The Mullinax Family: Settling In

Hey all! Just so you know, we did not fall off the face of the earth when we moved to Oklahoma. I'm sorry it's been very slow going on the blog posts lately. As you can imagine, there are many fun things to do around our new house that are distracting me from writing as faithfully as I should. We LOVE our house! We have progressed from the complete post-moving chaos stage to the organized chaos stage. Though it may seem like a slight improvement, it's an improvement none-the-less. It has been a little difficult committing to a complete moved-in status due to the fact that we have repainted three rooms in the house and are replacing the flooring in the living room, bedrooms, and hall bath. It seemed a little silly to unpack everything only to have to move it all around again to make room for home improvement projects. It has been a test of my patience some days, but it is so exciting to, for the first time, be able to transform a home to fit our tastes. We are really enjoying it, and the house is just great. Great size, great neighbors, great yard. Our whole family is really starting to feel at home.

Robbie and I have spent a lot of time outside on the days we haven't had rain (and there's been a bunch lately!). My vegetable garden is starting to grow - I now have squash, cucumber, and green bean seedlings popping up everywhere. My tomatoes and peppers are also still hanging on...barely. I'm afraid with all the rain we've had I might have to replant some due to overwatering. Robbie took on the difficult task of preparing a pumpkin patch from scratch (and got very sunburned in the process), we've pruned up the existing rose bushes around our house, and I planted some summer bulbs along the front of the fence. Zaylee got a new baby swing for her swing set and LOVES having mommy or daddy push her in the swing or slide her down the slide.

Zaylee is growing in leaps and bounds, and getting cuter every step of the way! Robbie recently submitted her into the annual "Cutest Kid on Tinker" baby contest that is held at the BX on base every spring. She competed in the 0 - 11 month old bracket against about 10 other babies and won first place!! She was adorable when her daddy brought her up on stage. She immediately found mommy in the crowd and gave the whole audience a great big smile. ^_^ She won a bouquet of flowers, a trophy, and a $25 gift card! We were so proud of her, as you can imagine. Here are a few photos from her pageant debut.

She is efficiently crawling everywhere now and loves to create "Zaylee's Fun House" wherever she goes (that's daddy's new term for the mess she loves to make with whatever she can get her hands on). She LOVES paper, unfolded clothes, her kitties, Peyton, musical toys, soft stuffed animals or blankets, and her "paci." Today she also discovered a new love - jumping! A friend from church has a 12 month old son and she let us borrow his jumperoo since he is no longer interested in it. It's a cowboy style "horsey" that neighs and plays music as she jumps. She was going crazy in it, laughing and all! She is always smiling, always talking, and VERY expressive. You can always tell exactly what she's feeling. We love that she has so much energy and personality. You can really tell she's learning quickly these days. I think we might also have a lefty on our hands - she has become quite fond of using her left hand for feeding herself, holding, and grabbing things. We'll just have to see if that habit continues. My dad (who's also left-handed) would joke, "Well, at least she's in her right mind!"

There's so much more I have to tell you all about and pictures I would love to show you, but it's getting late once again so I'll have to do that again another day. Hopefully, this will hold you over for just a little while. ^_^