The Fountain Downtown

Moving - Almost to Sandpoint!

These were probably still in Montana, but I'm not 100% sure. It was funny when we got close to Idaho and our arrival time was earlier than the current time (time zone change at the border). Kinda threw the GPS for a loop. =P The time area just went blank until we crossed the border. Anyway this was on a little pull-out area off the highway - had to feed Bekah. =)

Deanna made my girls a travel bag out of monkey fabric and put in stickers and colored pencils and paper and all sorts of stuff for the trip. A monkey shirt for me, too. =) And pipe cleaners! The girls had a blast stringing Bekah's Cheerios onto pipe cleaners and making bracelets and necklaces. =) Tatum also sent us off with a bag of things to do on the road, and when we got to Colorado, the grandmas had gotten stuff, too. The girls were easily occupied for all three days without a single video. Rockin'! =)

Pictures!

These are from Kansas. I'll get the Sandpoint ones up, though! =)

Blueberries! =)

Hey! Well yesterday we found zero huckleberries. =P But we had a fun drive and Brenton and Sunny came with us, so that was fun too. We found kind of a neat camping area. You'd definitely not find other people out there, but I'm feelin' pretty sure we'd see a bear. lol! I'm not too worried about the bears but maybe I should be. I think it would be awesome to see one - just not get attacked by one. =)

Anyway this morning we went to a blueberry farm with Sunny and picked blueberries all morning. I made quite a few treks back to the car to take kids potty (or not - Em chickened out a few times and wouldn't use the port-a-potty - I don't really blame her) and once I even drove to the gas station around the corner to get the kids go in a real potty. =P I ended up with 2.5 pounds of berries. I don't know how many we ate. =P What's funny is they are cheaper at Safeway right now. =) Haha! But only by a little and the experience was worth it. My kids had fun and even Bekah picked some berries. =) She smuggled a berry into her crib with her somehow when we got home and decorated her sheets and her shirt.

Good thing I'm getting a washer on Wednesday. =) It's going to be a looooong day of laundry, so I hope it arrives early! I have laundry baskets and storage tubs piled with clothes.

I edited pictures!! Wahoo! But the other computer doesn't have internet and I haven't looked for a flash drive yet. Lainey has been really corny for pictures lately. I need to get some good ones of her! I can't wait to post them and show you all what Sandpoint is like. You will all want to come visit. ;) And we have plenty of room for you! Just not all at the same time, 'k? I'll be taking reservations, lol!

Oh, funnies: Last week I was playing with alphabet magnets with Laine and asking her what letters they were. She knows 15 letters, which I think is how much she knew last time I quizzed her. I might start "school" once I get the big room (what we're calling the office/craft room) totally unpacked and clean.

Anyway I held up H and asked what it was. "Um, a line like this and a line like this, and then a line like this!" (drawing it in the air) She didn't know that one.

I held up P. "Um, a circle and then a line!" (drawing it in the air) "Yep, what is it called?" "P!" Hehe! She knew it.

I held up an M. "Ummm, an up-side-down W?" Hehe! She cracks me up. She didn't know that one either though, so it was a good guess. =P

What else? Ooh one nice thing about this new phone (don't know if I blogged that but Harp got us new phones when we extended our contract right before we moved) is that I can type notes in it. So I wrote down what I wanted to blog when Lainey said it this morning. Yay!

So we were sitting in the car waiting for Sunny. Laine says "Mom! I saw a guy with panties on instead of pants!" Hahaha! I was glad to see that it was a guy in running shorts jogging past their house.

Wonderful Sandpoint... =)

Hey! Well not a ton to update, I guess. Lots of time at the beach, the playground/park by our house, etc. On Thursday we met Jen and Steve at the beach and then went to their house for dinner. We went by the grocery store and grabbed stuff to make apple crisp and peach crisp and some ice cream and I made dessert at their house. It was fun! =)

Friday Harp came home from work and said "Get in the car - we're going to the fair!" Hehe! So we went to the county fair. It was fun and I was excited that they let the kids in to see the quilts. In Derby, no kids were allowed, even in strollers. Anyway the kids liked seeing the pigs and chickens and rabbits. =)

Yesterday we got up and hiked 1.1 miles of a trail that is super close to us. It's a difficult trail, but the kids did great! Lainey asked on the way down if we were outside or inside. =P It is really thick with trees. Super pretty. The trail is 3.5 miles so maybe someday we'll all make it to the top. =) We did gain 700 feet though so that's no small thing for little girls!

The kids and I took some long, hard naps after the hike and then we went geocaching. The first one led us to a tree with a wasp or hornet nest in it, so we didn't dig around for the cache. Then we went and found a cache at City Beach. I love going to City Beach in the evening because almost nobody is there, the air is nice and cool, and the sun is pretty. And there is a restaurant on the beach (probably expensive - we haven't checked it out) that has live music at night and you can hear it pretty far down the beach. We swang in the bench swing, listening to the music, watching the boats... I still can't believe we live here. It is awesome!

This morning we went to the same church, with Steve and Jen. We split up for lunch and to get ready and we were going to all go huckleberry picking together, but they just called and bailed 'cause of kid attitudes. Yeah, we SO understand, lol! Anyway we are heading out to Priest Lake to pick huckleberries and Harper loaded some geocaches onto the GPS, so maybe we'll grab a geocache or two. This place is awesome!!! =)

Ahhh

Well, we have internet now! Yay! =) And no more data plan, although I realized later that in our house we have wifi anyway. I guess I'm going to have to get used to the cell phone thing. =P Tonight at dinner we were eating eggplant (and teriyaki chicken and rice) and Em said it was her favorite vegetable. Harper decided to look up eggplant (probably wikipedia) on his phone and he told us all sorts of stuff about it. Did you know it natually contains nicotine? More than any other food. It's still not a ton, but that's just weird. =P And it's technically a berry. Also much smaller normally than the ones that are cultivated.

So I didn't know this but huckleberries grow like crazy up here. The forest service had info about where to pick them for free and warnings about bears. =P We've had fresh huckleberries, huckleberry honey, and huckleberry cream ale. I wouldn't have been too sure that a huckleberry wasn't a made-up berry before we moved here. =P They look like blueberries.

I worked on the garage more this morning. I'm still unpacking. Slowly but surely. =) Bekah's other top tooth came in today and she was a little cranky, so I didn't get as much done as I would have liked. But it's all good 'cause she's cute. =) Well and she has a scream that is just absolutely horrid. I can't even describe it to you. It is awful and painful and so uncool. I held her a whole lot today so I wouldn't have to hear it. =P She has been happy as long as she's crawling around exploring or being held by me - but leave her in a play pen or in her high chair and she is a total crank. I really do think it's just her teeth, but yikes... =P

I tried to take the girls to the lake after naps today, but Emily absolutely freaked out when we got there because I had forgotten life jackets. She really had her heart set on swimming far out into the lake. So far, they've only played where they could stand up easily. She was insisting that we go back and get life jackets and I told her she needed to be thankful that we could go play in the sand and the shallow water or else we would go home and stay home (we didn't have time to go back with life jackets before Harp came home and I wasn't going to let her get her way with that attitude anyway). She freaked and freaked and freaked, but I wanted to give her a little time to get herself together because she was so wound up. Finally started to chill out a little bit, but after like 30 feet of walking, she whined a suggestion that we get the life jackets again. So I said we'd go home. Then she changed from "We NEED to go back home!" to "No, we CAN'T go back home! I WON'T go back home! We HAVE to stay!!" Wow. When this girl is good, she's good. When she's bad, she's bad. I ended up carrying her kicking and screaming back to the car. I buckled her in and she unbuckled herself. I buckled it again and told her it would be 10 swats if she unbuckled herself again. She didn't unbuckle again, but she did object loudly a few more times on the way home. ::sigh:: After we got home, she got some swats for the whole episode and she was perfectly sweet the rest of the day. Kids... I must say, I am SO glad issues like this have become so rare with her. I had forgotten what it was like!

Hmm so it sounds like today was an awful day, lol. It wasn't, really.

Oh and we had a fun trip to the library. We got some books about ants, a Curious George book that Em found, and Peter Pan. I don't like Peter Pan and I really don't like Tinkerbell, but I checked it out because I told Emily once that I would show her the scenes with Tinkerbell in them so she could see what her attitude is like. Emily agreed that she is not sweet.

Oh hey I just started to scratch my bee sting and realized I hadn't blogged about it. It's the first time I've ever been stung by a bee. I was surprised by it because I didn't even see the bee until I saw it flying away. There seem to be a TON of bees here compared to Derby. Anyway the stinger didn't get stuck in my skin or anything - I don't know what it would be like if it had - but it hurt!! I guess not quite as bad as I had expected. I remember my sister freaking out about a bee sting, but she was really little. I thought if I ever got stung by a bee, I'd be screaming and freaking out, lol. =P Anyway it still itches 2 days later.

It is waaay later than I had planned on staying up. Gonna go to bed! =) Night!

Finally!

Hey! Woo hoo! I am finally blogging. =) We are supposed to get internet access tomorrow, so we can ditch the data plan on Harper's cell phone. I can't wait, 'cause he's always whipping out his phone to check somethingorother and it's starting to get annoying. =P I told him I was afraid I would do that if I had the data plan - I didn't expect him to do it, though! We didn't get the data plan on my phone and I'm glad, even though it means I haven't had internet. I sorta like being disconnected for a while. But blah blah blah whatever. =)

So Bekah got her top tooth in today! She's been happy for a couple of days, but last week was rough because her gums were swollen and she was just not happy.

Anyway. We had a great time with Steve and Jen on Friday. They are fun and the kids had a great time together, too. Eden and Emily played together and Lainey and Ephraim played together. Jen said Ephraim keeps talking about "my friend." =P And Eden has been excited about meeting Emily. We'll have to get together with them again this week. We don't have a kitchen table so I feel a little silly inviting them over, but I also don't think they'd really care that we don't have a table. We're eating off our coffee table (which is in the dining room, with no chairs). =) We are church shopping with Steve and Jen and we liked the church we went to Sunday. I missed a chunk of the sermon to feed Bekah so I kinda want to see if there is a recording so I can listen to the whole thing...

Harper's parents got here late Friday night. Saturday was Lainey's birthday and I made her a cake with a pig, dinosaur, and elephant on it. =P That's what she wanted. I'll get pics up once we have real internet. Harper's birthday was yesterday and he sort of gets ripped off of a birthday cake because there's always leftover Lainey cake. =P But we'll make a pie one of these days and pretend it's for his birthday. =) It's been getting pretty hot here in the afternoons so we try not to heat up the kitchen too much. Anyway we had a fun time with Harp's parents. We went to the beach, the park, ate out, played Carcassonne and Hullaballoo... =)

Today a guy came over to fix our stove and I asked him about places to camp and hike. He was born and raised here and he told me a ton of great places (claimed there are a million awesome places to camp around here though) and told me a ton of moose/bear/mountain lion stories. Oh and about hunting rattlesnakes. He was a funny guy. He says every time he goes elk hunting he feels like a moose magnet. =) He's probably in his 60's so I'm not too freaked out by the number of wild animal stories he had - and he's kind of crazy, too, lol. I'm excited to go camping, though! We went to the forest service and bought a good forest map and got lots of info on native birds, trees, flowers, edible/medicinal plants, and river rafting and camping info.

Oh and today I went and ordered a washer and dryer. Yay! I went to the laundromat (the "laundry store" according to Lainey) last week and it took all morning. Bek really needed a nap. I may go one night after Harp gets home this week because my washer and dryer won't be delivered until Wednesday next week. But I'm excited. I got an awesome washing machine and a cheapo dryer. Dryers are super easy and cheap to fix and we've done it before... and the washer I got spins at 1300rpm so the clothes will be so dry, they won't spend much time in the dryer anyway. The only thing we would have spent more on a dryer for was a steam cycle, but this washer has one. It's the top of the line LG, so it should last. Not cheap, but huge capacity, which I'm thinkin' I'll be very happy to have in a few years. Or even now. =) And it's a front-load, so it'll be easy for kiddos to help. =)

Okay I'm done on the computer. After so much time without getting on the computer, I'm not liking being on here so long. I did just spend forever on Facebook before I blogged, but still. =) Later! =)

A Couple Old Posts That Didn't Get Posted =)

(Saturday night)
Hey! Well, we are in Sandpoint! We won't have internet access at home until the 25th, but we live about a block from the library, so we can walk over there and use their internet. We have been so busy unpacking, though. We have made it out to Walmart and Yoke's (grocery store with a huge natural foods section) and to get our water and electricity and stuff in our name. And we've gone out for a walk. =P And to the library a couple of times. Anyway I should back up.

We left Colorado around 11 on Tuesday and only made it to Billings. The plan had been Bozeman, but it got dark and Harp was having a hard time seeing. So we stopped to find a hotel and it took a while because the state fair is in Billings this week. We stopped at a few places and people were telling us everywhere else they had tried and where not to bother asking. =P Crazy! But we found a room (the second to last room) at a Best Western that was not cheap at all but they did have a ton of stuff for breakfast and if we had had time (and swimsuits out) they had a cool kids' water park thing inside.

Anyway then we got going at 6:30 and made it to Sandpoint around 4 or 4:30. We parked the truck at Walmart and Harper took the van to get keys to the house. Then by the time we got to the house, people were waiting to help us unload. It was awesome! I didn't count, but I'm thinkin' there were about 15 guys there helping unload - all people from Quest. Brenton and Sunny were here too, of course, and we got to meet their little cutie Samuel! =) Sunny watched the kids, I told people where stuff went, and the guys did all the work. It was so nice! =) I went to get pizzas, but Dominoes doesn't have cups, so I had to go to Safeway too. By the time I got back, there were only a few guys left. =P So we ended up having pizza for the whole next day AND gave a pizza to our neighbor. =P There may still be some in the fridge, lol.

Anyway there was some funny stuff on the trip... Emily asked me "How do fish and sharks and whales not get water in their eyes?" =P Hehe! And when we got into the mountains, we were talking about how tall the trees were. Em said "Whoa! Those trees are so tall I couldn't even climb them! ...But I bet Laine could! .....But I bet Keller could do it better!"

Lainey was in the moving truck with Harper the last day and they hit a bird. It flew past the windshield and hit the side of the truck. Laine said "Maybe it wanted to eat the truck." And then "Maybe it just forgot that we were there." After a little while, she said "Daddy, I wanna do that bird crash thing again!"

Oh and the day before we were in Wyoming still and Lainey said "Mommy, when we get to Montana's house, can you get me the dry-erase markers?" Hehe! She has never heard of Hannah Montana, that I know of, so I don't know what made her think it was someone's house. =P

Welllll I guess I should keep unpacking if I ever want to get it done. Harper's parents are coming the 21st and I really want it all done by then 'cause I know I won't be unpacking while they are here. Later! =)


(Friday, Aug 21)
Hey! Well Harper decided to upgrade his phone plan so that we can use his phone as a modem. He's at work though so I think we'll walk to the library later and I can post this. The internet company is supposed to come Tuesday, but we still haven't unpacked our modem and stuff and we think we've looked everywhere. Which isn't possible. But we can't find it. =( Anyone remember packing it?

Anyway Sandpoint has been fun. We have mostly been unpacking stuff still, but we have had fun too. There is a fountain in the middle of what I think is downtown that the kids can run through. We had to go by the rental place and pick up a key to the garage because they forgot to give it to us (yeah no garage door opener - that's gonna be chilly in a few months!) and the fountain was right next to it. The kids didn't want to run in it in clothes. Lainey asked if she could just take her shirt of and run in it. I said no and she was like "but those boys are!" lol =P We went home and got swimsuits on and went back for the rest of the afternoon. That was Tuesday and that was a really rough day for them. I think it must be moving, unpacking, Daddy going back to work, etc that kinda messed them up for a coupla days. =P Wednesday we went to City Beach Park with Sunny and Samuel. That was fun! That park is SO awesome and Lake Pend O'Reille is so pretty. It's just a tiny part of the lake that you see from the beach and it still looks big. =)

Tonight we are going to Steve and Jen's house for dinner. Steve started at Quest a month ago and he's one of the guys that helped us move stuff in. They have 5 kids, including a 5-year-old girl named Eden. Cool, huh?! =) Their kids are 9,7,5,3, and 6 months. I think we're going to have a lot of fun with them. Maybe the boys will like playing Cranium Cadoo with Emily. =P She's been asking me for days to play it with her. I told her when it's just her and me we can, because I don't want to leave Lainey out. But it will be cool if she can play with them. The rest are boys except the baby.

So, funny stuff:

The other day, I heard Emily ask "When is it going to be Sunday?" Lainey jumped right in and answered her question: "Friday." Emily was like "What?" Laine said "It's going to be Sunday on Friday." Emily was amused. =P

After running in the fountain, we came home and I told the kids to go up and get dressed because Harp was on his way home and wanted to go out. Lainey came back down with her swimsuit still on, shorts over it, and panties over her shorts, and said "Do I look dressed?"

Lainey says her l sound so well now and she overcorrects for the w sound she used to make. Flowers used to be fwowers but now it's flalers. =P

Emily drew a picture of a guy crying and then at the bottom wrote B+10. She asked me to try to figure out what it meant. =P He was crying because he was beaten. lol! She likes the rebus puzzles in Cranium Cadoo...

Oh and I got a Games magazine yesterday and Emily did the kid puzzles with me. That was fun. Then she worked on her maze book while I did other puzzles. =)

Tomorrow is Lainey's birthday and I can't believe she will be three! I'm such a dork that I had to write that out (three) because it looked like 3 factorial and she is not six. =P Anyway I need to make a cake today or cupcakes or something. It's been so hot in the afternoons and we don't have a/c so maybe I should get to work. Later!

Hey!

Hey! We are in Colorado. Saturday we loaded the truck, Sunday we unloaded the couches and sold them on craigslist and then got the rest of the stuff in. Luke took a bunch of stuff in Mark's truck to give to Care and Share. We have waaaay too much stuff and we'll be getting rid of stuff once we get to Idaho. I think we had over a dozen boxes of toys. Too much! It was so easy keeping the house clean when we had all that stuff in storage. I don't want to go back to having it all! It's hard to decide what to get rid of, too, though.

Anyway we went through a crazy storm yesterday in Salina. There were blue skies all around it and it was just blackness. We had to pull over because visibility was so low. The rain and wind made it feel like going through a car wash. I tried to take a little nap on the side of the road while we waited it out. I like storms and it's funny but I felt an overwhelming sense of peace every time a huge wind came that shook the car and made noise from going around it. It just reminds me that God's in control! The girls asked why we didn't just keep going but the storm didn't bother them at all.

Speaking of kids asking stuff... Emily asked me about 5 times in a span of 10 minutes when we were going to get there. I explained to her that I didn't like hearing that question over and over and explained the map and ETA on the GPS and she didn't ask again for the whole trip. Woo hoo! =) The girls were perfect traveling companions for the first 10 hours or so. Then Bek was tired and crying and Em and Laine pinched and hit each other and I don't even know what they did because they were so busy accusing each other to me. They were irritated with each other for a while and things kept getting tense back there. So I told them they had to fold their hands in their laps and not make any noise until we got to Grandma & Grandpa's. They did such a good job! When we got into Greeley I told them they could talk and move their hands and everything was happy the rest of the time.

Oh on the way we stopped for gas and the pump didn't kick off when the tank was full. I was on the other side of the car talking to the girls and slipped in the gas when it started coming under the car. Peew! I didn't fall, but it got on my foot and my shoe and my pants. Ick. We had to wait for the manager to clean it up before we could leave and they called the fire department but they didn't get there before we left. Anyway that was nasty and I changed my pants and washed my foot & flip flop in the sink, but I still smelled gas for an hour and a half after that.

And I got here kinda sick. Achy bones, big-feelin' throat, and I had a temp of 101 last night. I really think it's all just sleep deprivation. Last night is the first night I slept well in a loooong time.

It has been very hard leaving all our friends in Derby. =( I don't want to cry about it again because my face will fill up with snot and I am actually snot-free at the moment. =P lol I will write more when we get there and have things set up, I guess. Harp just checked our skype voicemail and we had 55 messages. What?!

Anyway, we're going to go for Bozeman tonight and then Sandpoint the next day. Maybe we'll go farther tonight - just depends on how things go. Okay, later!

Quick Random Update

Today we packed and packed until it was just excruciating. =P CK came over and helped. She is so sweet to do that because I know it's not fun! She even offered to come back after Bible study tonight. We stopped around 5 and went to Taco Bell. Then we all went to Bible study (CK is watching the kids) and hung out and had snacks until the study started and then we came home to pack more. We have to have stuff ready to load when we go to bed tonight.

Tomorrow we will take the kids to Emily P's house. We haven't seen them in a while because they have been at camp. Harp and I will go pick up a Uhaul, unload the storage unit into it, and then drop it by our house. Then we'll pick up a bunch of sandwiches at Subway and head for the park. We're going to get together with a bunch of friends at the park. Then we'll come home and load the truck. We'll have Sunday to deal with it if everything doesn't fit. =P After church on Sunday, we'll have lunch and then head to the Keltons' house. The guys will watch the kids and Katy and I are going to come back to our house and clean. There is a showing Sunday afternoon so we'll have to have it decently clean Saturday night, but we'll detail clean on Sunday.

Oh we got an offer today. It was a lame offer and really kind of rude, in our opinion. Ain't no way! =P Only 2 days of showings so far (5 people), so no biggie. Someone will make a better offer.

And we got our place in Idaho lined up! I am super excited!! =)

As we pack, I'm getting more sad to be leaving our friends but at the very same time, more excited to pull into Sandpoint! It doesn't exactly make sense - I know. =) Judy gave me this really sweet card today that about made me cry. We'll miss having them as neighbors! They have become just so special to us.

Okay I need to get back to packin' but thought I'd let y'all know what's going on! Later! =)

Hilarious Quote of the Day

"Hi i saw your ad on craigslist about the furnisher. im getting my first place sept 1st and im looking for some furnisher. if you can send me back that would be great."

LOL I'm sorry but that is just too hilarious to not blog. Am I mean? =P

So we posted our kitchen table on craigslist because Harper doesn't like it anyway. It is a booth-style things with storage in the benches. I think it's cool! But he wants chairs. And it'll save space to get rid of it anyway.

We don't know if everything will fit in the truck, so I posted an ad on craigslist for our couches, figuring if there was interest, I'd email them back tomorrow after we see if they fit. Then we wouldn't be stuck with couches and no time to get rid of them. But I have 13 emails about them so far. Agh! I should have posted them for more $$$. Maybe I'll email everyone back and ask for bids if they don't fit, lol! =)

Naptimes & Showings, Oh My!

lol, WOW. Okay. This is crazy. Yesterday we were out pretty much all day. We had a showing at 1 and a showing at 6. We went to All Star Adventure Sports because there was a good deal involving wristbands (this is a carnival-like place). We made a special trip to an unnamed place. =) And then stopped by home to grab a frozen meal (good thing we got some!) and cooked it at the church before the prayer meeting. Got home late. Kids had no naps. Even Bekah hardly slept all day - just a few minutes in the car.

Today we have showings at 1, 2:30, and 7:15. So we'll be heading over to the Blanchettes' house pretty soon and spending the day there. Again, no naps.

Good thing we blocked Friday off and will have no showings so we can pack. Emily and Lainey are NOT getting along. They SO need naps. I guess at least they will be distracted at the Blanchettes' house. I hope. =) If they start being mean to each other there or to their friends, they'll just have to be stuck in a Pack N Play or something 'cause I'm not going to let it happen. I feel bad for them not having their naps and all, but this is just not okay.

Okay Bek is up and we have to get ready to get outta here. Later!

Girl Time

I forgot to blog about last night. Harper went bowling with Joseph and Scott, so the girls and I made pesto tortellini. We haven't had tortellini in a little while, but there was this Schwan's promotion where you could get one thing free up to $10. So I got a bag of frozen tortellini. =) We went out and picked all the basil from my garden (I think I'm going to pull out everything that's in it before we leave so it doesn't get icky) and I just made pesto without a recipe. It turned out great. I love pesto. I thought it was too bad I couldn't stick my face in the blender to lick it out. =P lol Harper's not a big fan of pesto, unless it's a side dish.

While we were eating, Emily said "I like this kind of noodles. These...cordellinis." Hehe! Coeur d'Alene is the closest big town to Sandpoint and I think she's heard us talk about it a whole lot. Hehe!

Anyway we ate green beans out of the garden, too, and then after dinner we played Kids of Carcassonne. Fun stuff!

Well Bekah pooped Manhattan this morning (lol that's been a phrase ever since Emily was a baby). ALL over her crib sheets, her bumper, her jammies, and her head. There was surprisingly little inside the diaper. lol! But I just came down to toss them in the washer. Heading back to my fam... =) Later!

Park Pics and 'Gator Pic

Hannah and Lainey at Red Beans. Lainey told Harper that those alligators were just rocks. Then when she went up to them, she asked me if they were just rocks. I said yes and asked her to stick her foot in one for a picture. She hesitated and said "Are they real teeth?" lol It took a little while for her to be convinced that the teeth weren't going to get her, either. =)

Waine

Bekah and Daddy

Soooo happy to swing. =)

Pictures!

Daddy's pile of girls. =)

Emmy-O

Bekah likes her carrots. =P

Emily loves to feed Bekah. She is such a little mommy. =)

Um, yep. Disaster-prone. Hilariously disaster-prone. =P lol

Lainey loves Bekah Jane. Today I had taken Em to Chris and Judy's house to set up to take pictures. Harper had Bekah playing with toys in the crib and he came downstairs and heard Lainey in there playing with her over the baby monitor. Then he heard some loud sounds and Bekah was screaming. He ran up there and found Bekah screaming with delight and cracking up at Lainey - repeatedly whacking herself in the head really hard with a Gator Golf club. LOL! He told her to stop and she said "But it's making Bekah smile!"

Woo Hoo!

Okay I started emailing a friend about the realtor situation (she and her family have done lots of FSBOs) and I decided to make a spreadsheet that figured the true cost of using this realtor. Assuming it took me 2 months longer to sell the house than it will take the realtor, and assuming we drop the price a bit (which Harper wanted to), it would come out to about $300 that we are really losing out on by using him. Lots of reasons - higher listing price that we can probably get 'cause it's still very competetive, homeowner's insurance, property tax, interest, etc, a trip back here for H to move us, etc. Anyway. That is a small price to pay for us to get to be together. And to get me out of this 100-degree weather, lol! =) No being together is still better than being in nicer weather, but I can't help but think I will be SO GLAD to cool off. =)

Oh and if we did pay a buyer's agent 3% we'd possibly not even come out ahead at all. So yeah I'm glad to be gettin' outta here and letting the realtor deal with it.

If we were moving locally and there wasn't the job issue, it would still totally be worth it to do a FSBO. But I am very happy to see that in our situation, we really aren't getting ripped off.

I am sooooooo happy! =)

Okay and we are off to take family pics of Chris and Judy and their kids! Later! =)

Blah, Blah

Went to Sedgwick County Park this morning with Scott & Alyssa! And then to Red Beans Bayou Grill - mmmm! I'll miss that place. Well it's not as good as the place in Colorado where Quin worked, but still. It's good. Wonder if there's a cajun place in Sandpoint.

Bekah is waking up. She is a mommy's girl now. She doesn't want to be with anyone but me - or she wants to be free to roam. She is like Emily - not a snuggly baby at all. She would rather go try to find some paper product to taste. =P

Bekah used to make these cute dinosaur sounds and we called her Baby Dino all the time. But she has stopped. =( Now she babbles more.

The other day, CK was watching the kids at Bible study. She said something to Lainey and Laine said, casually, "My name is not 'Lainey'; it's 'Wainey.'" CK was like, "Oh, really?" and she said, "Uh-huh." lol She's a nut.

This morning I told her to go up and go potty, get her Pull-Up off, get panties and pants on, and then come down so we could go to the park. She came down in a swimsuit and flip flops. =P lol! I told her she was supposed to have clothes on and she was so confused. She really must have gotten it stuck in her mind that we were going to Osage Park. =P Then she went up and put her swimsuit away and came down wearing nothing but flip flops and had a shirt draped over her shoulder. lol She is so dingy sometimes! =P I love that girl...

Lainey's Shirt

I'm so excited!! The pic has awful resolution - I used the snipping tool in Vista to capture it. But isn't it going to be cute? =) Terrie, I had this shipped to your house so you can bring it when you come to Idaho. =P It wasn't going to get here in time and free shipping ended today. =) Lots of cute options at customizedgirl.com - Thanks, Aunt Laurin, for telling me about that site. It has way cuter clothes than cafepress. =) I was originally going to do an iron-on transfer but I couldn't find a shirt that I liked for it. I found no plain shirts anywhere that would work except at Hobby Lobby and they felt and looked SO cheap. I think this is going to be really neat. My sister ordered from them and she said the stuff looks like something you'd buy at a store. Nifty!

Chinese Products, Sweet Momma

The other day, Laine was taking a Pull-Up off and started to rip the sides. They are made to rip apart on the sides pretty easily, if you haven't used these. Anyway she told Harper "These rip apart at the sides. They're made in China." lol!

This morning I had a fun breakfast date with Bek and Laine. Emily and Harper are still in bed, actually, and Bekah and Lainey are playing. But Lainey randomly said "You are my sweet, sweet Mommy that I ever saw." She tells me that fairly often. =)

Harp is sick. =( He started feeling icky yesterday. I thought it was just stress because all sorts of things have gotten complicated with the move. One day we think everything's pretty much settled and the next day something throws it all up in the air again. Not actually moving - that is for sure - but stuff with the realtor, stuff with the rental we were (maybe are) going to move into, etc. But he still feels nasty today and skipped out on a morning of golf with Scott and Randy. It was going to be their last chance to go. =\

Emmy just got up. =) Yesterday Emmy and I went coupon shopping while the other kids had naps. It was fun! =P At Target, we got 14 awesome birthday presents, a $9 scrapbook paper & sticker kit, a set of United States flashcards, and a roll of paper towels for a total of $5.96. The scrapbook paper, 8 presents, and flashcards were on one transaction that totaled 34 cents. The rest of it was whatever the difference is. Anyway I thought that was cool 'cause I would have bought birthday presents anyway and I got free scrapbook paper out of it. Yay for coupons. =P And we went to Walgreens and got 4 mocha Fraps for 52 cents total. Mmmmm. I can't claim to have saved money here 'cause I don't just go buy Fraps, but for 13 cents apiece (6 cents plus 7 cents tax) my goodness yeah I want them. =P Yum! And we got a DiGiorno flatbread melt for free at Dillon's, so we ate it when we got home. We've decided to not use the microwave anymore (thanks for the link, Dana!) so I made it in the oven. It wasn't good enough for me to ever want to buy one, and I didn't like that it tasted like white bread. But it was edible.

Well, I searched MLS and our house still isn't listed. So I guess we don't have to expect to be leaving today for showings. We've been trying to sell things on craigslist because we think we're going to have space issues in a moving truck and it would be so silly to take two trucks. We just have too much stuff. The unfortunate thing is that most of the stuff we'd want to get rid of is stuff we already packed. Like months ago. We packed whatever we didn't need to have in the house while it sold. Some of it is stuff like winter clothes that we would definitely want. But there's a lot of stuff that should have been the first to go if we wanted to get rid of stuff. =\ Hopefully we can offload some stuff in Sandpoint. I don't know if it's a garage saling kind of town or not. Here, there are tons of garage sales every week. But we don't think we're gonna want to unpack boxes to find stuff to garage sale and then repack the stuff that we wanted out of them. Then again we found out the place we were going to rent is half the size it's advertised as being. They either counted both halves of the townhome in the square footage (even though they only gave the number of bedrooms and bathrooms in the one half) or they counted the garage in the square footage and then some. It was advertised as 1500 sf and we called for room dimensions to see if we could fit all the girls in one room. Added it all up and it came to under 800 sf. Very frustrating. We can't fit all our furniture in there, but we don't want to get rid of stuff because we're planning on buying a house up there in the spring. So we're probably going to end up having a storage unit up there anyway. In which case I'm not sure I really care to try to get rid of little stuff here either. But it does have to all fit in the truck. We'll see...

Ny neck is almost normal! Yay!

Okay gonna go play with my girls. Later! =)