The End of A Great School Year

We had such a great experience with both boys attending Lincoln School (Mommy’s old school;).  I think Morton is such a great school district and we will definitely miss it.  Every single teacher that the boys have had has been excellent and so caring.  Their teachers were sweet and took these pictures for the boys on their last day of school on May 18th.  We will miss them all and traditional schooling. (Hayden and Bennet will be on year round schooling starting on July 9th this year.)

Goodbye East Monroe Street and Morton

This past spring was a blur and went so fast for the four of us.  Jamie got a great job offer to move back down to North Carolina with Caterpillar and we decided to go for it.  Although we will always miss Morton and the Midwest, we are excited about the great North Carolina weather again and the new opportunities for our family.  We put our house on the market in March and ended up selling it in a day, much to our surprise. We actually got two offers in that same day.  It was quite the blessing and made the whole process much easier.  During spring break, we headed down to NC to look for our house.  The market down here was MUCH different than that of Morton as houses are not only super high priced (yeah timing) :( but they go within less than 10 days usually.  Our last two houses have been new construcion and we knew that this time around, we wanted an older, established house with a flat yard and trees.  We didn’t plan on buying a house in our old neighborhood, but that’s exactly what we did.  It was the second house that we saw and we immediately liked it, because of it’s unique layout and location.  The boys new grade school and middle school is literally a 5 minute walk out of our backyard.  The high school is also a little further down the road.  This was important for us as we didn’t want the kids to ride the bus, but be able to walk home and go for family bike rides in the area.  The house needs a lot of work as it needs all new landscaping in front, lots of love with the grass, new paint inside, and a kitchen update eventually.  I plan on putting pictures of our new house up on the blog and some before and after. I snapped this picture of our house right after we had moved out. 

Goodbye Jones Family

The beginning/end of spring 2018 was very busy and crazy with Jamie and I working full time and our big move.  We didn’t take many pictures to document any of our last visits with our friends, but my friend Jill did send this picture to me of our last visit with them at their house.  We have been friends with them for the longest time and will defintiely miss this sweet family, but we’re excited for them to come and visit us in North Carolina.

Bennet’s 7 and Hayden’s 9

We have obviously neglected our blog for the beginning of 2018.  I got so lucky this year with getting my old job back after a teacher decided to quit in the middle of the year.  It was such a blessing to be able to, after almost 10 years staying at home, get into teaching full time.  And to be able to work with my old collegues and have them train me on all of the new technology used was perfect.  It was, however, a LARGE amount of work and I think that I worked about every weekend either grading or planning.  So much has changed since I last taught. I didn’t have time for much else, so our blog took quite the back seat.  After probably one of the worst Christmas breaks in Florida, we were all very sick with the flu (even Nana and Papa), we came home and celebrated Bennet’s 7th birthday and Hayden’s 9th.  The boys didn’t want to do anything special this year, so we had two very low key birthday parties. It’s very hard to believe that they are 7 and 9 already.  Hayden’s last year in the single digits (sniff, sniff).

A White Christmas Afterall and the Ronin 2017 Top 5

The Ronin Top 5 of 2017 – Oh, what a year!

1. Jamie, Hayden and Bennet made the decision to give their lives to Jesus and were baptized.
2. I got my old job back after staying at home for 9 years.  Hello, iPads and apple TV
3. Bennet finally started school ALL day in 1st grade.
4. Hayden mastered his back flip off of the diving board and Bennet his front flip.
5. Bennet riding his bike without training wheels.

Christmas Program 2017

I was able to snap a quick picture before the boy’s Christmas program this year.  Both boys had a line and did a great job. It’s always so fun and sweet to see the kids all dressed up and singing Christmas songs.  And this year all of the grandparents got to livestream the program, so they could see it live.

Blurry, But Fun Nonetheless

It’s all about Star Wars this year for the boy’s, so for their matching Christmas pajamas this year, these were a must.