May 17th - June 16th, 2014

Hello All!

It's been one month since our last post and a lot has happened around here. We are officially moved in and, as of today, we are online! Not sure how we have survived the past few weeks without internet service to our home computer, but somehow we've made it. :) Throw in the wedding of a close friend, (pretty much family), a reunion with old college friends, and a large paint job and you have one busy moving week.

Here are some pictures of our move. 

 Back it up, redneck style. 

 So many good memories at our old house. We were there for 4 years!

 Blake taking a break from his hard labors.

 Worn plum out. 

 Last night...sleepover in the front room with movie and ice cream. :)

 Said some final goodbyes the next day. It was a little hard to leave our lovely kitchen we spent so many hours remodeling. 

 Goodbye yard!

 Somewhere on another hard drive I have a picture of our family when we first moved in. It was just Micah, baby Blake and Me with my pregnant self expecting Seth. 

 All loaded and heading to Gan-Gan and Nanas for a few days. 

We were blessed to have wonderful family who let us stay with them for five days while a few things were being wrapped up at the new house. One of which being a huge painting job in the living room. 

 "Before" picture of the living room. As much as we love to Do-It-Yourself, this was one job we were more than happy to pay someone else to do! 

Goodbye yellow!

 Happy to have some special moving help flown in all the way from Texas!

 Our good friend, Amos, got married the same weekend we moved in and Blake got the privilege of being a ring bearer in his wedding. 

Micah also got to be part of the wedding party as a groomsmen. 

Moving In...

New room! Blake and Seth are sharing a room and Owen is by himself. Finally, easier nap times. :)

 New house! 

Met some of the neighbors. This is Fred. No really, that's his name.

A view from our front porch. The boys are running back from the mailbox. The gravel road on the right is our driveway. 

An "after" picture of the living room. Just pretend you are a fish on Finding Nemo.   =)       We christened our home by hosting a brunch (thanks to Joy and James' help) for our friends from out of town who attended the wedding. It was fun to have a group of people over the day after we moved in. 

We had so much fun with J & J while they were here. 

 Our first "normal" day at home in our new house. Micah went back to work, J & J were gone, time to dig into the kitchen boxes and start unpacking! The boys were a huge help...as you can see. Owen rearranged the tupperware while Seth and Blake practiced their baseball slides into the piles of newspaper. :) 

First reading time in the new house. 

Coincidentally, we are reading through the Little House on the Prairie series and our moving days fell on the part in the story when Laura Ingalls and her family moved in their covered wagon from "The Big Woods" to the "Little House on the Prairie". We left our very shaded yard in surrounded by trees to now living on over 2 acres of mostly open lawn. It almost feels like the prairie out here. I've gotten reacquainted with some of my old Kansas buddies- ticks and chiggers. We are getting into a habit of checking the boys for ticks when they come inside and doing quick baths in the evenings when they've been running around in the grass. Last night I saw a deer in our front yard and we see at least three large rabbits every morning. Our road is quiet and in the afternoons an hour can go by before you see a car pass. No sirens or highway noise out here, it's so quiet. It's awesome. We are so thankful God provided us with a newer home with few immediate repairs needed. Just needs some landscaping and maybe a few ponies running around the front yard. :)


Funnies...

Blake and Seth got to experience the thrills of eating cotton candy for the first time while we were at the park. Seth, being unfamiliar with such substances asked me on the way home, "Mom did you remember to bring my rotten candy?"

On Father's day we woke Micah up with cards and coffee in bed. I asked Blake and Seth to tell Daddy something that they liked about him. Blake gave a response, but Seth was silent. Finally, Seth smiled and admitted he was too embarrassed. After trying to coax him and tell him how much it would mean to Daddy to hear Seth share, I ask Seth how he would feel if Daddy was too embarrassed to tell him he loved him. Seth said with a smirk, a shrug, and a long sigh, "I'm about to cry right now".      It was so funny, he reminded me of a teenager. And no, we never did get to enjoy hearing from Seth about what he appreciates about his Daddy. Maybe someday. :)

Blake was very concerned about the used mower Micah was looking at buying. Blake said, "Daddy, does the mower turn?" Micah- "Yes, of course". Blake "Well, you said it was a ZERO TURN!" 


Hope you all have a good week. Thank you to those would have prayed for us the last few months about all that went into finding a house and moving. God is good!

Love, 

Kari, Micah, Blake, Seth and Owen

May 1st - 16th, 2014

Hello Everyone!

An update on our house transition is below...

But before I get into that, I've thought for a long time of using one whole blog post of what a typical weekday at home is like for us. But, since our routine is going to be changing I decided to take some time to post some things that we do at home to keep ourselves busy and learn. The boys learn about the world around them and I learn more about what it means to be a mom. :)

We swing on trees...

We take care of our kitty and play with him...

 We get to attend Story Time at the library... (last time we went to the fire station)

 We play in the sand...

 We do puzzles...(and make weird faces)

 We do activities...(like practicing our scissor skills) 

 We ride our bikes (a lot) up and down the driveway).... and we pretend to mow the lawn (a lot) :)

 We eat oatmeal...almost every morning...(not usually with chocolate chips) 

 We do more mowing...and work on our tan...

 We go swimming on our deck...

 We sometimes give the babysitters a hair cut in exchange for babysitting...(yes, he is holding his own hair I just cut off!)

 This week we went strawberry picking...

 Blake and Seth have asked at least once per week for the past year when it's time to go strawberry picking. Their dream finally came true. They can eat one for every two they put in the basket. Thankfully, the farmer doesn't mind the kids "grazing" as we pick. I offered to weigh the boys before and after we did our picking and pay for the difference, but they declined. :)

We picked over 40 pounds this season!

 After we fall asleep at night, Daddy checks on us every night and we are very tired...  :)



News

The past two weeks have been a whirl wind around here. Along with deciding on and going under contract with our next house, we have done some traveling. We've been to Virginia Beach and Newport News, VA and Dayton, TN and points in between to celebrate two graduations and one anniversary...ours! Six years! The happiest of my life. 

Me and Owie at Regent University where Micah's sister, Hannah, graduated.


House update....We have found a house! If all goes as planned, we will be moving out of our little house on Gurney St in 15 days!! 

 We have officially started packing! 

Sometimes I wonder why we keep toys at all. Between, dirt, sticks and cardboard boxes the boys can be perfectly happy for a long time. :)

I'm excited about moving to a some more space and yet going to miss our little place a lot! So many memories. I have so enjoyed it these past four years. This will likely be the last post I do while we are still in our Gurney St. house. Maybe next time I post I'll have pictures of our new house and probably more moving pictures. Did I mention the new place has 2 acres?! I'm looking forward to telling you more about it in our next post.


Funnies

While strawberry picking Seth announced after about 15 min of the pick-two-eat-one policy, "Mom, I have an idea. How about you pick and I eat." :)

I wish I could post the video of this, but at one of the graduations we went to Seth had a funny incident. After we were seated a man came around with a bucket of candy. Seth picked out a nice big piece in a wrapper. He opened it and popped the whole thing in his mouth. Suddenly, he got a shocked look on his face and spit it out as fast as he could...turned out to be a pencil eraser! You should have seen his bottom lip drop. Poor fellow, had never seen such a colorful eraser before. :) Luckily, Daddy had a spare piece of candy at the ready.



Thanks again for your prayers for us about our house transition. We still have a few more steps to get through (inspections, appraisals, etc.), but we are getting closer and things are looking good. Thank you, Lord.  

Have a good weekend!

Kari, Micah, Blake, Seth and Owen

April 11th - 30th, 2014

They are just so sweet!   (If I do say so myself)

Hi Everyone!

Here's a little of what we've been up to...

Hope you all had a Happy Easter! It's become family tradition to take pictures together (or at least make an attempt to)while everyone looks nice.

 Since we can't make a fairy house, (apparently boys don't pretend fairies) we decided to make a house for a frog the other day. 

Strangely enough, a few days after we constructed our reptilian shelter, the first frog of the season showed up. He was caught straight away and forced into his new abode. He was gone by morning. Can you say ungrateful?!

 We tried our hand at paper mache for the first time as we made a minature of Jesus' tomb for Easter.

I wanted the boys to have a memorable visual of the Easter Story, so on Easter morning, Daddy read the Easter story while the boys "acted" out the scenes. Here they are wrapping Jesus' body for burial. The boys played with the little stick figures for a while after we were done reading. I heard Seth holding the angel and talking to Jesus' disciples saying "Hey guys, do you want to come to my house and watch a movie? I'm taller than you because I'm standing on playdoh."  :)

 Owen tried to keep up during the Easter egg hunt, but he gave up after a while and sat down to take on the job of opening all of them. 

 Owen loves his uncles! It's fun to see him play with them. 

 The boys participated in two different Easter egg hunts and made out like bandits. I've been slowly rationing out their huge stash of candy. I'm actually hoping that they will forget about their bags of candy altogether. :)

Blake got measured for a little tux yesterday. He was asked to be in a wedding this June as a ringbearer. He told me he was worried about it because he might "get distracted". I finally figured out that he meant to say embarrassed. :) He's going to be so cute!

Other News...

We had an offer on our house a few weeks ago and are now under contract! Yay! We had the results come back on our inspection and there are several (not so inexpensive) items the buyers are asking us to pay for. If you'd like, pray with us that we would have wisdom to know how to best negotiate what we will and won't pay for. Our realtor is very experienced, has been excellent to work with and has been a big help so far.

On the flip side, we've found a house we really like! It's out in the country and sitting on a little over two acres, which should give the boys some room to run around. We're pretty excited! Our projected closing date is June 2nd, so that means we have a little less than 5 weeks left in this house. May will be a busy month for us! 

Micah and I will celebrate 6 years of marriage this weekend! Can you believe it?! I know I say this every year, but he really is the best hubby a girl could ask for. :) 

We get to go to Virginia Beach this weekend to see Micah's younger sister, Hannah, graduate from college. The boys are looking forward to seeing the beach again and Micah and I get spend some time together for our anniversary too!


Funnies...

On the way back from the tuxedo fitting session, Micah told Blake that sometimes people call tuxedos a "tux" for short. Blake replied, "Well, I guess you could call it "zeedo" for short too."



That's actually the only one I can think of right now. :) I need to do better about writing them down when they say them. 

Love to you all!

Kari, Micah, Blake, Seth and Owen