Tuesday, December 27
The Very Best Part of Christmastime
We had our preschool nativity this month! I sound kind of sappy- I was trying to get our actors' attention away from the huge group of senior citizens they hadn't practiced with. ;D
Monday, November 14
October in Vegas
I have to admit- the boiling hot summer was definitely worth it. We are enjoying walking around without jackets, and it was pretty fun to plan princess costumes knowing we wouldn't have to cover them up with coats!
We went to a pumpkin patch in short sleeves.
"What is IN this thing?!?"
We visited a farm named "The Farm," and went on a hayride.
The whole place was a money trap, but the kids had fun getting their faces painted, petting cats, feeding animals, and pretending to drive parked "tractors."
Mia's October history unit was on ancient Egypt, so we went to the King Tut exhibit at the natural history museum. She brought her book along and was excited to see her pictures in real life. (Everything was replicated, but whatever. ;D)
Yummy mummies
They requested this photo with the giraffe, and this was their pose idea:
We spent Zach's second day off since we moved here raking rocks and dirt. We're trying to plant lawn, but the birds keep eating the seeds and it's probably too chilly to germinate anyway.
After spending hours digging one trench by hand, Zach broke down and rented a trencher. Worth every penny, he says. :) 
next we're going to break down and buy sod... haha.
Mia asked to be Rapunzel months ago, and I got it in my head for some reason that I could make her dress. I don't know how to work my hand-me-down sewing machine, and the last thing I sewed was a wind sock or something tubular in my middle school home-ec class. But we went to Wal-Mart and bought some purple and white material anyway. I found some free patterns online, and one that looked like Rapunzel's dress. There wasn't one for kids, but there was a little picture of what it's supposed to look like when you lay out the peices. So I printed that, cut out the little peices, and then held them close to my eye and kind of drew/traced them onto the material. Cutting everything out was pretty easy- I knew enough from watching my mom over the years that you can put the middle of things on the fold to make it perfectly symmetrical. Then I went and bought a needle and thread kit at Walmart and started sewing! It wasn't really hard- I think I spent less than three hours actually sewing. The really hard part was figuring out how in the heck to put stuff together before I sewed it so that it would end up right-side out and ugly-stuff in. And the sleeves- it was a good thing they had a drawing of how to sew the sleeves on, because at first I had no idea why the sleeves had those points coming out the top. For the hems I just used Liquid Stitch- there was no way I was going to figure out how to make lining for a dress that was going to be worn one night in the dark.
And there we have it! My first sewing project! I'm so proud of it! But not proud enough to think I'll ever sew anything ever again. :)
Mia loved having long hair, and was so excited about her dress... it was all she talked about for weeks. I was so happy it actually worked, ha.
Anya and Bree kind of fell into their costume choices. They wanted to be princesses, and we had Aurora, Snow White and Cinderella left to choose from. They decided, we bought the wigs for 5 bucks at WalMart and ta-da!
Kael wore Mia's old lion costume that she never fit. Somehow we managed to cart it around through seven moves in-tact. He LOVES this thing. If he sees it, he must have it on. The first time we put it on, he wouldn't take it off. By Halloween, he would only wear it ten minutes at a time.
We had a Halloween party with our homeschooling group. My mother-in-law sent us a TON of awesome crafts from Oriental Trading Co. last year, and we only used a few things. So the kids all got to choose any project they wanted, and we had a little Halloween parade, decorated Halloween cupcakes, and went bobbing for apples. I love the moms in our group- they are so down-to-earth and nice.
We took graham-cracker owls to the neighbors again this year (benefit of moving- we can recycle ideas, ha.) It was fun to get to know people- there are a lot of nice families right on our street... something we missed in our Ohio subdivision. One family even brought us cookies the next day!
This was a busy month- but it was so nice to be busy doing something other than looking for a place to live, packing and unpacking, I'll take this kind of busy any time. :)
We went to a pumpkin patch in short sleeves.
"What is IN this thing?!?"We visited a farm named "The Farm," and went on a hayride.
The whole place was a money trap, but the kids had fun getting their faces painted, petting cats, feeding animals, and pretending to drive parked "tractors."
Mia's October history unit was on ancient Egypt, so we went to the King Tut exhibit at the natural history museum. She brought her book along and was excited to see her pictures in real life. (Everything was replicated, but whatever. ;D)
Yummy mummies
They requested this photo with the giraffe, and this was their pose idea:
We spent Zach's second day off since we moved here raking rocks and dirt. We're trying to plant lawn, but the birds keep eating the seeds and it's probably too chilly to germinate anyway.
After spending hours digging one trench by hand, Zach broke down and rented a trencher. Worth every penny, he says. :) 
next we're going to break down and buy sod... haha.Mia asked to be Rapunzel months ago, and I got it in my head for some reason that I could make her dress. I don't know how to work my hand-me-down sewing machine, and the last thing I sewed was a wind sock or something tubular in my middle school home-ec class. But we went to Wal-Mart and bought some purple and white material anyway. I found some free patterns online, and one that looked like Rapunzel's dress. There wasn't one for kids, but there was a little picture of what it's supposed to look like when you lay out the peices. So I printed that, cut out the little peices, and then held them close to my eye and kind of drew/traced them onto the material. Cutting everything out was pretty easy- I knew enough from watching my mom over the years that you can put the middle of things on the fold to make it perfectly symmetrical. Then I went and bought a needle and thread kit at Walmart and started sewing! It wasn't really hard- I think I spent less than three hours actually sewing. The really hard part was figuring out how in the heck to put stuff together before I sewed it so that it would end up right-side out and ugly-stuff in. And the sleeves- it was a good thing they had a drawing of how to sew the sleeves on, because at first I had no idea why the sleeves had those points coming out the top. For the hems I just used Liquid Stitch- there was no way I was going to figure out how to make lining for a dress that was going to be worn one night in the dark.
And there we have it! My first sewing project! I'm so proud of it! But not proud enough to think I'll ever sew anything ever again. :) Mia loved having long hair, and was so excited about her dress... it was all she talked about for weeks. I was so happy it actually worked, ha.
Anya and Bree kind of fell into their costume choices. They wanted to be princesses, and we had Aurora, Snow White and Cinderella left to choose from. They decided, we bought the wigs for 5 bucks at WalMart and ta-da!
Kael wore Mia's old lion costume that she never fit. Somehow we managed to cart it around through seven moves in-tact. He LOVES this thing. If he sees it, he must have it on. The first time we put it on, he wouldn't take it off. By Halloween, he would only wear it ten minutes at a time.
We had a Halloween party with our homeschooling group. My mother-in-law sent us a TON of awesome crafts from Oriental Trading Co. last year, and we only used a few things. So the kids all got to choose any project they wanted, and we had a little Halloween parade, decorated Halloween cupcakes, and went bobbing for apples. I love the moms in our group- they are so down-to-earth and nice.
We took graham-cracker owls to the neighbors again this year (benefit of moving- we can recycle ideas, ha.) It was fun to get to know people- there are a lot of nice families right on our street... something we missed in our Ohio subdivision. One family even brought us cookies the next day!
This was a busy month- but it was so nice to be busy doing something other than looking for a place to live, packing and unpacking, I'll take this kind of busy any time. :)
Saturday, October 15
Craigshouse
We've been in our new house for two weeks now! We're about 60% done unpacking and putting stuff away.
The sense of dread that has been underlying my every thought since March is finally starting to abate. It's a relief to see the negative effects of moving so much come to a halt, and to begin on damage control. We're finally catching Mia up on school, getting back into a routine.
I'm excited to have a place to put everything- take everything out of boxes (lots of it for the first time since we were married!) We keep wandering around in shock at all the space we've acquired, and the fact that we're paying almost $200 less per month than we did renting.
We won't be decorating much- right now we're spending all our extra dollars trying to get fully functional. And most of those extra dollars have been going to amazing deals from ads we've found on Craigslist.
Kenmore refrigerator: $100
It's kind of old, but it's huge, clean, and has a water-in-the-door thingy! The original owners were so kind to discount it $300 and then keep it in their garage for us for a couple of weeks until we moved- every time I open it, or the girls get themselves a drink, I feel a little splash of gratitude.
Buffet and hutch: $130
This was advertised on Craigslist by a guy who owns a little furniture store that buys store models with damage, fixes them and re-sells them. I couldn't find anything like this new for under $800, so I'm still not sure how he made a profit off it, but whatever. I think we've had this china in its box since our wedding in 2002- it was the first thing I unpacked. :)
Maytag Neptune Dryer: $150
A little old lady had a stroke right after she bought this. :/
I have only been able to do one load of laundry a day for the last few months because the apartment dryers were so bad. The last dryer took 300 minutes to do a normal load (prematurely aged a lot of clothes) and it squeaked like metal against a chalkboard the entire time. This puppy has a sensor, and only runs until the clothes are dry, which is usually as fast our washer cleans! Warms my clothes and my heart.
And my favorite Craiglsist story. Sectional with two ottomans and storage: $350
Our first night here the kids wanted to watch a show on our $80 Craigslist TV (we got that months ago because Zach left our old monster TV back in Ohio) but I had our couch up in the front room to avoid further damage to the new upholstery Grandma made us. So while the kids sat on the tile, I looked up sectionals for the hundredth time, not really hoping to find anything and bummed that we hadn't found one in time to move it with the U-haul truck we'd rented and taken back that morning. I saw one for a reasonable price in our part of town and called. I told her we had just moved and that my husband might be able to stop by to see it after work. She gave me her address and we realized she was right next door. I went over with the kids (Zach had already talked to them and knew they had four-year-old triplets- when she told me her address I asked if she had triplets and kind of freaked her out- haha) and she said "I guess it was time for us to meet!" They gave us $50 off the price because of some wear (and maybe because it was just going next door, ha) and we carried it over and had a place to watch tv that night!
Aside from our new stuff, I'm also loving being able to open cabinets in the kitchen that don't smell like the halitosis of a mummy, being able to take pictures without flash because of all the windows and light!!, walking into the house with groceries from a garage, and not around a building, past everyone and their dog, and up two flights of stairs calling for three kids to keep up.
I can't describe the change in my psyche. Everything seems more... possible.
The sense of dread that has been underlying my every thought since March is finally starting to abate. It's a relief to see the negative effects of moving so much come to a halt, and to begin on damage control. We're finally catching Mia up on school, getting back into a routine.
I'm excited to have a place to put everything- take everything out of boxes (lots of it for the first time since we were married!) We keep wandering around in shock at all the space we've acquired, and the fact that we're paying almost $200 less per month than we did renting.
We won't be decorating much- right now we're spending all our extra dollars trying to get fully functional. And most of those extra dollars have been going to amazing deals from ads we've found on Craigslist.
Kenmore refrigerator: $100
It's kind of old, but it's huge, clean, and has a water-in-the-door thingy! The original owners were so kind to discount it $300 and then keep it in their garage for us for a couple of weeks until we moved- every time I open it, or the girls get themselves a drink, I feel a little splash of gratitude.
Buffet and hutch: $130
This was advertised on Craigslist by a guy who owns a little furniture store that buys store models with damage, fixes them and re-sells them. I couldn't find anything like this new for under $800, so I'm still not sure how he made a profit off it, but whatever. I think we've had this china in its box since our wedding in 2002- it was the first thing I unpacked. :)
Maytag Neptune Dryer: $150
A little old lady had a stroke right after she bought this. :/
I have only been able to do one load of laundry a day for the last few months because the apartment dryers were so bad. The last dryer took 300 minutes to do a normal load (prematurely aged a lot of clothes) and it squeaked like metal against a chalkboard the entire time. This puppy has a sensor, and only runs until the clothes are dry, which is usually as fast our washer cleans! Warms my clothes and my heart.
And my favorite Craiglsist story. Sectional with two ottomans and storage: $350
Our first night here the kids wanted to watch a show on our $80 Craigslist TV (we got that months ago because Zach left our old monster TV back in Ohio) but I had our couch up in the front room to avoid further damage to the new upholstery Grandma made us. So while the kids sat on the tile, I looked up sectionals for the hundredth time, not really hoping to find anything and bummed that we hadn't found one in time to move it with the U-haul truck we'd rented and taken back that morning. I saw one for a reasonable price in our part of town and called. I told her we had just moved and that my husband might be able to stop by to see it after work. She gave me her address and we realized she was right next door. I went over with the kids (Zach had already talked to them and knew they had four-year-old triplets- when she told me her address I asked if she had triplets and kind of freaked her out- haha) and she said "I guess it was time for us to meet!" They gave us $50 off the price because of some wear (and maybe because it was just going next door, ha) and we carried it over and had a place to watch tv that night!
Aside from our new stuff, I'm also loving being able to open cabinets in the kitchen that don't smell like the halitosis of a mummy, being able to take pictures without flash because of all the windows and light!!, walking into the house with groceries from a garage, and not around a building, past everyone and their dog, and up two flights of stairs calling for three kids to keep up.
I can't describe the change in my psyche. Everything seems more... possible.
Saturday, September 17
So many ifs
We're only three days away from our closing date. The seller is taking forever to fix a cracked window. Our lender is taking forever to decide if we have specific enough documentation about our student loan repayment plan.
We have no idea if we'll really end up living in this house. When I walked into the first house that fell through, I was convinced we'd be living there- I could picture us there and didn't even think it was possible we wouldn't. This house (and none of the others we looked at since the last one) has never had that same feeling. Neither Zach or I can picture ourselves actually living there.
The good thing is we really don't care what happens. If this house doesn't go through, we're just going to rent. Costs quite a bit more, but whatever- at least it's an option!
Hopefully we'll know in three days how and when this will end.
We have no idea if we'll really end up living in this house. When I walked into the first house that fell through, I was convinced we'd be living there- I could picture us there and didn't even think it was possible we wouldn't. This house (and none of the others we looked at since the last one) has never had that same feeling. Neither Zach or I can picture ourselves actually living there.
The good thing is we really don't care what happens. If this house doesn't go through, we're just going to rent. Costs quite a bit more, but whatever- at least it's an option!
Hopefully we'll know in three days how and when this will end.
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