St. Louis, Easter, and our house

Last week we drove to St. Louis with a goal of finding a house. We looked at 17 houses on Sunday and another 17 on Monday. We are very lucky/grateful that my parents were able to come to St. Louis and watch Kaden for us while we looked at houses. He would not have enjoyed it, and we were able to focus a lot more on house shopping without him. We had a top 3 that we liked, and on Tuesday we went back to those 3 with my parents to look everything over more carefully to rank them 1, 2, and 3. That afternoon we put an offer on our #1 house, and by 9 pm all papers were signed and it was official. We are set to close at 9am on May 12th. Matt graduates the night of the 9th, we will leave the morning of the 10th and get to St. Louis sometime on the 11th. We'll close the next morning. It's all working out so perfectly!

Little Uncle Bri -- coloring on his work drawings





Uncle Bri & Kaden



Kaden thought Breck's bed was quite comfy!





Reading the paper with Papa



Soaking little plastic capsules so they would grow into dinosaurs. Talbot was really intrigued!



Kaden LOVES Uncle Bri & Aunt Amber's cat, Sasha. Luckily she's a (pretty) patient cat and would tolerate quite a bit of Kaden's love. I'm sure Kaden will be seeing A LOT of Sasha in the next 4+ years -- she'll either decide she hates him and will hide or they will become best friends. Kaden's hoping for the later choice.











Matt, my parents, and I took Kaden to Chuck E. Cheese one afternoon -- his first time ever! He enjoyed it for the most part, but was quite scared of the mechanical toys at first!



Him crying and saying/signing "no more, no more, no more"











More with Sasha...





The last night we were there Uncle Bri, Aunt Amber, and the three of us went to a Mexican restaurant. Uncle Bri put the booster seat up high - Kaden enjoyed this new "seat"!!





The drive home. Kaden did SO well on both 14.5 hour drives. Both times we left around 4:30/5am and drove straight through. On the way there he took one 1-hour nap the entire time, but read lots of books, colored, played with markers, and watched a bit of TV. The way home he took a little bit longer nap (1.5 hours) and watched a lot of TV. These pictures are all from our drive home.

Early on in the drive... happy for TV.



A little bit later -- eating Cheerios and watching TV



Quite a bit later in the trip.. a new outfit, new snack, and starting to get really bored/tired of the drive



Almost home. His brain was dead and he was so over the car ride!





Lucky for all of us we only have to do the drive one more time! YAY!


While we were in St. Louis we celebrated Easter a little early. We dyed Easter eggs, had an Easter egg hunt in the front yard, and had a typical Easter dinner. Kaden liked dying the eggs, but didn't understand the term "gentle" as he threw them into the dye containers. During the egg hunt he would find an egg, then squeeze it until it split in two. He thought this was hilarious and we were all glad it was an outside egg hunt!






















He really enjoyed the Easter grass

















My Dad



Matt



My Mom



The dogs really wanted to join us



Playing with his new sidewalk chalk with Aunt Amber



Aunt Amber tried teaching Kaden hopscotch






Our house!! The home was built in 1979 and the original owner still lives in it. She remembers picking out all the style options 30 years ago. She is 80 now and is moving into assisted living and is ready to downsize. She put the house on the market last week, and we put an offer on it 4 days later! We had the opportunity to meet her and she is a super nice lady. She has taken GREAT care of the home, and although our decorating styles are a *bit* different, you can at least kinda see what the house looks like before we move in. Kaden's favorite color right now is green, so he approved of our house because of the green door and green shutters!! :)

Basement -- this will eventually be a 4th bedroom downstairs



Laundry area --


Downstairs -- we will finish this area and make it a large playroom/daycare area



Great storage shelves next to/behind the stairs



Kitchen -- it has a small eat-in kitchen area in one of the corners



Living room -- the only room with hardwoods, exactly how we wanted it!



The 3 seasons room -- off the living room and looking out into our fenced-in yard



Our room



Kaden's bathroom



Extra room -- this will eventually be another kid's room so we don't have any plans for it



Kaden's room -- we're excited that it's already painted blue!



Formal living room/dining room -- this room is huge. We will use the formal living room as our office and set up a couple desks and some shelves for Kaden's toys, and then use the dining room as a dining room



Laundry chute



Our bathroom -- it comes off the master bath



The house has these GREAT floor length, newer windows that I love! This one is in the kitchen looking at our yard





Front of the house



The next few weeks are going to be super busy. Matt has one week and 2 days left of med school rotations, but unfortunately his rotations are mostly 3pm-11pm, which means Kaden and I are alone for dinner, clean up, bathtime, bed time, but at least we get some Matt/Daddy time in the mornings. We also will be busy packing our entire house. My last day of daycare will be May 1. That gives us a week to finish packing and we have family arriving towards the end of the week to celebrate Matt's graduation. Hopefully I'll have time to update the blog, but if I don't, now you'll know why! Plus Kaden's schedule has been off and several nights have been spent trying to get him back asleep and back asleep and back asleep.... the next 2 months will be hard on him, too. Also, we left Talbot with my brother and Amber. She HATES the car, so instead of making her take 3 trips, they offered to keep her until May. She'll love staying with them, but we already miss having her around. Our new house is 8-10 min. from Bri & Amber -- we are all excitd about that.