Christmas 2010

Hanging out with Grandpa.

Maddie in her Christmas dress.

Christmas morning. My parent's living room was a mess!

Maddie's favorite Christmas present: a ball popper from Grandma and Grandpa McGee.

We had such a wonderful Christmas this year! It was so nice to be surrounded by family. It was a McGee/Nickels/Romano Family Christmas. Maddie loved being able to play with her aunt, uncle, grandma and grandpa. Maddie has been able to say "grandpa" for a lit bit now, but this weekend she really started saying "grandma" (it sounds more like "Nma"). My mom LOVED that!

Our weekend started out with a wonderful Christmas Eve service at my parents church. The whole family played a part, even my sister's hubby, Brandon, (or Uncle Brandon as we now call him) who took on babysitting duty while I was singing with Jason on stage. Maddie loves her Uncle Brandon! :) My mom and sister also did a beautiful duet. The service seemed filled with Joy and anticipation for the birthday of our Savior.

Christmas morning was crazy. I think that is the only way I can describe it. Toys and presents filled the living room. It was so much fun to see Maddie excited about her new toys. The rest of the day was filled with family fun and a delicious Christmas dinner complete with turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potatoes, stuffing, jello, rolls and pumpkin pie and mint chocolate chip cheesecake for dessert. Maddie learned a new word while we were there: "pie".

Sunday, we headed home after lunch, but first we stopped by my aunt and uncle's for a visit. It was so nice to see them. We made it to my grandparents around 7 (about 40 mins from home). We visited for a while and then headed home.

It was a tiring weekend, but a great one.

Maddie's New Quilt

One of my grandma's friends, Aileen, made this beautiful quilt for Maddie. I love the detail. It is completely hand stitched. Maddie, Grandma and I all went to visit Aileen when Maddie and I lived at the ranch. She is such a sweet lady. Maddie liked her very much. Aileen gave her a toy dog which she carries around with her all the time. It was so sweet of her to make this for Maddie. I love it! :)

Christmastime is Here

Tonight, we went to a Christmas tree lot less than a mile from our new place and purchased our Christmas tree. I love real Christmas trees! It smells like Christmas in our place. I have missed this smell. We had a fake tree in Oklahoma and I am so glad that it broke and we had to toss it out when we moved.

This year the tree is in the back corner of our living room, so Maddie cannot get to it. Maddie loved going to pick it out. She can now say, "tree" and she said it over and over. It was so cute!

Here are some pictures of our living room all decorated for Christmas.

This is our new bookcase we bought from Ikea. It holds so much and Maddie loves it. The bottom two rows are full of her books and toys.

Ardenwood Historical Park

Today Jason, Maddie and I went to Ardenwood Historical Park with our good friends, the McCoy's. The park was decorated for Christmas complete with Father Christmas and carolers. We had a great time walking around and Maddie loved playing with her friend, Hannah.

4 Generations!

Me, Maddie, my mom, and my grandma

Four generations of women all born in the month of July! :)

We have renters! Hooray!

We just learned today that we have renters for our OKC home. This is such great news and a wonderful answer to prayer! The rental rate will also cover all of our costs (mortgage, insurance and property taxes). The best part is that the couple who are renting our house love it so much they are hoping to be able to buy it. Hopefully, next year the market will be better and we can sell it to them. Isn't this fantastic news?!? God has blessed us above and beyond what we thought was possible. God is so good!

Holiday Cards from Shutterfly!

Hello everyone! The holidays are here and what better way to show off the family than a beautiful photo holiday card? Jason and I started using photos cards a few Christmases ago and with the birth of Madison last year, I am really excited about showing off how much she has grown. We have done cards from Sam's Club and Walgreens, but this year I am going to use Shutterfly. I love Shutterfly products. I made a beautiful memory book of Madison's first month using Shutterfly last year. Here are a couple samples of the cards they have available this year.

Here is a link to all of their Christmas photo-cards: http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/christmas-photo-cards. They also offer a variety of adorable invitations for holiday parties: http://www.shutterfly.com/cards-stationery/christmas-invitations as well as cute gift ideas such as calendars: http://www.shutterfly.com/calendars.

I am super excited about our cards this year. I am still not sure whether or not I will do a card with multiple photos or just one, but either way I know they will be great!

PS: Shutterfly is offering me 50 free holiday cards for this blog post! If you are a blogger and would like to do the same click here: http://blog.shutterfly.com/5358/holiday2010-blog-submission-form/.

Our New Place

Things are starting to settle down for us. We have moved into our new place. We are still working on boxes, but at least Maddie's room, the kitchen and living room (except for the boxes of books) are somewhat put together. Our place is small and definitely has its quirks, but at least it is a place we can call home. One upgrade from our house is the carpet. I never liked the carpet in our house and was planning on changing it, that is until our move happened. The carpet in our apartment is very soft. I am not worried about Maddie getting rug burns on her knees from crawling around on it.

We like our new location. We are close to lots of shopping. Not just the mall either, we have 3 grocery stores near by as well as about 5 Starbucks locations. Yes, you read that right. We are back in the land of Starbucks on every corner. :) It is funny, the whole time we lived in OK, I could count the amount of times I went to Starbucks on my two hands and now that we have been back in CA, I have been about once a week (or more).

We are also close to family and friends. I loved being here for the big celebration we had this past week for my grandpa turning 75. I missed being able to attend family get-together's.

All in all, things are going well. I do miss the luxury of living in my house, but there are so many good things that can make up for that. :) I will post pics of our new place once it is more put together, probably after Thanksgiving. :)

Life at the Ranch

Here are a few pictures of the time we spent at the ranch with my grandparents, aka: papa and GG. Maddie had such a great time there. I know she misses it. Luckily, they only live 40 minutes away, so we can visit often. :)

This is the hat that my grandpa made for Maddie. (He took an old hat of his and sewed it up to fit her head.)

Maddie and "Papa" in their hats.

Playing with all of her toys. There is a mixture of her toys, toys my grandparents have and toys my mom brought up.

First taste of chocolate pudding! She LOVED it!

Carmel By The Sea

Jason and I are now moved into our apartment and we have internet service. Yay! Now that I have a way of posting pictures to the blog, I thought I would share the pictures Jason and I took on our recent trip to Carmel. I love Carmel. It is beautiful. I love all of the little shops and cottages. It is also right on the coast, so the drive is very pretty.

Moving Update

We have an apartment! Yay! Our move-in day is Friday, November 12th. Jason and I are so excited about living together again. This one in Gilroy and one in San Jose thing has been no fun. Soon we will both be in Sunnyvale. :) Jason will only have a 30 minute commute to work and he is able to work 7-4 instead of 8-5, which will help with traffic. :) Our new apartment is small, but it is a great price. It is renovated as well with a stackable washer and dryer. It will definitely work for a little bit while we pay off the move and finally find a renter for our home in OKC. (No news on that front. It has been shown many times, but no one has put in an application. Please pray for a renter soon!)
We figure that we will take a year in this small apartment to pay off our loans and save, then next year we will look at getting a bigger place.
Jason and I are very excited to be in a new place soon. Prayer requests: 1) for help with our move, 2) for Maddie's transition to our new apartment, 3) for a renter for our OKC home and 4) that Jason will do well at Oracle once he starts actually selling (he is still in training).

Maddie's Words

I thought I would do a quick blog post with all of the words that Maddie has started to say the past couple weeks. She could already say some but it seemed like she decided to stop talking for a bit right before the move. Ever since we have been here at the ranch with my grandparents, she has become a little chatterbox. Here is a list of everything she is saying these days:

hi
bye (while waving)
mama
dada
uh-oh
baby
da ("dog"- she also makes the barking noise)
du ("duck")
be ("bear")
brush
papa (great grandpa)
G (great grandma, aka "GG")
toe (we think this means "toy")
go
no
yay
wee (she says this while swinging on the swing)
truck (and grandpa is working on tractor)

and every once in a while she points at something and says, "what's that?" (well, as best as she can say it)

Jason and I can't believe how much she is doing now. She has also decided that she wants to walk everywhere. She stands and reaches for our hands and as soon as she is holding on she starts walking full force. It is so cute. We suspect she will be walking by herself soon enough and then we will be chasing her everywhere. :)

I don't have any pictures to share right now, but I will have some when we get to move into our new place, hopefully in a week or so.

Halloween 2010

Our little bunny

Maddie and Hannah

Hannah

Maddie trying to crawl with her ears in the way.

Jason, Maddie and I spent Halloween with our good friends Chris and Melissa and their kids, Hannah and baby Owen. We had such a good time hanging out with them. Maddie loved playing with her new friend, Hannah. Here are some pictures of the girls in their costumes.

Update!

Maddie and I made it safely to CA on Tuesday and Jason crossed the border last night. He should be arriving in Gilroy today in the afternoon. I can't wait to see him! Yesterday, Mom, Grandma and I went to go look at a few apartments in Sunnyvale. We found two promising ones in our budget and timeline. I am going to take Jason on Friday to see them. All in all things are going well. Maddie seems to be adjusting to the time change and loves crawling around this big house. :) I will write more soon when we find a place. I should have pictures of Jason's journey to share with you as well.

Answered Prayer!!!

Jason just received the written Oracle offer in his inbox!!! Yay!!!!!

Prayer Request!

In my post a couple weeks ago I mentioned that we had confirmation that Jason's written offer was on its way. Well, we still have not received it. It should come by email and Jason needs to print it off and Fedex it back to them. If it doesn't come before Tuesday then Jason will be on the road and it will be much more difficult to have that done, which could push back his start date. Jason talked with his new boss a couple days ago and he had found the offer on the director's desk. She had been out of the office which is why it was taking so long. We were told that he would be receiving it a day later. That was Monday. Jason is not worried, but I have to admit that I am. This is the last thing that needs to happen before Jason is truly official. Please pray that we receive this offer ASAP. The truck is rented, the plane flights are booked and Jason gave his two week notice on Friday. (He is using his vacation to fulfill the last week of his notice.) Still all we have is a verbal offer and a preferred start date. I am going to feel so much more at ease with everything in writing.

Also, another prayer request is help loading our truck. We have reached out a couple times and have had only one taker. Sunday will be a long day if we have no help. We have had several CA friends offer to help us unload, now all we need are some OK friends to help load. :)

1 Week

The move starts one week from tomorrow meaning I have 1 week to finish packing up the house, finish painting the house (touch-up and repainting the nursery), and finish cleaning the house. We want the house to look great for our new renters. So much to do in such a short amount of time! Please pray for both Jason and I as we are both sick right now. Jason's doesn't have much of a voice which doesn't help at work and this is his last week so no sick days. My voice is also going. We both have head colds (runny nose, congestion, sore throat and cough). Our little Maddie also has the sniffles. Poor baby! Please pray we can get everything done that needs to be done.

I can't believe we will be in CA next week!

More Pictures from the Pumpkin Patch

Playing with Sam

She loved riding the pony!

Trip to the Pumpkin Patch

This weekend we are in Tulsa for Jason's 10 year high school reunion and to say goobye to family and friends before we move. We met our friends, Dan and Steph, and their two kids, Rachel and Sam, at the Bixby pumpkin patch. Maddie had so much fun and even got to ride a pony! :)

Walking!

Less than 2 weeks!

Time is going by so fast! I cannot believe that in less than 2 weeks Maddie and I will be in Ca and Jason and our good friend Trey will be on the road headed for Ca.

Boxes now cover every room of our home except for Maddie's room and our garage is full of items for our garage sale coming up on the 22nd and 23rd. (Yes, I remembered to get the permit.) I think we are doing rather well on the packing front. The kitchen is almost completely packed except for Maddie's cups, bowls, and utensils as well as some pots and pans and a sandwich maker so we still have the option of cooking at home. We have packed up all of the plates, bowls, cups, and silverware and have swapped them out for the paper/plastic variety.

Curtains and pictures are coming off the walls and as I look around, I wish I would have done more with the house while we lived here. I think the next house we buy, we will make it a point to make it ours from the very beginning. While painting the living room a month ago, Jason and I made the comment, "I wish we had done this years ago!" Next time, we won't wait so long.

Although I am completely excited about this new chapter in our lives, I have to admit I am sad to be leaving this house. It is our first house. It is the house we brought Maddie home to. I took so much time in decorating her nursery to make sure it was perfect. There are a lot of memories here. We will also miss the neighborhood and the people. We have some great neighbors and we will miss them very much. I guess technically, we are not leaving this house completely behind yet. We will still own it, but it will be home to our renters. I am just so grateful that we were able to call this beautiful home ours for these past 3 years.

I am very excited about the opportunity we have to make our home in California. I cannot wait to see what is in store. I know that one day in the not-so-distant future, we will be moving into a new home. What an exciting day that will be! :)

First Steps: 10/11/2010

Last night, Maddie took 4 steps!!! We have not been able to capture this on video yet. She gets too excited and falls down. We skyped with my parents to see if she would walk to the computer, but she got too excited. She would stand and squeal and fall. She took maybe two steps while we were talking with them. Hopefully, I will be able to get a video today.

JBF Find

Today, I went to the Norman JBF sale with a friend of mine and I was able to find what I was looking for! Yay! I wanted a lightweight stroller for Maddie to take with us when we fly out to San Jose. It will be just the two of us and I didn't want to have to deal with having her big stroller. This one is in great shape and it rolls very nicely. It is only missing the sun shade, which I found out I can order from the manufacturer for $15. I am thinking I will order the spare part in the Spring as the weather is cooling down and the sun will not stay bright for too much longer. :)