The past year and a half since our last post have certainly brought about much change. We hope you will forgive our gap in posts, but a brief summary of the time will perhaps explain some of our negligence. Ben's firm closed their Pawley's office at the end of July due to COVID slow down with projects. After a search around the region, he secured a position with McMillan Pazdan Smith in Greenville, SC. Johanna's firm has an office there, so she was able to transfer.
The need to sell our house in Pawleys set off a mad dash to finish our lingering renovation project. In the span of just a few months, we were able to finish the exterior of the house, finish the kitchen addition, completely gut and remodel the master bathroom, replace the upstairs flooring, and build the second floor deck. By November we were ready to list the house and as expected it sold within the first week. We were quite proud of the final result and really hated leaving our modern Pawleys house.
After a few visits to Greenville, we were able to find a wonderful house in a neighborhood that is super kid friendly. This was one of our main requirements, along with 4 bedrooms (spoiler alert for later in this post). As soon as Christmas was over, the final push for packing began. We ended up closing our Pawleys house in the morning and drove to Greenville to close on our new house that afternoon.
In our first month in Greenville, Jackson was able to experience his first snow. He thought it was tons of fun, until some snow got down his jacket. Then it was too cold and time to head inside for hot chocolate!
We made a trip to Kentucky in February to pick up Ben's Maker's Mark bottles from his bachelor party trip in 2013. The rest of the spring was spent unpacking, exploring Greenville, and watching Jackson grow into an amazing little toddler. Both of our jobs have been extremely busy all year. Clients are catching up from the pause in 2020. In May, we went to the PGA Championship in Kiawah with Tony, Brian, and Katie.
Phil!
In July we took our first big family vacation to Gatlinburg. We had an action packed week and Jackson still talks about our trip.
In August, Jackson turned three with an awesome pool party. He is growing up so fast and his personality is full of laughter and empathy. For Halloween he was Cat Boy from PJ Mask and Ben was the villain, Romeo. We also took Jackson to his first Clemson game, or as he calls it the "Go Tigers game." He had a ton of fun and still talks about it all the time. Looks like we have a future Tiger on our hands!
Even with all the fun, the biggest event this fall was preparing for the arrival of baby #2. We converted the fourth bedroom into a beautiful nursery and mentally prepared Jackson for having a little sister. He was incredibly sweet during the whole pregnancy and would always ask how baby Hollis was doing inside mommy.
Hollis arrived promptly on schedule on Dec 24th, which made Christmas quite special and different this year. We even had Santa delay coming for a day, so we could all be home with Jackson for "Christmas" morning. She has been a very chill baby and Jackson has been a gentle big brother. It was quite special closing out what has been an incredibly busy, stressful, chaotic year by completing our sweet family of four.
Stay tune for hopefully more frequent post of our adventures in 2022!
