Our big move

Between us and the two kids our stuff filled up all three bays of my Dad's garage. I think maybe we have too much stuff.
With the hardest part of our move over the 10 days went by surprisingly fast. We filled up the biggest truck that Uhaul has, also the biggest truck you can drive without a CDL ...

... and headed to our new house! While the guys were unloading I went through and took a few quick pictures of the empty house.

the upstairs bathroom

looking into the dinning area, keys and owners manuals on the kitchen counter

laundry room and downstairs bathroom

from the living room looking into the dinning area out the back door

play room

one of the first things on my list was to replace the shower doors in the bathroom with a curtain

and one of the first things Jeff did was set up the trampoline for Kara

the living room was the first room to be fully unpacked

we're still working on where to hang pictures

Today after church we layed a blanket down in a shady part of the backyard and then sat down with the kids, talked, read, laughed. Then, I pushed the kids on the swings for a bit while Jeff dozed off and had a Sunday cat nap.

After renting and living in apartments for so long its still a little surreal that this is our house. I feel like Mr Martini from "It's A Wonderful Life" when he is asked if he was renting a new house and he laughs and says "You hear what he said? I no more rent! I own the house!"

F is for Fernandez and...

Our First party at our new house. Celebrating Freedom with Family,

Friends,

yummy Food

Flags



Fireworks in the driveway



After we finished with our own fireworks we walked down to the lake and watched as a couple of the lake residents seemed to be competing for best display, lots of the big mortar shells and stuff. It was pretty impresssive! We had a Fun Fourth of July and we are looking forward to doing it again next year, hopefully with warmer weather.

P.S. Jill I hope you don't mind me borrowing your idea.

10 months

Today Andrew is 10 months old! He's got six teeth now. Two top, four bottom and more coming soon.
He's mastered the stairs, going up...

...and going down

He used his last size 3 diaper this morning and is now using size 4, which is the same size Kara wears. He stands more often and has also taken a few steps. They are very wobbly steps, and it's not a mode of transportation for him yet, but I managed to get a video of one of his successful attempts!

not so little brother

On June 7th, when Andrew officially turned 9 months old, he had his 9 months WCC. He weighed in at 20 lbs 13 oz and is 2 feet 5 inches tall! He also popped tooth number three. This one was a top tooth, his left my right. Then a few days later his second top tooth poked through, and another tooth on the bottom just came through as well giving him a grand total of five teeth. Hard to beleive that in a couple months we'll be turning this little cutie around in his car seat.

8 and 9 months

Tomorrow Andrew will be 9 months old! With all the moving madness I never did get around to posting when he turned 8 months, so here's a few highlights.

He sits up well enough he takes his baths with Kara now instead of in the baby tub.

He can feed himself Cheerios.

He made the all important toilet paper discovery.

He is no longer content to sit in the stroller and watch Kara swing, he want to swing too.

He loves anything with buttons, phone, remotes, computer keyboard,video game consoles, etc. He can stand without holding anything for about 5 seconds before he falls over. He is generally a smiling, happy boy who giggle when you tickle his tummy and is a joy and blessing to have in our family!

moving date moved

The original plan was to move Saturday, June 19th, that's when we get the keys to our new house. Load the truck in the morning, drive it to the new place, unload into the garage, come back to clean Monday, turn in the apartment keys and get on with unpacking the NEW house! I had it all figured out... I thought. Our lease on our apartment isn't up until November so rather then pay the $2000 to break our lease we gave them our notice when we paid our May rent. If they get it re-rented then we don't have to pay to get out of our lease. Apparently someone in the office was confused and didn't double check the date, and re-rented our apartment starting June 15th. See a problem here!?! So now we are moving on June 8th, cleaning up on the 9th and turning in the keys on the 10th so they can have it ready for someone to move in the 15th. My dad has graciously offered up his garage to store our stuff and we will be sleeping either at their house as well, or at one of my mom's houses. We are still figuring out the details on that. My mom and her husband currently live n Des Moines, but they bought a house in Auburn (18 min from our new house) and are the process of remodeling the kitchen before they move in. They were planning to be done this weekend and be moving in, and were going to let us stay in their old house for the 10 days of our "homelessness". Well, Dave(my step-father) had a mild stroke Saturday and had to be rushed to the ER. He is recovering well, but has to take it easy and will need extra help with getting their new house livable and get moved in. We now have less then two weeks to finish getting everything packed. Andrew got sick, Kara keeps taking off her diapers to put on underpants, her potty is packed, and the boxes in the living room are closing in on us. Moving = yucky!

Going Private

I didn't want to but I feel like it would be best. I like it when I find a friends blog linked to another friends blog, and I like being able to tell when there are new posts by following rather then having to check the blog for new posts. I realized though that when I posted about our new home that there's enough information that someone could find our neighborhood and then our house if they really tried. So since I primarlly keep a blog as a journal of family happenings, and for family and friends that might be interested, I've decided that for the safety of my cute kids to take this private. If you comment a lot (Janine, Jill, Mary) I already plan to send you an invite. :)