Updates

Moving:

I am down to four boxes half filled with miscellaneous stuff, two boxes of pictures and decor, and making curtains for the back door. Not bad for having been in the house full time for a little over a week and having company for four days. The painting, packing, and heavy duty cleaning are all done. Now we are down to the everyday messes and life going on as usual. Hooray for being done with our move!

Gardening:

I need to take some more pictures of how the garden is growing. The pumpkins and weeds are taking over because weeding has been sadly neglected with all of the moving that we have been doing the last couple of weeks. We have been eating onions, spinach, lettuce, and zucchini. (If anyone has some good zucchini recipes, let me know!) A few peas grew but the birds ate most of my seeds and we didn't get much. Hopefully, we will have cucumbers, corn, potatoes, watermelon, and bell peppers before the summer is over. The tomatoes and pumpkins are growing great! We spent a couple of hours over at the garden tonight watering and weeding. I would say that we got caught up on about 1/5 of it. I am grateful that we get to keep our garden even though we live across town.

Bekah:

Our little girl crawls proficiently up and down the stairs, but still insists on scooting across the room on her bum. Her vocabulary is growing to include words like "brover" and "g'n'pa" and "see that." She loves to play in the water: bath tub, pool, sprinklers, you name it. Her smile and laughter brighten our house every day. It is a joy to watch her play with and tease her brother. Today Bekah learned how to open the bottom of the entertainment center where we keep the VHSs and started resorting those for me like she does the DVDs every day. We are grateful to have her as a part of our family.

Benjamin:

Our son tells us that he is growing big "like a giant." He likes to watch this show called Word World where everything is made up of words, even the characters. One day the ant wanted to be a 'gi'ant and so they added the letters g and i to ant and the ant became very large. So now Benjamin thinks that in order to be big you have to be a gi-ant. His vocabulary is expanding as well, not so much in words as in phrases. Mom is having to watch what she says because Benjamin is starting to mimick her by saying "You've got to be kidding me!" or "That's wonderful!" or "You say d*** it when you are mad." Oops! Kids are too smart for their own good. (I am working on curbing that habit. I now know why our parents and leaders try to encourage us not to start bad habits because they are extremely hard to overcome once they become a part of your life. I have been trying to stop swearing for a decade now and do good most of the time.) He is a great helper and is learning to help himself. Benjamin's greatest accomplishment of late is learning to dress himself. He still needs lots of encouragement and a little supervision, but he does a great job of doing it by himself correctly.

Michael:

My husband is still as wonderful as ever. We butt heads every so often (a lot lately because of the moving stress) but that is because we are individuals not clones and we both have strong opinions and distinct ways of doing things. He is thoroughly enjoying his job and his work environmeny except for when I'm gone too long during naptime and the kids wake up. He has been a good sport about watching the kids while I did a lot of cleaning and moving.

Charlynn:

I have been busy with sifting and sorting, gardening and moving, trying to maintain some normalcy in the midst of chaos, and continuing to work on my other challenges. I spend a fair amount of time blogging and attempting to read. I even squeeze in time to myself once in a while and need to do so more often. After this last month, I think I am ready for a break. What that means I'm not exactly sure beyond sitting around doing nothing with no one demanding my time and attention every five minutes or so. I make a mental list of what I accomplished each day so that I don't concentrate on my to-do list so much. If the mental list isn't working than I try the pencil and paper method. That definitely helps me focus on the positive.Life is continuing to move forward.

I think that about covers it for now. We are still learning and growing each and every day.