Reaghan turned 2 on Saturday. Thats right people, its been 2 years since I wrote this, and this, and this! Just a few days before her birthday she was in the bathroom with me as I was fixing my hair and doing my makeup. I could see her in the mirror behind me playing and talking to herself and I just kept thinking "wow, how did this happen? How do I have a 2 year old?" This little person has become such a beautiful, consuming part of my life and I couldn't imagine living without her now! Sometimes it just catches me off guard and I have to stop and ponder these precious moments and musings in my heart.

We had a fun day on Saturday celebrating our toddler. We woke her up with hot and ready now donuts (she loves donuts!) from Krispy Kreme and a balloon to toss in her crib as we sang happy birthday to her. She thought the balloon was great and probably would've been content with that as her present all day long.

momma also got a special frappe treat. Hey - its technically my "birth" day too right?

Here on the east coast of Virginia we're getting ready for Hurricane Hermine to make its way up. We're usually not too intimidated by impending hurricanes since most of the time we're protected by the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Usually it hits there first and and is less intense by the time it gets to us here in Hampton Roads. We haven't been hit hard in a good 5 years though, the last big one we had was Hurricane Irene, so who knows?! We can already feel the storm coming though. It's a good 10 degrees cooler today than it has been the last couple of days and pretty breezy so I figured I should at least be somewhat prepared and ran to the grocery store for some essentials. I grabbed some water, batteries, milk and a few non perishables for Reaghan. Of course, thinking about staying up late tonight watching the storm roll in made me think of needing snacks. Right?! So I grabbed some ingredients for some chocolate chip cookies!!

I realized as I was baking the cookies that I've never shared my favorite Chocolate Chip Recipe on here before. I found it about 2 years ago and I promise you, they've turned out perfect every. single. time. (Okay, except for one this one time that I accidentally grabbed cook&serve pudding and not instant pudding and they came out super runny!) I say this because it's totally not me making them turn out so good. This recipe is just that fool-proof.

Yesterday I was cleaning up some things on the homepage of this blog of mine and ran across this post about Reaghan being sweet towards Piper after our pup had surgery to remove a mass on her gums. In the post I mentioned that the mass was being sent off for a biopsy to see if it was cancerous or not and I realized I never updated you on her results.


Unfortunately they were not good.

Its been a long, hot, humid summer! We didnt have anything big planned for the summer but its still felt like a busy few months. Heres a recap of summer 2016!

I basically took an unintentional sabbatical from blogging this summer. The last time I wrote was the end of May and even that was just a recap of Mothers Day and our Anniversary because we had been so busy with moving! When I wrote that update we were actually on vacation in the OBX with Mark's family and I had every intention of writing a nice post about our new house when we got home, but while we were on vacation we found out some pretty exciting news! If you're friends with me on facebook then you've known for a while, but I have to make an announcement on here too right?!

It doesn't feel likes its been 25 days since I last posted but I guess it has!

When I last wrote I showed a pretty poor quality picture of our new house that was taken through my car window on a random drive-by of the house after we bought it but before it was officially ours. And unfortunately I haven't taken a better one yet.

Things that I normally blog about but that got totally overlooked this month because of all of the moving craziness were Mothers Day and our Anniversary. I feel like those are events that I have to write down so I can look back and remember them so here's just a quick recap of them both:

We found a house!

You guys, this house hunting has had its ups and downs. We had been to see more than 10 houses by the time we found this one. Mark was available to see it one day on his lunch break when I wasn't able to meet him so I said you know what, you go see it and if you think its worth it then we'll schedule a time for me to come out. That was the weariness of house hunting setting in! So Mark went to see it and loved it right away so of course I came out. I was a little hesitant - afraid to get my hopes up - but when I walked in I fell in love. The high ceilings and open floor plan was a sight for sore eyes that had only been seeing walls to knock down in other houses.

That weekend we had our parents come out and take a look at the property. We value their opinions and wisdom and we're so grateful that they're willing to lend us their eyes and thoughts.

We put the offer on it that Monday and it was rejected. There was some back and forth and we were holding strong at our initial offer because we felt it was our highest and best. Eventually they said they couldn't accept that offer. We were disappointed but I looked at Mark after he got off the phone and told him I had a feeling that we weren't done with that house yet. We gave it over to the Lord and knew that either that was the house for us and it end up working out or there was something better.

A few days later they contacted us again with a new, lower counter offer and we agreed.

We've waited for the home inspection and appraisal to go through before making the official announcement. I wish I had a better picture but I'm just so excited that we've found a new house!

Eating oatmeal - a breakfast favorite.

Okay, so I'm writing this not because I think I'm an expert at selling homes. This is our first time going through the process and it's had it's stressful moments for sure. Though we did do most of the things listed, I decided to write this post because of what we've noticed walking into other houses. In our experience so far it's definitely been harder to imagine ourselves moving into a home that's currently occupied compared to one that is vacant, but it's almost impossible to see the potential of a house when it's looks uncared for or generally unkept.

We've looked at around 10 houses and we've seen some that show beautifully (but just weren't for us) and others that looked like the owners didn't even know people would be stopping by. Because of this I thought it would be fun to put together a list of things that could be helpful in sprucing up your house to help its full potential shine when possible buyers come to see it.

Remember a little over a month ago when I shared that we had put our house on the market? I told you then that the day we put it up for sale we had 3 different people schedule to come see it within the first 48 hours. Well, by the end of those 48 hours we had 2 different offers on our house.

We were in shock! We hadn't even made it to the weekend, which is the typical busy time of showing a house to potential buyers. We put it up Tuesday morning and Thursday night we were reviewing the offers and signing the contracts to sell our home.