feeling sentimental

With the big move a little over one week away I am starting to feel a little sentimental about leaving our house. Don't get me wrong, we are SO excited to be moving to a bigger, more updated home but we have created a lot of memories here and it will be sad to leave them behind. I think the thing that is bothering me the most is the fact that we will be tearing Olivia away from the only home she has ever known. She has a beautiful nursery that was designed for her by her godmother and one of my closest friends, Korrie. As you can see Korrie is amazingly talented and created a room that fit Olivia perfectly, even though we did not know what we were having. If I could take the room with me to the new house, I would! But I think that this beautiful room was one of the strongest selling points of our house, which helped it sell so quickly. The family moving in has an eight month old little boy and I hear they just loved the room when they saw it for the first time!

There was so much time and effort put into this room and I felt so lucky to be able to provide my daughter with a gorgeous room that was all hers. She has enjoyed many hours of playing, reading and sleeping in this room. We have shared some late nights with Olivia in this room when she wasn't feeling well or would wake up in the middle of the night upset. We have spent many hours sitting in the rocking chair reading numerous books to her. We have had lots of fun rolling around on the floor and playing in her little "fantasy land" of a bedroom. I am not sure how she will react the first night she has to sleep in a new room that is MUCH larger than she is used to and just does not feel like "home" yet. I am prepared for a middle of the night freak-out. No fear, Olivia's godmother already has amazing ideas for her new bedroom and I am so anxious to see them come to life. In fact Olivia's bedroom will probably be one of the first rooms we focus on in the new house.

With only a short time remaining for Olivia to enjoy her beautiful bedroom I decided to take some pictures of her in her most comfortable space. I thought it would be nice to be able to show her what was created for her one day, since she will probably never remember what her room looked like. Oh, that makes me so sad.

This past Sunday we were hanging out with Olivia in her room while she played and she decided to sing us a few songs. I quickly grabbed my camera and tried to catch some of it on video. She starts off by singing one of her favorites, "Itsy-Bitsy Spider", but towards they end she switches gears and starts singing something that I am not familiar with. It is probably one of the many songs she sings at school that I do not know. It is great memories like these that we will take with us...

So thank you, Korrie for making Olivia' s first bedroom so special and memorable! I am looking forward to seeing what you create for her next. I am sure it will, once again, be something special that she will be able to enjoy for many years to come.

We did find some time to do some fun things as a family this past weekend. On Sunday we attended the opening festival of our neighborhood pumpkin patch. We took Olivia to the pumpkin patch last year and had fun picking out a few small pumpkins. We thought we would make it a tradition and allow her to pick out a few more this year too. I wanted her to be able to choose from pumpkins that were more her size. They have cute little names for the smaller pumpkins too, calling them "spookies" and "wee-be-little" pumpkins. Olivia was all about picking out a few "spookies" for herself. They even gave us some stickers to take home so that Olivia could decorate her pumpkins with funny faces.

They had pumpkins of all sizes at the patch and she was quite fascinated with the big ones. I was amazed at the size of some of them, but the bigger they were the less round and perfect they were too. Olivia was much happier with her small, perfectly round little pumpkins.

After buying our spookies we walked around the festival and enjoyed the beautiful day. I wanted to snap as many pictures outdoors as possible since I know these nice days will be ending soon. Later that afternoon we downtown to Headwaters Park to enjoy the Sunday in the Park with Jazz event hosted by NIPR, a local radio station. We went last year and relaxed in the park while listening to some nice music and we thought we would check it out again this year. We had a nice time and Olivia was thrilled to find a drawing table sponsored by the Fort Wayne Museum of Art. We mainly just relaxed in the shade and enjoyed the nice weather. My Mom came along with us and her friend Cindy joined us as well. Some of the music was really nice and I just love how Olivia looks like she is really "feeling" the music in this picture...

It was a really nice day and I am so glad we were able to take part in these fun local events. Now it is crunch time. We have a busy weekend ahead with tons of packing to do. I am waiting until the last minute to start tearing apart Olivia's room. We have told her that we are moving and when I ask her what color she wants her new room to be she starts naming every color she knows. For now we are going to enjoy the final days in our house and get ready to start the next chapter in our new house! Chances are I won't be blogging again before the move so it may be awhile before you hear from me again. Stay tuned, I promise to update as soon as I can!