colors

Colors is the theme of the week at baby school.  I like my colorful necklace and later this week we are making tie-dye shirts. 

The Mitten

This week we restarted speech class.  We read a great book called "The Mitten" about a boy whose grandma makes him a mitten that he looses and all sorts of animals live in the mitten.  One of them is a fox and above I am wearing my fox hat I made.

The sounds we are working on are "Bilabial sounds, alveolar sounds and multi-syllabic words"
Here is my word list: deputy, deposit, domino, telephone, television, take a nap, tamale, teddy bear, two-legged, my papa, my paper, mobile home, banana, my mitten, motorboat, be polite, bubble gum, my money, basket, boy's cap, ball game, bobcat, bait shop, big sock, big feet, bag full, capitol, copilot, carpenter, kimono, communicate, catalog, caterpillar, canopy.

I am very excited to be back in elementary school, the classes are great and riding the bus is so fun.

Transport

This weekend the weather was actually pretty nice.  40-50 and sunny with no wind.  Even though I felt sick and still sound really croupy I rode my bike or scooter every day. 

Superheros down!

The whole Karrels' family has some variation of the cold/flu/seasonal change congestion yuck going on.  We all feel mostly ok but glad for the 3 day weekend to get over all this before we jump back into work & school

School bus time

Yea!  It is school bus time again!  My speech class started today.  It was supposed to start on Tuesday but we had a few inches of snow and all schools were on snow delayed so my class was canceled.  I was really bummed I couldn't ride the bus on Tuesday but I quickly forgot that heartache when I rode the bus today.  When I got off the bus mommy was waiting for me at school and I told her "Bye mommy, have fun at work"  This blew away my teacher, Mrs. Sharon, since last time I saw her I was just saying a few words.  I ran into the classroom eager to start.  My class will be 8 weeks long, ending on March 7th.  I will update you along the way with our words and books like last time.

Gymnastics

Today was my first Gymnastics class.  My teacher was Mr. Derek and my class, named Funny Bugs, had all 3-4 year old kids.  It was tons of fun.  I got to run all around and learn how to walk on balance beams and flip on uneven bars.  Running and jumping are two of my favorite things to do, so this class was perfect.  I have gymnastics class every Saturday at 11am until we move to Virginia.

Vroom

Thanks Aunt Debbie for my Christmas presents.  I love my race track.  It is even more fun to have them go fast and fly off the track :)

Floorplans

Here are the floorplans and general dimensions of our new home.

House hunting

The little blue mark is our future house.  This photo is a bit old, most of the houses are done or in progress currently for my section

A model home of the "Celestial" floorplan - Ours will look similar except we have a front loading garage and this model had a side loading garage.  Our floorplan is also flipped, so garage left.

 

Our lot - good location on a side road

Our kitchen will look close to this - same appliances but different colors for cabinets, floors, etc

Well that was an exhausting three days.  Thank you to Dad, Kathy and Deb who helped at various points picking out everything from the land to the type of finish on the bathroom faucets.
I spent 8 non-stop hours on Friday with Brian the sales manager looking at models, looking at lots, going over floorplans, options and working the price.  By 7pm we left with a signed contract.  The next morning at 10am I had the design center to actually pick out the floorings, appliances, light fixtures etc.  That day took 4 hours at the design center, but 90 minutes of driving each direction. 

We ended up with the following: 

• Drees "Celestial" floorplan, garage left
• Oak flooring on entire main level including the stairs going up.  Only exception is the master bedroom which has carpet and the master bath which has 12x12 ceramic tile.
• Carpet for upper level and in the finished part of the basement (about 1/3 of basement)
• 4 bedrooms, 3 full bathrooms, 2 half bathrooms
• All baths, except master, and laundry room have vinyl flooring
• Ceiling fan rough ins for all rooms
• Utility sink rough in for a laundry room sink
• Covered patio with gas fireplace
• Wired cable and internet for most rooms

Glad I am done with that, but in the end we got all the major things we wanted and below our max budget.   The house started at $464,900 and then they nickle and dime to all the way up!  But in the end I am very happy with the floorplan, the lot we got and hopefully when it is all put together I will like all the interior choices I made.    I think we will really love living in Virginia - being so close to DC is amazing.  Just 2 hours in a Smithsonian museum showed me how cool a good museum can be, cant wait to bring Dexter there at least once a month.

So it will be a slow two months as the exact floorplans are finished, permits are pulled and the home loan is approved.  Until then I will just continue dreaming about our new home!

Checking in

Just wanted to say hello.  Not much going on here except talking about the new house all day long.  Mommy leaves tomorrow for Virginia to check out builders and see if we can build a new house.  I am sure we will update you on her return.  Until then, the boys will rule the house!!