Today is the day!

Although we signed the closing papers on Saturday, they weren't officially submitted and okayed until today. I cannot believe that we are finally homeowners! Closing on Saturday was actually more exciting and less stressful than a normal closing. Since my dad and our real estate agent are really good friends with our banker, we were able to go in first thing on Saturday to sign at the bank, instead of a title company, with Kent (our banker) instead of a closing agent. We were able to sit back joke around, and actually talk about things other than the finances.


I am VERY VERY VERY grateful for Kent . He bent over backwards to help us in anyway he could. I mean if I had a question at 9pm, I could text him or call his cell to get an immediate answer. I would definitely recommend Kent.

I meant to take a picture of us leaving the bank with our house keys, but got too excited to go and celebrate Greyson's birthday that I completely forgot! Oh well!

Greyson Turns 3

Our first big event at our house was Greyson's 3rd Birthday Party! While we still didn't have a huge party we had both sets of grandparents and Beth, Gordon, and their boys over to celebrate! Do to some last minute changes with the house, we ended up closing on the Saturday morning of Greyson's party. It was a rainy, dreary, cold day. I had to take the boys over to my parent's house so that we could head to the closing. On the way home I stopped our cake lady's house to pick up Greyson's awesome Toy Story Cake. She did an amazing job and everyone loved it! It was super yummy too!
Greyson had a great time, and loves all of his presents. I guess the excitement from the day had worn him out because he even took a nap before dinner at Nakato's!

We were so worn out from the previous week and the busy day, that we had a calm evening at home. We had some more cake and ice cream and let the boys play with Greyson's new toys. It was a low key but fun day!

I can't believe my baby is 3. He is such a big boy. He had his 3 year well check earlier in the week, weighing in at 40.5 lbs! As usual is in in the top percentile's on height and weight. Dr T is very impressed with the fact that he's been potty trained for a year, his vocabulary and the fact that he can count to 10! We also got Greyson signed up for preschool next year. He can't wait until he gets to stay at preschool instead of just dropping brothers off and going home!

Work Days

Through out the month of March we were still living with my parents, but had a contract on our house. We had a bunch of legal issues that came up last minute with the house so closing kept getting delayed (not problems with us, but with the owner of the house). Luckily our real estate agent is closely linked with the top real estate attorney in Springfield. So we had our issues taken care of with absolutely no stress or work between Brandon and I. It was great. So as the financial side pressed on, we were able to take early possession of the house and start the changes that we had planned on.

(Here's a shot of the kitchen before. It looks like the floors and cabinets match- but they didn't!)

The kitchen and dining room originally had dark cabinets with super light cheap laminate flooring. In the living room, upstairs bedrooms and hallway was UGLY burbur carpet. So we had it all ripped up and replaced with top of the line laminate flooring in the kitchen, dining room, living room, hallway and new carpet in the three upstairs bedrooms. To save on the labor costs, and because I have the best daddy in the whole world, we spent a couple of evenings as a family ripping up flooring, staples and carpet padding. The boys even got in on the action with plyers and ripping up staples.

After a couple of days of hard work, we were finally done! Brandon and I LOVE LOVE LOVE our new flooring. We were just looking forward to the day when we could official move into our long awaited new home!

Later in the week we were able to put the twins new bunkbeds in their room and our new couch for our upstairs bedroom. Slowly but surely we were getting closer to the official move in day!

Sittin 'Round Waitin on Two Pink Lines...........

Last summer, Brandon and I decided that we were ready to start thinking about having another (LAST) baby. We prayed about it, and thought that it was the right time to start. But apparently God didn't agree. So we put off the idea, and put on the idea of working out and eating healthy, to lose weight and get in shape for Brandon's high school reunion.......... but as soon as we got the gym membership, got some workout clothes, and got pumped up with motivation this happened!

After realizing that I had let a little more time pass than I had realized, and the strong encouragement from my girlfriend Carrie, I went to Walmart and bought two test. Since I am one of the most impatient people in the world, I immediately took test #1 and had one solid pink and one faint pink line. Knowing what it meant, but not truly believing I sent a picture to Carrie for her opinion. The next morning (3/8) I took test #2. Same result. Same feeling in my stomach, so I headed to Target to get the pregnancy test for morons. You know the one I am talking about. You pee and it flat out says PREGNANT or NOT PREGNANT. Well, I had to potty really bad, so I purchased the test and headed to the restroom. Classy right?! I immediately took the test to see that 8 letter word. PREGNANT! Now that it had finally set in, Greyson and I headed to Babies R Us, to find a Big Brother shirt for him to give to Brandon to tell that we were expecting. We wrapped it in a cute bad along with the three tests (in a plastic bag of course), and headed to Brandon's office.

When he met us in the lobby, Greyson gave him the bag, he looked inside and turned white! He was more shocked than I was! We headed to his office, were we hugged and could celebrate without worrying about people coming out into the lobby. Our celebration was cut short, since I had to go pick the twins up from preschool.
After picking up the twins, I headed over to Nixa, to tell my mom. At this point G is wearing his big brother shirt, and I wanted to see how long it took my to notice. It took her a few minutes and then a few more minutes for it to click what was going on. She too was shocked but excited for us! After a few minutes of hugs and kisses, they boys and I left to head back to Springfield to eat a celebration dinner and to tell Brandon's parents via telephone.

When we found out that we were pregnant with the twins four years ago, we took Brandon's parents to Olive- Garden, and showed them the ultrasound to see if they could tell what made those ultrasound pictures special. 11 months later, when we found out we were pregnant with Greyson we did the same thing. So we thought it was only appropriate to follow in tradition and tell them at Olive Garden. Little did we know that they had planned on going to Olive Garden in St Louis that night! So while we were at OG in Springfield we called them in STL and told them the news! Perfect timing right?!

We are very excited about the sixth and FINAL Howard family member to join us in the fall!

The Forgotten Holiday

I just realized I completely forgot to blog about Lincoln and Daniel's Valentines Day Party. They were so pumped about this party, and thankfully even though the actual party day fell on a snow day, their teacher made the party up on the next preschool day.

The week before we searched high and low at Target to get the perfect Valentines. Lincoln picked out Star Wars with a magnet and Daniel picked out Toy Story. For some crazy reason this non crafty momma volunteered to lead eight 3 & 4 year olds in a craft. So after Target we headed to Hobby Lobby to pick out a pre prepared craft. The easier the better. I ended up picking out(with all three boys picking out something totally different) a little smiley face heart to color and then tape on the scrunched up legs and arms! It sounds kinda creepy, but was pretty cute.

While at Hob Lob (as Greyson calls it), we also picked out "valentine's day school busses''. You see, this mom keeps all of her shoes in the shoe boxes, so there was no way that I was going to tape and cut up my precious shoe boxes. Seriously, I know. But the boys picked out really cute school busses to decorate for passing out valentines.

I let the boys fill out their own valentines (the boys did AWESOME!). It took us a little while, considering I had to help write out double the amount of invitations that a normal family had to write! So we took a snack and play break and then headed back to work on our busses. It ended up that this perfectionist momma was WAY TOO picky about the placement of the stickers. I had to follow the instructions, because of course the other kids would care what the busses looked like! Ha! After spending nearly a hour attempting to perfectly decorate, we gave up and the boys went to go and play.

On the day the party was set for we recieved about six more inches of snow, so we had a snow day and postponed the party. But were able to have it the on the next day of class! Here's some pics: