It's a....

Ya'll ready for this?

Baby Richards is giving you the most adorable little fist pump of joy, because we found out today that this little bug is a...

BOY!!!

It's kind of what we had been thinking all along, and what most people had guessed, but it was still exciting to get the confirmation! We're both beyond happy, and can't wait to see him and meet him. There was just something weird in the back of my head thinking that I was more comfortable having a boy first, plus I'm pretty terrified at the idea of raising a daughter. We were just a little relived to hear the word BOY :) Regardless, bug is healthy and seems very happy in his temporary home! We watched in awe as he wiggled back and forth and stretched his legs out and back over and over. The ultrasound tech spent a really long time measuring everything and showing us every detail of his body. We got to look all down the spine, at the kidneys and bladder and I swear I could have watched his little heart beat forever! We didn't ask for this or know she was going to, but before we left she also showed us some 3D images. They're still pretty weird to me, but so fun to get an idea of what he might look like! I'm not going to post all of those, but if you're curious I'd be happy to share. 

Thanks for all your excitement friends! This little boy is already more loved than he could know!

A Welcomed Addition

The rumors are true! We have added another member to the Richards' family.

No. Not a baby, or a pet. A new car!! Well... not a new car, a 'new to us' car which means we are officially a two car family. I never thought this day would come! For me personally this means SO MUCH. No more bumming rides off of friends, no more feeling stranded at home and no more having to drop Keith at work if I want to get around. I made this joke earlier and Keith wasn't such a fan, but I AM A FREE WOMAN! Having two cars is spreading our budget a bit thin, nothing beyond our means, but the benefits outweigh that by far. My collection of Mariah Carey cds have already been moved into our previously shared car, Marty and I am basking in the freedom that comes with having my own car. I feel like I'm 16 and just got my license (except I didn't get my license until I was 18 and I don't even really like to drive haha)

So here are the details: we are now the proud owners of a 2003 Silver Honda Element. When we started researching used cars in our price range we fell in love with the Element partly because we wanted to stick with a Honda, and partly because we just think they're cool. We shopped around a lot, went to drive one on Saturday afternoon, but sadly left empty handed. We had told ourselves that a good deal was going to come along in time, and we still had some breathing room to find something before we got desperate. It all starts to get a little crazy when at 5pm on Sunday evening Keith pulls up something right on point with what we're looking for AND it was at a Carmax a few miles from our house. We made a call, got pre-approved for financing, went to the dealership, test drove the car, quietly pondered between the two of us, and left with a car. CRAZY! I still can hardly believe it haha Not really what we had planned for our Sunday evening :) We still have until Friday to make sure that we're happy with our decision, but for a second car that will just be used around the city, we couldn't think of anything much better.

The Element will now be Keith's car, but we still need some help naming him (we're a little weird about solely referring to our car by its name haha). Please send in your ideas! He's kind of an older gentleman of a car, but is definitely still sporty and fun... we're at a loss (Keith wasn't a fan of calling him The Silver Fox, boo)

And of course, some photos....

This is the moment they handed us the keys and said we could keep it.

Rolling out of the lot

He loves it. 

We did a little photo shoot in celebration, but since I don't have a camera anymore we had to do it with the computer... please excuse the quality, but enjoy our enthusiasm haha

Theo did not want to be in this family photo.

We love our new addition, even though I feel like it hasn't really hit me yet that he's ours to keep. Man. TWO CARS! It seems so normal to most people, but Keith and I have always shared a car as long as we've been together. Welcome to a new era in the Richards' family :)

Our Big Move!

It still hasn't quite hit me yet that we actually LIVE in Nashville, we're not just visiting this time, we permanently live here haha. Our Philadelphia apartment no longer belongs to us, and it will never be our home again. Such craziness! Our life is so crazy right now, but I'm so content to just sit back and see where all this change is taking us.

So naturally I want to give everyone a little bit more background on our decision to move, because it wasn't as much of a random selection as it may seem. As you may know, after our wedding I made the tough choice not to return to my graduate school program. Since that point I had been searching for jobs with absolutely no positive response to speak of. It was very frustrating and discouraging, but Keith and I knew that eventually something bigger and better must be coming my way. We had very seriously talked about moving out of Philadelphia because we felt it was pretty void of job opportunities and we never felt like the city really "clicked" with us. After our trip to New York in October Keith and I chose 3 cities that we were interested in moving to, which were Boston, New York, and Nashville. I had a possible job connection in each of these cities so when we got home I sent out messages to 3 people and only got a response from one of them. Sign number one. It was our friend Jamie here in Nashville and she reached out to me with a whole list of after school programs in the area (something that I was really interested in pursuing) and with all kinds of helpful advice. I sent emails to the HR departments of all the places she suggested and heard back almost immediately from one of them. It seemed like such a miracle to even hear back from a potential employer after months of nothing and it felt even better to find out that they wanted to offer me a job on the spot. Obviously we couldn't just jump without a few more things falling in line, but we used that job offer as a motivator to pursue a potential move. Slowly but surely things started to come together, like Keith finding out he would be able to transfer his job with American Eagle, and our friends Tytus and Jamie offering to let us stay with them for a month or so until we got settled. The last of the puzzle pieces that needed to fit together was finding a new tenant to move into our apartment. We were pretty nervous about it because it decided whether or not we would be able to get our security deposit and last months rent back (which we needed to be able to move). We put up an add on craigslist and within a couple hours we had lined up around 15 people to come and view the place. It was SO COOL! We had about 4 people that were absolutely serious about moving in and while we were in Florida our landlord had chosen someone to move it. It was SUCH a blessing, and definitely made us feel like moving was something we were meant to do. Nashville is just a place that we have such a large community of friends which is something we were really looking for in the next place that we moved. The Northeast was not kind to us... like literally, the people there were kind of mean haha. Keith was born and raised in the south and has a huge list of reasons that he's excited to be back here (like being able to drink sweet tea where ever he wants haha). I'm still impressed that we haven't lived here for more than a day and everywhere I go someone holds the door for me and calls me ma'am.

Ok, so I haven't mentioned what I'm exactly going to be doing here in Nashville that was big enough for us to move a thousand miles for haha. I'm going to be working full time at an after school center here in town as a teacher. I'm going to have a group of 10 kids that I'll see every afternoon, and I'll be spending the beginning part of my day meeting with their teachers at school and their parents to get to know them and work to come up with the best plan for success. I'm excited to get to be part of a community, and to feel like I'm contributing positively to that community. This is also a great opportunity because the organization will begin paying the interest on my student loans as well as giving me a large educational credit that I plan on using to get my teaching certification. All good things! Wish us luck, because Keith and I both start our jobs on Monday morning! I'll surely keep everyone updated on how it goes :)

Here are some photos from our move:

Our boxed up Philly home

Empty

Our last night

My faithful driver

My passenger seat companion and road trip champion

14 hours on the road. Ugh.

Marty!

Headed home :)

Who knows where life will lead us from here, but after the very stressful experience of making this move Keith and I both agreed that we would like to stay here for at least the next 5 years. Moving is the worst of the worst, lowest on my list of things I don't enjoy, but we're happy to be here and happy that it's all over and behind us. Now we just need to search for a home, and settle ourselves here in the great state of Tennessee.

I love our life right now :)

Florida Surprise

So obviously everyone knows by now that we went to Florida for a surprise visit last week. It was such a great vacation, and a little rest time before the craziness of our move began. It felt so great to be able to surprise our family and friends who were very appreciative of our visit.

So we arrived on Thursday afternoon, later than anticipated, and Janelle picked us up at the airport. The first person we planned on surprising was my aunt Kathleen so we headed to her house speedily and found ourselves some beers so we could hang out on her patio and wait for her to come home. We had her dog out back with us, so when she came in the house she was really weirded out the the dog hadn't greeted her. She finally saw Maycee sitting out back and got mad at my cousin Jack because she assumed he had left her out all day long haha but when she walked to open up the door she saw us sitting there waiting for her :) Her reaction was priceless and it was the beginning of an awesome night. After we got all our hellos and ohmygosh's out of the way we headed down to my parents house to surprise my mother. We had thought she would have been home by then, but when we pulled in the driveway she pulled in just after us so Kathleen yelled for us to get our heads down so mom wouldn't see. Kathleen went out and distracted her and then we casually got out of the car. Again, SO surprised and so excited. I'm really starting to enjoy surprising people haha. We all headed over to my dads restaurant to continue the surprise train and when he saw us come in he hardly had any words besides "what are you doing here?" with a terribly confused face. We enjoyed a great dinner together and laughed about the craziness of us just randomly showing up.

Friday Keith and I met Kathleen for lunch at Moes (our favorite) and then we went to Rocco's Tacos (our other favorite) that night to celebrate Kathleen's upcoming birthday (mmmm margaritas). Saturday we went to Jack's basketball game and then had wings and beers at Bru's Room for lunch. Sooooo good! I hardly ever eat chicken wings, and it's because I really only like wings from Bru's Room haha

Sunday while everyone was watching football, I headed down to Ft. Lauderdale to see Janelle's new apartment and to have some lunch with her. It was really really good :)

On Saturday and Sunday nights we were able to catch up with the few friends that we have remaining in Florida and got a chance to go to our favorite local pub. I love our Florida friends. Such genuine people, it doesn't happen very often that you can find a group of such awesome people.

As you can probably tell, I didn't take too many pictures while we were in town haha. I was a lot more focused on just relaxing and being intentional about spending quality time with family and friends. To finish up our trip, Monday Keith and I went on an eating marathon haha. We had a delicious breakfast with friends Erick and Catie, had lunch at my dad's restaurant, and then went to dinner at our favorite mexican restaurant with my parents. We felt like such piggies when we went to sleep that night haha. Unfortunately we had to wake up at 4:30 Tuesday morning to get back to Philly.... but that's another story haha Good times, great people... I love Florida :)

GUESS WHAT!

I've been waiting to tell everyone this for QUITE SOME TIME. I'm the worst at keeping secrets, but Keith made me promise with this one.

We have some very very awesome news to share with you guys, something that you'll hardly believe because I've been so good at secret keeping :)

WE MOVED TO NASHVILLE!!! Yeah, like packed up all our things in a U-Haul and moved 800 miles to the south without telling anyone except our families and some close friends back in Philadelphia. I know... it still hasn't really hit me yet haha. We're on a really exciting new adventure and I'm so glad that we can talk about with everyone now.

I got offered a job about a month ago in Nashville, and after thinking and talking it over, Keith and I decided we just needed to take a leap of faith and go for it. He transfered his American Eagle job for the time being and we're staying with our friends Tytus and Jamie so we have a little time to look for a place. CRAZY CRAZY CRAZINESS!!

All of this happened in just a couple weeks! I found out about the job, confirmed it with them within a week, and we both gave our two weeks notice right after. We silently packed up all our things and found a new tenant for our apartment. Then on Thursday the 11th we packed all our things into a U-Haul, said goodbye to our friends here and got on the road in the AM. This was one of the craziest weeks of our lives ! Keith and I are both more tired than we've ever been before, but it was all worth it. It was SO hard not to let this one slip, but the looks on our Nashville friends' faces when we walked in the door was priceless.

Can't wait to share pictures from our roadtrip, and keep everyone updated on our new life adventure in the South! We couldn't be more excited to be a little bit closer to family and friends and to be in a place with lots of opportunities for both of us. (I'm also happy for a much milder winter haha). I promise that we don't have any other major secrets coming up haha

Dear Philly: We're going to miss you so much! We're going to miss our best friends, our church, our favorite restaurants, and our adorable little apartment. Philly was our first home together, our first time truly on our own, making it work just Keith and I. This past year was a tough one with lots of ups and downs, but we learned SO much! and Philadelphia will always hold a special place in our hearts. We can't wait to come and visit again soon! Thanks so much for having us :)

Edit: Feel free to ask any questions you may have in the comments, and I would love to answer them for you!

BRB

Keith and I are in Florida until Tuesday, SURPRISE! We booked flights in early September because we knew we wanted to visit family since we can't come home for Thanksgiving or Christmas. My wonderful husband just thought it would be fun not to tell anyone, and make it a big surprise. I'm TERRIBLE at keeping secrets because they just make me so excited and I can't tell you how many times I almost blew it! Seeing the look on my parents and my aunts faces when we popped up out of nowhere made it all worth it though. As a precaution not the blow the whole thing, we really told no one, SO! if you're reading this, and you're one of my friends who still lives in Florida, we should hang out!!! We have no plans other than to relax and enjoy some vacation :-)

Halloween!

Hope everyone is having a fabulous holiday! Keith is working all day, but we have plans to dress up and go to Dan and Aly's house to pass out candy to trick-or-treaters this evening... can't wait! Any holiday that encourages the consumption of free candy is a-ok with me haha

Last night Keith and I watched a scary movie and had some beers, which seems to be our new little Halloween ritual (such party animals, I know).  I love watching scary movies and love having an excuse to rent one.

Here is a cute photo I wanted to share, just a little blast from the past. I wish that I could raid my mothers photo albums for some more Halloween gems, but this is the only one that I have here with me. I'm not positive how old Jake and I are, I'm guessing maybe 5th grade and 3rd grade? but here with are with our good friend Olivia and her parents Perry and Bev. Jake is some kind of pirate, and I'm dressed up as Amelia Bedelia, one of my favorite story book characters at the time. We were all about the homemade costumes at our house, and my mom usually did a really awesome job of sewing/creating for us (one year she made me a sweet mermaid costume, gotta find a picture of that!)

Halloween obviously signals the end of the month of October, and we CANNOT wait for all that November will bring. We've definitely got some tricks up our sleeves :) Have an awesome Halloween!