For those of you who follow me on instagram, by now you know that Jolene has gone to live with another family. It was a hard pill to swallow, but we keep on going over the reasons as to why that choice was best for her and us.  It's still pretty raw; I expect to see her when I walk into our home, or see her come out of the room from a nap.  She was and is, after all, our first child but talking about it is the only way I can think of helping me deal with the sadness of missing her. 

She made me a mother.  Because of her, I always carried a "diaper bag" with all of the essentials - water, bowls, because she gets hot easily, snacks, toys, cleaning towels (incase we stumbled upon a good but muddy field to run in).  I constantly scheduled her vet appointments, made sure to givce her her monthly medicine for heart worm and fleas/ticks.  If I or her spotted her friends across the street, we'd run out for a playdate and I made friends in the neighborhood with those other dog parents.  Gave her baths and taught her to tolerate them because they're not as scary as she first thought.  We taught her games and tricks and words (sounds) for specific objects.  All of this is not dissimilar to what we're doing and going through now with Jack.  

And so, in honor of our girl, whom we had the privilege of having be a part of our lives from December 7th, 2016 until April 7th, 2019 I'm sharing the most recent photos taken of her just before we gave her a new, better life at a farm with all of the land to play in without children, and a letter I wrote to her.

Hi Folks! We've been MIA for a while...back in January we found a house in a neighborhood we loved and put an offer.  Since then things moved quickly and yet slowly.  You see we gave extra time for the paperwork to go through, and set March 15th as the closing date, but now we can officially say we are home owners!!! Take a look at our 1942 Cape Cod style house!

Prior to actually closing, we did a bit of leg work to get started on some of the renovations we need to get done and they're already underway.  It's all very exciting and we can't wait to move in, but we know that a month and half will go by like a blink and barely have time to actually get all of our things out of our current apartment. 

We'll miss the city and the neighborhood we lived in for three years, but we won't be too far from it - in fact, we're only about 7 miles due north of our DC apartment.  So if we're really hankering for tacos from Bandit or larb tofu from Bangkok Thai we can just hop on over and pick some up. Obviously what we'll miss most is walking to and from anywhere and everywhere as we're now moving to a more suburban area, but we're also pretty excited about the farmers market down the block, Antique Row and camping in our backyard! 

Follow along as we slowly renovate our home by looking up the hashtag #OurKensingtonHouse on instagram! We're starting with the kitchen for now. Stay tuned for before and after photos and details regarding our renovations...

Life, lately, has been exciting, to say the least and also so full, which is why we've been away from our blog for the past couple of months! We'll have some big news to share soon but for now here are a few updates on what's been happening:

1. Starting off in the new year, Jack learned to crawl....fast! And soon he was standing and now cruising. And basically, we have no free time now because he's on the move at all times.
2. Jolene has learned (finally) that not all outings are for going to the Park.  She's getting really into discovering new parts of the neighborhood.
3. Pete got the flu and Jack got sick so that was a major reason to be MIA from the interwebs - just had no time!
4. LittleMIGHTYpress has some new work up on the instagram - check it out!
5. Still deciding how to celebrate Jack's up coming first birthday and the theme...should probably start a pintrest board, like now because we have a month and a half left. How has a full year already almost gone by? Keep you posted on the design deets...
6. We're slightly obsessed with Starz series Outlander. So good! Have you seen it?!?!?!?!

And if you're wondering about the quote above, it just really resonated with me. It's good to have a focus when you're just trying to get by day by day.  Each day counts! And we're sure working on building the future that we're dreaming of. 

It's still the early in January so it's not too late to share our reflection on this past year right? This first week, we slowly got back into our groove, focused on routine, and spent some quality family time thinking about or plans for the year ahead.  But before I get to that, we want to share about what a great year we had that kicked off with two baby showers from our families and friends, my sister's marriage to a wonderful man, and of course the birth of our son! We also celebrated Jack's first Christmas with my family in Michigan. It truly felt like a joyous year and we're excited for the adventures to come!

Jack got to ride the Q line for the first time as we went from Midtown to Downtown Detroit where we watched throws of people ice skating at Campus Martius right next to the giant Christmas tree!
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As always, the vacation went by fast, but I met some goals for the end of the year including:

• spending some gal pal time in Michigan (see photos below)
• getting the grandpas and uncle Jon more comfortable with holding mini man Jack
• visited the Detroit Institute of Arts (first time for Pete, first time for me since 1995)
• got Jack to visit Santa

We spent NYE relaxing at home after all the travel, celebrations and teething troubles, but below you can see photos of our trip to Michigan this holiday season!

Since we always travel for the holidays, I've always been a little bit of a Scrooge when it comes to decorating - why spend money and time on things we won't actually get to enjoy very much since we'll be gone?! Well, of course things have taken a 180 turn now that Jackie Boy is here! Bring on the lights, tinsel, tree and ornaments because Santa Claus (or Santa Paws) is coming to town!

This year, we're going all out.  We went out to chop down our own tree at Snickers Gap Tree Farm in Virginia - they provide the saw, but you do the work and load it up on to your car.  It was a lot of fun! For Christmas 2018, we went with a Douglas Fir, and next year we may go with the Colorado Blue Spruce.  Pete and Jolene were on a mission from the get go - it had to be straight and full, have a perfect point for the star topper, not too wide because we live in a small apartment, and have enough clearance down below for presents.  And they did a pretty great job hunting down the perfect tree for our home.