Our Happy Busy Family

We've been busy. Really busy. The days blur together and the weeks zip by. The boys are growing up faster than ever. But we're proud, we're happy, and we're healthy. Can't ask for much more.

Paul started his real estate career full-time as of May 1st. Bye-bye car business, hello houses! Check out his personal website here: http://buyfrompg.com/home.asp. He is working for Samson Properties and has been lucky enough to have a tremendous mentor helping him every step of the way. To date, he has rented numerous properties and has a ratified contract on a beautiful single family house in Gainesville/Bristow area. He is looking to drum up business to be the listing agent on a couple of houses so let him know if you know of anyone who is looking to buy or sell!

It's great that Paul's schedule is a bit more flexible now, but we're still adjusting to the "last minute" appointments/house showings. For the most part, he is able to schedule around any big plans or show at 7:30 or 8pm at night after he's helped feed our little monsters . I look forward to the weekends now more than I ever did before, knowing that he will at least be around for more than an hour or so during waking hours. Now if I can just get him to put his phone down long enough to have an adult conversation....!! But I am so proud of him for following his dreams and not giving up. This change has been a long time coming for him and I think we all know that he will be tremendously successful at it.

In Jake's world, we have made tremendous strides in potty training! He has been in pull-ups since January and had been doing really well but we needed to take it to the next level. Voila! REAL BIG BOY UNDERWEAR (which is super fun to buy, by the way)! We started this past Sunday and so far, only minimal accidents. We're on a 24 hour streak of NO accidents right now. Sometimes it takes some creative bribes to get him to go potty, especially first thing in the morning, but he usually gives in. In other news, he's doing great with speech -- talking in sentences now and we can usually understand him about 95% of the time :-) (I secretly think he has a couple of his own words that he likes to use to keep things interesting.) He should be more than ready to move to Preschool II in August when he turns three.

My BABY is not a baby any more! I don't know what happened to the last year with Josh but boy is he turning into a little toddler more and more every day. He is SO close to walking but just hasn't gotten up the confidence yet to let go of what he's holding on to and move! He cruises everywhere though -- quickly! And can go up and down the stairs with ease. He still prefers chicken nuggets and cheese to any other kind of food (still hates fruit but we're working on it) and he's weaning himself off the bottle (kind of a nice surprise/treat!). He transitioned from formula to whole milk with no problems which is a nice money saver. Now if we could just perfect his use of the sippy cup; he's always been pretty stubborn about those things. He looks at it and gives you this look like, "why in the world would I want to use this thing?" and then BAM! Throws it on the floor. He does like drinking out of an open cup though. Maybe we'll just deal with soaking wet shirts for a little while.

We're looking forward to this summer and a couple "mini trips". We're still planning our big family beach week trip (think to OBX) for the end of August and Paul and I continue to seriously contemplate an adults only trip to a tropical destination. (I desperately need a vacation!!)

Will post some new pictures/videos soon!