Everyone's napping and I desperately need to be unpacking and organising/cleaning...so I think I'll update real quick. We are moved in and getting settled. I have most of our stuff unpacked and somewhat ordered although I will be doing some major organising once all of our company is gone. Mom only has 2 weeks left here. It was been soooo nice having her here to help with the kids during the move and catch up on alot of my much neglected sewing projects. We've even fit in a few sightseeing jaunts, including our first ever school field trip today. We went to a local farm and the farmer gave us a tour. We got to all pick pumpkins out of the patch and apples from the orchard. Feed the pigs, learn about beehives and their honey making. Joshua and Leah both asked very good questions about the bees, dispite my nervousness of them being silly and distracting. Overall it was a good little tour. It felt good to be around other homeschoolers again and got me in the schooling frame of mind, which is good since we will be starting our year as soon as everyone leaves. Robert's family comes in on Thursday. We are going to do Amish country (a must for every visitor here), the ProFootball Hall of Fame (I'm giddy about this one), the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame (I'm sad I"ll miss this one since the kids have a doctors appt that day), dinner on Lake Eerie, Robert's first soccer game and other shopping and eating. Gonna be exhausting but fun. Hope you guys are all doing good. Shoot me an email if anything big is going on in your lives, I'm only checking email right now. I've popped on Facebook for about 2 seconds once or twice but that has been about it.

We are moved in. Busy unpacking and getting "home" reestablished. My children are in desperate need of routine.

Celebrating 8 years of marital bliss today. We've been so blessed by our Lord. He brought us together 8 years ago. We met in Feb of 2001. Robert came to know Christ in April, then quickly got permission to court me from our pastor. By my birthday in May, we knew we would be getting married. Sept 11, 2001 shook our world and then 4 days later we began a wonderful walk TOGETHER with our Lord. It really has been all blessings since. Only by His grace and love are we where we are today. We acknowledge and are grateful for that. Happy Anniversary Sweetie, I love you forever and ever.

Happy Birthday Joshua!

Today is my sweet baby boys 5th birthday. Five years and three states ago, I became a Mommy and Joshua brought joy into our world. He is a really great kid. He has a heart of gold, even on his arnery days. He loves loves loves his Mommy and still will stop almost anything to snuggle up with Robert or I. He thinks Leah is a pretty cool playmate and Hannah is his joy. He is quite proud that he can now carry her around, since he is a big 5 year old after all, dontcha know. This morning he ran in to our bedroom and snuggled up as Robert and I sang happy birthday to him. Then he quickly got up and jumped super high, so we could notice how much higher he can jump, not that he's 5 years old. He's reading really well. He'd really really being doing well if his mother would hurry up and teach him more phonics rules. He loves playing outside in the dirt with sticks and rocks...and sometimes balls. He would sit and listen to books being read to him for days on end. He likes limits and having them reinforced when needed, keeps him a content boy. We are having our first, not at home birthday party since our house is now 80% packed up, including the entire kitchen. I even had to BUY a birthday cake, I hope it is tolerable. We are going to Bounce City and having a good fun jumpy party for him. I know he'll be blown away by it. I can't believe that it's been five years. We are blessed to have sweet Joshua Robert in our lives.

We love DAVE RAMSEY!

Ok, we have taught his class, and are successful with his program. We love him.

In case you haven't jumped on the Dave Ramsey Debt-free Bandwagon yet, now's a great time to check him out. He's giving away baby step #1!

Real quick catch up....before I dive back into boxes and packing and then head to the airport to pick up Nanny.

Hannah turned one year old on Friday. This year has flown by! She has been my easiest baby by far. I think alot of that is because I didn't have major surgery to deliver her. (insert my long rants about idiots that schedule Csections here) I feel kind of bad. We didn't do anything for her birthday at all. We had decided to go visit friend in DC for labor day weekend and so I was getting us packed and loaded and then we were driving the rest of the day. I hate that I don't have a picture of her eating her first birthday muffin that I always make the kids. I think I might make them later this week, and do a little family party then, just for the picture, lol. I just don't want her to later ask me why she doesn't have a picture like Joshua and Leah. Right now, I think she's ok with it. ;-)

We had a wonderful weekend in DC. We visited Pooka (Harris), Aunt Cake (Kate) and Jojo (Jonah) and Sammy the dog. They are foodies, like us and so we ate alot and loved every minute of it. I took my grain mill and Pooka made some fresh pasta for us. Cake made some fresh calzones also. It was lovely. They live in a beautiful planned community in Virginia. We walked all over, down to the farmers market, to the playground, so fun. We also drove into DC and went to the national zoo. It was nice but got crazy crowded in the afternoon. Cake and I got pedicures. The whole weekend was so nice and laid back and relaxing. Just what we needed before this next month of craziness. We can't wait to go back and do the DC touring. It was exciting just driving over the Potomac and seeing the Washington and Lincoln monument from the car. I can't wait to really go explore our nations capitol.

Awesome

We finally got and accepted an offer on our house in Texas. 14 short months was all it took on the market. Actually, it was less than 2 months since we listed with our new agents. If anyone in the Houston area needs to buy or sell a home, I CAN NOT recommend Ronnie and Cathy Matthews any higher. They have been amazing!! Seriously, they've been actually WORKING to sell our house, instead of just listing it and waiting. We have been impressed over and over by them. And now, we have a much better idea of how to sell a house the next time we need to. We are grateful to the Lord for leading us to them and for His perfect timing for our sell, even if it isn't the timing we would have planned. May His will be done in this sell and in our buying of our next home! He blessed us sooo amazingly in that, our first home. All three of our children were conceived there, along with babies for three other families, including the birth of a sweet baby boy there just yesterday! We thought about listing feritility blessings as part of our sellers disclosure, lol!