Tuesday, January 31, 2012

{ some of the past three weeks in pictures }


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the last three weeks have flown by and also seem to have gone by super snail slow at the same time. on thursday we will officaly been here for 4 weeks... really? only 4 weeks?

i've tried to keep brody as busy as possible! every so often he still wants to go to campus, swimming and riding the bus. he also wants to go my friend lisa's house and see riker. and he talks about my friend heather's little girl Hadlee and also thinks our friends kelli and neal are coming over (i wish!). there is a little part of me that kinda hopes brody will always be able to remember his little part of life in ohio and his adventures. but i know it will begin to fade little by little and that makes me sad. but i know i've got plenty of pictures and stories to always tell him and remind him of amazing past times.

whether the time has been slow or fast, we've been trying to have lots of fun!
in the past 3 weeks...
we've lounged around some days and tried to get some last few items unpacked.

we've gone to the zoo a few times. it's pretty much pathetic compared to the columbus ohio zoo which is voted #1 in america. so you kinda can't compare. but pretty much the richmond animals live in the ghetto and columbus animals live in beverly hills. just sayin. one rad thing about the richmond zoo, you can feed the giraffes. and they have camels...so take that columbus! ;)nonetheless, brody loves it. so that's all that matters to me. (awe, did you just feel that warm fuzzy? yup, i'm a sap!)

we've built some pretty impressive towers with our legos. and how bout that mater bubble blower. pretty awesome? you betcha. it only cost us $1.67 on clearance at Target. we were sure there was something wrong with it. but nope. bomb.com!

we've painted lots!

we bought a pass to the Children's Museum which is fabulous! it's so fun and there is so much to do! my favortie part is the art area. you can color, paint, water color, do differnt crafts, amazing!

we've gone to the richmond science museum a few times. our passes to the science museum in ohio (cosi) gets us into the richmond science museum for free. so that's nice. the museums' builing use to be an old train station and they converted it into the science museum. it's a lovely building. there is the old train yard in the back of the museum with some old trains. pretty much brody was in heaven!

we've watched movies in the afternoons before nap and of course when watching a movie you need to have a yummy snack! lately, our favorite snack has been popcorn, m&m's and some milk duds. yum!

we've also been blessed with some awesome weather! and awesome weather = us being outside for as much time as possible! we live by a really cool park, that consist of lots of open land. a huge playground, a pond that you can feed the ducks (which we've done, of course!) and you can fish in it, and on top of it there is a large historical farm! the farm is also heaven for brody! everything is open to the public. so we just wonder all around the farm. it's so fun!

so busy, we've been. i am still kinda sad because i miss ohio and friends, can you tell? i feel like my post are boring and slightly whoa is me posts. but i must say, i am really happy to be in richmond. it's a wonderful place and beauitful! i'm not gonna lie, i am usually a champ with change and new things, but i am just still a little sad. perhaps part of living here so far makes me a little weepy is because it's so much like columbus, minus all the forests we are surrounded in. i am certain that soon my post will be so rock'in awesome that all of you are going to want to come and stay with us and take part in all the awesomeness that is richmond! :) right? RIGHT?

Alright...over and out...imaginary high-five!

the end.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

before i forget::


a few last minute pictures of things we did before heading on out to Richmond...

bye3

i worked out at my beloved RPAC one last time. hands down BEST. GYM. EVER!

bye4

took brody swimming at the RPAC one last time. normally tyson would always take brody and i would workout while they swam. but for the last time i joined them in the swimming fun. brody loved the fins!

bye1

bye2

one last "family" dinner with kelli and neal

bye6

got stuff all packed up and organzied in the dinning room before heading out to the truck

bye5

loves!

bye11

bye12

O-H-I-O

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going for a walk and out to lunch on campus

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looking at all of our stuff being loaded into the truck

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pretty much everything was loaded up in the moving truck besides a few toys. so brody's imgaination sprung to life! here he was with brutus checking out the elephants at the zoo. they were...Quoting brody "playing in the water and eating a snack". seriously he is such an awesome kid! the Rhinos we outside the kitchen window "taking a sleepy sleepy". good times looking out the window!

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dinner with our stats peeps! the best group of friends! i love all of them! they've been such awesome friends and classmates with tyson and me! and they all love brody too, of course!

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our loaded up truck with all of our stuff...thanks ABF for doing all the work! thanks tyson for getting such an awesome job that paid for our move! woot woot!

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one last picture from our mantel! i loved having this mantel! we've taken so many pictures on the good ol' timer setting! our goodbye picture in our empty house.

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all packed up and ready to head on out!

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goodbye great house! this actually deserves a post of its own. but we've loved our house, squeaky old wood floors, claw foot tub and all! so much love is in those walls from the time we have lived there. so many awesome memories, firsts for us, parties, family dinners with friends, vistors, dance parties with brody in the kitchen, summers in the backyard with bbqs, playing with hose and eating popsicles, taking thousands upon thousands of pictures on the front porch. the list could go one and on. some of the best times of our lives happened here!!

bye16

and my boys alseep in the car on the ride down to Richmond. just snoozing away! we were all exhausted! everything just happened so fast and we ended up having to leave a day earlier than planned due to having to meet the realtor at our rental house. so then we really felt rushed. but it has all worked out.

oh ohio...i miss you!

Friday, January 20, 2012

{I have left my heart in so many places} ::


the new year has definitely started out on a high note and even a few low notes, but most of all we've had quite a bit of change in the fast lane!

back on december 5th tyson was offered a job...and 3 days later he accepted this job offer. and that's when life went into warp speed! accepting a new job was one thing, but starting it on January 9th in a whole other state was another thing! we had to find a new house to live in, tell our landlord we were leaving and hope he would/will be able to find someone to take over our contract that we are still in till June! pack up our ohio house, find a moving truck, say goodbyes and move all in 3.5 weeks time!! big sigh! happy sighs! sad sighs! exciting sighs!

the fall quarter ended december 9th, so we couldn't feel more blessed than to have a job so quick and on top of it, tyson got the job he really wanted!

it was hard at the same time because pretty much everyone was leaving for the holidays, so saying goodbyes happened quickly or not at all. everything happened so fast we still don't feel like we even got a proper goodbye to a place we love so much and hold so dear to our hearts. we have plans to head back and do a few more things and have a proper goodbye!

once we got the job, we drove to this new state to find a home. and it. was. hard! we saw good places and a few not so good. who knew we would be city people? i guess living in Columbus for almost 4 years and literally being down the street from the city and it's perks grew on us. but we just didn't have time to find a place in the city or the money. (remember we are paying to live in TWO places right now!) so we settled for suburbia! but a good settled! there were moments of fear, moments of "what if" and of course tears (on my end). but all in all it worked out. we found a fabulous place and felt good about it! we headed home to Columbus to celebrate christmas and then right after christmas...we hustled to get a moving truck and our house packed up.

Right when we found out we were moving, we started talking to brody about it everyday! every morning when i'd go in to get him, we would talk about what was going to happen. we were moving, to a nice city, to a new home. a big moving truck would be coming to take all of our stuff so we would have all of our things with us in our new place. we would have new parks, new museums, make new friends. and most importantly all three of us would be together! i would talk to him about it in the car, before nap, at dinner time. to really get into his little mind that things were changing. we tried to make it exciting and happy.

once room after room started getting packed the change was amongst us. whether or not we were ready, it was happening! we ordered an ABF truck that got dropped off at our house January 2nd. we got everything loaded up, besides brodys room. that was the last room to be packed. his room got packed up on the 3rd and put in the truck. our truck got picked up on the 4th and got dropped off to us on the 7th.

we stayed in our Columbus house till the morning of the 5th. the morning of the 5th, we said goodbye to all things familiar. goodbye to our house that we've loved dearly. goodbye to our little city, the ohio state university campus and everything else in between! what an awesome time we've had in ohio!!
it's all been really sad, but really great at the same time.

everything went so smoothly it was almost to good to be true. like ya know, everythings gone so well, something bad is bound to happen? but really everything has been wonderful. we've got pretty much everything all unpacked and in it's place. we've tried to make most everything seem as familiar to brody as possible. he has done AMAZING with all this change that has happended so fast. he definitely knows we are somewhere different. but i've tried to keep him very busy and show him all the new things that i'm sure will come to be some of our favorite things. he is my happiness! i on the other hand miss ohio so much, more than i imagined. as hard as i am trying to be happy, i can't find but help that my heart is in a whole other place and i am just waiting for it to catch up to me. and i know it will, it will just take time. everything just went so incredibly fast, and i'm just starting to feel like things are slowing down. and i know we've only been here 2 weeks. but it seems like we've been here so much longer! but we really do like it here! we've done some pretty exciting things in a short amount of time that we've been here so far and i know it will only get better.

tyson LOVES his new job. LOVES. which is awe.some! he comes home saying "i got to do statistics today, yay!" yay indeed for my statistician!! i am happy that he gets to go out and do what he really enjoys. it only makes life sweeter!

our "student life" has officially ended. and it's werid, so so werid! we've been quite blessed and comfortable in our "student life". but the next chapter of life beings! we're big kids now!! we are excited to live in a new city and we couldn't be more thrilled for all the new adventures we know are ahead of us.

we are excited to say our new home is in Richmond Virginia!

cheveron horizontial

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

{two thousand and eleven} ::


We had a great 2011...here is a little review of our awesome year...

January...one word :: Snow

january

February... valentines day and my birthday celebrating the big 3-0 was pretty awesome!

vday

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March...we checked out Blooms and Butterflies and brody makes our world go around!

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world go round

April...we flew kites and celebrated Easter

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easter

May...we saw elephants and brody and tyson went to the circus, we had a super hero birthday party and brody turned 2!

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super hero2

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June...we picked tons of yummy strawberries and went to the park of roses to of course, enjoy the roses!

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July...we celebrated the 4th of July and Tyson's birthday. we went to Zoombezi bay a tons, and we also hit up a columbus clippers baseball game and played a little corn hole.

4th july

july

clippers1

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cornhole

August...we went to the Ohio State Fair, brody got a hair cut and we celebrated 7 fabulous years of marriage you can watch our wedding video here!

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hair

September... we went met a Farmer at 'Farm Days' at COSI, Brody and Tyson rode the Bus almost every single day, grandma and papa nicholes came to visit, and brody and tyson went to the first Ohio State Football game of the Season and melted in the 100 degree weather!!

farm days

bus ride

grandma and papa

september football

October...we went apple picking, enjoyed all the fall colors, grandma and grandpa crowther came to visit, had a halloween party, dressed up as woody, buzz and jesse for halloween and uncle jeremy came to visit.

apples1

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fall colors

grandma and grandpa crow

halloween party

buzz,woody,jesse

uncle jeremy

November... i ran my 2nd half marathon, we played with friends, went to football games, worked out with Richard Simmons and Gave thanks!

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friends nov

nov. football

richard

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December... kicked off the month with ugly sweater party, decorated gingerbread houses, went to a hockey game, and had a wodnerful christmas!

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gingerbread

hockey

xmas card

2011 was such a great year! I am thankful for all the wonderful adventures we had, and we are so excited to see what 2012 has to offer us!