The latest...

Well... without naming names (because I really don't know who it was) someone has misplaced the camera, so until I find it posts will be picture free. We bought the kids a new swing set/fort thing that took about three days to put together. They LOVE it. It's nice to have something in the backyard for them to do finally. Thank you to Joe and Jamie for helping us with that! So we still have a trampoline to put together and a shed to build. That should be fun. I'm staying inside for a couple days because I got a little too much sun the last few days and am hurting a bit. The tan will look good once all the skin peels off, right? We're supposed to have a heat index of 105 today, but it decided to rain this morning and it feels quite nice out now. Jerreme recently spent a week in Alaska and says we'll live there in the summers someday and somewhere warm for the winters. Sounds good to me! I really don't like the extreme temps. So that's about all for now until I find the camera and you can see our smiling faces again!

ps... our new phone# 785-408-5463 I still haven't unpacked a phone. We haven't used a land line since we lived in Texas. Hopefully this week I'll find one.. until then we still have the same cell phones.

The Lake

We have a beautiful lake near our house and the kids and I have gone over there the last couple mornings. I take Jett and Savannah in the stroller and Dylan and Skyler walk. Well, yesterday Skyler tried to ride his bike and he almost didn't make it back to the car. He was whining saying it was the desert and he was going to die if he didn't get a drink (he's my drama queen). Today we didn't take the bike and it went much better. We figured that from where we parked to the gardens and back was a little over 2 1/2 miles. We were definately tired and ready for a nap when we got home so that was a plus! The garden area is very pretty and Dylan had the camera so we got a picture of every flower in there. The geese and ducks were quite plentiful as well and today we came prepared with bread so they were swarming us. It is slow going with 4 kids and the walk takes us 2-3 hours by the time we stop and play and swing and feed the birds and smell the flowers. We're taking the walk around the other side of the lake tomorrow...wish us luck that we make it back to the car! There are 7 miles of trail around the lake and someday I'll make it all the way around. I don't know if it would be any easier pulling them on a bike? There are lots of flowers pics and it may take a few minutes to load!

Lions and Tigers and Bears!

Not really.... but I did happen to find a nest of baby bunnies in the back yard. Lucky for them the lawn mower did no damage. I knew the kids (especially Skyler) would be so excited to see some wild life at our new house. So we had to show them off to the neighbor kids and all were impressed, even some parents. I'm sure that helps the boys win brownie points with the kids... whatever helps. (This is now 2 days after I found the bunnies) and they are still doing good and we moved them to a box in the garage. We have a noisey bunny. We named him Stripe from Gremlins. He is very active and makes this very load EEEEP EEEEEP sound when he doesn't want to be touched. It scares us everytime. I think we'll just keep them till daddy gets home and then we'll call the animal rescue center to come get them. So this is taking the place of the dog the kids have been begging for... for now.

Getting settled

Well, we're finaly here (I guess we've been here a few days). It will take a while to get unpacked of course. I was really amazed at how fast the kids adjusted. They all slept in their own beds the first night. Savannah may have ended up in our floor at some point during the night, but Dylan did good staying in his room... didn't seem to mind at all (his room's in the basement... all by himself now.)

So let's go back to July 1st. Thank you to all the guys that volunteered to come over and get all sweaty loading a U-Haul for me. It was loaded to the door... I don't think we could have possibly stuck anything else in there! And we couldn't... that's why I had to go rent another truck the next day. I severely underestimated the amount of stuff we have. Dad and I filled the second 26 foot truck on wednesday (taking longer than I wanted... because we have so much junk) and we didn't get pulled out of the drive until 7pm. We got about half way and Jerr called to say he had landed (8:45pm). Unfortunately I had to tell him I wasn't in town yet so he had one of the guys take him to the hotel. By the time we got to the house to drop off the two mongo trucks and unload the car (we had to pull Jerr's car behind a truck) and my mom was following in my car with the kids... it was about 11:30 before I got to the hotel. I was so tired and stinky. Not the conditions I had in mind seeing my hubby for the first time in 35 days. I was soooo tired because I had less than 4 hours sleep with all this. I couldn't sleep so I was over at the house at 3am cleaning and packing up a few last things. Anyway... we got here in one piece. My parents had my car so they took the kids to KC and Jerr and I had the 3rd without kids. We closed on our new house and ran some errands (picked up the cable box, because I think life would stop if there were no tv in the house). The kids were delivered the 4th and the help came to unload all this great stuff into the house. Jerr I got started early and unloaded one of the trucks before the help came. If that wasn't enough we had another enclosed car trailer of stuff delivered sunday that was from my parents house. I'm sure the neighbors think we're nuts or something. We had a couple days to unpack about 6 boxes (yeah me!) then we went to KC wed. night. We left Vannah and Jett with Jerr's mom and took Dylan and Sky to Dylans grandma down by Springfield and Jerr and I enjoyed a couple days (with no kids!) in Branson. We got back last night and we sadly had to go take daddy to the base so he could leave for Alaska this morning. He's only gone for a week this time, so I'm hoping to get a few boxes unpacked and a little decorating done.

Thank you again to all that helped during the moving process whether it was manual labor or prayers and good thoughts to get it all done. We really appreciate it and I couldn't have gotten it all done without you! The pics are of the old house... we'll really miss it and the last two are Skyler and his snake he caught on our last day in Independence. You can imagine my surprise when I saw him walking towards me holding that thing. It was no little pencil thin snake. Savannah had her nose stuck right in there. She's not afraid of all the critters either. It's name... Snakey McSnakester.... we also had that day Froggy McFrogster, Toady McToadster and Granny the turtle (from Franklin on Noggin if you're familiar). It was hard for him to leave them all behind, but I assured him there would be critters in Topeka. I'll stop there for tonight, because if you've gotten this far you're probably tired of reading! I've got a couple funny stories, but I'll save them for another day. Thanks for checking on us!