All grown up

Notice anything missing?  Ben came up to Jon when he got home from work and said he was ready to lose the training wheels.  Jon happily got rid of them and Ben was off.  He's a little unsteady, but he hasn't fallen. I was expecting a couple bloody body parts tonight, but he's doing great so far.  We're two proud parents!

Decorations

Corrie found this decoration for Ellies room and helped us put it up over the weekend.  Cute is an understatement! Ellie loves it.

Letting go

I went out yesterday for a few hours.  The kids were in the back yard and everything was normal.  When I came home, I pulled around the corner just in time to see a line of kids running through the garage and into the house.  Jon said the boys made friends and they had been out riding bikes with them and then going from house to house to play all afternoon.  I'm thrilled that they've made friends....even though so far they are all girls!  I wanted a street full of kids for them to play with.  I want a basement full of laughing, dumb kid jokes and secrets.  They didn't have any of this in Lakewood.  We had a couple kids on our street that they played with once and a while, but I wanted so much more for them.  Now we have it and a little part of me is freaking out inside.  In the 24hrs they've had these friends, they've started riding bikes in the street.  That's something we've never let them do before.  Not only are they in the street, but we can't see them the entire time. They've never been allowed to ride more than 4 or 5 house away on either side of us.  Now they have two connecting cul de sacs that we can't see.  We've also had a few times when we didn't know where the kids were.  We knew who they were with, but we didn't know whose house they were at, if they were riding bikes or something else.  This is a whole new thing for us.  I know this is how kids are.  This is normal and this is good, but its a big change in 24hrs!

Almost done

We've been living with boxes for so long, we've been on a mission to unpack as quickly as possible.  Aside from the basement and a few boxes with all of our pictures in them, we are unpacked!  We don't have anything on the walls yet, but it feels so good to have a functional house.  Here are a couple downstairs pictures:

The living room

Half the kitchen and dining room

Part of the kitchen and family room

Today

We finally got the ok to move last Thursday.  I was thinking we were going to be delayed another week so we unpacked a few things and got a little lazy about packing up the kitchen and some other random things. Once we got the ok, it was a whirlwind.  Gram was coming up Friday afternoon so I knew the kids would be covered on moving day, but we planned on painting the kids rooms before we moved in, we needed to clean and hang some hardware for curtains and blinds.  We didn't get the keys until Friday morning.  Luckily we have some amazing family and friends who stepped up and helped us get it done.  Poor Corrie painted 2 rooms by herself.  3 colors and 9hrs later, they look amazing!
We signed papers at 9am Friday, got the keys at 11:30, worked until 10pm and didn't get to bed until after midnight. A long day is an understatement!  We barely slept, but were wired Saturday morning.  We were organized and ready, we had a great group of guys, but we needed a bigger truck.  We ended up making 2 trips. We were all exhausted, but we were home.
Jon was off Friday through today.  We busted through a lot of the boxes so we could just relax today.  We went out for breakfast, did some exploring and are enjoying the house. It feels so good to have more space, fewer boxes and multiple bathrooms!  Life is good.

Outside

After the longest, coldest and snowiest winter ever, it was finally warming up (Its in the low 40's today) so we hit Bens favorite park.

Look at those cool dudes.

Sam only fell off the slide once!

Ben is super rad!

Improvement???

Mall time

The kids and I met Jon at the mall on a rainy Monday last week.  Since we didn't have any food in the house, we hit Panera for some bagels for lunch.  Since boxes were all over the house, a stop at the play area as a must!

We're back!

After a last minute delay and a crazy amount of drama, we're moved and the internet is up and running!  I'll post more about the house later, but I made it a point to take pictures to update the blog so I want to get some of those up.  

We headed to the Easter egg hunt on what should have been moving day.  Ellie wasn't interested in pictures, but she was very excited for candy!

The boys spent that weekend with Gram so we were short two kids while we did dome shopping, hung out at Corries and had a cookout that night.

MIA

Well, after finding out we weren't moving last week we were on a mad dash to make sure our utilities weren't shut off as scheduled.  We got to all of them but AT&T.  I guess if we had to lose one utility early the phone and internet was the one to lose.  Unfortunately, that means no blog updates until we move.  I was going to mooch off Corries internet and sneak in a quick update, but I'm having trouble with AOL (I had to e mail pictures to myself from my phone) so no updates for anyone.  Maybe next week....

Beyond livid

Well, I was going to post about how its looking like we're going to have to delay our move by 1 week. Every time I start thinking about it I get more and more mad.  The incompetence of people amazes me sometimes.  I have no desire to get into the story again right now.  For now, please pray that people start using their brains and have some compassion for 2 families that are completely ready to move this weekend.

Goofs

I stole these pictures from Corries facebook page. Thanks for taking these great pics and hanging out with us at lunch!