Happy Birthday Elaina!

Elaina is 7 years old today! If you'd like to wish her a Happy Birthday, you can leave her a comment here or send her an email.

Settling In

Hopefully there are still a few of you out there who are still faithfully checking my pitiful attempt at a blog. You've probably been wondering if we were moved to another country by the Witness Protection Program or something, but no, we're still here in good old Taylors. We closed on our house 4 weeks ago today and are finally getting all settled into our new home. Things have been even more hectic than usual since the move, but I figured I better make myself sit down and type up this post before anymore time passes.

The move went pretty smoothly, but I don't want to see another U-Haul truck for a really long time! I've only found one casualty so far, broken glass in one of my family photos, so I guess that's not too bad. We had Two Men and a Truck move all of our heavy stuff. That had to have been the smartest decision we made! I think we'd still be trying to move stuff in if it weren't for them. They did a great job moving my "baby" (my roll-top desk). It's huge and it's heavy! I heard someone say that it would probably hurt them before it would get hurt, but I was holding my breath the entire time they were carrying it...I could just see it laying in pieces all over the sidewalk. It came through without a single scratch though! :-)

It seems like everything's been non-stop since we moved. Besides trying to get unpacked (I'm still stumbling over boxes in every room!), we've been doing some "fixer-upper" work around the house. We've also been busy trying to catch up on work that we got behind on through the house selling process. Elaina's first day of 2nd grade was on the Monday after we closed, so that added to the craziness of it all. You would think that I would have more time with her in school, but somehow it seems to be the opposite. She's enjoying school though and it's amazing to see how much she's learning in just the first few weeks. Here we are on the morning of her first day back at school, bright and early! It had been a long weekend of moving and unpacking to have to wake up to the alarm at 6:00 in the morning!

Ryan's parents came down from Iowa to help watch the kids during our move. They were such a big help keeping them occupied for us! I don't know how we would've done it without them! Of course, Zachary decided the morning of our closing though that he didn't want to stay with Grandma & Grandpa, so we had to take him with us and I had to hold him while signing all those papers!

Here's the big 2nd grader showing off her new backpack. I was amazingly organized through the move and made sure her school clothes and supplies were where I could easily find them, so she actually made it to her first day of school in matching clothes! I was not as organized, however, with our own stuff, since Ryan's parents had to go buy sheets for our bed at around midnight the first night that we were in our house because I had no idea which box our sheets were packed in! :-(

I leave you with the most adorable picture I've taken since we've been here. Zachary loves our new family room where he can throw his toys all over and we don't have to worry about keeping it clean for house showings! :-) Here's how I found him one night after he'd been playing with his new discoveries, toys that had been packed away since we put our house on the market several months ago...it was like Christmas!