Maine, Moving and More

We are all settled in the new house, and it's AWESOME. I LOVE it. Did I mention I LOVE IT!! There are still some boxes that need unpacking and other minor things, but we are loving it. The only bad thing is that we have been without phone and internet for 2 weeks - UGH! It's awful. We are supposed to have internet by Friday. TJ's mom flew into Jacksonville on Monday. I flew up here to Maine yesterday. It's so beautiful up here. Nice cool weather (55 degrees or so) and beautiful trees everywhere. Nothing like Florida. And, I am enjoying being with TJ, just him and I. We will be driving to Boston tonight and visiting the Boston LDS Temple. Then Washington D.C. the next night where we will visit that Temple as well. I am so excited to have 4 days of my husband all to myself. TJ just found out he will most likely be deploying to El Salvador for his upcoming deployment in November. That's what we were hoping for. Hopefully nothing will change on that.

Here we go again...

We close TOMORROW!!!!!! I probably won't be able to sleep tonight - it's just so exciting thinking about how much debt we're getting ready to take on...
Anyways...the house pretty much got packed up today, tomorrow the packers will come finish the Kitchen, master bedroom and garage and that will be it. Then, Thursday the movers will come and move it all to the new house.
This is our 3rd move in 3 years...I don't recommend it, and I'm not even the one who has ever packed a single box or moved it on my own. It's just all such a hassle. Hopefully we won't be without internet for too long.

1 more week

We close next Wednesday, Sept. 23!! The movers will begin moving our stuff into the new house one week from today! I can't begin to tell you how excited we all are around here! We have our final walk through on Monday. As I was walking through today I can still tell there is some minor work that needs to be finished, mainly the final cleaning - there is dust everywhere! And, they haven't put the stove in yet. But, it's all done except for the minor details, finally!! So this was taken April 21, 2009...

After a long hiatus due to the County losing our building permit...July 20, 2009...


Today (wish the garage door had been down) September 17, 2009. Crazy what they accomplished in just 2 short (long for us!) months.

Front door - living room to right and there's a powder bath and closets in that little hallway you see on the right. On the left you can barely see a door knob - that's the storage under the stairs.

Kitchen, dining area, and family room.

Laundry room - upstairs with all the bedrooms.

My sewing/craft room :)

Brena's room and closet.

Entry to Master Suite! The walk in closet is the door open straight in front.

If you turn right, this is the hall to the bedroom

In the bedroom.

If you turn left, this is the sink area...to the right more is a separate shower/toilet area.

Neapolitan finished

This is what I did all day yesterday with kids at school. Neapolitan is finished. I LOVE this quilt! Do I say that about all of them? My good friend is have a baby girl and this is for baby Paisley.

Maybe someday I will branch out on my quilting, but for now I am very happy stippling everything. Thanks to Amanda Jean over at www.crazymomquilts.blogspot.com I was able to figure out an easy way to make labels. She is also the one who taught me how to stipple (via her directions on her website).

Brena the quilt holder :-)

Brena's first day of school

It seems like just yesterday she was like this...

Now she's in school??!!

Brena started pre-K today. She goes MWF 9am-2:30pm - that was a really long time for me to be away from her! But, she had no problem being away from me. She kept telling me I could sit by the bus (no idea where the bus idea came from, she doesn't ride it) and wait for her, or my personal favorite "you can sit home and cry Mommy." I wasn't alone for long though. I went in and worked in Tyler's classroom for a little bit. And, I got to run around and coupon by myself - no dragging any kids around with me - that was really nice!

I'm on a roll!

The kids were next door playing with the neighbors, and since I don't have a hubby to snuggle up with on a rainy Saturday and watch football, I decided to start another quilt. I made some progress! I kept looking at this material before I cut it up and sewed it together trying to decide on a good name for this quilt. I was originally thinking chocolate dipped strawberries, or something like that. Then, after I sewed the strips together, it came to me - it's Neapolitan!

Another quilt finish - finally!

This is for a friend's baby. I have known he was coming since she told me in January. Yes, I just
now finished it, I am really slow. He is now 6 weeks old.
This is a yellow brick road pattern. It did come together very easy. I stippled it as usual.

Glenwood Caverns - LOTS of pictures

On the way to Denver to get to the airport we stopped in at Glenwood Springs, CO. They have a fun park there called Glenwood Caverns. We had never been, and I'd heard really good things about it. I am so glad we stopped in - it was a BLAST!

There is a cave tour, which was really neat.

There was a swing - wow! This isn't us on the swing. This swing pulled you up to the right and then blasted you off the edge of the mountain!! It was awesome. Below the swing, which you can't see is I-70 and the beautiful Colorado River. You could see lots of rafts river rafting down the river and they looked like little ants - that swing is about 1,700 or so feet up above the river and interstate.

The Colorado River, Glenwood Springs and I-70.

They had a rock climbing wall and Grandma and the kids did that together.

Look at those mountains!! I miss the mountains terribly.

Tyler getting up to the top.

Brena was actually a better climber than Tyler.

Can't get enough of the view...

This is at the swing platform - that railing behind us drops down and the swing goes right off the edge. Brena wasn't tall enough for the swing, so she didn't get to go and she screamed like you would not believe because she couldn't get on it.

The bungee jump - they were flipping all over the place on this thing.

Grandma doing flips!

Tyler flipping.

The alpine slide!! I had never done one of these before - and it was so much fun! This is actually the part coming up - you don't go down right here.

Coming up after we had gone down.

Bedtime Stories

It's hard not having a Daddy around. One of the things we have done that the kids love is bedtime stories. TJ calls at bedtime and I put the phone on speaker and he tells stories to the kids. They are usually Bakugan Princess stories. Tyler likes Bakugans and Brena likes princesses - so TJ combines the two for some pretty hilarious stories. It helps the kids a lot to have Daddy tell them stories. This will only work for the next few months. Once TJ deploys in late November/early December, we will only receive 2 phone calls a week. And, who knows what time they will be coming at. I am thinking of doing something like video recording or tape recording TJ telling stories, then we can watch or listen to him still, even if it's not "real time."

Listening to Daddy's stories. See the phone in the middle of the picture, on top of the garage toy?

I always catch Brena sneaking out of bed wanting to "hold Daddy." (the phone)
Brena has her own room, but she won't sleep in there anymore. She has to sleep with Tyler.

Another thing we did was take photos of the kids with TJ and press them onto pillow cases with special transfer paper. You can kind of see Brena's on her bed. The kids really like that too. I got that idea from my friend Kate - thanks Kate!

A lot happened in a week

The entire inside of the house (and garage) was painted (an ugly beige I might add, we will have to do some painting when we move in). We have baseboards and doors throughout the entire house. The cabinets are all in, in the kitchen and bathrooms. The counter tops are all in too. It was dark and rainy when I was trying to take pictures tonight, so everything looks kind of dark to me. We are supposed to get the carpet and wood floors in next week. It's so close to being done! I didn't want to leave the new house tonight, I just wanted to stay there forever. I didn't want to come back to this other house. I want to move in SO bad!!!!!!!! But, I figured sleeping on the cement slab wouldn't be too comfortable, so we went home.


Trying to get a better shot of the granite. I really like the silver that is speckled throughout it.

Yellow Belt!

Tyler tested for his yellow belt at Tae Kwon Do before we went on vacation. When we got back we found out he passed! He was very excited to get his yellow belt.

School's in session!

My sweet boy started 1st grade today! I asked him if he just wanted me to drop him off, or if he wanted me to walk him to his class. He said he wanted me to walk him to class. This boy is such a sweetie! And, he totally doesn't mind me kissing him in front of his classmates...yet :) Brena and I really missed him all day. I keep telling Brena she can't go to school in a couple of weeks because I will be all alone! She says "Mom *with a dramatic voice* I HAVE to go to school, don't cry at home." She will be going MWF 9-2:30pm - what in the world am I gonna do all day??? And, I am all too aware of how fast this year will fly and then I will be taking Brena to Kindergarten and Tyler to 2nd grade....ahhhh!!!!!! I have to stop thinking about it.

Peaches!!

It was one of the best times to be at my parents' house. The peaches were ready! My parents have a large orchard on the back part of their property and we got all the peaches we wanted. The kids were in heaven. I have given up trying to ever buy peaches anywhere else we have ever lived because they are never as good as Colorado peaches. It's very disappointing to bite into a peach, expecting it to taste as good as you think it should, and they never do.

Kim was lucky, she gets to can her peaches and take them home. I couldn't do that. So, I got the dried peaches and the peach leather (which I forgot to take! Can you mail them Dad, please??). This is the 2nd kitchen in my parents' house, it is a dedicated canning kitchen because they have so much fruit from the orchard. And my mom would get mad when my dad was making a mess with all the fruit stuff in her kitchen.

This was the after picture, because I forgot to take a before picture. This is the canning kitchen fridge, it was totally stuffed to the gills with peaches when we started that night. After we finished, there were just a few peaches left. But, there are plenty more peach trees ripening in the orchard, so there will be lots more soon.

We canned, dried, pureed...

My Dad is so silly...

Some of the orchard.

The pears will be ready soon...I wish everything could be ready at the same time so I could have had some!

Gotta use a ladder to get to the top!

Look at those peach beauties!!!

The apples will be ready in a month or two, missed out on those too!