Parade of Homes

David and I love going to the parade of homes. It's fun to be together, to see beautiful things, to talk about what we like and don't like and make plans for a future dream home. This year I surprised David with ticket's for Father's Day. (And by surprised, I mean he said "maybe you should get me tickets for fathers day" so I bought us tickets sent him a "happy early father's day" text, then still bought him a different present for Father's Day. It's called budget manipulation, people.)

Regardless of how we came by the tickets, I'm so glad we went this year. We set up a couple of babysitters, and went several times over the course of the two weeks. A couple of times we even braved going with all three of our kids and it was much more successful than I thought it was going to be. We even convinced Amy to come with us one evening. (I don't have pictures of Amy or the kids, which is too bad.) Caleb was our constant little tag-a-long and he was SO good. I just wore him in the carrier and he rarely cried and was pretty good at getting in and out of the carseat without much fuss.

(One of our Parade of Homes dates took a detour so we could do a little car shopping, too. Caleb is seriously the best little baby. He didn't make a peep the whole time. Also, car shopping is not nearly as fun as it should be.) 

My two favorite houses were both remodels. The first was a 1989 Parade of Homes winner, and they went through and modernized everything into 2017 standards and at every turn I was in awe with how much I loved everything about it. The master bedroom had a stairway and loft in the room and it was incredible. (My neighbors growing up, the Cote's, had something similar in their master bedroom but it was a smaller loft with a metal circular staircase and I thought that it was SO neat. I'd love something like that someday if I could fit it into my "dream" house. The second house was a home that a family had purchased with the intention to flip, but then fell in love with and updated it with their family of eight boys in mind. There was a slide hidden behind the entertainment center, a lego-loft area, pathways between rooms, and a gorgeous play area in the basement. I loved how they were able to fit so much fun stuff into their space. Both houses used their space so well and so creatively. It was fun to see ideas of things that we could implement into a future home without having to make it be a HUGE house. If you can be creative - you can make your house really special. It's fun to dream big with David and talk to each other about the things we'd love in a future dream home.  

Parade of Homes 2014

This year for Mother's Day, we got my mom and I tickets to the parade of homes. She had mentioned wanting to go, and I just wanted to spend time with her. So we figured it was the perfect gift for this year. I'm so glad that we did because we had such a good time! My mom came down last week to stay for several days and we hit up the Parade of Homes for a couple of hours each afternoon. (Let me tell you, this pregnant lady was ex.haust.ed by the end of it.) It was fun to walk through some of the giant, completely unrealistic houses, as well as seeing the designs in some of the smaller, simililar-to-our-square-footage homes. Mostly, we just loved spending time with Grandma. Here are some pictures (I had some more on my phone but, due to an unfortunate incident with a pool bag - those pictures are inaccessible). 

 Oh, and yes, I had a hard time keeping Lydia out of the roped off zones in most of the houses. There were just so many fun things to see, and she just fit so well underneath the ropes. Luckily she's well behaved and just liked to look at things - not destroy the pretty staging. The only exception in her "innocent rope dodging" was when she slipped into a small nook/passageway and I couldn't see where it went. We were in a particularly open house, with lots of levels and ledges, and we were at the very top/attic area. When she didn't come back when I called, I started having visions of her falling three stories and breaking all the bones in her body. Panicked, I called for my mom who was one room over and contorted my pregnant body through the tiny passageway to get her. It was ridiculous and my heart was beating a million beats a minute. We later saw that the passageway really did lead to an overhang over the living area with a little rock wall thing that climbed up to it. It's such a blessing that she didn't start trying to climb/jump down. I held her hand a little tighter after that, but even thinking about going back to that house makes me uneasy. Moral of the story: obey the rules!

Again, we had such a good time and we are so glad that we got to go see all the pretty houses with my mom (as well as go out to lunch, and spend several days with her). I think that we would definitely get tickets again!