Mom's Visit

My mom flew out to spend a few days with us. We had a great time relaxing at the beach, looking for seashells at Coral Cove, showing her Olivia Newton John's house, boating with Kelly and Brian, and eating seafood.

Rizzo

Rizzo loves to watch TV with us, especially when there is an animal on the show. He's very attentive!

We Bought a House!!!!

After going through 20 some houses, we decided we were ready to put in an offer on a beautiful home in Rialto. Rialto is a gated community in Jupiter located close to the interstate for easy access for Trevor to get to work and within 10 minutes of the school. Rialto has tons of kids, a community pool, tennis courts, exercise room and basketball courts, which is a definite plus. Not to mention the HOA form we had to fill out to live in this community is reassurance that our community is very safe!

Our new house is a 2-story Mediterranean style home with a guest room on the main floor and the rest of the bedrooms upstairs. The selling feature of the house is the resort style pool and backyard space, complete with a summer kitchen. We gain possession of the house October 31st. Part of our offer was a credit for new flooring, as the tile on the main floor is cracked in various places and needs to be replaced. We plan on having the flooring replaced and the house painted prior to moving in, so we extended the lease on our rental house for one additional month. We are excited to get settled into our new home!

Labor Day Weekend

Stacie came to visit us for the long weekend, making her our first visitor from Iowa. She arrived late Friday night and stayed until Monday morning. On Saturday, she said she felt like she was on an episode of "House Hunters" as we showed her and the kids our top 3 houses. We had the gorgeously decorated, move in ready house in Paseos. It is the smallest house and only has a two stall garage. Second, we have the medium sized house in Rialto, a gated community with pool, tennis courts, basketball courts and an exercise room. The house needs some work inside, but has an amazing pool and summer kitchen. Third, we have the largest house in the small gated community of Mystic Cove. The house is quite large and has the layout we have been looking for with the master and guest room on the main floor and the kids rooms and a loft upstairs. The house is dated, but loaded with potential. It has a beautiful rectangular pool that backs up to a pond. It was fun to show Stacie and the kids these houses. We plan to put an offer in on the Mystic Cove house, as it has lots of space and tons of potential for an investment property.

After we visited the houses, we introduced Stacie to one of our favorite restaurants, 3 Natives, where she had the famous açaí bowl I had been telling her about. It didn't disappoint! Then we spend the afternoon at the beach relaxing. It was a wonderful day with one of the most spectacular rainbows I have ever seen.

Today, we tried out a new church, Christ Fellowship, which meets at Jupiter High School. Kaylee had been invited to their youth group by her friend, Makenna. It was a very friendly church. We were greeted initially by the youth pastor, a young woman named Abrielle who had remembered Kaylee from Weds night. Then Makenna and her dad found us and walked us to the service where they had saved us seats. It was nice having some familiar faces and such friendly people. The Nelsons met us there too, which was extra special. The church is quite large, but has multiple satellite locations. This means that the pastor preached via satellite and was not actually live at our location in Jupiter. The Jupiter location was a nice size. The worship was live and was great. Kaylee and I liked it a lot, while Trevor and the other two may prefer the other church we have attended on several occasions called Calvary Church.

After church, we borrowed paddle boards from the Nelsons. Stacie, Kianna, Trace and I took them out on the intracoastal waterway. The water was pretty calm and we had a blast! We saw some basketball-sized yellow starfish, which were pretty cool. Then we got cleaned up and had a nice dinner and then the adults went to a movie, while the kids plus Cameryn swam and relaxed at home. Kaylee had her first sleepover since moving to Florida, which is pretty exciting! We had a fabulous holiday weekend. We are so thankful that Stacie was able to come visit us!