Sweet Pleading

This little pumpkin was not so much pie as jack-o-lantern last night. She's in the midst of a three day struggle with her two front teeth coming in. Up every two hours last night SCREAMING and this morning I feel like I was left to soak in a tub of Nyquil. I can hardly see straight.

As I lay on the couch, still in my robe, thinking of all the things that must be done today, Andy kept begging me to play puppy with him. I kept mumbling "not right now," and so he brought me this:



"Mom, maybe if you read this to me you will feel more puppyish, and then you will want to play puppies!"

Puppyish?! - i could not resist. Too cute. I grabbed the camera, snapped a shot, and am now making "mommy puppy" requests to a panting puppy at my feet under the kitchen table.

Guess What!

YES!! YOU'RE RIGHT!

Our first home and we are SO CRAZY EXCITED! We closed this morning and I am currently brushing spackling dust off my face from some of the prep we've been doing for painting. It is such a cute little house and will be great for our family. Three bedrooms, an office, newly renovated kitchen and bathrooms, and a full length covered patio in the back. A huge backyard with 2 producing orange trees. We are just one street over from where we live right now, and still within walking distance of the elementary school and pool.

But best/most important of all.....it feels so right. We saw it and knew it was ours.


Here is a shot of the side and back yard. (sort of)



Standing in our front yard you can look across the street to a great park with trails and a baseball diamond and playgrounds. This is a different one from the one with the pool - it is just at the other end of our street.



More pictures to come of the inside once we have put in our mad week of work.

Today after school I met Jake with his bike. He saw me and shouted, "Are we going to our new house?!" I told him we were, and he jumped up and shouted with glee , while I was laughing - Tee Hee! (indulge me, it's a poem my family loves).

We biked the trail and it took us 4 minutes. I am now looking forward to a beautiful little bike ride each morning with my buddy.

The rest of the evening was spent scraping popcorn ceilings while the boys camped out in the living room, occasionally joining us to demonstrate their skills with screwdrivers, spackling knives, and brooms. Random wall hooks were removed and popcorn was carefully herded into piles on the carpet with scoopers (aforementioned knives).

Amelia slept off all her previous frenzied exploring in her OWN NEW ROOM!! Sweet girl. She mastered the tall flight of stairs and loved the feel of the tile underneath her. She would speed all over the house and loved to shout as loud as she could in the bathrooms and listen to her echo.

We are all so happy!

We went to Utah...

for three weeks in July and had a FANTASTIC time! We got to see all of my siblings and spouses, Mike's family, cousins, grandparents, great-grandparents, second and third cousins at a large reunion in Montana, and friends.

What an adventure it was. Trips to museums, parks, pools, splash parks, movies, relatives, birthday parties, hanging out and playing with new toys in a different backyard with different people. Good times.

Here are some of the pictures, and hopefully I can finish out the trip report in two more posts. Don't want to forget it, or lose the pictures in the quickly mounting picture files.

WE LOVE YOU FAMILY!!! THANKS FOR SO MUCH FUN!

Aunt Haley Bug reading on the back porch to the kids



Making sugar cookies with Grandma. A delicious tradition! And the kids always look so cute in their aprons. Here Brooklyn and Grandma do their thing!



The boys sampling the product. They also enjoyed scooping up handfuls of flour and watching it "snow."


Andrew and Grandpa Thomason on mower



Jake and Grandpa



Mmmmm....blackberries...



amelia playing dress up and house with the big girl cousins



My three in the play kitchen - the same kitchen my siblings and I spent countless hours in. The yellow hutch used to be my grandma's when she was little, and then I received it for Christmas when I was three or four years old. Everybody loves the toyroom. Grandma has dress up and Western Town, an old buggy, lots of dolls and bunk beds, and all the Hot wheels you could ever need. Andrew spent a lot of time making "chocolick" pudding and chicken pot pie. Jake's specialty was chicken noodle soup.



The girls watching grandma load the washing machine