First Visitors

My best friend wanted to see my new house so she brought her kids down for a play date. The weather was a bit cold but having the kids play outside was essential for our sanity. We bundled up and let them climb, dig, and rake. The boys loved it and Taliah did okay.


After snack the boys played cars - one on the fire truck and one in the Coupe. They were really good at taking turns and I thought it was super cute watching them play; stopping to fill up with gas, parking the cars in a "garage," etc.

It is nice that the kids are starting to do better playing on their own and we can have semi-normal conversations. (Until we add the baby to the mix in a week or two. then it is back to a halt on adult conversation.)

Outing at the Orchard

My MOPs group had the October outing at Paulus's Orchard. The weather was perfect and Daniel and all the other kids seemed to have a great time picking out their pumpkins and apples and enjoyed the tractor ride through the picturesque fields. I don't know what kind of apples they picked but they were amazing! After the tour the kids were let loose to play in a little house and on some big pipe slides. (I couldn't get an actual picture of Daniel doing any of these things, just the back of his head.) After an hour or so I had to drag him away to get home for lunch.

Children's Lake

I love the Children's Lake in Boiling Springs. The setting is beautiful and Daniel seems to really enjoy watching and feeding the ducks. It is a fun place to hang out and for an hour or so.



Plus my boys like to run around outside and be silly!

Oktoberfest in Carlisle

Jason and I discovered that the Army Heritage Center in Carlisle was doing a big, free, one day Fall festival. Since we wanted to take Daniel there anyway to see the tanks and helicopters, we decided this would be a good opportunity to get out and have some fun.

There is a walking trail around the grounds with displays of all kinds of cannons, tanks, planes, helicopters, bunkers, barracks, medical huts, etc. from all the wars of America's history. It is pretty cool. Daniel seemed to really enjoy seeing all the equipment but was disappointed that he couldn't get in them and test them all out.




The weather was a bit too cold to hang out at the fair for long but maybe next year we can get a bit more out of it. There were booths of all kinds of foods, beer, and companies marketing themselves. They also had a gigantic bounce house village set up for the kids but we somehow managed to bypass that this time. It was getting too late and we had someplace else we had to be. One cool thing we did try to do was get Daniel to ride a horse. He was fascinated by them while we waited for them to get saddled but as soon as he hopped on - he cried and wanted down. Oh well, we'll try it again.

Passing the Time Away

I am so large, uncomfortable, and overly stressed that I can't do much to keep Daniel occupied anymore. Thankfully there is a lot of construction projects going on to keep him busy. Pappy comes out at least once a week to help Jason with the nursery, bathroom, and window projects and Daniel is always there helping out.



Daniel's other favorite past time right now is playing chase with Roxy. We used to play this with her before we had kids so it is something she enjoys. You give her a raw hide "chewy" and then chase after her trying to take it away. She growls and barks but if you stop, she'll come back into the room, stare you down, wag her stump and wait to be chased again. This activity lasts for a good 15 - 30 minutes a night and gets them both some good exercise to wear them out for a good night's sleep!

New House and a Missing Month

I don't really know what happened to the month of September. We closed on our new house on August 31 and worked on getting it cleaned up to move in that weekend. Friends from our new Sunday School class helped unload our PODS (note to readers - do not use PODS - they stole over $100 from us and justified it by saying that their sales people were vague enough in their language that although it is easy to see things from our point of view, they can't do anything about it) that Saturday and we were ready to get settled.

However, we ended up needing to stay with Kat's parents for another two weeks!
Bedtime ritual - story time with Pop Pop

The sellers did a great job of hiding the fact that they were complete and total slobs who let their cats use the floors as litter and never seemed to clean more than necessary. They hid the smells with discrete air fresheners stuck in every inconspicuous location. We were disappointed during the walk through but didn't think it was that big of a deal to change our minds at the last minute. After having the carpets cleaned it was discovered that the second bedroom on the first floor (the room designated as the nursery) was so saturated with cat pee that the carpet and baseboards had to be ripped up. The bathroom adjacent to that room had been noted as having no sealer around the bath tub, what the inspector failed to notice is that under the linoleum was years of mold and mildew build-up because of this. That room had to be ripped up completely too in order to get rid of that smell and filth.

Eventually we decided that the smells were to a minimum and it was time to get moved in. This was a bit difficult with Jason traveling a lot for work, and Kat left to her own with a very busy two year old while being 8 months pregnant. Due to low platelet counts and her history of HELPP, Kat had to see the doctor and have blood work done weekly. Between doctors appointments. women's bible study, MOPS, Library Story time, and the occasional play date, I think it will be 2013 until we are unpacked and settled!

Our list of projects will keep us busy for a long time. The first thing we did was to make Daniel's room totally awesome in attempts to ease the transition. We even bought him a huge John Deere Front Loader as a welcome to your new room present the first night we stayed there.


Jason (with some help from his dad) has already trimmed back several overgrown trees, ripped out the pond, repaired rotten beams on the shed, cleaned out and guarded the gutters, replaced six windows, repaired the drywall in the nursery, started painting a bit, and more. We'll try to show the progress as we go.

Playing in the New House

I guess we need to unpack some of his toys. . .