Flipping the Edinburg House - Before Pics

When Paul hired on with DSW Homes last May, the belief had always been that we would move to McAllen, TX and Paul would be over the program in that area.  By October Paul was commuting to McAllen on the weekends.  We found this house that had been on the market for 2 years and had just recently gone to auction.  We made the decision to purchase it and fix it up.  Here are the before pictures:

Laundry room

Kitchen



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Sitting room off of kitchen

Family room

Formal Dining

Front entry

Moldy closet

Moldy 1/2 bath

Office

Moldy Master

Master Bath

Moldy bath

Moldy closet

Family Room and Formal Dining

Up the gross stairs

Upstairs nook

Hallway

Lana's room

Tanners room

Full bath

Toy/Guest room

Another full bath

Upstairs balcony

Front

Houston Exodus

 

So it's been a while since I blogged last, but in my defense we had a lot going on :).  I will try to play catch up now that we are in our house in New Jersey!  Our last few weeks in Texas we ate a giant Texas sized pizza from  Papa Murphy's.

 

The kids found Texas sized onions the size of their noggins at Krogers.

 

Tanner had his last preschool program ever.  Sniff.

 

 

My boys

 

The cutest baby ever

 

Seriously!

And Tanner lost his first tooth playing tug o war with their neighborhood friends.  The funny part was, he's been wanting to lose teeth since Lana lost her first tooth and when he realized he lost it, it scared him to death.  He was so worried that something had gone wrong in the process (of course nothing had...except we never found the tooth).

 

 Our PODS arrived :(

 We packed up our stuff and said goodbye to our friends the Hamm's and to the place we called home for the last year.  In some ways it was really hard to leave Texas.  We loved the neighborhood, school, neighbors, and the good friends we made.  But on the other hand, we were moving closer to family and going to an area where we could finally be together as a family.  Paul had pretty much been traveling for work since Porter was born (He's 10 months old by the way).  This has been a really hard year between the stressful pregnancy with Porter, having a newborn, Paul being gone and facing "the unknown" in many aspects.  However, we have been truly blessed on more than one occasion which is a confirmation of the right decisions that we've made.  That being said, I really hope to stay in New Jersey for a long time.  And by long time, I mean more than a year because when you move as much as we do, anything over a year is a long time.

We have a tooth!

 Check out the pearly white!

 Haha, I love Porter's expression in this one!

6 1/2 months old!

2nd Grade Musical

 Lana had her 2nd Grade Musical on Thursday.  Unfortunately Paul had to be in McAllen for a meeting so I bravely went by myself.  Sadly by the time we got to the auditorium, all the seats were taken and we ended up on a cafeteria table.  I was able to see Lana a bit, but she couldn't see us.

 Tanner wasn't too happy about not being able to see but he was happy playing on the iphone.

Lana's class were all dressed up as monkeys.  They were so cute and did such a great job.  I am super impressed with their music teacher.  Lana has been singing their program songs every day for the last few months.  I could pretty much sing a long with the whole program.  :)

Weekend Getaway

 Paul and I asked Tutu if she would come watch the kids for a couple of days while we (mostly I) got a much needed break from the kiddos.  We drove up to Conroe (about 2 hours north of our house) and stayed at La Torretta.  It is so pretty up there!  I thought all of Texas was brown and ugly but apparently it's just Houston and the coastal areas.  We had an awesome view from our room.

 Along with a suspicious van parked on the beach.

We went and ate at the Salt Grass Steak House.  Holy Cow.  Our appetizer was amazing!  Fried onions, crab meat, pico de gallo and avocados served with tortilla chips.  For dessert, a skillet baked chocolate chip cookie, topped with a brownie, topped with a scoop of vanilla icecream, drizzled with salted caramel.  It was awesome!

 Thank you Tutu for coming!!  We love you and miss you already!!!

Daddy's Home!

 Paul made it home just in time for Easter weekend.  We were all incredibly happy!

The kids loved dying easter eggs.  We tried dying them with Kool Aid instead of the vinegar mixture (I can't stand the vinegar smell!).  And it worked!  We didn't have purple or yellow but it smelled great!

For FHE on Monday we played "Life".  I thought it might be too much for the kids, especially since it can be kind of a long game.  But they loved it!  All Tanner wanted was a kid and he never did get one.  Lana kept suing him for all his money.  Paul lost his career and got a low paying job and pretty much went bankrupt.  I pretty much cleaned house, and I was trying to lose!  :)