Southern Life!

We are officially settled into our new home in Georgia! Pictures are hung, boxes unpacked, and new carpet stained. We are loving it here! Everyone has been super friendly and the ward members have been great! It makes me even more grateful to be a member of the Church and to have that Church family no matter where we go. So much has happened over the last couple months and I have been avoiding putting it all up here so I will probably do more of a quick recap.

We lived in a hotel the first 2 weeks we were here and we were so happy to move into our apartment once our stuff got here! Never has a 2-bedroom apartment seemed so roomie! I haven't taken pictures of the apartment but you can see pieces of it in the following pictures. More pictures will come I promise!
This is the kid's bathroom sink and mirror! We started potty training Jaxon last week so we spend quite a bit of time there. We've had a rough start but Jaxon is 3 1/2 for 4 today (he almost made it the last time) so maybe he's finally getting it!
This is one of Chesni's favorite spots. Little did I know when organizing the kitchen that I was leaving a perfectly sized Chesni seat open but I am so glad I did! She will sit in there and talk with/at me while I make dinner. So fun!
We have a balcony! I love that I can send the kiddo's out to play on their bikes (Chesni has a little push car she rides on) and they love it! We also planted my square foot garden out there, more on that later.
The kids sporting their new sunglasses! It was a necessity with how much we are outside and the kids love them! For a couple weeks after I got them Jaxon would throw a fit when I made him take them off to sleep! Silly boy!

Chesni has had a busy week of learning. In the last 6 or 7 days she has learned how to climb on top of chairs, how to pull out electrical socket covers, how to climb ladders (luckily she only made it up 2 rungs before I found her), how to say "ca-ca" (cracker) and "da" (done), how to fold her arms during prayers all by herself, and how to climb onto her brother's bed. Needless to say we have had a few new bruises but we are finding new ways to keep her safe. She is definitely keeping us on our toes! She is my super happy girl. She loves her independence and every time I start to understand one of her words she gets so excited! She now probably has close to 15 words. My last count was 13 and I'm sure I missed a couple. I love how much she talks! Jaxon had 7 words at his 18 month checkup and Ches is only 14 months! She still loves putting everything possible in her mouth and for the most part is my good eater.

Jaxon is my big boy. The other day Braeden and I were talking about what a big boy he is! He will talk your ear off if you let him. Ask him anything about trains and you have a good 10 minute conversation about Thomas. For Jaxon's 3rd birthday we had a Thomas the Train birthday party and he LOVED it! We got him some new tracks for his train and I'm so glad we did! We play with them every day and we can make lots of different tracks for him. He is still my picky eater, but he is slowly getting better. He will try new foods now instead of just looking at them and pushing them away. He loves our new apartment which is close to the train tracks so he can hear the trains blow their horns (they are diesel engines so they have horns and not whistles, or so he tells me :)), and see them sitting on the tracks when we go anywhere. Our apartments circle a lake and there are about 30 geese living here and Jaxon loves going out and feeding them. They had tons of goslings when we first got here and they all just lost their baby feathers. Jaxon is also learning to love Church related things. We were recovering from the flu this last Sunday so we only stayed for sacrament meeting and he screamed all the way home because he couldn't play in nursery. He loves scripture time and he is learning more primary songs. He loves to read books about pretty much anything and he is familiar enough with some books that he reads them to me and does a pretty good job of it! We hope to start a more structured preschool regime this fall. I'm still making my plans for how I'm going to personalize it for him.

Braeden is loving his new job! The company is great and he loves the people he is working with. They tell us we'll be here a maximum of 2 years and a minimum of 1 year so we'll see what happens! Bray also got called as the young men's secretary in our ward so he gets to serve in the youth! It feels so weird to send him off to mutual on Wednesday nights and I stay home with the kids but I'm so glad he gets to serve with the youth.

I am still plugging away at school. Hopefully I will be done in a year with all the rest of my classes. I really can't wait to have that degree! Then I can put all that away and move on to something else. Nine years really is too long to be in college! In other news I finally made it down to my pre-baby weight! Still hoping to lose a bit more but it feels great to fit into all my old clothes.