HAPPY 2014!!!

We hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas and has had a great New Year so far! We are definitely looking forward to 2014 and everything it has to offer!!

First and foremost, we are very excited that after 9 months of being in school and 3 months of driving back and forth on weekends, John is done with school for now and he finally lives here with us!!

E had so much fun at Christmas. She loved opening all of her presents and it was great to see her so excited about everything! She got so many new and exciting things to help her learn and grow.. and of course some awesome new outfits. Thank you so much to everyone that sent gifts!!

Just after Christmas we packed up the car to head to Colorado to check on the house and see some friends. It was so great to be back in CO and it reminded us of how much we missed it there. We drove through some snow on the way in and the way out, but it was gorgeous everyday.  We got to have a "just the adults" dinner while 2 baby sitters watched all 7 kids, we went to a place called trampoline world, we went rock climbing, we got to see our house and we got to hang out with some great friends.  Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of trampoline world, but it was awesome. All 7 kids and all 6 adults got to go in and jump around. It was a lot of fun!! Rock climbing was pretty awesome as well. Peanut had a blast. It was a huge indoor climbing place and they even had harnesses small enough for E to get into and climb. She spent a lot of time in the giant swing and the zip line. John and I made it to the top a few times and then we were all pretty exhausted!

We made our way back home just in time for john to start his new job here at Ft. Knox. It is pretty cool and it is NOTHING like his old job in Colorado. John has been adjusting very well and as a family we are enjoying this new lifestyle a lot more. John is home in time for dinner every night and some days he's home in time to COOK dinner… which is much better than getting home between 7 and 8 every night after the peanut is in bed! It is a much deserved and well earned position. John's job is now focused on writing contracts for the army and he even got his first two contracts yesterday! It was very exciting!

Peanut is doing great!  She is getting so big and she has been learning so much. She is picking up new words every day and she is doing great with numbers and colors. Her favorite color to say is orange.. she also loves to eat them. She is also starting to develop quite the independence. John was carrying her out of the childcare center at our church this weekend when she proceeded to tell him "I walk, I walk" over and over again until he put her down to let her walk on her own. She was very pleased that not only she got her point across, but she got to walk ALL the way outside by herself. She also likes to use the word "no"… like "no bath", "no eat", "no shoes".. etc. She even helped us count all the way to 4 yesterday. She loves to sing whenever there is music on, she loves ALL fruits and will eat anything as long as it has chocolate or ketchup on it. She frequently runs around the house yelling "more choc-lat" and wants "cats-up" on everything. She loves playing number and letter games on the iPad. She loves snuggle time and watching Sophia the First and Doc McStuffins. Her most favorite thing to do is read books. She will sit on your lap for HOURS reading books. She likes us to read them to her, but she also likes to pretend that she is reading them to us. She loves books that have flaps that she can look under and ones that have big pictures of words that she can identify in them. She has one book that she can name everything in (cat, dog, chair, shoes, car, orange, etc..) and its pretty neat to see her able to do that! she has grown just over 1/2 and inch in the last 2 months and is now just over 32" and weighs about 26 lbs. She is such a smart and sweet little girl and it is so fun to watch her become her own little person.

Peanut started swimming lessons this week and she loves them. She had so much fun with the other kids and it was cool to see her kicking her feet and putting her arms out to try to swim. She loves the water and has no fear in it. She was eager to put her face in the water and loves going under the water. 

Here are some videos for you to enjoy! (please make sure that you are actually going to the blog website and not reading this within your e-mail browser or else the links and videos will not appear!!) For some reason when it emails an update, it will open the post in your email and you will be able to read it and see the pictures, but to look at the videos, you actually have to go to the webpage www.expeditionnik.blogspot.com When you open the e-mail there will be a blue link just above all of the text that will always be the title of the post. This post was titled Happy 2014. You will need to click on that link and it will take you directly to the webpage.

This is what it looks like in my email--I click the blue link that says Happy 2014.

That link then takes me to the Blog webpage and should look like this picture below. That way you will be able to view the videos at the bottom. Also, if you are on a mobile device, the device may not allow you to view the videos. If not open them on a computer. 

Here are the videos. You will click on the link to watch each one! Happy viewing

--------->     Laughing baby!


---------->       Swim lessons

October-December fun!

Oh my! 4 months of no posting!!! This post is going to be a little crazy because the pictures uploaded weird.. and well.. because its been a little bit crazy around here!! Peanut is almost 19 months old, we now live in KENTUCKY and not icky sticky Georgia, and we added a dog to our family! So, bear with me as I go through the following pictures. And I sincerely hope it is NOT another 4 months before I get a chance to get on here and update you all. 

This picture below is from thanksgiving weekend. Yes, it looks nice, but it was far from warm. Hence peanut in her snow suit. Yup, this is that same 4-wheeler from all the videos inside our GA apt and yes, Peanut has GROWN! She was so teeny tiny on this 4 wheeler just a few short months ago and now she drives it like a race car. 

 E has become quite the adventurer. She loves getting into everything and anything. She now has an accomplice named Barley and they get into lots of trouble… Like here in this picture when she took all of these blankets out of there and threw them all on top of Barley. 

 We live 5 minutes from the Zoo here in Louisville, which is awesome. We have become members and we have been several times this fall! This particular day was fairly cold, so most of the animals were inside keeping warm. We bundled up and enjoyed the stroll and checking out the ducks. 

Several weeks ago Peanut and I headed down to Alabama (where John has been living for the last 7 weeks) and got to stay with him in Hunstville. There is lots to do down there and we tried to take advantage of it all! This picture below is of peanut at the children's museum, learning how to fish with daddy. 

Learning to milk a fake cow

Playing in the store with daddy

Learning some engineering skills from daddy

Dressing up as a settler child way back in the day! 

We also went to a festival of lights at the botanical gardens in Huntsville. It was SO much fun and Miss E had such a great time running around and looking at all the lights. 

We took a trip to the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville too!! Anyone remember the space camp commercials back in the day on Nickelodeon?! Well this is THE camp. It was awesome! 

With all of our house renovations, E has been very curious and wanting to help, so we bought her a tool box full of plastic tools and she loves it! She uses the hammer to bang on everything and tried to measure the dog with the tape measure all the time! 

Someone got new santa slippers to wear with her santa PJs! 

Thanksgiving dinner--it was just the 3 of us so we opted for buffalo rib eyes instead of the old turkey and potatoes and it was delicious! Peanut tried eating the whole steak! 

We have also found another gymnastics place to take her in Louisville, just like the one from Columbus!! Here she is hiding in the ball pit, waiting her turn to practice on the bars! 

Working on her jumping skills! 

We have been having some snow and super cold weather the last few days and peanut enjoyed playing with her friends in the snow!! 

We also made Nutella brownies with our friends that were AMAZING!!! 

 This picture below was from the day we got to Alabama. Peanut loves elmo lately and john bought her a small stuffed elmo doll! She loves hanging out with her daddy! 

 

E was the cookie monster for Halloween! It was my first homemade halloween costume and it came out pretty dang cute! We celebrated and trick or treated for candy at the zoo! We even ran into Elmo and the grouch while we were there. 

I will have to take some better pictures of our house for another post, but for now I will show you all of the incredible work john has been working on between schools and driving every weekend!! He gutted two bathrooms and has tiled both of them. One bathroom was horribly outdated and was full of black and yellow tiles and a leaking floor and the other bathroom did not have a shower in yet.. yup, it was just a bathtub! John tore down all of the yellow tile on the walls and floors and we have installed new walls and floors and even painted this bathroom blue. The other bathroom is green and almost all done too! We still have a little bit of work to do in each one, but they will be complete soon and I can post more pictures! We also have painted the living room grey and are getting ready to paint the dining room (the entire house is a horrible shade of yellow/brown, so we are trying to get rid of it all!) We even made shelves to go in the kitchen and are in the process of making a really cool coffee table! We can't wait to post pictures soon. 

This was the other bathroom without a shower. As you can see, john used all his best plumbing skills to put one in and did an amazing tiling job! 

In between bathroom renovations, we snuck in a trip to a pumpkin patch just over the river in indiana and had some fun! Peanut got to pick and carve her first pumpkin. 

Peanut helping daddy measure the tile and double check the measurements! 

And as a final for the night, here is a sneak peak at Miss E's christmas cards!! They came out super cute and we can't wait to share them all with you! Stay tuned for more (and better) pictures of the house and all our new adventures in Kentucky!!