we are alive!

i have been so bad about blogging on here! its been like 2.5 months since i last posted on here. wow. but life has been crazy busy around here. we have finally moved into our new home and are finally starting to feel settled. still a lot of decorating to do, but its starting to feel more and more like home.

anyways, i'm going to catch everyone up with the gardners. let's see, we lived in the old Windsor house for 6 weeks. we had no stove, 1/2 a kitchen sink, no dishes, A/C barely worked, a mini fridge {not a full fridge}, spiders, squirrels, ants, dust, and dirt everywhere. it was gross and everything was broken in it. {the house is 70 years old and had been vacant for several years.} so it was in need of some serious TLC. we were so happy to move out of the place! but here's a couple pics from there.

i was cleaning up a mess Gavin had made when i turned around to find that he'd snuck into the mini fridge and had buttered up Hayden. at first i was mad {rough day}, but it was really funny! Gavin was so proud of himself. he is so mischievous.

Hayden at 8 months old sitting up pretty good. still fell over occasionally though.

Gavin playing in the rain puddles in windsor.

trying to catch rain with his mouth.

"washing his hair" this is when he became obsessed with washing his hair. or in other words, getting his hair wet and watching the water drip off.

love this picture of Gavin looking at me through the lattice at the windsor house.

we moved into our new to us house in Carrollton on July 9. we were able to move in before we closed on the house. since the home had been vacate for over a year, there was some small maintenance things that needed to be done like trim the trees, clean, change filters, etc.

Hayden at 9 months old {in Carrollton} he finally starting sleeping 8 straight hours around this time. yay! and started taking better naps- like 1.5 hrs instead of 45 mins. huge improvement. he also got his first tooth in around this time.

since we had a list of things to do on the house and we don't have any family close by, we flew my mom out for a week to help us. she was a great help! we got a lot done that first week. we completely unpacked everything but the decorations, cleaned the entire house from top to bottom, and davis and i got most of the shopping done that was needed at the hardware store.

we made sure to take breaks and have fun with Oma too! Gavin loves his trike that Oma gave him awhile back. he is getting really fast on it and can even ride it down steep hills and keep it under control. whenever we go for walks, he rides his bike and i push Hayden in a stroller.

Hayden and Gavin LOVE to swing! we go to the park by our house and most of the time, we spend our entire time on the swings.

we had to fix a few holes in one wall and paint when we moved in. one night we let Gavin help for a minute. he was in heaven!

he did manage to get some paint on the wall. {oh and for the record, we replaced the carpet pictured above. that's why you don't see a drop cloth. it was nice to paint and not have to worry about getting paint on the carpet.}

Davis's crazy acrobatics to paint the staircase.

bath pics! taken 7/17/11 notice Hayden's chubby cheeks :)

the boys love to bathe. we give them a bath every night even though we go swimming almost every day at the neighborhood pool. {which by the way, is awesome!! this neighborhood has a great kid pool and the lifeguards are awesome. i'm going to miss going to the pool everyday when it closes during the week starting the end of the month :( you'll notice how tan Hayden's legs are in this pic. he has the tannest legs i've ever seen!

we live in a branch. its pretty small. we have 3 sister missionaries in our branch. we have them over for dinner about every week. shown above is Sister Gopp {gavin does Jellyfish high 5's with her}, Sister Butterfield, and Sister Nash. Sister Butterfield was transferred but the other 2 are still here. they are the cutest gals! Gavin just adores them. one day we were coloring and i asked Gavin what he was coloring and he said, "Jellyfish."
He drew jellyfish for Sister Gopp! it was so cute!

Hayden at 10 months {love the shirt haha} he got his 2nd tooth in.

Hayden is finally sleeping 12 hours most nights. FINALLY!!!!!!! and is almost weaned. Hayden loves applesauce, peaches, sweet potatoes, carrots, and chicken with stars.

this was like 2 days ago. Gavin decided he wanted to be my model for one of my latest projects. lol

Davis and i upholstered our craig's list dining room chairs. this is gavin helping me take the seats off with his toy wrench, of course!

and that brings us to yesterday. yesterday, 8/27/11 was a big day. it was davis and i's 7 year anniversary. we had to share it with Hurricane Irene. she came through yesterday afternoon, but we had all kinds of stormy weather starting friday night. the power went out saturday morning and was out for 5 hours. then it came back on right as davis turned the generator on. {great timing huh?} oh and i have to add, davis drove 2.5 hours on friday to buy the generator, which was a floor model in Farmville. only generator we could find. anyways, power came back on and then went out again about 9pm saturday night and stayed out until about 8:00am this morning. but at 3:00am, davis got up to turn the generator on for the fridge and left the backdoor open. well, the fumes from the generator came in and set the CO detectors off. we couldn't get the blasted alarm to go off for over an hour.{fortunately the boys slept through all of it. HUGE BLESSING} we opened doors and turned off the gas to the house, but could not get the stupid thing to stop beeping. finally we called the fire department and they said it was probably linked to the home security system and that the only way to turn it off is to take out the battery. so we opened it up and couldn't find a battery. so davis pulled the red wire and it shut off. we put it back together after we woke up this  morning and it was fine. but that was a nightmare last night! as far as damage from the hurricane, half of one of our big trees in the back broke off {didn't hit the house}and 2 tall shrubs in front of our house bit the dust. oh and a couple windows leaked. but we feel so blessed!! things could have been so much worse! at one point the Hurricane Irene was rated a category 3 hurricane, but it was downgraded to a 2. we are all safe, have power, and had a gorgeous, sunny day today. oh and we're like the only ones on our street that had trees/shrubs down. which was kind of funny. but oh well. 

anyways, that brings us up to date. sorry for the huge post. hope everyone is well!!