Look at us now!

One year later and look where we are! Blessed in so many ways! Dec 17th will always remind us of our beautiful family and how lucky we are to have each and every one of them, powerful friendships, amazing community and the world's desire to help others. The world is full of exceptional people!!

Loving my new cathedral ceilings, mainly so I can have a big-ass tree!  Also loving my multi-tasking husband. Standing on a bar height stool, kid in one arm, decorating with the other. #bestguyever

Kids unwrapping all the Christmas stuff that made it out of the fire. So much excitement!

Honey, I'm home!

We have been in the house for a few days now and are so happy to be here. I am a woman of few words on this subject right now. So grateful for our new home. So grateful we are all here together. So grateful for life. :)

Here's a sneak peek at the new digs. Pretty happy with how it is all coming together!

  

Bye, bye, bye!

5 months to the day since the fire and they are hauling the remains of the house away. Thank you to everyone for your kind words and well wishes. We have had 5 months to heal and are doing fantastic...we watched the house come down as a family and quietly celebrated the fact that we were all there to watch it together. Our new chapter begins today :)

Feelings

Connor's pre-school teacher pulled me aside today when I picked him up. She told me to have a look at the 'Feelings' project they did at school. She thinks the fire has affected him more then he shows and more then we realize. When I read it, I laughed. And then I cried. Now THAT is good journalism - making your audience laugh and cry in one short body of writing.

Displacement is hard

I haven't been a loyal writer. Since the fire, we've been a bit displaced. We are staying at my aunt and uncle's home while they are gone to Florida and will have to move into one more place once they come home in May. Our new house won't be built until probably August. These last two months have been a major whirlwind. We are starting to settle down, but we are still so busy dealing with the insurance, writing hundreds of thank-you notes and then of course there's those two little people that we take care of during commercials. They take up a bit of our time too ;) Seriously though, I have received quite a bit of feedback in recent months about my blog and people that are enjoying my posts. It's made me think how sad I am that I blogged so much when Connor was little, but have barley done so for Carter. So thank you to those who have written me ... you've inspired me to continue. I don't have many pictures of the fire since our laptop is -- well-- no longer. Don't worry, don't worry, we DID get the pictures off of it. None of our things actually burned in the fire. We did however lose most things to smoke and water damage. I'll try to do a post in the near future on just the fire alone, and add some more pictures at that point. Stay tuned for that!

This picture is a small glimpse into the aftermath. It's our kitchen as I'm sure you can tell. We actually just painted our kitchen a few weeks prior. I LOVED the color and will definitely use it again in our new house.





So ... life after fire? Life after fire is pretty good. But it's hard not being in your own environment, not having the things you take for granted like your high chair, your kids plates and utensils, their sippy cups and special containers. Don't get me wrong, we are really blessed with the house we are staying in now. It's huge. It has three garages. We didn't even have one. But I loved our house because it was OURS. It had OUR things in it. The things we loved. The things we picked out. The things our son picked out. You can't make up for that. But we are trying our best. We're trying to focus on the positives ... like the fact that we will have a brand new house, designed by us, within the year. we will have all new furniture and all new clothes. We'll have the playroom of our boy's dreams.

I. Can't. Wait!!!