HOME! SWEEET! HOME!!!

We made it FINALLY! The kids and I (accompanied by my parents) finally got to go home. Curmudgeon too, though he'd been in Kansas for a while, still hadn't been able to live in our house until we came just 2 weeks ago.
Major renovation has been going on since we closed and just as soon as the place was liveable we moved right in. The basement/foundation had to be completely shored up, all the wiring redone, various and sundry other things throughout the entire house. Almost all of it happened before we arrived and now we've got major projects to look forward for the next several years. I've got a few pictures here to show what's been going on since we arrived.
With all the rewiring every single room has big plaster spots all over so we'll end up repainting everywhere but have only tackled the living room so far.

It may be hard to tell because the angles are so different, but the living room used to be a fairly neutral fawny brown. It was actually a pretty nice color, but I felt it made the room feel too dark so we chose a light blue to brighten the place and give it a bit more air. Eventually--one of those long-term projects--I plan to do a William Morris-esque stencil in an opalescent paint over the blue...but that'll probably be a long time coming.

My dad was able to stay with us for a week so I put him to work. He built a sandbox for Happy in the back yard, fixed our uncloseable front door, and built these beautiful shelves for the living room. We ran out of time, lumber and paint so we weren't able to finish them, but he's planning a trip back soon so I'll post new pictures when they are all finished.

Do keep in mind that we just moved in, so boxes are still everywhere and we're still living in a bit of a mess, but things are looking better everyday. I kept getting requests for photos so I figured I could't wait until the house looked perfect or you'd never get to see any of it!

I'm pretty excited about the new floor in the bathroom. Obviously we need to repaint (the workers repainted the trim around the window and medicine cabinet but didn't bother to use tape anywhere so we've got these white halos around the trim in every room. Looks pretty bad right now, but the floor is great!

As for the rest of life, we're SO happy to be back with Curmudgeon. The kids and I had a great summer with my parents and seeing so much of my family, but it was really hard to be separated. Chubbles is walking all over the place now and has eight teeth (half of them just popped out in the last two days!) Happy finally speaks English--no more nonsense syllables for him. It's words all the way now and it's been so great to see him learn and process things then talk about them. 

All for now and happy to be back to normal life. 

new month, same story

Well, it doesn't seem like we're any closer to our home and normal life, but the contractor assures us that it should only be about two weeks before we can move in. Hope it's true this time.
Curmudgeon has been in KS for about six weeks now. School has been in session for nearly a month and he's enjoying his classes very much. I know the learning curve for first-year teachers is a steep one, but he seems to me like a fish in water and just as happy with them as can be. (correct me in your own post if I'm wrong, C)
The babies and I are still bunkering with my folks in UT. It's been great for them to get to know our little ones and we've had a wonderful summer together, but I'm definitely feeling a bit crazy for my own home and especially to be reunited with C again. Also, I only brought summer clothes with me and it's starting to get uncomfortably chilly here on the edge of Wyoming. sigh.
Happy and Chubbles are growing incredibly fast. Happy seems to add new words and more sophisticated concepts to his vocabulary every day. To give you an idea of his favorite subjects and the very cute way he talks about them, let me share some of his most common words:
funt-a-woda (frontloader)
dosus (bulldozer)
crane 
dump truck (also, "daddy" dump truck and "baby" dump truck to delineate their sizes ;)
tractor
haybale
kangwoo (kangaroo, obviously)
ri-sus (rhinoceros)
efunt (elephant)
monkey
horse and cow (which are still interchangeable to him and both say "moo")
It's amazing how sharp he is about some things. He absolutely knows the difference between frontloaders, backhoes and bulldozers and makes sure I get it right.
A couple of days ago he got mad at me because I wouldn't let him draw on my paper--don't worry, I wasn't intentionally stifling his creative development. He had a whole stack of his own papers. After a brief and firey tantrum, he stormed up the stairs to his bedroom and slammed the door. I went up to check on him a few minutes later and he was happily playing by himself on his bed. great, right? So I just left the door open a crack and went back downstairs. About 30 seconds later I hear him get up, go to the door and slam it shut again. I never knew it started so early!
Chubbles is so close to being completely mobile. She has taken lots of steps by herself but hasn't quite gotten the confidence to just let go yet. Maybe today. She crawls like a champion. We haven't  actually clocked her, but I bet she could win any baby race.
She's also an impressive mimic. She and Happy have hilarious "conversations" as they copy each others noises, each louder than the other until it escalates into possibly unsafe decible range. She has taken to making kissy noises at us, she claps and dances all the time and last night she repeated "night night"many times before I put her to bed-- well, it was more like "na na"--but she was definitely copying us.

One of my family traditions is to the famous "sailor suit" picture when any baby turns one. All of my siblings, myself and all of the grandchildren have gone through this little ritual. Chubbles just barely squeezed into the suit and it barely covered her diaper. She has cousins on whom the dress hung loosely down past their knees at the same age. Oh, my hilariously huge babies.

 And her first birthday cake. Happy had a very healthy, low-sugar pumpkin bread cake for his first birthday. You see how my resolve has been worn down... 

We took a brief visit to see my grandparents. So here's a four generation shot of the kids and me with my beautiful mother and grandmother.

Well, if all goes as planned, we should be able to move into our new home by the end of the month. Then regular posting will begin again, as will our monthly movies and music posts and whatever else we can think of.

Back for Real This Time? Hopefully!

It's been so long I wonder if anybody even bothers looking anymore! We do have a good excuse, however, since we've been living in limbo for the past two months.
We made our plans to move from Ohio at the end of June based on the original closing date for our house. As it happend, the closing got pushed back (and there's a long and frustrating tale. stay tuned) after Curmudgeon had already given notice at work, we'd already told our landlords when we'd vacate our rental house, and we'd already reserved the moving truck. We decided to just go with the original plan, put our belongings in storage in Kansas and spend a month or so with my parents in Utah while we waited to move into our new home.
Apart from a few "adventures" and way too much time in the car, we've had a pretty good summer. We've had lots of fun with Grandma and Grandpa Roar as well as seeing most of the rest of my family. We even got to spend several days with my long-missed Okie family. Here's Happy with one of his sweet Okie cousins. I think he was in love and would have followed her to the ends of the earth!

 And here's Chubbles sharing a story with my brother.

and again with Grandpa Roar.

 The kiddos doing their best impressions of prehistoric beasts facing off at the dinosaur museum near my parent's home. I love that the dinosaur scuptures in the background are basically a mirror image of my children!

 And speaking of dinosaurs, Happy's favorite food has become dinosaur chicken. My parents have a stockpile of grandkid-friendly snacks including some frozen chicken nuggets cut in the shape of dinosaurs. When he wakes up in the morning it's "di-sus CH-KUN!" When we get back to Grandma's house after a trip to see cousins we hear "di-sus CH-KUN!" before we've even parked the car. And at any random time of day when he thinks of it: "di-sus CH-KUN!" (including right this second).

Happy has lots of fun when it's Daddy helping him to play the violin. There's not as much enthusiasm when I try to help. I guess that's ok since I'm not the expert!

But when it comes to music, Chubbles is the real avid fan. She is our little dancer and if there's even a hint of music playing she's rocking, waving her arms, shaking her head and bouncing.

 (Grandpa Roar likes to decorate the babies.)

 Happy won't get near the water, but he likes playing in the sand at the beach. 

We don't have any pictures of it, but Chubbles is a total fish. She has no fear of water whatsoever and loved every swimming pool, lake and bath she's been in.

We're glad to be back and we'll be more glad when we can get settled!!

in an upcoming post: the frustrating and convoluted story of our quest to buy a house, our too-long separation from Daddy, and the continuing saga of our move to Kansas.

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...And we're back

It's always when the most is going on (when you really should be keeping a good record and keeping your family and friends in the loop) that journals, letters and blog posts go by the wayside. I won't attempt to get you up to speed on all our recent happenings in one long post because it would be too long, too boring, and would take me such a long time to write that it just wouldn't get done and you'd never get the update.
So here's the concise list version:

• I went out to KS to scope out a place for us to live. Not a lot of success in the rental department and some really awful foreclosures for sale. Then this gem:

It's also a foreclosure, but it's in great condition, a well-made "Prairie Box" house built in 1930. It was love at first sight. So we're on the road to owning our own home. Exciting!

• Curmudgeon is in his last week of student teaching! YAY! A couple of weeks ago the school had their final orchestra concert. I wasn't able to find a babysitter so I didn't see it firsthand, but C made a recording of it. Sounded good! Here's a clip: this is the high school orchestra playing C's arrangement of "House of the Rising Sun".

• Happy and Punky just keep growing bigger and bigger and bigger! Happy loves tractors, trucks and busses more than ever. He's also a modest boy and won't move unless he's got pants on. Honestly, when we change his diaper, he'll lay on the floor for ten minutes waiting for us to replace his pants! He's talking more and more all the time. Some notable additions to his vocabulary are "ga-goof" (tractor), "gee-kees" (pancakes) and "shirt" (he doesn't say his 'r's yet, so we get a big kick out of that one and as we laugh gleefully he says it over and over with great emphasis. I know, we're terrible).

• Punky is 10 months old now! She doesn't win any awards for sleeping through the night. In fact, her brother was a horrible sleeper but at least he started sleeping through the night around 8 months. Girly, not so much. But in every other way she's a complete peach! She laughs and claps and coos and generally enchants everyone she meets. She seems perfectly content to sit immobile on her bottom and play with anything in reach and ignore anything out of range. No sign that she'll be crawling anytime soon. Maybe she'll walk before she crawls.

Anyway, that's the news from our end of the world. As things slow down we hope to get a little more consistent again. We also look forward to resuming our weekly movies...and boyo have we got some good ones in the dock! Just you wait...

music, music everywhere

Happy will have his first "official" violin lesson tomorrow. The teacher Curmudgeon is student teaching with is a Suzuki guru and has kindly consented to meet boy-o and give us some further tips on how to teach him at this early stage.
So in the spirit of that lesson, here's a cute video I took of him playing the other day:

Also, if you're interested, I promised to post some of the music from our Easter Program a couple of weeks ago. I'll refer you to my other (dedicated music) blog: singlikeanything.blogspot.com. So you'll know what might be most interesting to you, I'll give a list of what we were involved in:

Choir Numbers (I'm the director and C sang in the bass section)

• "In the Upper Room"
• "Mid the Stillness of the Night"
• "Dona Nobis Pacem"
• "Abide With Me" (I arranged and sang on this one. The balance is a bit off because the mic wasn't exactly in the middle so I'm louder than I should be, but you can still get a bit of a feel for it)
• "He is Risen!" (C arranged this one and sang too. Ditto about the balance issues)
• "I Know That My Redeemer Liveth" (C on bass)
• "Who is this Jesus?" (C on violin. But I feel I should mention that he didn't feel great about how this one went, so just bear in mind that this may not be a fair representation of his skills)

By the way, on a totally unrelated topic, you may have noticed that we've gone two whole weeks without any movies! Worry not, the weekly tradition will continue...probably next month. Or maybe when we're settled into our new place.

What a crazy week!

It's been a whirlwind around here for the past little while. Easter (more about that in an upcoming post), a fast trip to the prairie, a new job and then back to home and business as usual without a breather. Can you blame us for neglecting you for a little while? I thought not.

Congratulations (and a deep sigh of relief) are in order as Curmudgeon has accepted a position as orchestra director at a middle school (with a couple of elementary classes too) in Overland Park, Kansas. So we're headed west after he finishes student-teaching in June.

whew. For having said we had such a crazy week I feel like I should have more to say right now! Guess I can explain a little of why it was so busy. Last Sunday we had our Easter Program in church (which I planned, directed, and wrote. So yeah, it was a big deal for me) and it went very very well. Immediately after sacrament meeting was over we jumped in the car to drive to Kansas. Happy wasn't with us at this point--he spent the weekend with C's parents (thank you Grammy and Gramps!!), but Punky was a pure trooper through the whole trip. I hope all of our kids will be as good at traveling as these two are. They can't sleep, but they sure are good in the car (usually).

here's our cute girly in the hotel room late at night after riding in her car seat for many hours across many states. So happy!

Once we got into Overland Park C had a great interview with the other music staff members and principle. They seem like a great group to work with and he felt very warmly welcomed. He was offered the position almost immediately and that was that! I am quite relieved that we don't have to fill out any more online applications! Those are a complete mess! To my siblings, remember the "place that sends you mad" in Asterix and the 12 Tasks? I think online job applications are that place.
Anyway, now we have the happy task of finding a place to live, packing up our belongings and readjusting to a new place. Stressful though those things may be, I was serious when I said "happy task". We're blessed to know we've got a job lined up in a great place and we're excited about the possibilities ahead of us. The only downer is leaving our family behind. And I don't even want to think about that yet so I'm going to stop talking about it.
One last parting shot...

it's been rainy-rainy all week, but somebody is so prepared. I know it's blurry and you can't even see his face, but somehow he still manages to be so cute! (yes, it is sunny with no sign of rain and yes, we are indoors. whatever.)

April: Cons & Capers (4 of 4)

The Sting!!

One of the gems of my childhood. I don't know how many times we sat and watched this movie as a family or listened to the record (Joplin piano rags). Robert Redford and Paul Newman are one of the great duos of hollywood history and they don't disappoint one moment in this classic.

Redford is a small-town crook who goes to learn "the big con" under the tutelage of Newman, a drunk has-been who hasn't run a con for years. Together, they set out con one of the most powerful, dangerous and vengeful gangsters in Chicago... and get away with it? You'll have to make it to the end to find out.

Enjoy!

And by the way--no comments this month? What gives? Surely somebody watched something with us! (Especially after the long spiel I gave in favor of Brothers Bloom! Come on, I want to know what you thought of it!)