser if we need to put it in there.

The master bathroom is "en suite" so there is no entrance to it except through the bedroom. That is at one end of the house and at the other end is the family room, two more bedrooms and another full bath.

bedrooms on either side of the bathroom

family room with built ins

It's the perfect size for us for right now. The fact that it's in a mobile home community isn't exactly what we first had in mind but it seems nice enough. It's a corner lot so we don't feel crammed in.

The down side is there there is no covered parking and considering we are leaving an attached garage that will take some getting used to! Plus there isn't enough parking to have large family get togethers anymore.



We have lots of plans for this new place.  I can't wait for this all to be over and it feels like home!

And of course here is my little Maxwell!

My heart and the joy of my life!

Next post I probably will be telling you all about my new grandson, who should be born by the end of this month!

Until then.......