Getting Settled (a.k.a. Time to Blog Again)

We are slowly, but surely getting settled in.  Perhaps "slowly" isn't the right word.  Jon has been working nonstop and putting in long hours to get everything in order in our new home.  It's hard to sit back and put your feet up when your husband is plugging away on project after project.  Thanks to him, I think we see the light at the end of the tunnel.

While I haven't made time for any blogging since the move, I have been jotting down the things I want to remember that have come from the kids' mouths.  I've also continued to take a billion pictures.  :)  Here are a few highlights of the past month.

*Kate being Kate.

*Me:  (Listening to Kate whine one afternoon.)  Sounds like I have a whiner. 
Natalie: (Very matter of fact)  Hmm...I'm usually the whiner around here.  Kate's not. 

*Good-bye old house!

*Good-bye Kindergarten!

*Scott's class had a Kindy-500 on the last day.  Scott made a "John Deere Gator" for his racing vehicle of choice.  He didn't want to attach a "Slow Moving Vehicle" sign however.  He thought for sure that he was going to beat all of his classmates.  He was very proud of his creation.   (Shame on his mom for asking if we could pitch it after the race...it was trash day afterall...and we were moving the next day...BUT WHAT WAS I THINKING?!  In the attic it went, for safe keeping.  Sorry, Son.)

*On the morning of our move, we were talking about saying goodbye to our old house and how we would start sleeping at the new house.  The kids were processing it and one said, "Yeah...we are going to start living there forever.  And never, ever leave there again.  Well...at least until lunchtime."     
 

*On that note, Kate was crying one day and saying that she wanted to go to McDonald's.  That was not in the plans, but Natalie went up to her and told her that we would go through the drive thru.  ?!?!  Anyway, Kate stopped crying and said, "Natalie calmed me down."  (Thankfully she forgot about the Golden Arches and went about her day.)


*Scott was trying to talk me through how to drive the gator over breakfast one morning.  Then he said, "It sounds more complicated than it is."

*Scott celebrated his 7th birthday a week after we moved in.  He came up with the idea to give everyone a gator ride. He came up with 4 different "Gator Experiences" for the people to choose from.  (An easy ride in the cornfield, a trip through the wooded trails, a mud tire test, or a sampler ride during which you could try out everything.)  

*Natalie operated the ticket booth.  Scott told me that my job was to try to talk everyone into going on a ride and to convince the ones who seemed hesitant to give it a try.

*Even 85 year old Grandma Joyce gave it a try!  We steered her clear from the "Mud Tire Test" ticket. 

*We made several trips to the house while it was in the construction phase, and the kids would start to beg "Can we come in?" as soon as we pulled into the driveway.  Sometimes we were in a hurry, and Jon would just run in while the rest of us moaned and groaned in the van.  A couple of days after we moved, we were all coming home from the store and we pulled into the driveway.  Kate started her begging, "Can I come in?  Can I come in?"  We let her come in this time!:) 

*Scott & Natalie both got rain boots for their birthdays. God's sending lots of rain for them to test them out. 

*We were having our first meal on our newly constructed picnic table.  Natalie was asked to say the prayer for the meal and with all sincerity she prayed, "Please help nothing to happen as we sit at the picnic table today.  Please help it to be able to hold us all up."  

*Shortly after we moved, Scott and Natalie were outside riding their bikes from the front to the back.  Kate went out and looked for them and then came back in and said, "I can't find my friends!"

*I bought a game called KerPlunk from a garage sale.  It's a game that I fondly remember playing as a child.  The kids shared in my excitement and wanted to play round after round.  I told them I had purchased it for $1 at a yard sale.  Scott said, "One dollar for all this fun?!?!"

Kate and Natalie were calling out different types of fives to do to one another...high fives, low fives, soft fives, hard fives, tickle fives.  Then Kate said, "Identifive!" 

*A picture from Natalie to Uncle Derek & Aunt Maggie!:) 

*I was reading a book to Kate, and we came to a dinosaur page.  I told her that dinosaurs were extinct.  The next night, we were reading the same book, and when we turned to the dinosaur page, she exclaimed, "P.U!"  It took me a moment to figure out that I did tell her that they were ex-STINKED.  :)  Tonight, we were talking about stinky animals for some reason.  She said pigs.  I said skunks.  Then, she said, "And dinosaurs."

*A cousin picture- It's so fun watching them play with one another. 

*Scott is all into tractors these days so instead of replacing train batteries, we've been replacing tractor batteries.  Kate and I saw a tractor pulled off on the side of the road so that cars could go around, and she said, "The tractor needs new batteries!" 

*I'm realizing that a lot of these stories are about Kate. She is 2 1/2 and at that stage where funny things come out of her mouth quite often whether she realizes it or not.  The kids and I often get a kick out of her and start laughing.  She will sometimes get mad and try to get us to stop laughing.  With a scowl, she repeats, "Stop laughing!  It's not funny!  Turn the laughing off!"  which makes Scott and Natalie crack up all the more.  :)  We love her to pieces!