Celebration at the Museum

I decided to start Audrey's birthday celebration a day early and take the kids to the Museum of Life and Science. Audrey loves dinosaurs and they have a great section of the park with big dinosaurs and a digging for shark teeth. We also did a train ride, explored the butterfly house, went into the new mist farm, sailed boats, went inside a space pod, looked at a real skeleton, and so much more. Over all it was a great day! 

Baby is Almost 2!

Audrey's 2nd birthday is Friday. The party preparations have begun. She is very excited- she keeps saying "Happy Birthday Audrey!" every time someone mentions birthday or party or cake or anything she associates with birthday parties. Ryan is very excited also- he has been telling us that Audrey's birthday is next since the day after Don's birthday. Hopefully he remains this exciting when Audrey starts opening her gifts....
Year round school started this week in our County which means that one year from now Ryan will be starting Kindergarten- and my baby is turning 2, crazy. It seems like I have been a parent forever, yet I can't believe how big they are getting!

Home Improvement

Ah the joys of home ownership :) We (and by we I obviously mean Don) spent the afternoon installing one of two fans in the kids bedrooms. We live in the south and fans are a must, because we moved into new construction fans didn't come in all the bedrooms so we are adding them ourselves. This is our first major project in changing something in the house and it was a success! Hopefully tomorrows fan installation will go even better! I admit late in the afternoon something fell downstairs and my first question to Don was "was that your fan?"... the good news is it wasn't and my confidence in the fan has grown exponentially with each passing minute that it stays attached to the ceiling (most importantly) and working properly (secondarily important).

Happy 4th of July!

We had a wonderful 4th of July! We went to a friends house for a party with most of Ryan and Audrey's friends. We had a potluck with amazing food, water balloons and sprinklers, fireworks (as big as legally allowed- which isn't that big but the kids seemed to really like them), and great friends, we even were able to  celebrate one of the kids 1st birthdays with cake! 

Future Doctors?

Hot Days

In the next few days it will be really hot (think above 100) so we are spending as much time outside before 10am as we can. I see lots of movies etc in the near future (luckily I unpacked all the movies this week). 

Home

When moving there are lots of things you have to do to get back to a comfortable baseline. You have to unpack quickly or you are forever playing the "Have you seen...?" game. If you move into new construction as we did you play the crawl on the floor while changing to get to your shirt before the blinds you ordered are installed game. You deal with contractors (some better then others) and movers, it is all very disrupting. Then much sooner then even you thought possible you look around your house and realize that this house that has caused you sleepless nights and mountains of stress actually feels like home and maybe, just maybe it was all worth it.

Ninja Class

Ryan started taking Taekwondo, or as he calls it "Ninja" class.  He was very wary at first about it but he seems to be warming up to the idea. Three classes in and he is already building some confidence and starting to learn some of the moves. 

Finding Lost Treasures

One of the few joys of unpacking is that every time we find something that has been in storage for awhile it feels like it's brand new to us. We started getting ready to stage our house at the beginning of February so some of the toys have been put away for a long time. I found the furniture and the dolls for the doll house Audrey got for Christmas today. She was too young to really enjoy it when she got it but now she loves it. Let's see what I can find next.... 

In the New House!

Let me tell you, moving is a lot of work and we hired movers! All day everyday there is something to do to settle better into the house. We have a million boxes to unpack- and it seems like whatever you need it is lost in the garage (where most of our boxes are living at the moment). That being said, we LOVE our new house.  It is big but it feels like a home already. The kids are adjusting a bit. Ryan is having trouble getting to sleep so he is exhausted- a four year old exhausted is a force to be reckoned with.  He moved into a big boy bed today so hopefully he will start looking to bedtime a bit more.

It’s a bit of a trial by error about where to put things.  We have realized we have a lot of some things and too little of others. We are learning where things are in the area and how best to get from point A to point B. Ryan is out of school so we are trying to figure out a new daily schedule. It’s a lot of figuring out at this point.

Don and I actually went out on a date now that we live so close to my mom.  It’s nice to have her come over and to have the option of dropping them off even if it’s for a short time so we can efficiently get something done.  I can tell already that we have made the perfect choice for our family.  

Moving On

Tomorrow is our last full day in this house. While I am the one that pushed for the move and I 100% know that it is the right move for us, now that it's upon us I'm overwhelmed. The process of moving is very physically and emotionally draining.  There is a lot to do, way more then I thought was involved in this process. I've signed a million forms (okay that is a SLIGHT exaggeration), packed more stuff then I was aware we owned, picked new preschools, made our house show ready over 20 times, and I've made a ton of hard decisions all while continuing a semi-normal life for the kids. Even without the emotional toll of leaving a place filled with so many memories it would be a lot to deal with.

So much has happened in this house in the last five years (Strangely enough we are moving 5 years to the day from when we moved in):

- We brought two kids to this their first home
- We hosted birthdays, Christmases, Thanksgivings, Easters and so much more
- We have made life long friends

We have learned a lot here, we were newly weds when we bought this house and we are moving out with two kids. There are a million memories, and it's hard not to focus on those as we are leaving- I need to focus on all the memories yet to come in our new house.  It is simply time to turn to the next page in the adventure.

I'm a Ninja!

Today some of my friends and I ran the Ninja challenge. It was a 5K with lots of challenges along the way:   monkey bars, climbing ropes and hay bails and walls, monkey bars, ice bath, Ninja star throwing and my favorite was after the race which was drinking a beer in celebration. Good times, great friends!