I'm back!

Ok, so sorry, hopefully I wont have to apologize much more any time soon...

For starters, I had a great visit with my mom. I REALLY wish she could have stayed longer, we were so busy with preparations for other things while she was here and now things have calmed down and she is gone :( Miss Gracie may be having a hard time with this goodbye. I dont think she really understands why Grandma is gone. Hopefully she will get through this quickly (I know this will depend on how quickly I process the end of her visit myself) but it nearly broke my heart when we got out of the car and she quickly looked over my shoulder and giggled for Grandma and the confusion crossed her face as she looked all around us and couldnt find her Grandma. Even when we got upstairs to our door, she looked back down waiting for Grandma to "catch up"....I must be strong, if not for me, then for my baby girl. I'm just trying to get through today, and then when I put her down I have a glass of wine with my name on it, I will relax and know that we can get through this, we have every visit before, and there are many visits to come! At least we will see her again in Oct for my best friends wedding, and I may get to go to CA this summer if finances allow....so here's hoping that I see her sooner, and at least Oct isnt that far away if not - my mom always taught me that it is easier to enjoy life if you do your best to see the glass half full.

Yesterday Grace was dedicated at our church, and we had some of our extended family there; then everyone came to our place for lunch. My first meal served to John's family went over pretty well. At least everyone was well fed and seemed to enjoy themselves. It was really nice to have everyone at church with us for the service, I'm so glad my mom was able to make it out for this.

The big news is that we are moving, yet again...thankfully not half-way across the country this time ;)

We got notice at the beginning of the year that our apartment complex was sold. And then the 1st week of April we were notified that we the option to buy our unit or move within 180 days. Although we rather liked living here, we were not interested in buying this place [too many problems] so we've been tossing around the eternal question of do we buy now or rent a while longer. As much as we'd like to be home-owners, the timing is not very good right now, and we'd have to get real lucky to find a place that we could afford/like/move into quickly. So, the apartment hunt began in earnest. We found one we could deal with, but the time-line had us rushing to check out our other options to make it by their deal "dead-line" and in the eleventh hour John found one more place just outside of our previous search zone and we love it!!!

This place is just a little futher south than we had planned, but the travel time difference should be negligible. It has a little less square feet, but a much more open floorplan and LOTS of closets! I will have storage for all our stuff now!!! Also, since we arent moving until mid-June I will have time before this move to purge all the junk so things should be much better around here after the move. Gracie will really have a room (right now her room is more like storage) with all her toys having a place and we can get her stuff out of the living room when she's not playing with it! I am very excited about that :D

Also, our bedroom will now have enough space for the desk to go in there instead of in the middle of traffic central (and no more presents for Gracie from the tower - she really cannot resist playing with the buttons and wires hanging in the back)

And did I mention that our kitchen is so big it has an island? Oh, I fell in love at first sight of the kitchen...so I'm hoping that everthing will work out once we move in, and come close to what I hope for. We will also now have a pool and a catch and release fish pond :)

On the knitting front I barely finished my mom's top before she left - far too many things going on around here for me to even think about knitting, how scary was that? And now I need to get going on something for my sister since her b-day is tomorrow...my how time flies! I cannot believe that Grace is nearly 1 year old and that we will be nearing our 1 year anniversary of living in Illinois!

Well, I better get organizing/packing, catch ya later! Happy knitting!!!