Well, lookee here!

In the movie Horton Hears a Who, the Who's have to chant "We are here, we are here, we are here, we are here!" in order for Horton's friends to hear them and believe they exist. I'm hoping that this blogpost will serve as our "we are here" chant and you will no longer doubt our existence. WE ARE HERE. I actually sat down last week and started updating on our life here, but never got finished. So, here we go again.
We're all moved in and are continually grateful to our church family for helping us. We had a great group of guys from church show up to help us complete with trucks and vans and things like that (one with a lift which I know helped avoid many sore backs!) and they had us out of the old and into the new in 3 hours time. Now, if only I could have unpacked so quickly. I am making progress in the unpacking arena and each day a few more things get put away and more floor space is revealed. I had hoped to have a little more done by now, but with being quite pregnant, trying to continue with homeschooling, and attempting to keep 3 little people and 2 big people fed and in clean clothes, it's taking a little longer. But, I assure myself that progress is being made. And my ladies from church tell me that as long as we can eat and have clean clothes to ear, all is well. I think we're really going to enjoy having so much more space and I'm definitely growing accustomed to the stairs (we have 25 all together!). I'm learning to make the most of trips up and down and accomplish all I can at one time while on a certain level. It's sort of like being VERY pregnant and getting down on the floor to get something out of a cabinet and trying to figure out what else can be done while down so low. On this, I definitely speak from personal experience!
On Tuesday, we celebrated Abby's first birthday. It's hard to believe that a whole year has already gone by. What a precious little blessing she is to our family; it's hard to remember what we were like without her. She is growing like a weed, eats EVERYTHING we put in front of her, and babbles all the time. She's still not walking yet, but has taken a couple of steps since we've been here. She just doesn't see quite confident enough to do much beyond that. She has adjusted quite well to the new place and has actually only gotten up one time early in the morning for a bottle in the 3 weeks. She weaned herself from the bottle with no aid from me and has made my life much easier by doing so. She seems to have an affinity for finding crayons that the girls leave here and there and I'm never shocked to see that she has a bit of wax crumb on her chin or teeth. Makes me very grateful for the "non-toxic" part of Crayola!
Sarah Grace and Lainey love being over here and are up and down the stairs several times an hour! They love all the nooks and crannies we have for storage and have declared our walk-in closet as their house.
Tomorrow we shall be having a birthday party for Abs with a few friends from church. The house isn't completely as it should be, but it's presentable (or at least will be by tomorrow afternoon) and I know that these are the kinds of friends who will be okay with the fact that not everything is in quite the right place. Give people cake and they'll overlook most anything!
I shall try to be more faithful in my blogging henceforth and shall try to come up with funny things Lainey and Sarah Grace have said since we arrived here. There have been some good ones; I'll just have to jog my memory for what they were!