My Faith and Joy… and Boys!

What do you get when you cross two girls with a roll of Scotch tape and their little brother?

A sticky mess (Especially considering they added in PB&J crumbs into the mix)!

When our friends Ashley and Uriah came to help us move, we were thrilled to get their son Breton and Danny together for their first “play date.” The boys may not have paid much attention to each other this time, but I just know there’s a good friendship in their future!

See?  They’re already sharing toys. 

And butting heads. 🙂

They can always bond over our families’ shared love of motorsports!

You know you’re tired when you’re changing a baby’s diaper in a dim room and you’re trying really hard to wipe up the mess, and one spot just isn’t coming off his stomach, and you scrub and scrub and wonder if you’re going to have to give the kid a bath until finally you realize…

…it’s his belly button.  Oops!  Well, at least he now has a really clean tummy! 

While we were busy moving, Danny was working on his new moves.  He’s crawling!

Here is his first nearly-successful attempt.  He’s getting cheered on by his dad, siblings, and our friends Ashley, Uriah and their son Breton.  I should have known that all it would take to get him to move was an enthusiastic audience and the allure of a soda can!

I’m back!  Well, I never really left – I just moved a little.  Or a lot.  As in, an entire house.  Which had more than a little stuff in it.  So right now I’m knee-deep in boxes (actually, chest-deep in certain rooms) and this is the first time I’ve opened my laptop in several days other than quickly turning on Netflix to entertain the kids for a few minutes while I attempt to make sense of these boxes.  Have I mentioned that we have TOO MUCH STUFF?

The kids are thrilled with the move.  They love their new playroom in the basement filled with STUFF, all the new closets to fill with STUFF, all the boxes of STUFF they can paw through.  Oh, and they love all the TV they’ve been watching while I unpack and organize.  It’s a kid’s dream come true!  (And a mama’s too – it’s a gorgeous house – although I’m still feeling very sentimental about our last one.  I found myself the other day crying as I scrubbed the toilet in our old house because it was the last time I would ever clean those toilets.  Which is an entirely new reason for me to cry when it comes to cleaning!). 

So we’re all good.  We’re settling in, trying to figure out which light switch controls what, hanging curtain rods so we all aren’t woken up at early hours by a beautiful but entirely too early sunrise (too bad that hasn’t helped Danny!), and meeting new neighbors including a fox, deer, uninvited ants, and an adorable chubby animal that we think is a groundhog.

Oh, and before I go unpack more boxes of STUFF, I want to thank all the people who have helped us with this move – Maria, Uncle Jeff and Aunt Mary, Ashley and Uriah, and especially Jim’s Mom and Dad.  We literally couldn’t have done this without you!  And thank you to everyone who was praying and supporting us from afar.  We love you!