It's Official...

We found a house and we named our baby.


We looked at many, many houses. Probably too many. After seeing what we could get new in our price range, looking at used houses {{and the fiasco of the last one}} just made them seem dingy and too much work. New it is. For whatever reason the amount of building that is happening in this part of the world has not slowed down at all and we had many to choose from. The one we chose had some particular incentives that made it hard to turn down and ultimately they helped us make our house buying decision. J likened the whole process to buying a new car. You go to a dealer tell them what you want, they walk you around a hot parking lot all day looking at the different models, and then when you find one you may be interested in, they sweeten the deal with incentives to get you to buy one way or the other. And just like with buying a car, they worked. Here is the new Casa.



Perfectly located 20 minutes north of post, this little beauty is going to give us 2400 square feet of living space that does not include an awesome screened-in porch with an attached deck. The kitchen has gorgeous cabinets {{lots & lots of cabinets!}} with dark granite counter tops and a cute little space at the island for some stools. There is a ton of closet and storage space {{good for any girl trying to run a business our of her house}} which I'm not even sure we can fill at this point in time. There's one closet off the kitchen I didn't think we would even use, but I'm thinking it is going to be a great place to put a wine rack - a BIG one{{I'll be storing up for the impending birth and inevitable deployment that will leave me with 2 two years apart}}. J got his man-room. A nice large bonus area that will be a nice place for video games. Also, one of the best parts for me, is there is an office space off of the bonus room that can be shut off by these great french doors. That way when I'm doing businessy things it can be quiet & private {{ha! I'll let you know how that works out}} and when people come over I can hide my {{messy}}desk by shutting the doors. It's a wonderful thing folks.

Speaking of the impending birth of our second child, we finally picked a name. {{yay!}} I feel like a better parent, as why should you have children if you can't even name them? Having thought I'd never be the parent to anything but one of each {{I mean, I put my order in folks}}, I just assumed we wouldn't have to pick another girls name. Jokes on me. IT'S A GIRL. Some day I will write about all this so it makes sense, but for now, just know we are very happy to have another princess in the house. Any who, Bug's name was really the ONLY girl name we liked when we had her. Actually, we liked the name Maille. Which is the traditional Scottish version of Miley. And after 10 people asked us with straight faces if we were honestly naming our kid after that annoying one on the T.V., we decided to go a different route. Now Bug is named after her Grandma. A much better and more suitable name for her. It fits her. So we find out Baby 2.0 is a girl and that starts a whole mess of name searching, database reading, website checking. You know, the norm for naming your off-spring. I wanted her to have a family name since her sister does but quite a few of our family names are very antiquated {{I'm not naming 2.0 Wilma, Ethel, or anything else of the sort and that's just that}}. I did like one family name from J's side but much of the family was unanimous that she wasn't a person to be named after. Unfortunately, the databases, websites and search engines didn't help us out either. We found one name {{ONE NAME}} in three different websites we both thought was OK. You can't name a child a name you feel is *just* ok. Every name I liked, he hated or rhymed with something awful and in turn I would do it to his favorites. We are a loving couple.

I kept going back to the one family name. I really loved the name. {{And don't tell my husband but I've been calling her it since we found out she was a girl.}} After weeks of, "How about _____ {{fill in the blank with any weird name you may see or hear on the radio or while driving}}" I finally wore him down and got my way. Baby 2.0 will be named Lyla Renelle. A name I love and a middle name that was J's grandma's. Unfortunately for her, we are the nick-namey kind of parents and 2.0 will probably stick with her the rest of her life...

At least it will here, anyway.