Monday, June 30, 2008

Movin On Down


This was taken just before we left the house as a family for the last time.

As exhaustion swept over me today, I promised myself I would be in bed by this time tonight. But I couldn't get you blog checkers out of my mind. I imagined you daily checking for any sign of a Dixon update and couldn't bear to let you down yet again so I am pressing on until I feel you have been sufficiently informed of our current status.

Last week we said goodbye to our friends and our home in Cookeville to embark on a new chapter in the life of our family. While we will miss our friends dearly, we were also excited about this new beginning and happy to finally be making the move. Naturally a few tears were shed, but we couldn't be more confident that Tuscaloosa is where God wants us to be right now. There is much joy in that confidence. We moved into our new home on Saturday. Needless to say there has been and still is ALOT of work to do just to get organized and settled. Thankfully, we had the good sense not to buy a "fixer upper" as we have in the past. So, Duane won't get to show the people of Tuscaloosa his mad skills at home remodeling, but he did paint a castle in Noah's room (it's going to be a Narnia room - his new obsession). We love our house and our neighborhood, but most importantly the people at the church have been very nice and welcoming. We've been invited to eat with 3 different families already. The kids are doing great (with the move that is - general attitudes could stand some improvement :)! ) Sophia will be crawling very soon and says dada WAY more than she says mama, which I think is one of the more serious injustices in our world today. I will try to keep up with my posts better once I have my own computer set up and don't want to cry everytime I walk into the office, which has caught most of the junk we don't know what to do with yet. Sorry for the long post, but moving to another state IS kindof a big deal.


Some picture from our "goodbye" parties.



Our new house! You'll be waiting a while for pics of the inside. :)

Sophia finally grabbed a sword and started defending herself! Go girl.

Today was actually Duane's first day of work. This is his "first day of work" picture.

And this little sunshine just makes me smile.

Monday, June 02, 2008

We returned Saturday from our vacation in Charleston, SC. Thanks to Grandy and Nana for treating us to another fun week! We got to spend time with lots of family and had many fun times. The week had a few bumps here and there, but we won't talk about those :). We like to focus on the positive (atleast on the blog). Here are too many pictures from the week. Couldn't narrow it down!



Givers of the trip and lots of great memories - Nana and Grandy.



My handsome first born.




The Petty Fam.



Noah and the Mountain Man.



Sweet NaNa.


My Micah.



Houston and Bennett. Sarah is the only one who escaped my camera.




Aunt Karen and B.



My girl.


Me and my girl.




Me and my man.


Me and my sis.


Grandy and Micah.


It takes a real man to strap on a baby at the beach.

Sophia flew her first kite.



The guys went deep sea fishing. Noah went deep sea puking.