momma's day.

Happy Mother's Day to all of the hard working, loving mommies I know.

I enjoyed a lovely day at home with the kids today, which is exactly what I wanted. We had gorgeous weather so we poked around our new yard (which needs some work - ugh!), played with some of the neighbor kids, organized some things inside the house, and had grilled burgers for dinner - my fave.

outside fun.

Matt's mom came for her first visit a few days ago. We had some nice weather and took advantage of it by walking down the block to the neighborhood park. Here they are enjoying the swings.

Here is Linc acting like king of the climber.

Cassidy is enjoying a little bike ride in front of the house.

I just loved the gorgeous color of Lincoln's hair in this picture.

in with the new.

We have arrived in the Land of Lincoln (yes, that is the official state slogan of Illinois). How great is that?

Here we are in our new home in Grayslake, IL. As you can see in the picture below, Lincoln is already enjoying the basketball hoop in the driveway. We are slowly, but surely settling in. It's a good thing that I enjoy unpacking and organizing because there is a lot of that to do!

Here are a few pics of the back of the house. I know, super exciting, right? Some of you haven't seen the place yet, though, so these are for you. We've got a nice, big deck to hang out on.

Because the deck is on the larger side, it actually takes up a fair amount of the back yard so this is what we've got for a back yard, which is much smaller than we're used to. We'll have to go to the park a lot with Linc's ball, bat, and bases so we can practice our baseball skillz.

This was taken from the deck.

My parents joined us for a few days when we first moved to help us get settled and to occupy the kids. Here are my mom and Linc watching a movie on the portable dvd player. Living without tv and internet even for a few days was not all that much fun!

Here is Little Miss Helper aiding Papou as he and Matt put our tv stand together.

And the hard part...saying goodbye. We got SO much done while my folks were here but the time came for them to return home to MI. This was an early morning shot of my dad and the kids snuggling. We're very grateful for Skype so we can see each other regularly.

All in all, the move went very smoothly. We are all adjusting well, are settling in, and are making the house our home. We have met a number of neighbors and all have young kids, which is great.

Here's to our new adventure...we hope you'll join us for the ride (if I can keep the dang blog updated!) as we explore our new surroundings.

out with the old.

We bought our first house in Livonia in Dec. 2002, just six months after we got married and were certain we wouldn't be there longer than five years. We'd either upgrade to a larger house in the metro-Detroit area or would move out of state for Matt's job. Over eight years have passed and the latter has option has arrived. We've moved to Illinois! While it was very, very difficult to move away from our family and friends, we know that we're just a 5-hour car ride away (really, everyone...it's a quick drive!).

Here are some pics as we exited our Barbara St. house, or should I say home? Yes, it was most definitely a home. We were newlyweds in this home. We had our first pet in this home. We had two kids in this home. Seriously, so many major life events and fond memories. Even though I often complained about the old kitchen and the tight quarters, I will miss so many things about this home.

Au revoir, Barbara St.

It was such an odd feeling watching all that we've accumulated being loaded onto the moving truck.