Easter 2013

Look what we did....

 Once in a while Jim and I live a life of reckless abandon.  Yesterday, we went to a foreclosure auction and I placed the winning bid.  No fear, we had actually looked through the house thank you to our awesome realtor.  The house is weird....it is really like 2 houses connected together, but we found it strangely appropriate for our big family.  It definitely needs some TLC, and a good airing out (the former owners were apparently very big smokers) but I think with a little carpet and a whole lot of paint it will be an awesome place for us to live. 

 The house has a barn and a little weird garage shed.  It sits on 10 acres outside of town.  When I say outside of town, I mean 8 miles out....which is a little further than we really wanted, but I did get a great deal on it, so we are super excited!  Of course, it is cautious excitement because the bank who owns it has a week to accept my bid or not.  We are back to waiting!

 The smile on Jim's face all the way home made it worth the risk!  I took this photo from the back yard.  When we were out there Monday night, 3 deer came right out of the trees onto the back patio.  I thought this was cool, but I may  not like it so much when they are eating in my garden!  :)  The little kids were thrilled to find that there is a creek running through the back yard, and immediately went exploring and were through the roof with excitement about moving out there.  The big kids....well the last move is still to fresh in their minds!  We won't be able to take possession for at least a month, and after that we have probably another few weeks of work to do before we move in .  We are aiming for summer break....hopefully the big guys will be rested up and ready to go again by then!  Colin and Jim are also pretty excited that it is right by Pomona Lake.  They see all sorts of evenings of fishing in their future.  I have news for them - there will be no fishing until my projects are finished!! 

Since we have been moved, I have gotten a little behind on the laundry.  Do you think this is a violation of child labor laws?  She is the only willing helper I have in the laundry department!  :)

RIP Grandma

 My grandma Nellie passed away this morning.  I had to swipe these photos from my uncle's facebook account (sorry or thank you Uncle Marc).  My cousin wrote a nice paragraph about her memories of grandma this morning.  I will always remember funny things about this lady.  Like how she always had Wendy's spoons and ketchup in her purse....because you never know when those will come in handy.  And how she never, ever saw my kids without pulling candy, crackers and other goodies out of that purse "to keep them busy."  I will always remember her putting petrified wood from the petrified forest in her bra so that I would have a souvenir, and how much she always, always loved us.

I am sorry to lose her, and I will miss her for the rest of my life, but I am happy that she is back with grandpa.  Their love is an inspiration to married people everywhere.  It was apparent how much she loved him, even when she was wrinkling up her nose and telling me how she hid onion salt in the food because even though grandpa hated onions, he never ever seemed to notice the onion salt!  :)  Rest In Peace Grandma.  I love you.

Spring (or winter) break

 This has not been the spring break I had fantasized about.  For one thing, the weather has NOT cooperated at all.  It has been cold, and we got a huge snow storm which I am not taking photos of because I am so tired of taking photos of the snow.  YUCK is all I can say!  It has been a little too much indoor time and I am usually not one who is ever ready to send the kids back to school, but this time --- well Monday cannot come soon enough!  :)

 We did get some of the unpacking done, and are feeling pretty settled into Amityville.  The kids had a cooking meeting, where Madison was the junior leader and was supposed to come up with some creative ideas to do with the kids.  She practiced here making pig cupcakes which turned out pretty cute!  The 4-H group had a good time and they made lots of awesome "Preston approved food" which included broiler s'mores, butterfly hot dogs and pig cupcakes!

We did have one afternoon of fun when we visited the Lawrence Aquatic Center.  Grandma Chris might have gotten more exercise than she bargained for when swimming with Quincy.  It was a good blow off of a bunch of steam before we had a 6 inch snow and more gross weather!

Colin made it home from Missouri.  He had a great time fishing, but only caught one rainbow trout.  He said that it was tough to catch them!  He has cleaned the fish and is wanting to cook it soon.  He also said it was so cold that the poles would freeze up and you couldn't cast.  I don't think that sounds very fun, but he insisted that it was!!

Jim and I are currently spending time looking at all of our options on house purchasing.  We are looking seriously at a house that will be auctioned off on Thursday.  I don't have any idea what the odds are of us actually winning the auction, but I lack for entertainment in my life, so I am excited to go and give my bidding skills a little work out.  We are also looking at some other houses in the country.  I really want to build eventually, but with the many, many foreclosures on the market, it seems silly not to at least look.  Plus, I like looking at houses anyhow, good ideas for decorating sometimes reveal themselves that way!

Grandma continues to get stronger, and seems to be holding her own.  I was able to go down yesterday with my brother and she was sitting up and able to visit with us for a while.  I do not know what her long term outcome will be after surgery, but all we can do is pray for her.

Home Sweet (rental) Home

 We managed to get all moved into the rental house before the deadline.  I told Jim that this house reminds me a bit of a certain house in Amityville, NY.  I also told him if he grows a long beard and starts digging around in the basement, the kids and I are out!  :) 

 The landlord did a ton of work and everything turned out really  nice.  I had been a bit worried when I was in the house a week before we moved and the floors were missing!  We are starting to get settled in and unpacked, but still have a way to go.  I told Jim we only had to be out of the old house....not necessarily moved into this one!  It has been a bit of an adjustment for the kids,

 and for poor Lizzy, who has always been a fiercely independent cat.  She has been a little bit wigged out by the move, and has actually even been acting nice toward the kids!  :)  We have been forcing her to stay indoors, which she hasn't started resisting yet. 

 The kids had to go say one last goodbye to our old house before we turned over the keys.  This was a very difficult thing for Preston, who has had a lot of seller's remorse. 

 He made me take pictures of him in every room.  There were some tears shed as we locked up for the last time.  We have been trying to convince him that this is a positive thing, and that in the end, we are going to be very happy....but this is the only house he has ever lived in! 

 One thing that the kids are really excited about is that they can walk to school, and that the school is within viewing distance from the front yard, so they are able to go over there to play basketball and play on the playground.  It has made Quincy absolutely giddy.  I had to take some photos of them walking home from school on Friday.  Quincy is also very excited because 2 of her very good friends live across the street, and one of  Preston's friends lives across the alley.  Once we get settled, this is going to be a fun place for the kids to live. 

 We sold our appliances with the house, so we had to buy a new stove and refrigerator (which we had been needing to do anyhow). The stove had to be hooked up....and Harper was sure that Jim needed her assistance.  Together they did get us up and cooking again!

 We had to take a break from unpacking Saturday to go watch Mallory and Madison dance at Regional Club 4-H day.  Their group got a purple ribbon.  They did a great job!

We are now going to try to get settled a little bit more into the rental house, and try to have a little down time for the kids' spring break.  Colin went trout fishing and camping in Missouri with a friend for the week.  The girls are working quite a few hours, covering for some people who went on vacation as well as for some of the adults who can take vacation days when the kids are available to cover the shifts.  I am happy because we got the living room and kitchen mostly unpacked.  The rest of the mess is bearable if you can sit down at the end of the day and have a home cooked meal!

My grandma fell down this weekend and broke her arm and several ribs.  She is in pretty bad shape and is in the hospital.  We are praying that she will make a quick recovery and be back to her independent self in no time.  We love you grandma!

Another program

 Cameron's junior high choir had a concert last night.  They sang a couple of songs alone and then were joined by the high school Choraliers.  It was a pretty good concert, but again I was missing Mallory and her photographic help.

 Since I didn't get good shots during the concert, I asked Cam to pose for a couple afterwards.  He was semi-happy to oblige.

 Since the camera was rolling, I took a few in the car on the way home.  He was done with me and the camera by this point!

Saige didn't care about anything other than the fact that Daddy bought her a chocolate milk at Casey's!

We officially started moving today.  It felt good to actually put boxes in the house we will be renting.  Unfortunately, all the floors are still not complete, and won't be until tomorrow.  Still, any progress is good progress.  I told Jim we do not have to be unpacked, only have to get our stuff out of this house on Surrey Lane!   I will be exceptionally happy when it is this time next week!  I will say that last week when we went to tour the house, I was very worried....a lot of work needed to be done on it.  Today, I was delighted with how hard the landlord (and his wife) has worked.  There are a few more things that need to be done, but overall, it looks great.  The kids were happy to finally get a chance to go in and see where we will be living.  I got a kick out of Quincy saying she would NOT be going into the basement there for any reason - EVER!  It is a scary dungeon looking basement, but if there was a tornado, it would come in handy.  I am not sure that other than surviving a tornado I will be going down there either!  :)   The timing on this move is working ok....next week for the unpacking the kids are on spring break.  Things clicked in place well on that!

I am also happy to report that the antacids seem to be helping Mallory and she was able to return to school and work today.  She is tired, but seems to be feeling much better.  I am very thankful that it was nothing serious.

Second Grade Music Program

 Preston's second grade music program was tonight.  He is his father's son.  Nothing more can be said about that!

 He had a speaking part....he did a wonderful job - was easy to understand and spoke loudly into the microphone.  I had a hard time with the camera tonight - I really needed Mallory to be there!

 When it was over, his teacher told me that he had won second place in some water resources poster contest.  She said that he had asked her to not submit his poster, but she did it anyhow.  It is hard to tell here, but the poster had a lot of information about the water cycle on it.

 I then made the mistake of asking him to smile.   What a turkey!

There were a couple of things stressing me out about the upcoming move this week.  One was our attic (storage room/junk collection).  The attic is now mostly empty.  We did a smart thing and rented a storage unit, and filled it up.  Now that that is looking manageable, I feel a lot better.  I did get a kick out of taking Quincy over on one of the unloading trips.  She jumped out of the truck and said "WOW!  THIS IS JUST LIKE STORAGE WARS!!!"  I think we might watch a little too much TV?

Mallory was not there tonight to take photos because she has been having a bunch of pain in her stomach.  I took her to the doctor today, and he was worried about her gall bladder or possibly her pancreas.  We spent the afternoon at the hospital having testing, but they have said that everything looks fine.  They are prescribing some strong antacids to see if that gives her some relief.  I hope it works!  She seemed more perky tonight, so I am taking that as a good sign.  I am going to have to share that I wasn't expecting to be sent to the hospital, so we had Harper and Saige with us.  While they were doing a sonogram of Mallory's gall bladder Harper was watching very carefully, so I said 'look Harper, and alien monster'  her eyes got big and she said "aaaw Mallory, you will be ok!"  Later she was still watching carefully and she said she saw a rattle snake.  No wonder Mallory had pain!