Summer in a post.

Hello!
It's been a long while. Time is going so much faster than I can keep up with these days. How is it September already? I for one am looking forward to fall and our first Christmas in our new house. It's just around the corner, ready or not!
I've obviously been missing in action around here. I didn't blog once in August. This summer has certainly been a crazy one and I'm going to attempt to recap a bit for record and for anyone who wants to catch up!

The weekend before Memorial Day, we listed our house for sale and sold it in 5 days. We quickly found a home we loved, and we were supposed to move right into our new house the same day we closed on our old. That would have been convenient, huh? Instead, because of bank/paperwork/appraisal issues, we sat homeless for the entire month of July.

Us in front of the old house a week before we moved out

July was a really hard time for a lot of reasons. It was extremely difficult to explain to my 2 year old that we couldn't go "home". That we didn't have a home anymore. I cried once on the way home from work one day because Cameron didn't want to go back to grandma's (where we were staying)- he wanted to go back to "Cameron's house". All I could say was, "I know you do, baby. I'm sorry" as I tried to fight tears. To be honest, I wasn't even certain that we would get this new house (or any house for that matter). Because my husband is self-employed, we had to show SO much more paperwork than the average couple looking to buy a home. Evey single day, the bank was asking for some sort of documentation of some sort, among many other problems we ran into. Long story short, we ended up switching lenders from Bank of America (who eventually denied us a loan despite our pre-qualification) to a different, smaller bank-and that made ALL the difference. That, and we were on our knees daily asking God to provide this house for us- with a lot of our friends and family praying too. Getting the house was certainly a testimony to answered prayer. Even with all of that said, we were still unsure about when we were closing until about 5 hours before it was scheduled to happen. So, yeah. Pretty stressful summer. At one point, I think Jon and I were in agreement that we made a huge mistake selling our house. As you can imagine, we were extremely relieved when we pulled the moving truck up to our new house!
The nice thing about staying with my parents was that we were able to go out on LOTS of dates since there was always someone able to be there with the kids. We would put them to bed, and go out to dinner, a movie, or ice cream several nights a week. We even took Cameron on a few of our outings after Kylie went down (which we probably enjoyed more than him!). It was nice do something special with just him.

mini-golf with Cameron

Several weeks ago, we took a last minute (and much needed) trip to Branson last weekend! One of the perks of Jon's job sometimes allows us to go along with him when he moves people to different states (like when I joined him in Vegas last September). The customer he moved to Branson encouraged him to bring his family for a weekend of fun, and we did just that. We stayed at the the most adorable, rustic little cabins called "The Wilderness" and we will definitely be going back there. Quietly nestled in the woods, the cabins bunked 7 people and had a nice little kitchenette where we cooked our breakfast each morning.

The Wilderness Lodges

We spent that Saturday at Silver Dollar City (so fun!) and Sunday browsing around Branson's downtown shops and flea markets.

We've since settled into our house and are now knee deep in projects- finishing the basement, staining a deck that's larger than our living room, pouring a new stamped concrete patio and landscaping when it cools down next month. Cameron loved watching the big concrete truck that came and poured the patio!

I have so much to share and I promise it won't be another month before I update- I hope to post much more regularly. If you made it this far, thanks for reading! =)