8 Months Old and Growing Up Fast

That's right. Our little girl is 8 months old today. It seems like just yesterday that she was brought into our lives, but alas it is true. I'm so thankful for her though. She is an AMAZING little girl. She's quite tiny (or petite as some would say), but she's anything but fragile. She's got her mama's spunk and her daddy's passion. And somehow mixed in there is a little bit of shyness. How amazing is God to make a little girl like our Evie Jane?

Here are some pictures of her that I took lately. She has learned how to pull herself up to her knees. She's so proud of herself too! She has 5 teeth and a few more on the way. She army crawls around the whole house now. She's eating several different vegetables and LOVES to eat Puffs. She's even starting to sign 'more' when the food has stopped coming. I wish I could make time stand still for a little bit longer so that I could enjoy her babyhood, but I know that's not possible and that I will enjoy the next phase as much as this one. Thank you, Lord, for giving us Evelyn! She is such a blessing!

(You can see a little bit of our house in this picture.)

Score!

We're about to redo our tub/shower in our bathroom. It really needs it! We've been looking around for tile for a while now. We just couldn't find anything that we love and can afford. Well, the other day JD and Luke went to our local resale store (Encore) and found some tile there. Today we all went back so that I could see it too. It wasn't exactly what I was thinking, but since it was cheap we were contemplating it. While we were standing there a worker man comes up to us and says that there's a lot more tile in the back and would we like to see it. "Yes, please." We went back there and were amazed how many different tiles they actually had. The man told us that a local store had gone out of business and had donated them all. JD and I started looking through them. Luckily they had stacked them by type/style so we could see how many boxes they had of each kind. Well, lo and behold we found tiles for our bathroom that we both really liked. We asked the man how much it would be and he said "$3 a box". WHAT! We just couldn't believe it! Some of the tiles were out of the boxes so the man just rounded the amount so that we got all of this:


for only $36! Can you believe that? And they're really nice tiles too. God has just amazed us today. Oh and we woke up this morning to a crystal clear swimming pool too. It was still a little cloudy up until this morning. YAY!

Splish, Splash

Well, it finally looks like our pool is very close to being finished. Shew! It's been a very long, expensive process of cleaning, dumping chemicals and cleaning again and again and again. I thought I'd post some pics so you can actually see how much we've done with it.

Here we go:

This is when we first moved in and the pool was still frozen with lots of "fun" treats in it.


This is when we decided to drain it, but had to stop mid draining because I read that you're not supposed to drain a pool that has a liner. Who knew?


These next 2 are the beginning of the cleaning out process. We filled the pool back up and started the wonderful process of scooping out the "stuff". We had a LOT of days doing just that. Nothing like getting dead animal sludge on you! Notice how the pole is bending from the weight?

The actual color:


And now...

What our pool looks like today!


JD took one for the team and went in first. It took him a few minutes to build up the nerve, but when he finally did it...

...we were all there to celebrate. We then all got in and had a great first swim! YAY! It really did make it all worth it!

busy, busy, busy!

Life is so full right now, but I wanted to post just so that you all know we're alive and well. Just busy! This is what I was just working on today:


That's right! 20 jars of homemade strawberry jam. ~YUM~ It is delicious too.

In a few days I'll be sharing some pool pics. You won't believe your eyes. I promise! It's amazing how far it's come. And then hopefully pics of our house now. I know lots of you have been asking me for this. Sorry it's taken me so long. Life just continues to run on full speed ahead. We are running to catch up! Be back soon!