we're so glad when we all get home

Glad as we can be!

We're home! Even though it is a bit traumatic (and I'm not being dramatic) to leave our beloved parents, grandparents, siblings and cousins, we're all super-dee-duper-dee-glad to be home.

I was relieved to see our house still standing. I worry about loving an inanimate object so very much. We do have a sprinkler system, so I wondered if we'd enter the house to water damage. I wondered if our grass and plants and flowers would be dead. I wondered if the place would be full of ants or spiders or ear-wigs. But it's just as great as we left it. Brent mowed the lawn as soon as we got home on Saturday evening. He's spent the past two nights diligently moving a sprinkler around in an effort to bring a few brown spots back to life.

This morning we walked to our local post office in wonderfully comfortable 70 degree weather. We stopped at the park on the way home to play for a while. Then Mercedes rode her grey "horse" cupcake home, and Cooper rode his red one, Skip's Up. Yes - they do have healthy imaginations. When we got home Mercedes yelled, "Mommy! Cupcake got in the house!" Lincoln is already in the muck and mire of the terrible twos (and he's barely 18 months old). He bucked and bronked each time I carried him across the street (because he absolutely refused to hold my hand).

Since our adventure, I have been filling out new student registration forms for Mercedes, making an Endodontist appointment, and trying to find a baby-sitter in a town where we know almost no one.

I am a super-lucky duck whose first root-canal failed and now have a TON of pressure in my sinuses because of the lovely abscess trapped above my tooth. Tomorrow, I get to pay a sitter to watch my kids while I pay the Endodontist $600.00 to RE-DO my root canal, possibly breaking my beautiful porcelain crown in the process (which will cost another thousand bucks). I don't even want to imagine what this would cost me if I didn't have dental coverage.

I need to go and breathe for a while. Sometimes I forget to breathe when I get upset.

I'm excited to share the fun details of our great family vacation, but it might take me a few days to get the pics uploaded. Life has gotten so very busy!

mess

This is our mess:








It's a good thing that we have some energetic little hands to help!




Maybe someday we'll be clean and organized.

But not today.

Today we're going to the park.

oh, how we love christmas

Last night as we were driving home from the closest "good" mall in our area (almost an hour away), Mercedes was excited to see Mt. Rainier. She's always excited to see Mt. Rainier. It's still quite an impressive sight to all of us. We can only see it on clear and sunny days, and it's always covered in snow.

Here's what conversations sound like in our family:

Mercedes: Look! I see Mt. Rainier!!!!

Me: Yup.

Cooper: Why is it called Mt. Rainier?

Me: Because that is what the mountain's name is.

Cooper: Does it have Reindeer on it?

Me: Maybe!

Cooper: Is it Christmastime there? Is that where Santa is?

Mercedes: (In a very "know it all voice") No, Cooper. Santa lives at the North Pole and that's where Reindeer live, too.

Me: Well, maybe there are some Reindeer living on Mt. Rainier.

Later, we passed an amusement park. It was close to 8 pm and Mercedes said, "I wish we could go there, but it's probably closed."

Cooper: No! It's not closed! (He was VERY upset with her assumption.)

Mercedes: Yes it is, Cooper. Because it's late.

Cooper: No it isn't, Mercedes! No, Mercedes - it isn't CLOSED!!!

I finally asked Mercedes to drop the subject, and ten minutes later I could still hear Coop in the back whispering, "it isn't closed. It isn't closed."

Apparently, it was VERY important to him that the park remain open. I think that he was afraid that if it closed, he'd never get to go there.

Also, he's very stubborn.

back to real life...

Brent is back to working
full-days this week.

We've been in heaven
for the past few weeks.

He's had time off and has
only worked half-days.

This week he's super-excited
to be taking a CE Course
(Continuing Education)
that has something (I totally
don't remember the name of it)
to do with Oral Surgery -
his second great love.
(I'm his first love, of course).

But here's what our mornings
have looked like for the
past few weeks:



Is there a better way
to start the day
than with a
MORNING DANCE PARTY?!?!?!!

busy beavers

As Brent would say,
we've been busy beavers.

Each mess we clean up seems
to make a bigger mess.

BUT - we can finally watch TV!

Here's a photo-story of our
latest accomplishment:

We started with a small
hole in the
wall above our fireplace,
and NO mantel.

So Brent made the
hole bigger.
Demo was fun.
And messy.


The kids were
great helpers.

But Cooper didn't like
the noise of the Shop-Vac.

Our wonderful next-door
neighbor does a lot
of work for
"Habitat for Humanity."
He was kind to offer
us the use of his tools.
We only had to rent a
finish nail gun and
buy some wood and
paint and...

Voila!
A hole big enough for an
LCD,
AND a mantel to hang
Christmas Stockings from
(my requirement).



Rather than having cable or satellite,
we bought an internet connectible TV.
We watch Netflix and
listen to Pandora - which I LOVE.
This morning Mercedes put on a
dance-show to our
"Jonas Brothers" channel.