So much to be thankful for!

Sooooooooooo... wow. I didn't realize it had been so long since I posted anything! I logged on to my blog and did a double take when I realized it had been (yikes!) almost 4 weeks. I have so much news to report on, so let's get started!

Wonderful wonderful wonderful news... we have OFFICIALLY and FINALLY sold our house in Beaverton! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! We feel so blessed that we don't have to worry about it anymore. It's DONE, and we even closed before our first mortgage payment on our home in Albany is due, so we never had to pay two mortgages. We feel so incredibly lucky; I know so many people having the same problems we were having, and although we did have to take a little bit of a loss, we still feel really blessed to escape that situation and start fresh. Now we really feel like we can take a deep breath, relax, and enjoy our new home. Speaking of...

We've already been in our new house over a month already! It's coming together slowly but surely. I've held off on posting pictures because I wanted to show it with the new carpet (which is coming in a week!). We've absolutely loved living here so far. I'll post a few pics, before and after.

Master bedroom before with random person's stuff...

...after! Still a work in progress. Please ignore the boxes, this was actually taken a couple weeks ago.

Payton's room before...

...and after! It turned out pretty cute!

Kitchen

Deck

Nice big backyard!

The house itself

The neighborhood looking down the street... ahhh suburbia :)

I promise I'll post more pictures of the rooms as they become more complete!

Payton's language skills have really taken off this month. She's starting to formulate sentences, and repeats basically everything we say. And when I say everything, I mean everything! The other day when we were out on an evening walk Kyle jokingly pretended to trip Payton while she was walking. I said "Kyle!", and Payton stopped, turned towards her dad and said "Kyle!" He was not too amused :) She's doing a lot of singing too, well enough so that you can usually tell what songs she's singing. She can sing "twinkle, twinkle", "baa baa black sheep", "abc's", and is even learning to count. She is getting much better at communicating her wants and needs, which is making everyones life a little easier. If I ask her to clean up her toys, she will say "Payton clean up!", or if I told her dad is at home, she will say "Daddy home". It's so amazing to watch those wheels start turning in their brains when they realize that they can speak and have us understand. I can't wait for her to experience the holiday season too. Kyle and I are so excited about Christmas, we have to keep reminding ourselves to rein it in a little bit. She's not even two, she won't remember! Yet we want to buy out the whole store and shower her with gifts. We've already bought a big girl kitchen for her to play at (she's obsessed with playing grown up) and a Disney princess couch for her to lounge on. We just need to grab a few stocking stuffers, and we're done! Until I find something I just have to have :)

My sweet little bookworm

I'll help you grade daddy!

Hmmm...

F! Just kidding :)

We had a great vacation in Gig Harbor for Thanksgiving, I was really sad to leave and get back to real life. I haven't uploaded all of my pictures from this weekend yet, and it's getting pretty late and I'm on call so I think I'm going to hit the hay and blog that stuff another time. Soon, I promise. It was a fun filled weekend, so lots to blog about. Hope you all have a great week!