So, in a nutshell… The past six months…

• We moved!  We got an offer on our town house back in the end of July.  Accepted.  Went to settlement the end of September.  Rented it back from the buyers for a month until our new home was finished being built.  (That could not have worked out any better if I planned it myself!)  Settled on our new house the end of October.  Moved in just in time for Halloween!

• Leanne!  She is now two and a half. Yikes!  She is an awesome little girl.  Filled with spunk and personality.  Smart as a whip and has a crazy awesome memory.  She is a total girly-girl but isn’t afraid to get down and dirty, loves being outside, loves running, loves Dora the Explorer and Sesame Street.

• Me!  Loves more then anything being a stay at home mom, but still wrestles with the slight void  quitting my job has left (mostly just in the winter).  Loves cooking and baking, trying new recipes, reading, reading blogs, scrapbooking.  In the process of attempting to decorate and organize our new home and socialize in our new world.

• Jay!  Still working from home, playing video games, reading, movies.  Enjoying home improvements and bring an awesome Daddy and husband!

Oh, and because I can’t do two posts without including a picture of our little princess.  Here ya go.  It is from right after Christmas, and taken with my camera phone (not the best quality, I am too lazy to plug in the camera), but you get the idea. 

It has obviously been a while.  A lot has happened in the past 6 months or so.  More on that later…

In the years we’ve been blogging the focus has been constantly changing.  We started this back in 2004 (whoa, that was before blogging was even considered “cool”) focusing mostly on our wedding and it most recently it became a way to keep everyone up to date with our family.

We I have decided to change it again. I am going to start blogging again with the focus on me - a sort of journal.  I need a way to gather and share ideas on things that interest me - cooking, baking, parenting, decorating, finances, music, etc.  I plan to use this blog for that, with of course, some Leanne thrown in there too. 

So, we’ll see how this goes.  In the meantime does anyone even read this old thing any more?  Is anyone out there??

We’ve been prepping Leanne for her second birthday for a while now.  She now knows to answer two when someone asks her how old she is and she knows all about wishing people a happy birthday and singing the Happy Birthday Song (she can even sing her own version of the song - Happy Birthday Cake).  You’d think with all the preparing we’ve done to get Leanne ready for her second birthday that she’d be a little more excited about her special day.  Just the opposite.  Leanne is a little bashful about turning two.  You’d think she were turning 32.  Whenever someone wished her a happy birthday she got this sad look on her face almost like she was about to cry and turned and walked away.

It started this morning when I went in her room to get her.  I walked in, said good morning, and wished her a happy birthday.  She started crying, sat down in her crib and told me she was going back to sleep.  She did perk back up after I sang a few rounds of Happy Birthday to her.

Since Leanne’s big birthday party isn’t until next weekend, Jay and I wanted to do something fun with her today.  We decided to take her to petting zoo and animal barnyard at Johnson’s Farm.  It was pretty cute.  Leanne enjoyed feeding the goats and checking out all the barnyard animals.  They had goats, ducks, horses, chickens, roosters pigs and sheep.  She was a little sure of the horses up close, but really liked the ducks and feeding the goats.

After heading home for lunch and a very long nap (poor girl was exhausted from last night’s festivities) Leanne opened her birthday gifts and we took her out to dinner at Chilis for her favorite dinner chicken and fries (well really just fries, she talks about eating chicken but “chickens out” when it comes down to it).  After dinner we took the bikes out for a quick ride and finished the day with birthday cake.  Leanne loved being sung to and loved blowing out her candles!

We had such a fun day celebrating our little girl!

Birthday Girl!

With Mommy in the Wagon

Visiting with the Horses

Checking out the Duckies with Daddy

Feeding the Goats

Wow! Presents!

Ohhh! Elmo Camera!

Excited for Chicken and Fries

Look Mommy! Chicken and Fries!

Blowing out her Birthday Candle

YUMMY!

She really just liked the icing, and it was better with her fingers

It is so hard to believe that two years ago today I held my baby girl for the first time.  On one hand the past two years feel like they have flown by in a second.  On the other, I can’t remember my life before Leanne came into it.

Happy Birthday, Sweet Baby Girl!  Not a single day goes by that you don’t amaze me with how smart, loving and sweet you are.  You are truely a beautiful person both inside and out and I am so proud that you are MY daughter.  Happy Birthday, Leanne!