Do We Have a New Home?!?!?

After almost one year of living here and months of house hunting, we finally put an offer in on a home!! The inspection was this week and went great - only a few minor issues - and now we are just filling out a lot of paperwork and signing page after page after page after page...

Hopefully, on July 18th, this will be ours:

Dare I mention we could already be moved in and well-settled in this home? It was one of the homes in the very first showing we had with our realtor months ago. We loved everything about it except wanted something with one more room for a dedicated office. It never appeared - or when it did, there were issues we couldn't overlook. So this home stayed at the top of our list, and like I knew would happen, we finally just got tired of looking and waiting. So who cares that my spare bedroom and office will share a room? I'll only have guests a few times a year anyway.

This house had one of the best backyards and screened-in porches. I can't wait to enjoy them both!

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Splishing and a Splashing!

What's summer without a little fun in the backyard pool? No, no, sadly not a real pool... but still there's fun to be had!

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Chicken Necks on a String

This past weekend, we gave a go of another pastime in our new hometown - we went crabbing! The Pamlico Sound here is full of Atlantic Blue Crabs, and we were out to catch our fair share. And how do you catch said blue crabs you might ask? Well, you skewer some chicken necks to a rig at the end of a string. And then you toss it in the water and wait for a tug.

I feared my camera would take a swim if I took it with me, but here's a quick cell phone pic:

You pull your bait back to the dock slowly and then scoop up the crab with a net. Our very first try netted us a big 8-inch crab!



Our second try got us this little guy, right at the minimum of 5-inches.



The rest of our afternoon, a whole lot of nothing on our line but a whole lot of fun for the three of us. Honestly, we had a blast!

And you know what happens when you put a big crab in the same cooler as a much smaller crab? Big crab kills small crab - yep - put his claw right through the poor guy's shell.



What's worse... you can't eat these guys once they're dead because they release toxins into their system, so the fish in the canal behind our house got to enjoy him.

But we got to cook up the big guy and watching my hubby try to get him out of the cooler and into the pot was worth every ounce of sweat I exuded that afternoon.



Now, I think we would have gone crabbing again before tasting this critter, just because it was so much fun, but after tasting him - we will definitely go again! Delish!!! I am really starting to love our new home more and more.

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Look at Her!

No matter how many times I say it or think it, I will never know when I turned around and my baby grew up. I'm saying this... and she's not even three yet! That means I can't begin to imagine how many more times I'll say this or think this in my lifetime.

But look at this! My baby has gone from incoherent scribbles to trying her darndest to stay between the lines - and for the most part - succeeding.

(now just to clarify, I colored the flower, but Georgia colored the body and wings of that butterfly. How awesome is that?)

She's going to be graduating from Harvard before I know it!

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My Beautiful One

She makes me so happy... every, single day.

(and thank you, Grandma Hains, for this adorable dress!)

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D-A-D Spells Our Annual Father's Day Gift!

There's one gift my hubby has received every Father's Day since he became a dad. Take a look at this year's gift:

Here's 2011: And 2010: One day, it will be great to look back at these from every year and see how much our little one has changed.

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An Amazing Dad

Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there. Fathers are wonderful people. Every day I get to witness the sweetest father/daughter relationship I've ever known - and it is such a beautiful thing to behold. This man makes my daughter's life truly happy and magical. Here's to the dads!

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Cousins

Cousins are those childhood playmates who grow up to be forever friends. ~Anonymous

I had a few days off of work backed up to my weekend, so Georgia and I hopped in the car and headed to Georgia to visit my family. She doesn't get to see her cousins very often - only a few times a year - but it's like they never missed a day.

What was so interesting inside that wagon you might ask? Oh, a dead worm and some other goodies! :) At least they're not squeamish cousins. And being around her cousins brings out the many faces of Georgia - my favorite being that big, ole smile. And cousins together do silly things, like hide under empty pools... and see how many goldfish they can fit in their mouths... It just melts my heart to see them all together, and it makes me wish we lived right down the street. Worth every mile and hour we drove to get here!

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