Wordless Wednesday

Carving and Painting

The girls spent the night at Noni's after the pumpkin patch and she let them carve and paint. Looking at these pictures made me very glad she tackled this particular project. Lol! 

It looks like it was a two part process...painting and then carving the next day?

Messy girl!

But so much fun!

I think Buggy was the most excited about carving. She said she couldn't wait to feel the pumpkin guts. A far cry from when she was little and refused to touch them! Haha.

Noni said she wanted a star, heart, P for pumpkin, and D for Daddy. :)

Bug made an elephant out of her little pumpkin.

Peanut saved some seeds to plant next Spring. :)

Raking leaves with Mama.

 

And all the finished pumpkins! 

 

Good job girls! And thanks Noni!!!!

Pumpkin Patch

The girls were asking to go to the pumpkin patch and we have three new homeschooling families in town so I decided to kill two birds with one stone and have a group outing. The weather ended up being iffy so only three families came, but we had a great time and got to know one of the new families!

They had this cute little photo area set up so we grabbed a picture on our way in. Noni came with us because Daddy was working on the house.

Silly sisters! Peaches new "cheese" face is cracking me up.

Our first order of business was the maze. This thing is SO hard. We have never made it without using one or more of the escape gates. I told Buggy she and Daddy will have to come some day and conquer the maze for real. I'm pretty sure it would take more than an hour...maybe two!

Peaches LOVED the slide in the pirate ship at the end of the maze!

She would barely hit the ground before she would go running back up.

I didn't get any pictures of them on the big inflateable slide. Noni helped Peaches do it a few times after she nearly sent Buggy off it backwards by knocking into her on the way up.

Next we headed over to pick some pumpkins. We each got a free pumpkin with our tour, but they were the small ones so Bug and Boo used their own money to get a big one too. Peaches wanted to pull the wagon. :) 

The pedal cars were a big hit and they took several turns going around.

Peaches really wanted to go on one, but was too small so Noni took her for a spin. She was so happy!

Cutie Boo!

We rode the big "train" and then they took several rides on the little barrel one.

After two hours we called it a day. Other than being slightly chilly we had a fabulous time!

Circle the Legos

The other night Peaches was SO tired. She asked to go to bed at 6 o'clock, but then by the time bedtime came around she did NOT want to go to bed. She was still so exhausted that apparently she decided to run in circles to keep herself awake. Goof ball. 

Funny Friday

Happy Friday! :)

Wordless Wednesday

"Settling" In

Our first week was spent settling in, although it is quite hard to unpack things when you have nothing but blank walls. We didn't have a single shelf, cupboard, cabinet, or closet to unpack INTO which made it very difficult to unpack as you can imagine. We mostly just ended up with stacks and stacks of boxes everywhere.

 

We also only had one interior door in the entire house...thankfully it was the powder room door. We've been working in the house all summer without a door so for the first week every single time Peaches would have to go to the bathroom she would excitedly pat the door with two hands and say, "Look Ma-ma! A door!"

 

I went through and cleared out half of all our clothes and put anything summery in bins in the grange. We tried buying a portable clothes rack, but it's not exactly working that great. I think it would work for something light like holding the girls' dance costumes. It's definitely not meant to hold this much weight. It's hard to tell but the only thing keeping it upright is that it is wedged into the attic ceiling. It can't stay up on it's own with all T's clothes and keeps tipping over. 

  

My "closet" left much to be desired as well. :P 

 

Our first week was definitely a little rough, but we made it through. It seemed like we didn't have time to work on anything, and the things that had gotten done were breaking already. Our basement toilet and upstairs sink both started leaking, and several things we ordered for the house were the wrong size and had to be returned. The girls were all running on high emotions and lack of sleep because Peaches kept keeping them up at night and was waking up really early in the mornings. Since it was their first time sharing a room it was a BIG adjustment.

Noni let S,A,and E spend the night on Friday, and Grandma and Grandpa came and helped us all day Saturday. When Noni brought the girls back they brought us an amazing chicken fried steak dinner with mashed potatoes, fresh green beans, rolls, and chocolate cake. WOW!

Grandpa reset the toilet, and T fixed the sink leak, and Grandpa cut a hole in a door so that I could get a working sink! Out of all the things I missed most that first week the kitchen sink was at the very top of the list! It's amazing how much you use one without realizing it!

 Thankfully with as much as it seemed like nothing was going right, we have awesome Internet which is SUPER important with three kids doing online school! This was my biggest worry about moving to the country, but it's even better than our other house! So thankful for that answered prayer!

We still have a loooong way to go, but we're gaining!

Moving Weekend!

Whew. Moving is not so much fun. I'm so thankful this is only the third time we've had to do it since we've been married, and I'm hopeful we will never move again! I cannot believe how much STUFF we have. I mean seriously. So. Much. Stuff. 

I thought I had a pretty good handle on things because I have literally been taking tubs of stuff to the Grange for over a year, and I had been slowly sorting, cleaning out, and packing stuff for MONTHS. Noni has taken car load after car load of stuff to Goodwill for me. I feel like I got rid of so much, but I can't believe how much we still had/have! The last two weeks before the move I was packing for hours every day. It seemed like for every box I packed I would find five boxes of stuff more. 

 

I think it would have taken about 5 days to move, but thankfully Noni and Papa came and got load after load of boxes and smaller items in the week before the big move. Noni spent almost every day at our house that week helping move and pack stuff...such a blessing! Every time I came out to the Farmhouse which was once or twice a day I brought a loaded Suburban, and it STILL took three days to move all our stuff. T kept reminding me that we are moving stuff for 7 people now, instead of 3 like the last time, but I still cannot get over how much stuff we have. 

Our big moving day was Saturday and we were SO thankful to have our good friend's help. We had 7 guys from church come to help. Our friends, the O family, were amazing. My friend B spent four hours helping me pack up the kitchen on Friday, and then on Saturday she let Peanut and Peaches have a 4 hour play date with her girls so I could concentrate on moving. Her husband brought a stock trailer and the men made several trips with it. Her father-in-law drove all the way to the city and back (two hours of driving) to pick up all our interior doors that were ready, and her mother-in-law made an amazing lunch for the moving crew! It seriously looked like a catered lunch from a fancy restaurant. I wish I had gotten a picture. I can't even express how huge of a blessing they were. 

 

I had labeled every box and piece of furniture with which floor it needed to go on, but since I couldn't be in two places at once stuff mostly just got dumped on the corresponding level of the house. 

 

I did my best to start unpacking without moving any large furniture (for baby's sake) that Saturday while Peaches took her first nap in the new house. 

 

 

Here is what the basement looked like at the end of the big moving day.

 

 Our sweet Pastor's wife had brought us homemade cinnamon bread for breakfast on moving day and then later her husband and daughter brought out a lasagna dinner! So nice! Here's our first official dinner in the new house! Daddy and Grandpa were still busy moving stuff so all us girls sat down to eat.

Here is our make-shift kitchen. It could definitely be worse, but it felt a lot like camping that first week. Haha.

Noni took the girls after church on Sunday and I worked hard to get the schoolroom all set up for Monday. By the time they got home I had it in order! We borrowed these tables from Noni and Mama since the cabinets for the schoolroom weren't available yet. 

I even made Peaches a spot which she didn't have in the other house. She was SO excited and for the first few days would go sit down and say, "I do my now school, Ma-ma." :) 

 

T took Monday off too and he and Noni and Papa cleared all the remaining stuff out of the other house. Papa helped me get my living room set up. We had bought the couches, rug, and art nearly a year ago and it had all been sitting wrapped in plastic in the breezeway of the old house. I was so excited to finally get it all out. I love it all, but especially the picture! My cousin's husband took the picture and let me have a copy. I used a Groupon and had this huge canvas print made. Whenever I got too overwhelmed with the house that first week I just sat down and stared at my pretty picture! 

Phew. More pictures tomorrow.