Easter

We had a busy Easter this year. The day before Easter was full of lots of moving things. I got up and left our house at about 8:30 to drive to my mom's house to pick up her truck, and some shelves that we were getting from her. I went straight to the new house, and unloaded the shelves (all taken apart) and waited for Jesse and his dad to arrive with some things from the old house, as well as our washing machine. While waiting for things to happen that day I was taping the trim.
After they got here with the washing machine, we went down to VA to pick up some bunk beds that we bought from someone in my in-laws' ward.
Then we came back up, and put the bunk beds together, and I got us some lunch from the local deli. All this time Cammi had the kids up in Frederick. She had taken them to the zoo, and then back home to hang out. After getting the beds back together, Jesse and his dad went back to Frederick to pick up the kids, I once again stayed back and taped. Soon after they got back, Grammy arrived with the cousins. We soon had an egg hunt orchestrated by Aunt Cammi.
The big kids were down in the yard.

The smaller ones up on the deck.

After dinner we went to the local creamery for some dessert. They offered Olivia a free baby cone. It was so cute, and she loved it!

We all enjoyed it, and many were left with ice cream faces.

After that, we headed back up to Frederick, had to stop at Kohl's, and got home at about 9pm. So I was gone the entire day, and I was exhausted.

The next morning was Easter, but we had early church, so the kids got to have a little candy for breakfast, and then we headed off.

That evening we went to my mom's house for dinner. Matt and Melissa joined us. The kids did not want to cooperate for a group picture. This is the only one that I got.

Olivia thought that she'd have a nice pre-dinner treat.

It was a lovely Easter weekend, and nice to be able to spend it with all of our family.

moved

Well, we are now sleeping and spending most of our time in our new house! Yea! Moving day went quite smoothly. We were competing with a youth fund raiser, and Jesse didn't contact the other ward until the last minute, so we didn't have a ton of people come to help us, but those who did come got a great work out, and we got the loading done in a little over an hour, and the unloading done in less time. Once again, so thankful to all of those who have come to serve us in the past month. Aunt Cammi came up to entertain the kids while all of this was going on, so after I supervised the unloading of the truck, I was able to start to unpack a few things. I got most of the upstairs unpacked the first day, but that was easy stuff. I know where I want my clothes- in dressers and closets. I know where I want toiletries- in the bathroom. It's the rest of the house that I'm stumped over. I got the kitchen started last week after I packed it up with my friend Lisa, and today I have gotten most of the rest of it unpacked. There are several rather large scary boxes that I'm avoiding, which were the last to be packed, and just had clutter and mess thrown into them. Yikes! And then there is the pantry problem. Whereas my kitchen is bigger than my old one, the pantry is much smaller, so I need to decide what makes the cut to be upstairs.
We love being here, but there have been a few problems crop up. The washer lines were never tested in the home inspection because there was no washer, so we tried to hook up our washer, and now there is leaking in the basement. Blah. The dishwasher may or may not leak, I have to keep an eye on that. Jesse and his dad took care of a leaky, running toilet, so that is good now, but when you take a shower, water ends up on the outside of the stall, and that is not good. I guess I never thought that on my first day of home ownership things would be so wet. I was hoping that came a little later.
But none the less, we are now living here, and loving it. Still quite a bit of work to be done, and I am waist deep in boxes. (Except for the basement, they are piled up to my neck down there.) Hopefully we'll get settled in in the next month or so, and then I can show you around!

What we do

So we've mostly been packing, and painting and getting us from one house to the other in recent days. But when we are not doing that, here is what we've been up to. Grandad got us an iPad, and the kids love to play on that. This is Graham's tough face, he got a "couch burn" on his eye, and for a while it made him look a bit like a thug.

Nate finally lost the other tooth, and now he's back to being cute.

I get this face from Olivia quite a bit, the bite your lower lip face. Oh, and her brothers taught her that neat trick of climbing up to stand on the ledge.

The boys enjoy playing outside almost every day. That is what they want to do the most, and I've been enjoying time at the new house, and being able to just throw them out into the back yard.

The other day the boys were watching a movie, and had some pillows and blankets out. Whenever that happens, Olivia sits right down, tucks herself in, and makes herself comfortable.

I'm going to start putting a few progress shots of the new house on my other blog. Nothing is quite to the finished stage, but I'm excited with the progress that we've made.

Just like that

And just like that, we are homeowners! Holy Moly!!!! Here are a few pictures from the rest of the house. I will be doing quite a bit of changing, especially when it comes to paint color. I think that painting it is what is going to make it feel like it's actually mine for real, and not just for now. Here is the back. The back yard is fenced in.

Here is the cat door. It'll make it so that the cats can get to their litter boxes in the basement without me having the basement door open.

Dining room. I'm already taking the wall paper down that is under the chair rail.

Large mirror in the living room. That is already down too. Nate cried a lot because we weren't keeping it. It was too big to get out of the room in one piece, so we had to break it. Now we have to work on the wall behind it before we can paint. SO MUCH WORK to do before painting!!! ugh!

One of the bedrooms. This is all going too. Ugly wall paper up there too. Not a high priority though since we don't need all 3 bedrooms right away. This will eventually be Olivia's room.

Master bedroom. Through those doors is the bathroom.

Kitchen. I may leave this for a while since there's not much I can do with it on a budget.

Family room. This only needs to be painted.

So there is our new house! We're very excited to get to work on it, and in the next few weeks I can imagine my mornings being spent at the new house working on painting, etc, and afternoons at the old house packing. It's all real now, and I probably ought to stop living in denial.

One year later

OK, so it's only really 11 months, but here she is, wearing the same dress. This was her Easter dress last year, a size 6-12 month. It finally fits her this year. (In case anyone is counting, she's 21 months.

A missing tooth

Nate lost his third tooth today. It was a bit of an experience. He was drinking, and he swallowed it. It took us a little while to calm him down and explain that nothing bad was going to happen, and that it was very likely that the tooth fairy would come anyway. The only problem now is that his crooked bite, combined with his other loose tooth migrating he looks like a little hill person, with one tooth in the middle of his mouth. Hopefully he'll lose the other tooth sooner rather than later!

3 weeks

Do you remember back in October when I said that we had put an offer in on a house and the owners accepted it? Well, we close in 3 weeks. I know, it's been forever. I was so worried that we had found this house before our 6 month lease had even begun. I was worried that we'd end up with a few months of double housing payments. As it turned out, with several major holidays in the middle there, I had no need to worry. And now all of the sudden it's March. When did that happen? And we close in 3 weeks. Holy moly! I am very much not ready to move. I'm the kind of person who likes to pack like a whole month before I move so that it's not all done at the last minute. The problem is that I don't have a space to put any boxes right now. However, we have over a month after we close before we have to be out of this place, so that will be nice. We still don't know when we are going to start living at the new place, but it will probably be early April. So there you have it. 3 weeks from today, and it all seems so weird.