Sweet Sisters

Since staying home with Matt this summer and being around each other all of the time, the girls have gotten so close. Of course they still have their fights, but they really do love each other so much. They stick together and pretty much do EVERYTHING together. I really hope that continues throughout their lives. Here's a couple pictures of our sweeties! I just told them I wanted to take a picture of their matching braids.......the hugging each other was all on their own.

One day last week, I went to the salon and had zebra toes done on my lunch break (since I can't go home) and it took the girls probably 2 mintues once I got home for them to notice them. Of course, they then wanted toes like me, so this is my attempt at giving them zebra toes, kind of hard to see in the picture.

1st trip to Aquatic Center

After we got back from gymnastics, we decided to check out the Gardner Aquatic Center. The girls had been bugging me since we moved to go there and since overseeing that facility will be part of my job responsibilities with Gardner Parks and Rec, I had been wanting to go check it out too. It was built 4 years ago and it is an awesome pool. The girls had a blast. The only bad thing was, Maddie was too short to do any of the big slides and she was really looking foward to going down them. Here is a couple of pictures of the girls at the house before we left. I didn't take my camera to the pool.



Maddie looking so sassy

New Gymnastics

One thing that I wanted to find right away was a new gym for the girls to get into gymnastics again. I did a bunch of research and narrowed it down to this one. It is in Shawnee so it's about 20 minutes from our house but I got the girls enrolled in classes that meet on the same day at the same time so it will still just be one trip a week for us. They had an open house there last Saturday so we decided to take the girls and check it out. The girls absolutely loved it and just had a blast playing on all of the equipment. They are so excited for their classes to start. Here are a couple of pictures we took before we left the house and then some at the gym.

Maddie flipping over on the bar

Kynzie trying to reach the rings

Both girls LOVED the foam pit that they could jump into

Maddie swinging on a rope into the foam pit

Updates

Well I feel like we are finally totally settled in Gardner and getting used to our new place and our new town. From what we've experienced so far, it's like we've landed right in the middle of some make believe town in a movie. Everything is just so perfect. It's all very new, new houses, new schools, new buildings, new sidewalks and trails, new streets, just new everything. We are definitely going to have fun house hunting in this town....so many options! And the best part about this town is we are 3 miles from all the shopping and dining you could ask for.

I've got the girls enrolled in their schools for next year. Maddie will be attending Moonlight Elementary which is very close to where we live. Kynzie will be going to Madison Elementary to an all day 3 yr. old program. Both girls will be doing the schools before and afterschool program as well. Matt and I will both start our new jobs on August 2nd so there are two weeks where we had to find daycare for the girls before their schools started. I found a daycare center very close to our house that they will be going to. The cool thing about this center is that every other Friday they do late nights where parents can drop their kids off from 6 pm to midnight and have a date night. They watch them and feed them and even lay them down for bed. We are pretty excited about this option since we haven't found any babysitters yet.

Everyone seems to be adjusting really well to all the changes so far but I know these next few weeks, we still have several more big changes. We all start somewhere new on August 2nd, so please be praying for our family on that day! What a BIG day for everyone.

I still feel in limbo right now since I am still commuting back to Emporia for work. Friday is my last day! I have all of the next week off and then will start my new job. Right now, I still feel a lot of ties to Emporia since I am there everyday but I know that once I am done working there, Gardner will all start to feel more like home to me. Right now it feels like I have my old life in Emporia until it's 5:00 pm everyday and on the weekends, it feels like I am on a vacation everyday. There is just so much to do up there and of course we feel like we have to go do it all right away :). I'll be updating lots of pictures of our weekend outings.

Our New Place

Wow so much has happened in the last couple of months and I have not done a good job of keeping up the family blog. Matt got a teaching job with Blue Valley School District, we sold our house in Emporia, I got a job with Gardner Parks and Recreation Department and we found this townhome in Gardner to rent. We plan to stay here for a year until we get a good feel for the area that we want to stay in and buy a house in. The townhome is just over 1/2 the size of our house in Emporia so it has definitely been a change for us but we are getting used to it and we really like the town of Gardner and our neighborhood. With all that there is to do around here and KC, we don't plan to spend much time in our home anyways. We are kind of excited to not have all of the homeowner responsibilities for a while, although Matt was sad when he found out that we were still responsible for mowing our own lawn. Here are some pictures of our new place. Now that things are starting to slow down and fall into place, I hope to do better with our family updates. Pictures of the girls to come soon!


Front



Back

Main level 1/2 bath

Small small kitchen

more kitchen

Pantry (I'm so excited about this, I've never had one)

Dining room from kitchen

Another dining room, it's somewhat open to kitchen

Living Room, on the other side of stairs is the dining room

Living Room, with our bedroom armoire that fit perfectly in the cove :)

Kynzie's room

Kynzie's room

Kynzie's room, she finally got a tv in her room but we had to mount it on the wall or she would probably get up at night and try watching tv. :)

Maddie's room

Maddie's room

Maddie's room

The girl's bathroom

The loft which we use as the girl's playroom

Our lovely "washroom." It is nice though since it is on the same level as our bedrooms. No more going up and down 2 flights of stairs.

Master Bath

Our bedroom, our HUGE headboard wouldn't fit up the stairs :( so it is being stored in the garage right now

The office area in our bedroom

Our bigscreen wouldn't fit in the cove in the living room so we decided to put it in our bedroom