New House...hopefully

Matt spent a four days pounding the pavement looking for homes for us and he was pretty impressive. The first day, he found our house. The agent took him to Murabella, a community in St. Augustine FL and he fell in love with the neigborhood. There were kids everywhere and he thought it was a great place for Makaela and Mia. The house was a bit more than what we were expecting to pay, but it is a brank new build and it has loads of upgrades. We are in contract, but we are still keeping our fingers crossed that the mortgage goes through okay and all is good. If all goes well, we will close on January 10th, which means we only need to stay in a hotel in Jacksonville for 5 days (and I will be able to get my doggies back sooner!!)Kitchen:Livingroom looking from the dining room and a view into the family room
Check out the floorplan at http://www.standardpacifichomes.com/new-homes/florida/jacksonville/murabella/Plans/osprey.aspx
The neighboorhood had a huge pool area complete with a toddler pool. It also has tennis courts, playgrounds, a gym, amnenity center, running paths, a marina, and schools within walking distance. Big plans and we are very excited about it but I wish I could bring all our friends could come with us.

Holiday House

We have been living at Tanya and Jerrod's and the house across the street from them is off the hook. The owners have been working on decorating the house since we moved in. This house has won the house decorating contest three years in a row, but unfortunately, all the blinking lights have been keeping our girls up at night. Oh well, it's all worth it for the season.

Kapolei Christmas Parade

Matt and I took the girls to the Kapolei Parade tonight. The place packs out and parking is nearly impossible, so we parked in a residential community, playing the park for a bit (and got completely dirty) and then walked to the parade. Here are our two joys prior to the parade:
We met up with Steph, Gavin and Dylan and enjoyed an impromptu Burger King picnic while waiting for the parade to start.

Gavin and Makaela couldn't control their excitement to be at the parade with each other:

Mia got a back seat to the parade (literally), so I tried to give her a front seat view, but she was more interested in french fries.

The floats were cute. Many groups passed out candy or trinkets and Gavin and Makaela were all about the treates. A beautiful parade float- so fun:

By the end of the night, the girls looked like this:

Today we had Mia's First Birthday Celebration. Yes, it's a bit late, but we wanted to hold off on a party until Matt was home and then we decided to have a joint birthday with Abby and Gavin since the holiday season was so packed. We held it at the Coconut Plantation Pool (thanks Martins) so we all got to be outside and had plenty of fun. The party was the Hungry Caterpillar theme and it was lots of fun organizing it. Plus we got to celebrate Mia's birthday with close friends.

And here is the funny outake family pic. Daddy and Mia chowing downThe birthday cake:

And all the birthday kids together:
Mia got a little excited about the candles:
Mia also got her own little cake but she was very conservative with her cake eating. She didn't exactly "go to town" like normal one year olds. She was quite dainty about her eating.

So the time has come for our annual Girls' Night Christmas Party. Tanya hosted in her gorgeous new home (an my temporary home) and once again, we had an all out crazy time. We had a night of many surprises (pregnancies, gifts, shoes and shapes -in no particular order). It was definitely bittersweet since this will be my last Girls' Night Christmas party, but it was a blast nonetheless. Jaimi, once again, was an amazing Secret Santa!

Lots of funny faces
Me, Steph and Katie

Our time with Santa

We went to a holiday fair at our friends' school and Santa was there. I thought it would be a good idea, but I guess not.