Monday, October 22, 2012

Family Portraits

I LOVE pictures and yet I have a precious few of the four of us all together.  I have been saying pretty much since the time that Colton was born that we needed to get a nice family portrait of us together.  I really wanted something done outside and during the fall.  One of my cousins started doing family portraits about a year and a half ago.  I saw the work she was doing and immediately fell in love.  So, last October I scheduled an appointment to get family photos done.  On the day before our appointment one of the children got really sick so we canceled.  Things then got really crazy for us so we decided to put the pictures off until the spring.  We scheduled a spring appointment (requiring a different set of outfits due to the season change) and the day of our appointment came and so did a monsoon.  So, we scheduled pictures for the following weekend.  A couple of days before our next appointment my cousin called to tell me that she was having some major problems with her editing site and was going to take a break from doing photos for awhile.  She recommended someone else but honestly I preferred Becky's photos so I just never followed up with it.  A couple of months later Becky contacted me and told me she was up and running again.  Yay!!!!  I briefly considered doing some summer pics on the beach but decided to just hold out until the fall.  We scheduled our fall appointment (requiring the third set of outfits) and then the week before Dan reminded me that he was running the Tough Mudder that morning.  I canceled again, telling Becky that I felt like this was never going to work out!  She promised that we would make it work and so we scheduled yet another appointment for last weekend . 

We awoke to a picture perfect Fall Day and neither of the children had fevers.  Whoo Hoo!  Halfway there!  So after a year of trying we FINALLY managed to get family portraits done.  I wish I could tell you that things went smoothly but Colton went into full head spinning monster mode from the very second we got there.  For whatever reason he did NOT want his picture taken and he was about as uncooperative as he has ever been.  We tried every form of bribery that we could think of and nothing worked.  Becky was super patient the entire time, even when Colton was screaming "NOOOOOOO!" at the top of his lungs.  We didn't get very many pictures of Colton alone but we did get some great photos of Brynn and a couple of the much sought after family pictures that I so desperately wanted.  She even managed to capture Colton looking somewhat angelic in a few pictures (I'm guessing there was a lot of photoshop involved!).  So it took a year of planning, 3 sets of outfits, and a somewhat stressful morning but in the end it was worth it.  It's a really good thing because it will probably be a LONG time before I undertake that little project again.

If you need family pictures taken please check out "Simply Photos By Rebecca Calvello" on Facebook.  She is super reasonable, unbelievably patient and does great work!








We're Moving...Maybe...

So I know we have been pretty hush, hush about our pending move but that is mostly because we still are not 100% sure that we are moving (and we are afraid to jinx ourselves).  That's right...we are officially 4 days from "moving day" and we are still waiting to hear from our realtor as to whether or not we can sign a lease.  Being the planner that I am, this is all a little more stress than I can handle.  We have made it through the home inspection, the buyers are conditionally approved for the loan...and therein lies the hold up.  They were "conditionally approved" pending the outcome of the appraisal.  For some reason the appraisal was not scheduled until last week and we are now just waiting on the lender to get back to us.  Apparently the lender and the realtors do not feel the same sense of urgency that we do (Seriously people?!  We don't know where our kids will be sleeping in 4 days!!!!)  We have been told that the lender believes that all is well but we have not seen anything in writing.  

So where does that leave us you may ask?  It leaves us in this all consuming sense of wait.  At this point our house is mostly packed.  This may seem pre-emptive but who can pack up their entire house in 3 days?  Not us!  So we had no choice but to take a leap of faith (or a gamble? You decided.) and just start packing. We have told the children that we are moving (my children need time to get used to big changes).  We took another huge gamble but putting a deposit on a rental house.  The non-refundable deposit took the house off the market for a couple of weeks so that we have time to discover whether or not we can actually sign the lease.  The bright side of that is that if the sale does go through we will have a place to live in 4 days.

So in 4 days we will either be moving into our rental home or we will be at our current house with everything packed in boxes, two children who are expecting to move, and we will have lost our deposit!  Sigh...at least we didn't pack the wine yet!

Please keep us in your prayers!

Monday, October 8, 2012

Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Karchner!!!

I bet you thought I had given up on blogging.  I haven't.  I was really boycotting in the hopes of getting my husband to get me that long ago promised power cord for my laptop.  He hasn't gotten me the power cord yet and now I'm just stressed with how far behind I am.  So the new plan is to go ahead and blog and then I will have to upload pictures whenever Dan takes care of the power cord....or when I get frustrated and just take care of it myself!

So…it was a huge weekend for the String Family!  I have a new brother-in-law!  That's right Patty and Ross have officially tied the knot!  Everything was just perfect.  When we got to the ceremony site, it started sprinkling so the ceremony was moved inside.  Then about 10 minutes before the ceremony we were taking pictures outside in absolutely gorgeous weather and my Sister-in-law, Leigh, managed to convince the venue to move everything back outside.  The weather was picture perfect for the ceremony!  It was such a perfect day.  Patty looked amazing (and Ross wasn't too shabby either).  All of the kids actually cooperated for the ceremony (it was looking iffy at rehearsal).  We all had an amazing time.  I can't wait to get my pictures uploaded!!!

Congratulations Patty and Ross!