Update #2 The Big Move

It is no surprise to anyone that knows me, I love to look at houses.  I love to look at them so much I did some real estate appraising at one time.  I have wanted to move for several years, my husband not so much.  There was nothing wrong with our house,  just the location and amount of yard work and the fact that we had been there 18 years.  When I really liked a house I would do research on it and drive by.  If it still passed inspection I might actually tour it.  If I actually LOVED one I would try to get Jon to go, and he always found something wrong with them.
This particular house I had seen on the Internet but had not even driven by.  It was in a wonderful neighborhood I didn't always look in, but closer to the gym we drive to 10 to 20 times a week. It was mothers day and we had gone out to brunch.  The house was being held open that day so I begged Jon to stop by there on the way home.  He did and I LOVED it, Deiana LOVED it, and Jon said its "okay".  It really was too big but had everything we wanted in a house. 
We thought about it a lot for the next week.  It was open the next weekend and my friend Debbie went with me to see it.  She loved it as much as I did.  I talked to the realtor this time and discussed possibilities, as we would have to sell our house.  Jon and Jeremy came back to see the house again too.  After this I did not want to see it again, in case it didn't work out it would be too painful.
We ended up making an offer contingent on selling our house, and the real work began. The main reason Jon did not want to move is that we have too much stuff and it would be overwhelming to have to move it all.  He was on vacation and we did a massive clean and purge.  We had a garage sale and hired a handyman to do some deferred maintenance.  In a week we put our house on the market.  In just over another week, we had it sold.  For the next few weeks we continued to go through things and took multiple trucks of items to Goodwill and sold some things on Craigslist.  The week we were scheduled to close on both houses Jon again happened to be on vacation and we planned the big move. We had to miss our annual camping trip but the timing was otherwise perfect.  There were multiple small issues and stresses to deal with during this time.  It was completely exhausting and overwhelming but so worth it. We all love it here, particularly Jon, it is really beautiful and peaceful.

 Home Sweet Home!

Past Due Updates, #1 Deiana

I have not updated the blog for some time, so here it goes.  Everyone is fine, life has just been so busy!!
Deiana continues to do gymnastics.  It is her passion and her social life.  After spring season she has moved up to the optional level.  This means individual routines and harder tricks.  She is now at the gym  5 days a week and loving it. 
She finished up 4th grade and had a great year with a teacher she loved.  She is at grade level and loves school (for the social aspect anyway) but still does not fancy reading and has to be forced.  If she would apply herself to school work she could be further ahead. 
In the beginning of the summer Deiana had surgery to repair inguinal hernias she has had since birth.  They had not been an issue until this winter when they started to be painful at times.  The surgery went fine but she did have a lot more pain than I anticipated.  She has a high pain tolerance and previous surgeries have been fairly easy for her.  I guess putting scopes through all those tight muscles did some damage.  Three week out her belly button became bright purplish pink and stuck out.  We visited the surgeon and they thought it was just a localized reaction, possibly her body trying the reject a permanent stitch used in the surgery. I experimented with some topical creams and it did improve fairly quickly.  She is finally close to 100% recovered.  She says she is NEVER having surgery again.  We will see about that.
She is on a break from her braces while we wait for a couple of teeth to come in.  One is coming in further back in the cleft area and the other was way up high but now beginning to show in the correct location.  Before the next round of braces I am contemplating changing to another orthodontist that much closer to us.  Her current one specializes in craniofacial orthodontia but is far away and I don't care for his "bedside manner".
This spring Deiana had a routine immunization, commented on how it didn't even hurt, was walking around jabbering like usual before quickly fainting and striking her head on the floor.  She was unconscious for a minute and very confused after that and had a headache for a week.  It was very scary us both.  It seemed like she had some sort of a reaction to the medication.  However after she had surgery and they were taking her IV OUT, I looked down at her and she was white as a ghost and going out fast.  I put my hand on her head to keep her from falling out of the chair, so at least no head injury this time. You would think after all of the medical procedures and high pain tolerance Deiana would be able to breeze through anything, but we have now been warned, the tough girl is officially a fainter.
Finally some random pics from the last few months.

February 2014

These four girls moved up a level in gymnastics, and had their first meet.  There were teams from 5 states and the competition was tough.  They were a little intimidated but did a great job. They were in the youngest group in the meet.

 

Deiana's vault

                                                               Warming up.

                                                             Another vault.

We had a nice Valentines day and dinner out.  Deiana and I both got flowers!

February is also when we celebrate this precious girl.  It is the month of our court date and gotcha day.

It has been six years with our bundle of love and energy.  Seems like she was always ours.

January Highlights

I have been very sad and upset over the unrest in Ukraine.  Having spent a lot of time in this country, and of course having a Ukrainian daughter, I do love this country and its people.  Exactly six years ago we were in this city.

 

Our own winter has been cold, but beautiful.  We even had a snow day with no school!

At the end of the day, its nice to be warm at home.