meet Miss Ella Rose

This is Ella Rose, and she'll definitely only be here for one day, so I hope you take the time to admire her while you can. She taught the girls how to roll snow to make a snowman, and also showed them yet ANOTHER use for recycling bottle caps! She's quite friendly (see her jolly cheeks?) and Macie and Addie have given her hugs and kisses all afternoon. We are all quite sad she'll be melting us, er, leaving us so soon, but we've been lucky to have spent one fine day with her. Thanks for coming, Ella Rose.

moving

It's difficult to find positive things to say about moving. Sorting through everything, deciding what to keep and what to throw, kids throwing miscellaneous items into your carefully categorized boxes, piles of boxes stacked in every room...ugh. Fortunately for me, our family has done this enough in the last several years to find ONE important thing to look forward to:

BOX FORTS!

And don't think for one second I didn't get in there with them and enjoy the cozy comforts of a dark, cardboard home. I sure did! Nearly fell asleep in there with those hooligans last night.

We done love us some good ol' fashioned frolikin' in da box fort!

a concert

Right after Christmas I was given (yes, given!) a piano. It has been such a warm and welcome addition to our home. I have loved playing every day (not well, but stumbling through the primary songs) and so have our children.

Here they are two days ago, playing a concert for their stuffed animals, giggling all the while.

This is just a cute picture of Carson. He is looking so grown up lately. And although you can't tell from pictures, he actually is getting slightly heavy! Yay!

Valentine's Picture

Last night for our Sunday family activity, we made Valentine's for all of the kid's grandparents and great-grandparents. (Now that I've put it out there in blog-world, I'll have to follow through and actually send them!) Here is the picture we took to go inside of them. Aren't we cute?

our house

Well, we have news. Exciting and frustrating at the same time.

1. We put an offer on a house! A great house! A house on an acre!
2. After we submitted the offer, the seller's agent found out how upsidedown the seller was on his mortgage, and said it should have been listed as a short sale. Ugh.
3. Kept in our offer, even though it will be a looooong process. We weren't even looking at short sales, but the joke was on us!
4. Will temporarily rent out a basement apartment from a family at church. Hopefully not for too long, it is guaranteed to be squishy!
5. We love the house. I mean, really really love it. Being patient is not always my specialty, but hopefully these next 2, 3, 4, 5 6, hopefully not 7 months, will fly by!

We will keep looking at houses in the meantime, in case something spectacular comes up that isn't a short sale, but it will have be pretty stellar to sway us from this house.

The house has a giant, two-story stone fireplace, 3 bedrooms, skylights, 2 car garage, a hot tub (not that we really cared about that, but it's still pretty cool), great deck, an unfinished basement (will add two more rooms and family room eventually), hardwood floors, and green carpet...in the master bathroom. Haha. So, it's not all sunshine and roses, but easily fixed.



The lot is OVER an acre! Lots of trees, a garden, an awesome giant shed with a loft and electricity, a place for bunnies, etc. We've already discussed family camping trips...in our backyard! It was really the yard that sealed the deal. It is amazing.

So...we'll keep our options open, but I'm pretty certain this is our house. We trust in the Lord's timing. This little set-back is certainly for a good reason, so we'll just have to wait to see what that is!