First Visitors After Move-In-- Kathy, Joel, Brady, and Kellen!


First Family Visitors (helps that they're not on the left coast like usual!)-- Geoff and Nicki!


And First Impromptu Visitors (love it!)-- Alison, David, and Ruby!

They seem pretty happy about it!   :-)

The truck was picked up at 7 AM Saturday.


Someone was super excited: 
 Not so sure?

 She's down with it now!


And.....the wild turkey that was running around behind our house when I pulled up:

(will fill in more details later.  so very, very tired.)

I'd say the move is 93% complete! We have to return the truck first thing this morning so any last items will be hauled by car. It's been quite the working weekend (not for me, so much, although I still ate like I'd been doing hours of manual labor! :-) and the BG continues to be amazing in his ability to get things done.

I've taken all kinds of pics to document the experience, but we don't yet have Internet so I can't upload them onto the blog off the camera. Our connection still works at the old house, however, so I'm going to try to grab some photo-uploading time today when we return yet again to finish cleaning out.

In the meantime, here's the answer to an earlier question!!




The B-man goes out to the garage to check on "the Husqvarna" at least 5 times per day!!

First of all, heartfelt thanks go out to those of you who commented on yesterday's post.  I really appreciate the thoughtful responses.  Clearly, it is a challenging topic and one that I'm sure I'll learn more about as the days go by.

Speaking of days going by....

If all goes according to plan, we will own a new house by later this afternoon.  We plan to move over the long weekend and have to be out of this house by midnight on Wednesday.  If the BG has his way, we'll be done on Monday!   We shall see.

When we moved to this neighborhood almost 8.5 years ago, we didn't really spend a lot of time outside.  We'd go on the occasional evening or weekend walk, but we were both working and plenty busy.  It wasn't until sometime after B was born that I began to meet more people and we soon learned that the neighborhood play area (or "tot lot") was the gathering place for the little community.  I can easily say I've spent more afternoons there in the last few months than I ever did in all the years that came before.   It has been so wonderful to have such close access to swings, a climbing structure, sandbox, and lots of people with whom to chat!!

(I'm already lamenting the certain lack of sanity I'll soon experience since our new house--as fabulous as it is in so many ways-- is not within walking distance of any such time-passing gathering place!)

We'll miss you, tot lot!


From the top of the slide....


...to the bottom--good times have been had by all!

This one spends most of his time digging in sand:

And making crazy "smiling" faces.

You know, I get kinda frustrated that he always opens his mouth like that when I tell him to smile, but then I realized that for 4 years, he's been looking at this "smile for me!" face:


 HA!

Happy Friday to all!!  May I still have that look on my face at the end of this eventful day!!!

The other night, I enjoyed what was probably my last late-night visit with Jen and Chris-- or at least, the last one in which I will arrive on foot.  Last fall when we were without electricity for more than a week, we joked that I had become the 5th member of their family since I'd go over every night to wash bottles and inevitably end up eating/drinking/chatting with them for hours. 

Somehow during our conversation on Monday night, the topic of Elementary School Field Days arose.  They had recently learned that our local elementary school (as, I'm sure, many--if not most--others) doesn't award any kind of ribbons for events, or at least they don't award different colored ribbons.   Everybody wins and nobody loses.  Rah rah self-esteem!

We had quite the discussion of the merits and ramifications of such a situation, and since I was hanging with some super competitive athletic types, you can imagine which direction the conversation went.  But really, we wondered this:  how will kids ever learn to strive for something if they never a) experience not getting it or b) even see that there is a reward for which to strive?

It will surprise none of you that I'm not sure I ever got a blue ribbon on Field Day.  Fast twitch muscles I do not have.  I seem to have emerged unscathed, but I also never really cared about that deficiency because I was fortunate enough to experience success in other aspects of the educational world.  I absolutely can imagine how difficult it must be for children who feel like they lose out in every component of the school experience (not to mention serious issues like bullying, etc), but I'm just not sure that taking away the competitive aspect is the perfect solution.

Your thoughts?   Go. 

This girl is not lacking for joy!

We were treated to a lovely visit with Alison and Little Miss Ruby yesterday.  They trekked up in the drizzly weather to chat and have lunch since it had been a looooong time since we'd seen them last.

Alison and David both went to Baylor although we didn't meet them until we moved up here; we had a mutual Baylor friend also living in the area who introduced us...and then promptly moved away!  Kinda crazy to think, however, that not knowing them at Baylor still yields an almost 10-year-long friendship!!!

The ladies:


C looks positively gargantuan here but I imagine Ruby (8 months old now) will be chasing after her in no time!


"Why doesn't this baby want her bottle?"


"Fine.  I'll just repeatedly steal her pacifier and suck the heck out of it, even though I never showed an ounce of interest in a pacifier when I was a baby":

Because I totally just spent $8 on new return address labels!!

Oh wait-- we also just bought a riding lawn mower.  I guess that cost a titch more than the labels!

The question is, however....

Did we go with SIC 'EM BEARS GREEN AND GOLD?


Or GO RAMS ORANGE???


We'll let you know when it gets delivered.....!!!!!!!!!!!

The B-man naps maybe 25% of afternoons these days, but yesterday happened to be one of them.  Since we had heard from the BG that he'd be home around 8:45 PM, I figured the little guy could stay up to say hello.  So the two of us enjoyed a nice little late dinner date and he started talking about "when [he] was growing up..."  Really?  Growing up?  You're 4, dude.

Anyway, I had nothing planned for this post anyway so I figured I'd whip out ye olde video camera and see what happened.  Behold, then, a minute and 45 seconds with Mr. Brooks:


You might have heard him say how much he enjoys going over to play with the Wayocks, our dear friends and neighbors.   You know who else enjoys going over there and wandering around...perhaps with their bike helmet on her noggin?  Yeah-- this girl:

HAPPY FRIDAY!!

(even though it ended up here as more of a belly chain!)


And....just because he hasn't made an appearance in awhile:

She learned how to pull out chairs:

 And then this, a few hours later:

You'll notice I got smart and closed the computer.  Not like it really matters much.

I gotta say-- this stage of things, with the constant need for close supervision, is challenging for me.  I'm still trying to work my 6-8 hours each week and have 87 million things going through my head related to the move, most of which involve thinking/calling/computing time as well.   The BG has evening commitments Tues/Wed/Thurs of this week and Mon/Tues/Wed/Thurs of next week.   As in, he'll leave at 5:50 AM and get home sometime 9ish PM.   In 5 outta 7 of those cases, if we were already in the new house, he could have come home for a little while in the afternoon and played with the kids (aka given me a break).  Alas, 'tis not to be quite yet.

As you can imagine, my sadness about leaving this wonderful neighborhood is tinged somewhat with WANTING TO GET THE HECK SOMEWHERE WHERE HE CAN COME HOME!!!   :-)

She's climbed onto a chair.

This girl is a climber.  And a quick one.  If I don't remember to push in "my" chair (at the end, in front of my laptop), she's punching those keys in a flash.  One of these days, if I'm not careful, I'm not going to have a working computer anymore.   She is not so ladylike in her keyboarding.

In this pic, however, she had to resort to a different chair and chose one that allows her access to her brother's cereal bowl.  I'm telling you-- hold on to your stuff when Miss C is around!!!

We enjoyed a delightful Mother's Sister's Day treat yesterday of meeting up with Geoff & Nicki at the park where our fam had been back then and even backer then.

Little did we know that there would be a classic car show taking place, complete with "classic" (aka oldies) music over the speakers.  Opa, you would've loved it!

G&N picked up yummy sandwiches from an Italian Deli near their hotel and we enjoyed a picnic lunch...

...before doing some serious wave-jumping!  (and ignoring of the "no wading" sign nearby):

Someone else was a little more cautious.  She is such a watcher (and drooler):

The ladies:

Pretty sure this shot ranks up there in my collection of faves:

I know I said this the last time but we were so excited that they had some time to spare and shared it with us!  The first week of filming (out of five) is in the bag-- that brother of mine is a legit movie director!!

That's an empty hutch, people!!!  And don't be deceived by the apparent smallness of those shelves-- there was a LOT of stuff crammed in there: china place settings and serving pieces, and all kinds of bowls, trays, and platters, too.  

(Packing credits go, of course, to the BG.  Guy's amazing.)

Beyond that, however, I feel kinda "eh."   I mean, we packed up all the unnecessary items months ago when we filled a complete storage unit with boxes of stuff.   So everything else hanging around here is kinda...necessary.  Most of it is clothing that can be dumped into boxes without much care.  I guess the kitchen cabinets will still take some skill, but again, much of that has already been pared down.

So I say:  let the avoidance continue!!!!

HAPPY FRIDAY!!!

Or you might drain your bank account at the strawberry field!!

Our local farm, where we've done the CSA the last two summers, has a brief season for pick-your-own strawberries. They opened on Saturday at 10 AM and had SO many carloads of people that they were sold out by 1 PM! They opened back up yesterday with another big field and we made sure to get in on the action....but not to go crazy since the sweet berries don't come cheap.  Found out last evening that a friend didn't take the time to study the pricing and ended up with a $110 total. Aahhh!!

Our MUCH smaller haul sure is delicious-- and was so fun to pick!! The little miss just stood in one place, exploring and sampling, while B and I grabbed the bounty. At one point, I was pulling long green stems out of her mouth!! And I was wise to dress her in a junky shirt because WOW was it red-stained by our departure!!






It would be fun to make some of the fab strawberry recipes I've seen lately but I'm pretty sure we're just going to eat these all up!

The B-man has had some adventures of his own of late.  Always a fave?  Big mud pits!

 New this year is tree-trimming:

Why are we trimming all the branches when we're about to sell the house?  Who knows.   I'm just glad no one cut off a toe.

Babydoll seems to be (slowly) becoming part of the family:


(top view):

The BG's meet this past Saturday was the annual invitational held at his previous school.   Back in the pre-kids days, I volunteered every year recording times on a clipboard at the finish line.  Now, they have electronic timing and use computers.   I'm shaking my cane and clicking my dentures as I type this!

The full meet didn't start until 2:30 (and went until 9 PM...!!!!!) but the BG had to be there in the AM for the quadrathlon, so we cruised on over around noon with some lunch for us all.  The little miss wasn't quite old enough to do the hurdles, but she definitely could take first place in the Drooling event:


There was plenty of running around:

 And the boy got to jump like he did last year.

Oh look-- it's one of those Friday collections of randoms!  

• It appears we are now officially moving out of this house by May 30th.  That is not very long from now.
• People have asked if I've started packing.  The answer to that is NO-- I'm still trying to catch up on all my DVR shows and hoping to pick up a book at the library today!  Can you say, "avoidance"?
•  Our electric company is doing a scheduled outage on our street today after just having done one on April 19th.  I'm really hoping this is a quick "let's check to make sure the last thing we did is working" because it's supposed to be in the upper 80s today and I'd sure like to turn on the A/C if necessary!
• Thank goodness Neighbor Jen's street is not included so I can connect to their wifi: EMK without internet access is way worse than EMK without A/C.
• C's morning nap is a necessity for me to have time to get work done but it's really crimping my options for trying to exercise.  We pay for a gym system that includes child care but 2 naps/day plus meals, etc, leave little time to go.  Pretty sure my pudginess is going to continue to win here since, again, I really value that time for accomplishing stuff!
• The stuff I accomplish rarely involves cleaning up.  I hear that some people physically can't get on with their day if there are dirty dishes in the sink.   Those are not my people.
• Y'all, I need to start packing.
• To cancel one's fitness system membership, one has to move more than 25 miles from the association's central address.  We are only going to be 17 miles away so it looks like we'll be making all kinds of return trips this summer/fall to get our money's worth.  But that's fine because Wegmans is opening in mid-June so we'll need to be regulars anyway!!
• Wegmans makes me think of Carrie and then I get sad that she is also moving later this month, but much farther away back to the Empire State.  It's been so fun to get to see her semi-regularly these past few years and she better come back every now and then!
• We met Carrie on Monday eve for dinner at IKEA.  Just so you know:  they do not have a Monday night special of organic pasta with sauce for 99 cents.  Website liars!

Happy Friday, everyone!

It's not me, for sure. I might get the red ribbon but definitely not the blue one. C's one true maternal love?! Miss Jen!



(I realize the little one isn't grinning in this shot, but it's probably only because she's trying to figure out why I'm interrupting her Jen-snuggles!)

We spent an hour together at Jump Zone yesterday and I'd say a good 50% of that was spent in the pose above. The other 50% of the time, this was happening:




Not sure how the little miss is going to feel about Jen getting a baby girl of her own in just about 8 weeks!!!

It always strikes me when the girl is in pink and the boy is in blue.  So I tried to snap a pic.  Too bad they wouldn't stop moving.

 It's supposed to be really warm this week but it's generally still cool in the mornings.  She started out the day with some off-white leggings under this shirt/dress/tunic but, by the time we went out in the afternoon, she needed something briefer.  So I reached into my giant pile of newly-washed summer togs (which of course I haven't put away yet) and pulled out some shorts.   And immediately flashed back to the 2nd summer in the life of Brooks, aka The Original Stringbean.

WHY don't they make adjustable-waist shorts before 2T for tall, skinny kids?!  Actually, that's not even applicable here but I should NOT have to fold down the waistband of 18-month shorts on my much larger-than-average 15-month old child and STILL have them practically falling off!

We'll just start calling her Droopy Drawers.

1)  The boy does love him some tractors.
2)  He has a sister.
3)  It's Baylor colors.
4)  It was $1.50 at the thrift store...which is actually kinda pricey since I also got, among other treasures, a Janie and Jack corduroy jumper for $2.45, but for the above reasons, I couldn't resist!