Chez Starkey 2010!

Here are some pix of the house we bought up in MI. The neighborhood is really great. Lots of kids and families. Hopefully that'll offset the colder weather (or atleast make it more fun). Pictures of the bedrooms are missing, but if they had been included you'd have to wear SUNGLASSES to view this blog. They are various hues of NEON pink, green and yellow. I'm gonna be painting for another 2 years. But it's a newer, clean house with a guest room and partially finished daylight basement in a great school district and really nice area! We'll move in January 22nd and be ready for guests any time after that! Make your reservations now!

Sophie's Bday

It was Sophie's 1st Birthday on Friday. What a crazy day! Katie had her last day of school that day also. The whole area was in an uproar because of the mere possibility of snow. Katie's school let out early (abbreviating her Christmas party planned for that afternoon). Anyhow, we did a little party for Sophie in the afternoon.

Check our her HUGE cupcake cake! Cool, huh? Hailey gave me the idea to get the mold to make it! It turned out really cute and pretty delicious too. I made the cake, the buttercream frosting for the top and the ganache for the middle and around the bottom layer. The mint chip ice cream that I filled the bottom layer with was not homemade but it was a good idea! Yum yum!

Sophie really like her presents this year (thanks Ya-ya, Grandma, Auntie Rachael, and Auntie Hailey!) but I think that Katie and Taylor are enjoying them more!! Taylor is obsessed with the airplane that Ya-ya sent. He wants to take it with us everywhere. Luckily, Sophie is really good about sharing!

After Sophie's party we went to the Christmas party at the church. We had a delicious dinner of Honeybaked ham and all the "fixin's" (even cornbread stuffing, how Southern!)and then after dessert the lights went out and we cleaned up in the dark and went home. It was nice to get home before 8pm! It's also been heavenly to have Craig home! The kids are warey of letting him out of their sight!

From the looks of the top picture, she's enjoying being one! Isn't she the cutest baby EVER right now???? We sure think so!

More Holiday Fun!

Get ready for lots of pictures and maybe not enough paragraph breaks! Last week for Family Home Evening we decorated the gingerbread house. Traditionally we do this while listening to the First Presidency's Christmas devotional, but with our computer up in Katie's room we just listened to Christmas music this year. It was a lot of fun though. It's been wonderful that this year we're old enough to do stuff together without making too much of a horrible mess. After decorating the gingerbread house we had fancy cupcakes for our family home evening treats! That was cool!

Tuesday night I had Bunco so the kids got to enjoy a babysitter! Also Katie lost her tooth finally! I guess it came out while she was eating popcorn. She's waiting to show it to daddy before she gives it to the Tooth Fairy.

The pictures of Sophie and Taylor are just because they are so cute. Taylor looks like a kid from the Gapkids commercial this year with my scarf on, and Sophie's little Christmas dress was so cute last Sunday.

This past Friday after having a crummy day, we went out to Red Robin for dinner. (After meeting with Katie's teacher, her speech therapist and psychologist to learn that she doesn't have a learning disability, but yet she is not performing well in school so they think she has ADD) . It was really fun. Taylor was super hungry and ate everything in sight (milk shake first, corn dog and two huge cantalope slices). I love eating dinner at 4pm!

After dinner we went over to Office Max and Katie and Taylor each got a new box of crayons ($.50!)and I got some Christmas shopping done. Then for fun we walked through Petsmart. Katie really wants Santa to bring her a "real bunny" this year, but Santa understands that when a family is moving, it's not a good time to be adopting pets. They did have fun posing where Santa usually sits to get his picture taken with peoples' dogs! HA! That was Katie's idea! "Hey Taylor, let's pretend to be dogs and get our picture taken!!" SO AWESOME!

The picture of Sophie in her carseat is to show off her first experience with a forward facing carseat! Hurray!

The picture of Sophie in the chair with the other two babies is our "second hour club" at church. Two of my friends had baby girls this year and we're usually in the mother's lounge together. I'm so sad to be leaving the best ward ever. I think maybe I'll start wearing all black everyday in mourning or maybe an armband.

The kids looked so cute yesterday at church I made them pose for pix in front of the Christmas tree after church. You can see that Sophie was not loving it. Cute twinner santa dresses on Katie and Sophie, huh! I bought that santa dress for Katie before Sophie was even a twinkle in my eye! Worked out pretty smooth this year though! Taylor's little blazer was a 75% off find at the consignment store last Tuesday! SWEET!

Last Wednesday it rained buckets. Taylor was sick and stayed home from school. We went to the Dr's office and then just stayed home and made TONS of cookies and watched "Holiday Inn". I love that movie. Sophie had her very first cookie. She LOVED the chocolate part. Smart baby!

Doesn't our tree look beautiful? We took the cow hat down. You can see the pic of my new rain boots. I'm so glad I had them. There was so much rain, there were flood warnings. Also you can see the pic of the nativity. I don't know if Katie or Taylor rearranged them, but if I were Mary and Joseph, I think I'd as the Wisemen and Shepards to give him some space or atleast use some purell!

Oh, I'm also including a couple pix of Katie's snaggle tooth. Isn't it fabulous? She looks like she's wearing horrible nasty pirate teeth, but it's real! What a funny smile! Then there's a pic of my new haircut and lastly the pic of the kids with Santa today at the clubhouse in our neighborhood. I was surprised that Sophie cried this time.

Ho Ho Ho!

Just some pix to start off the Holiday Season and celebrate the 1st day of December (or the "first day of Christmas", as Taylor says). We got that picture of Sophie with Santa taken in Grand Rapids. We had a little bit of time one day before the realitor could meet with us so we went to the mall to walk around. Sophie looked so cute and there wasn't a line so we had it taken! We put up our Christmas tree yesterday before Craig left (sadly, it fell down last night, AFTER he left). Also I was so happy to find that we hadn't put ALL our Christmas decorations in the POD, just some of the ornaments, so we decorated for Christmas yesterday. I'm preparing to start lots of baking (we'll see how far I get with Craig gone). I'm also preparing our Christmas cards and got 50 free photo cards last night from Seehere.com thanks to Hailey telling me about the freebies4mom-1109 coupon code! The only sad thing about that is we don't have our family pictures back from the beach so I just used a cute one of the kids. It is a pet peeve of mine though (when people use pictures of just the kids on their Christmas cards). Well, with this post I say "LET THE HOLIDAY BEGIN!!".(I have another great picture of Katie screaming bloody murder when she was 9 months on Santa's lap, but I can't find where I scanned it. Boo! I'll see if I can't scrounge it up. It's worth the wait! The original is probably in the POD.)

The moment you've all been waiting for!!!

Okay, so you might not all have been holding your breath for the past week and a half while I was off line and shopping for a house, but we did in fact buy a house in MI. I'm really excited about it. It all came off quite smoothly thanks to many prayers and much help (namely, Yaya for keeping Katie and Taylor while Craig and I went house hunting). We bought the house we intended to buy (the one we found online that we liked the most). It's in a great neighborhood and school. We even visited the ward and it seems alright(nothing can live up to our current ward). We drove up to Ohio on Thursday November 19th. Friday Craig and I (and Sophie) drove up to MI and met with the realitor. We shopped houses on Friday and Saturday. Sunday we visited our potential ward, Monday after checking into financial details we made an offer and despite being lower than the other offer on the table we were accepted because we are allowing the seller 2 weeks after Christmas to find a new home. Time, I've got, money, not so much! Works for me! I'll be painting for the next forseeable future, but we have a partailly finished daylight basement with a guest bedroom and full bath and a playset (in the yard) and basketball hoop (out front) and a flat yard and flat driveway and a fabulous neighborhood and biking/walking paths all over! I'm really excited about it all. It doesn't have a soaking tub but it's a newer house and the kitchen will be gorgeous. We got into the house for a great deal (for the neighborhood/school). Anyhow, while were hanging out in Ashland (we left MI on Sunday afternoon and drove back down to OH for the holiday week) we went to the outlet mall (where Taylor, Craig and Sophie rode the train), Mommo and I saw "New Moon" at the Ashland theater, we visited with family and had the most fun on Thanksgiving. Phil and Jack let us shoot their guns. It was great, eat more food than should be consumed in a week then go shoot up the yard! AWESOME! Shooting Phil's AK47 was a BLAST (literally, I loved watching stuff blowup!). Thanksgiving with the Starkeys is really a great time. It was so fabulous that Leisy, Kent, Laney, Taylor and the babies could join us too! Thanks to Yaya and all the Starkeys for allowing us to crash another holiday!! Saturday we drove back down to South Carolina(wow that is a long drive, pretty but long!). We are happy to be home now. I'm so grateful that even though Craig will be gone (up in MI starting his new job) that the house isn't on the market anymore so we can actually LIVE in it! Keeping the house an hour from perfect at all times with 3 kids is NUTS! Most of our holiday decorations are in the pod (we cleared out our storage when we listed the house), but I'm excited to make ornaments with the kids and cookies and a gingerbread house. I'm praying that nobody throws up and everybody sleeps through the night each night. So with that, Let the Holiday BEGIN! (oh, I'm also including a picture of Katie and Papa on the deck. Katie wanted to taste snow. Taylor told her it tastes like sugar. That is how far removed our kids are from winter. Also the Mountain Man that sings and plays his guitar and yells "GOD BLESS YOU!" outside the Ashland OH Walmart. Leisy, you should come down sometime to see him! He'll pose for pix too!Oh, also a pic of Eddy the Dog watching Katie play outside. I wanted to get a video of Sophie and Eddy, she'd lay down against him on the floor. They have a beautiful relationship, probably due to her dropping most of her food on the floor!