Wagon Rides and Exciting Toothpaste

We have had beautiful weather here again today and it looks like we will for the rest of the week. I thrive up here in the spring and summer! The sun is up early and goes down late and, when the sun is shining, it's amazing! Seeing as the weather was so nice today, the girls asked if they could go ride their bikes. So, we put everybody in knee pads, elbow pads, helmets, and full body armor (seriously, it takes longer to get them ready to ride bikes than they actually spend riding) and headed outside. I padded our trusty old red Radio Flyer wagon with a blanket and put Abs in that for her first ride outside. She loved it. She loved it so much that the other two forsook their bikes and joined her. At first, it was just Sarah Grace and Abby while Lainey continued to ride her bike ahead of us. But soon enough, Lainey parked her bike in the front yard and asked if she could ride too. It was fun, but left me pondering the question, "How did a bike ride turn into me pulling approximately 100 pounds behind me in a wagon?" Needless to say, we didn't do that trip too many times before I had to call it quits.

We laugh quite often at the little expressions our girls come out with, particularly Sarah Grace. Last night as we prepared to brush their teeth, we realized that there was just no more squeezing anything out of their tube of Tinkerbell toothpaste. Now, I KNOW that I put some Dora toothpaste in our cart last week at Walmart, but I haven't seen it since the checkout line so I don't know if we just made a donation to Walmart for the amount of the toothpaste and didn't actually make it home with it or if it's floating around in the van somewhere. At any rate, we decided they could just use some of our toothpaste. I expected a bit of a revolt because there was no character involved, but they were actually quite excited. Lainey ran up the stairs saying, "Yeah, we get to use big people toothpaste!" Sarah Grace quickly followed saying, "People big toothpaste, yeah!" I think Crest should use that as a marketing slogan of some variety. "Crest--the people big toothpaste for big people teeth!" If this stay at home mom thing doesn't work out, I could have a career in advertising!

Birthday Party Pictures

Okay, as promised, here are pictures from Abs' first birthday party. She had GREAT fun eating and WEARING her cake! Enjoy!

Happy Easter!

What a mighty God we serve! He is risen! Because of His death and, more importantly, because of His resurrection, we can live! I pray that you 've all had a blessed Easter and that Jesus has been at the center of your celebration today! Here's an incredible video I found on Youtube the other day: I'm so glad that Sunday came!




Here is a picture of the girls from this morning all dressed up in their Easter finest. Theese girls are definitely sisters! You'll note that I've obviously found a way to download pictures so I'll get pictures of Abby's birthday party posted soon and very soon!

Pansies, Parties, and Pride

Wow, what an incredible day of weather we're having today! It's been in the 60's here today and those are temperatures we don't usually see until the end of May or the first part of June. The girls have had a great time playing outside this afternoon and we even potted some plants that we picked up today at Walmart. Count that as a science lesson during this spring break week!

We celebrated Abby's birthday on Saturday complete with her very own cake and had great fun. Our other girls were both a bit tentative about getting into the cake, but not Abs. She dove right in and soon had it caked all over her arms, chest, and face. Pictures will soon follow, but we've not yet located our software to link the camera and the new computer. It was lots of fun, the weather cooperated and Lainey and Sarah Grace and their special friend Annelise were able to enjoy the swing set. We had several good friends from church come over to help us celebrate and really enjoyed the time. While I think it would be nice for our girls to have some other kids their age in our church (at this point, Annelise is the only one and she's several months younger than Sarah Grace), I'm grateful for our multi-generational approcah to birthday parties. It's such a blessing to have a couple of 80-somethings, some 70-somethings, along with folks our own age. It seems that real life is more about learning to relate to a wide range of different people and I'm glad that we can start teaching our girls that lesson now.

Okay, I promised funny stories on our girls and they have provided a couple over the last few days. On Sunday mornings I let the girls play on their own while I get other things ready. Thankfully our house is open enough that I can still hear most everything that's going on. I heard them playing hide and seek yesterday morning. Evidently, Sarah Grace wasn't playing in quite the way that Lainey would have liked. I heard Lainey say, "Count to ten and give me time to hide." I then heard Sarah Grace say, "Ten. I found ya!" Lainey got mad, but mom laughed and laughed from her vantage point upstairs! Today the girls and I embarked on our monthly grocery shopping trip to Walmart and Costco. This is always an adventure and I knew that today would be because it's actually been about 2 months since I've done a big grocery store run. We did fine at Costco and then headed over to Walmart. I told the girls in the car that we would eat at McDonald's at Walmart, but that we were going to use the restroom first so we didn't have to go while we were shopping (and besides, being this pregnant, I almost ALWAYS have to go). I told Lainey that she could go first and that when I went, I needed her to hold Abby and not put her down no matter how much she cried. Lainey said, "Don't they clean the floor in there?" Not to mom's standards. Anyway, as I used the restroom (there is no privacy with 3 children, even at home) Sarah Grace walked behind me and said, "Wow, your heinie is too big for the potty." I said, "Well, thank you for that." I guess the Lord thought I needed to be humbled today, though I can assure you I've not been guilty of thinking that my hindquarters were too small. Oh well, out of the mouths of babes!

Off to enjoy the sunshine and finish putting up 3 hours worth of shopping for groceries!

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!

It is finished. . .

Well, almost. We finished up painting on Wednesday night and neither of us care to see a paint brush or roller for a long time. There are still a couple of bathrooms to paint and a linen closet, but we determined those could wait just a bit and shouldn't take us very long once we get moved in. We had the carpets cleaned yesterday and things look great. The orange shag carpet is still orange (even the best carpet cleaner couldn't take the color out!), but it's very clean and doesn't look so bad (as "not so bad" as orange shag carpet can be). We'll be moving in earnest tomorrow though we've already taken over a ton of boxes and plan on taking more stuff today. We could not have done nearly so much without our church family. They've helped paint, cleaned our house, put contact paper down for us, cooked us meals, and plan on helping us move tomorrow. Various ones have kept the girls for us as it seems I have relinquished my parenting duties this week. As I told Lon yesterday, we could not have asked for a better church family. They take GREAT care of their pastor and his family and we love them greatly.

The girls are excited about moving and are excited about all of the space this new place offers. Lainey came to me the other day and said, with all seriousness, "Mom, I know what song we can sing when we go upstairs." I asked what song she had in mind. She said, "Wee Willie Winkie. Because he runs upstairs and downstairs." Very well then, we shall sing it!

Our internet will be down for the next week beginning this morning so we'll be out of touch for a bit, but we'll try to get pictures posted soon. Now, off to pack . . .Here's hoping I can find everything once we get under one roof.

A House Progressing

Wow, have we been busy! We have been working on the house quite a lot since last Friday and are making great progress. On Monday, it didn't really seem like we were making progress at all, but as we look at it now, I think we're beginning to see a bit of a light at the end of the tunnel. There is still much to be done, but we can at least see that we are putting a dent in the things we wanted to do. We are EXTREMELY grateful to our church family and one lady in particular. She offered to help us paint and has actually done more than I have. For the last three days, she's gotten at the house before I have and has done marvelous work. As it turns out, she loves to paint and makes quick work of a big project. I am eternally indebted to her for all her hard work. She recruited another lady from church to come and help tomorrow so we shall be able to accomplish even more! Folks are going to begin providing meals for us tomorrow which will also be a tremendous blessing! What a blessing it is to see the body of Christ work together and what a humbling experience to be on the receiving end of such work. I just can't put into words how blessed we feel by these people. The Lord has us in a place where we are physically far from our own family, but He has blessed us beyond measure with an amazing church family. They are very good to us and we are very grateful.

We shall take some pictures of the process of getting the house in order and will get those posted soon. (We got a new camera and I have NO clue how to use it so I am dependent upon Lon at this point!) I think it's going to be a tremendous blessing to us once we've got it completed and are able to get moved in. I'm looking forward to it being done and slowing down just a bit. As I told Lon last night, burning the candles at both ends is beginning to catch me in the middle. I remind myself that it is but for a season!

The girls are having great fun spending time with Nonie and we are extremely grateful for all that she's done while she's been here. I know how very hard it is to look after these girls day after day and her help has freed me up to get so much more done than I could have gotten done without her here. We're trying to figure out how we're going to make it all work next week when she goes home!! I think we'll be doing shift work!

Well, off to pack . . .myself to bed!