We Got the Keys!

The day after Christmas was closing day on our first home! It felt a little surreal, but we were so excited! Scott and I took Boston to his friend Rock's house, and then met with our realtor (Scott's friend), and the title company to start the fun filled hours of signing paper after paper. 

The never ending stack of papers finally disappeared, and we got the keys to our first home! 

The rest of the week was a blur! We started the move-in process by sealing our tile grout and countertops. We closed on a Wednesday, and started taking loads over each time we went to our house. It was so nice only having to move about a mile away. Our big moving day was the Saturday following closing day. We borrowed two pick up trucks from Scott's friends, and a small trailer from a neighbor in our ward. After a few more trips for all the big things on Saturday, we were officially moved in. We were grateful to Scott's friends for helping us move all the big things. Nothing broke in the moving process! We slept in our home for the first time that Saturday night. We feel so blessed and we really love our home!

Boston got to practice riding his bike in our garage the night we closed. It's so awesome having a garage! 

This is our first garage since we've been married. It's amazing how much the simplest things about having a home make us so happy. I was in heaven the first time I went grocery shopping after moving into our house. I went to Costco and didn't have to haul everything up a flight of stairs, and everything fit in our trunk because the huge jogging stroller was in our garage instead of the trunk. I even got to buy toilet paper in bulk because we had somewhere to put it. I also bought a couple boxes of cereal and they actually fit in our pantry! Another simple thing that makes me so happy about our house is having a recycling bin and a big garbage can in our garage. We didn't have a dumpster at the apartment complex. We had a small kitchen garbage that we left outside our door and the valet waste people picked it up. I never knew where to put big things, or all the cardboard boxes from Costco because valet waste only took the things that were bagged up, and they didn't have recycling. Now I get to walk out to the garage and stick things in our bins whenever I want. :)

The next few weeks after closing on our home were really crazy and hectic. Poor Boston was sick, I started a new job teaching some classes at the gym (fun, but bad timing for my first days!), we had to get our apartment all fixed up and ready for check-out, and we needed to get a bunch of random things at the store like garbage cans, door mats, and blinds. Scott and I were going non-stop all day every day for a few weeks. Then we would crash, so exhausted around midnight, or later every night. Our New Year's Eve celebration this year was just a casual mention that it was New Year's Eve, and maybe we would get a chance to sit down and make some goals in a few days. Ha ha. We didn't care though because even though we were busy, and Boston was sick, we were so happy to be in our house, and we're still enjoying getting settled. 

Christmas

Christmas morning around 7:00 or 7:30, Scott decided to lay outside Boston's door so we wouldn't miss him coming out of his room. He came out around 8:00, and then came running into the bathroom where I was getting ready and excitedly said, "Santa came!!" 

We like to make Christmas last all day so we open our stockings, make a nice breakfast, and then open our presents slowly throughout the day. We usually play with the toys or watch the movies after we open them before we open more presents. We usually add to our Disney movie collection for Christmas, and this year the movie was Pocahontas. It came with Pocahontas II as well, and Boston loves them both. 

We always get a new tree ornament in our stockings, and we try to have it go with something that happened during the year. I got Scott a personalized ornament that said,

Our First Home

The Fitzgeralds

and then our new address.

I couldn't find a good ornament to go along with Boston's year, so I got a bear ornament for him at Bass Pro because I thought it was cute. :) He wanted a Batman ornament, but I couldn't find a good one. 

He got plenty of other Batman and superhero things though!

Now that we live in Texas, we also do a lot of skyping with family on Christmas. This year we got to do a group skype with Kristen on her mission. It was fun to see her!  I think it made her a little homesick seeing all of her family on Christmas though. I could tell she was a little hesitant when it was time to say goodbye to everyone. I imagine it's pretty hard to be away from everything familiar to you on Christmas. She is doing really well though, and is a great missionary! She works hard, and is SO obedient to all the mission rules.

My sister Jessica made a cool fort kit for Boston, and my parents got him some giant kinex type things to go along with it. Now he can build all sorts of forts with Scott without having to use chairs and tables. 

Scott really liked his wooden castle blocks. :) I mean Boston really liked his castle blocks. 

We had Boston's bike hiding under a blanket the entire morning. If you look at the first picture where Scott is sleeping, you can see a big green blanket, and that's where we had the bike. We kind of thought Boston would see it first and look under the blanket, but he didn't seem to notice it even though it was sitting right in the middle of the room. Too much going on I guess. So, we decided to save his bike for last. 

Boston took an afternoon nap, and then we had the bike sitting in the living room, this time uncovered to make sure he would see it. We recorded him coming out of his room after his nap to see his bike. He loves riding his bike around the neighborhood with his friends! 

Christmas Eve

It's been a crazy whirlwind of events the past few weeks! We didn't have the internet for a couple weeks, but now that our internet has been set up in our new house, and things are finally slowing down a bit, I'm going to try and remember what happened so I can blog about it. I'm anxious to catch up on my blog so I can finish making our 2012 blog book and get it ordered! 

Good thing we took pictures these past few weeks because I'll at least remember those things. Everything else is a blur.

These pictures reminded me that we went to Sea World on Christmas Eve. 

We met up with some friends and saw the Sesame Street Christmas show. 

We also rode the mini polar express train. 

And that's about all we had time to do before we had to go home and get ready for Christmas Eve dinner at our friend's house. 

Our friends have three boys and one baby girl, and they invited another family with a boy, so there was lots of rough housing going on in the playroom before and after dinner. Boston had a good time.

We were once again grateful for such good friends here in Texas. It's nice to have people to share the holidays with when you don't have family around. Most of our stuff was in boxes on Christmas Eve since we were closing on our house the day after Christmas, so we enjoyed being away from our chaos and having a nice dinner at our friend's beautiful house! 

After dinner we came home and decorated a big snowman cookie for Santa, and left some carrots out for the reindeer. 

Boston also opened his Christmas pjs. They had a moose on them that said, "Don't Wake Me, I'll Wake You." I thought that was fitting for Christmas pjs, although we were really lucky and he slept in. He didn't wake up until about 8:00. I think this might be the last year we get that lucky. 

We read the Christmas story in Luke, The Night Before Christmas, and put Boston to bed. Then Scott and I stayed up late wrapping presents. We also pushed all our moving boxes into Boston's bathroom so they would be out of the way the next morning. Ha ha. This year's Christmas was a little different, but very memorable and exciting with moving into our first house.