Our 2017 Snapshot & House Tour

So....a quarter of the way through 2017 already?!  

Let's see what we've been up to, shall we?  :)

Gavin Jack

Height: 4' 3"

Weight: ~ 56lbs

Current sizes: 8/10 in most clothes and a size 2.5 shoe

Lost tooth count: 8

Gavin's inching closer to his tween years and it's been amazing watching him come out of his shell this year.  We had a really rough start to our school year and he didn't take the transition to a new school well, so seeing him happy and making new friends makes my mama heart happy for sure.  He's in Mrs. Moore's 3rd grade class, and loves to hang out with Cade and Noah in particular, but also James, Bo, and Liam. This year in TREC he's been in Economics and Chances (probability) and is learning a lot about taking electronics apart (and teaching his sister, too).  He still is technology-obsessed, especially with Terraria, Minecraft, and Disney Infinity.  This year, he's loving that he has a Chromebook at school and was introduced to Prodigy, a website that focuses on math and he's excelling in multiplication and division.  

When he's not at school or on electronics, Gavin's playing on the Stars soccer team with Coach Kellie, and he started back to tennis lessons a few months ago (which I am so excited about!).  Running Club just started and he's registered for two 5Ks next month.  Right before 3rd grade started, he finally mastered riding a two wheeler and loves to be on his bike.  Over spring break, he rode four miles with Daddy around Lake Atalanta. 

Gavin's getting ready to get his birthday room makeover.  We told the kids they could get their rooms painted for their birthdays this year, so I'm glad we're documenting what his room looks like now, before the makeover. 

Riley Savannah

Height: 3' 8"

Weight: ~ 46lbs

Current sizes: 6/6x in most clothes and about a 11 in shoes 

Oh, Riley.  This girl has taken kindergarten by storm and is doing so well!  I struggled a lot with sending her to kindergarten, but she's proven over and over again this year that she was ready for kindergarten.  She's officially reading, has gotten all 3s on every report card, and gets doted on by her amazing teacher, Mrs. Shiohira.  The new school year has brought new friends in her life - Sydney, Ryleigh, Ashley, Liam, and {her "boyfriend"} Sylar...don't get me started.  ;)

Last fall, Riley tried out soccer for the first time, and spring season just started.  She always smiling on the field as she's running around like she doesn't have a care in the world.  In January, she (and her big brother) started tennis and she's doing really well at it!  It's so fun to watch her on the court.  This week, Running Club started at school and she is so excited to be able to run this year.  She's signed up to do two 'fun runs' in April, and like her mama, she is all about the medal.  :) 

Thanks to a little influence from her brother, she likes to play games on her iPad and watch YouTube videos, put on makeup, and sing.  The girl can sing!  Just recently, she's taken a liking for her dolls again, and she's practicing balancing on her bike because she's determined to learn to ride a two-wheeler soon.  

This summer we will do Riley's room makeover for her 6th birthday, and she's leaning toward a light purple/teal room.  I'm anxious to see if it changes between now and then.  She says she needs a 'more girly' room, but pink and flowers fill her room now so I don't know how much girlier it can get.  

The Parents

 

Jarrod and I are loving being homeowners again.  We've taken on some fun projects, and Jarrod is really enjoying working with tools again and building furniture for our new home.  He's built us an entryway table, coffee table, dining room table, a headboard, and we shiplapped a wall.  So cool!  

Jarrod crossed another thing off his bucket list and completed a FULL Ironman last fall.  140.6 (actually a little more because the bike route was longer than it was supposed to be) of swimming, biking, and running in 95 degree weather!  Insane.  But, that's Jarrod....he's crazy!  He's running with the Rush Racing Team now, and loving every minute of it.  He's gearing up for the Flying Pig Marathon in Cincinnati this coming weekend!

When school started, I was really worried about being an 'empty nester' and having the house to myself all day long.  My days go by surprisingly fast, and I'm still busy as ever.  I have really LOVED being a sub at the school and working a little each month.  Back in January, I started training for the Bentonville Half again, and in the middle of training I found out I have some bulging discs in my neck.  No good.  I'm finally feeling back to normal, but hoping that I don't have to deal with that again.  

More House Pictures

I'm trying desperately to get these pictures all organized, but it's such an overwhelming task.    Some of these house photos are from soon after moving in, but others are from the spring. Hopefully by next year's snapshot I'll be more organized, and blogging more! :)

The Pate Place: From the Ground Up

Truth be told, I had pretty much written off ever being able to build a home of our own.  Maybe I'm a bit of a 'pessimist' like that, but the financial side of building a home seemed out of reach and I just thought we'd never go down that road.  When it became clear that this was the path we were going to go down, we all became really excited!

We spent a lot of time driving through the neighborhood, looking at the lots, the progress of the model homes, etc.  We made it part of our Friday Family Fun Night tradition - after our Friday activity, we headed to the neighborhood, usually with the kids already in their pajamas, and explored.  I loved those Friday evenings at the site of our future home.  Around Easter, the kids even took eggs and hid them in the grass to find.  We definitely made some amazing memories during the time of our house being built.

  

I definitely won't lie though....  building our house was full of excitement and stress.  We were the second contract in this neighborhood.  It was all new to everyone, and it was quickly becoming popular, so they became busy, quickly.  

The biggest stressor of the house building process was the lack of communication about how they were going to build our lot up before starting the slab.  I could never get a clear vision of what our yard was going to end up looking like, but they kept telling me fill would be brought in and there would be a very gradual slope in the backyard.  

Before drywall went up, the kids 'claimed' their rooms by writing their names on the plywood.  They thought that was pretty cool.  Just more ways to make memories through this whole process. 

Look at the beautiful roof line!  :)

On the day we did our pre-dry wall walk thru, we had Jacob, the superintendent at the time, take our first family photo in front of our house.  I love it!  Soon after, the drywall was complete and the kids were so excited to see their rooms.  

It was an exciting day when we saw the brick going up.  I'm in love with our brick!  The designer may not have been a fan of our kitchen choices, but she did a great job when she recommended Arkansas Rose to us.  It's gorgeous!

Slowly but surely, it all came together.  We had some bumps along the way, but we didn't have any maker issues until the weeks prior to closing.  I was so upset with how the yard was turning out.  It wasn't as gradual of a slope as they made it seem, and it sounded like the drainage ditch running behind the house was going to be inside our fence line.  It was a rough couple of weeks, and at one point, we thought we were going to have to walk away from it all.  But, in the end, it all worked out pretty well.  Yes, the yard is still sloped - not ideal, but it's doable.  The drainage ditch isn't inside our fence line after all, and the size of the yard is great. In a neighborhood full of small lots, we are really fortunate to have such a great sized yard.

Unfortunately, we've heard that having issues with the building process has been pretty common in the neighborhood, so again, we feel pretty fortunate that most of the process was pretty enjoyable.  We did close on the house with quite the punch list, and we actually just got everything 100% in the last week, five months after moving in.  But, we're still so happy in this home, and absolutely love it.  It's been perfect for us, and we're enjoying all the projects we've done.  Next up...a home tour!

That was a long three and a half months....

They say you don't know what you've got until it's gone.  Sadly, the Pates learned that the hard way when we moved into our new home.  We'd been waiting for months, eagerly watching as our house became a home, and that October weekend finally arrived when we were allowed to move into the home we built for our family.  As we got closer to the home being completed, we learned that the neighborhood didn't have internet, but were told that they were working on it and getting closer.  It wasn't until after we moved in when we learned that there was still a lot to be done to make internet a reality.  While we were told we'd have internet by the end of November, Thanksgiving and Christmas came and went, 2016 tuned to 2017, and we were still waiting, clueless as to who was really to blame and what to even do next.  

But....finally, we were able to connect to our very own wifi this weekend and it's been glorious!  It seems so petty how much we complained without having home internet.  But, it wasn't just not being able to stream Netflix and sign on to the computer to check Facebook or our emails.  I couldn't pay our bills because our mobile banking app didn't work properly.  The kids couldn't do their homework using the apps and websites the teachers wanted.  We couldn't print anything off that we needed.  I couldn't upload photos, or blog, or write.  It was a wakeup call.  

For exciting family nights, we'd pack up the electronics and head to Starbucks, order some hot drinks and connect to public wifi.  The kids could play on Prodigy, read books on Raz Kids, and watch You Tube Kids videos while we synced our Garmin watches, paid bills and browsed Pinterest without the guilt of using up our data.  Thrilling, huh?

But, it's all in the past now!  I hate that I'll need to spend hours, days probably, catching up, but at least I can now.  I need to upload photos, organize folders, blog and blog and blog.  I'm dreaming of getting a Cameo Silhouette and spending days creating.  I'm so happy to be  able to catch up.