Philip, Jen and Peyton's Pages

New job, new hobby

Its been a while since we have updated the blog. Jen, Peyton and I are still settling into the new house. As spring has come around, we did something we’ve never done before. We turned off the heat and air conditioning. The house, because of how its built, is near steady temperature during this time of year and so we occasionally open a window to cool things down, but for the most part, the house is feeling great. We are also spending a lot of time on our screened back porch and talking. We have cut off the TV and we’re spending time in conversation and I am really enjoying that.

A little over a month ago, Jen began a new job at Coastal Carolina University (our alma mater) as their Sustainability Coordinator. She’s settling into her new opportunity and its going great. She has a lot of supportive students and staff and that’s making the work enjoyable. It is keeping her busy and there is a lot to do around campus building upon the success of her predecessor.

And last week, Peyton began gymnastics classes on Wednesday evenings. She’s so super excited about it and wants to show us both all that she has learned after class. Jen took her last week and she’s asked me to come this week so that we can both watch. She really really enjoys it and it was her choice of what to do. We will try to post some photos and video of her in coming weeks.

But things are doing pretty well in the Sellers house. More to come soon.

2010 year in review

** I started writing this in December, but I never was able to bring myself to finish this entry. 2010 was a tough year. 2011 is a fresh year and as sad as it is to move on from some things, its truly a fresh start in many ways. — March 21, 2011 **

2010 is going to be remembered as very tough year.  There were personal highs and very deep lows this year in our lives.  This year will be the year of a new beginning with our house.  We celebrated the house with some close friends on Saturday night to celebrate and thank them all for their support, love and help along the way as we have gone through the process of building.  Without them, we couldn’t have completed the build.  And that was a large, very good night for us to celebrate. It represents a big milestone in our lives. As part of that night, we asked each of them to bring a photo for our family and friends wall. Its one of the final touches we are adding to our house. We purchased a “tree of life” metal wall sculpture made by a local artist as the focal point of that wall and we are surrounding the tree with photos of all the people who are most special to us. The photos we adding at the party were just the beginning as we have lots more people to add to our wall. These strong relationships are so valued and needed for us to be healthy and their support in the last year has helped us pull through some difficult times.
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House completed, and we’ve moved

What a busy month it has been.  Our house was completed on October 30 and we received our certificate of occupancy.  The next day, we celebrated Peyton’s birthday and we were able to show the house off to Jen’s parents who came into town for the birthday celebration.

After receiving the certificate of occupancy, we still had a few minor things to be completed in the house – trim paining and the such – but all the major construction was completed.

We moved in the following week and although we planned to move furniture and rent a truck on Saturday, with the help of some of our fantastic friends, we were able to move in the last furniture late on Friday night.  My cousin Brett, his wife Trina, and our friends Annie, Madelyn and Russell all were huge helps in moving us in so quickly, as well as unboxing when we got to the new house.  My mom and dad came in on Friday during the day and helped unbox and move some of the bigger furniture, too.

Saturday night, we enjoyed a fantastic dinner welcoming us to the neighborhood.  Our neighbor and friend Kendall fixed prime rib on the grill.  Tammy and Kendall hosted all of us so that we could meet our neighbors and celebrate our new house.  Tammy also prayed for and asked for blessing over our new home.  Afterwards, we gave a tour to my cousin Amanda and her boyfriend Justin – and they helped us unpack some more afterwards.

Peyton is really enjoying her new room.  She loves sleeping in there — and a bad habit she developed in the rental house has disappeared.  A lot of nights in the rental, she would come into our room during the night – around 3am – but that hasn’t happened once in the new house.  She loves her room and is really comfortable in it.

I’ll be posting some new photos soon of the completed house.

Peyton is now four years old!

Our little girl has turned 4 years old!  We are so blessed and she is a wonderful kid.  She is smart and crafty.  We celebrated her special day on her birthday at Thompson Farm in Conway.  Thompson Farm is a wonderful place and the kids had a great time.  We enjoyed a hayride and played games all over the farm.

A difficult couple of weeks

Its been a difficult couple of weeks personally and this is a very difficult post to write, but I know many of Jen’s extended family catch up with us here, so I wanted to let everyone know what is going on.

A little over two weeks ago, my Granny was put into the hospital due to nausea and vomiting.  She was diagnosed with a blockage in her small intestines and she stayed in the hospital for almost two weeks while they pumped her stomach and gave her IV fluids in hopes that the blockage would correct itself.  Late last week, they decided that the blockage was not going to reverse itself on its own and so that only left surgery as the last resort.  Unfortunately, she was not strong enough for surgery.

The family made the decision to bring in Hospice care and bring her home to live her last days.  While she’s still with us, she is not herself at this point and she had deteriorated fast over the past 5 days.  She is not receiving any nourishment at this time.  She has been constantly surrounded by her children and their spouses, grandchildren, extended-family and friends during this time.  Everyone has tried to make her comfortable and say goodbye.  This is an incredibly difficult time for me and all the family.  Please keep us in your prayers.

Easter update

We celebrated Easter at the beach last weekend and Peyton enjoyed breakfast with the Easter bunny at Market Common.  We ate at Travinia’s for breakfast and Peyton got to meet and have her picture made with the Easter bunny.  After lunch, we all gathered in Valor Park for an Easter egg hunt.  It was funny, because, the eggs were certainly not hidden.  There were thousands of eggs spread all over the lawn and in bushes.  The kids had a great time collecting eggs.  On Sunday, we went to church and then drove to my Grandma Hancock’s house to have lunch with family.  The kids got to hunt eggs again and Peyton had a blast playing with all her cousins.