Are We Done Yet?!?

Well, I think I've been packing for 2 weeks straight now. I'm SO sick of it! I'm about ready to just start throwing whatever in boxes and calling it good. I don't know how you people out there move around so much! I don't think I could handle doing this again anytime soon! We're getting closer to being done, but it seems to be never ending. We have less than a week left before we leave and I'm getting very stressed. Ryan finally had his last day at work though. So, at least he will be home to help now! Well, I better get back to it. I have about 3 more posts to do, but they'll have to wait. :)

The creatures in our house are taking over!

This past month we have had some extra creatures added to our collection. Ryan and the kids brought in a bucket of pond water from the pond out back. There have been hours of entertainment provided by all of the strange creatures that were in the water.

The tadpoles were a hit. What an amazing process!

This little guy still has his tail!

Our first frog developed.

I thought this tiny little guy was cute.

This bird joined us for a while, after the cat brought him in. He found refuge on the ceiling fan.

I'm sure he was thankful that Ryan rescued him.

I was totally fascinated by the butterfly life cycle.

These skinny little caterpillars

quickly developed into fat caterpillars

and then chrysalises.

Then this crumpled up little butterfly wiggled out.

And amazingly ended up looking like this. What an amazing transformation! God's creations never cease to amaze me!

Fun TImes With Good Friends

Last week, we got to go over to Shelly's house. We girls enjoyed chatting and having girl time. The boys enjoyed, well, being boys. We all had a nice afternoon.

Yesterday, Debbie, the kids, and I enjoyed a long day of playing at the zoo.

Caleb didn't necessarily want to get too close to this roaring dino.

Debbie got him a little closer.

Teacher Debbie teaching!

~The Elephants~

I love this series. The elephants must have been stinky!

The Lazy Hippo

Scary Cave Men!

Then on to the main highlights of the day...

ducks...

and a train.

Life's simple pleasures!
Caleb was out quickly, on the way home. I laid him in his bed and he stayed there until 8:30 this morning! I guess it was an exhausting day.

Summer's Here!

Caitlin was a little sad on her last day of school. She's sad not to be going back. She had a great year this year with her cute little teacher.

This little country school has been a wonderful place for Caitlin this past 2 years. I love that it's so little. It's going to be a big adjustment in a new school!

Well, the packing has begun!!!We are planning on heading out the first week in July. Yes, I know that's only a couple weeks away! We are going to drive out with all our essentials and find a furnished apartment and then move ALL of our stuff, once we find a house. So, until then, our house is full of boxes. I think I'm almost to the point that I can just ignore all the clutter and chaos, everywhere I look, but it's still stressing me for right now.

Our Wiley

Well, I think we've officially given up hope that our sweet Wiley cat will come meowing back to our door. He wasn't around, when I got home from the beach a couple weeks ago. When Ryan said that he hadn't seen him all weekend and had looked around for him, my heart dropped. He was the SWEETEST kitty I have ever had. My "not a cat person" husband fell in love with him. From the start, he was always so gentle, when he played. I don't think he ever broke anyone's skin, while playing. Our Tigger had us all torn to shreds for months, when he was a kitten. He would always run and greet us with a meoooow, when we came through the door. He always liked to "talk" to us, when we'd look at him. His constant "talking" kind of bothered me, but Ryan LOVED it!

Okay, I've gone on long enough, but we miss our kitty like crazy. And it's hard not knowing for sure what happened. We do get coyotes around a lot and the neighbor's cat is now missing. So, I'm afraid he may have been someone's meal. HOW SAD!

What do you think...

of my new wheels?!?

Okay, not really, but it would be fun! :) I'm so happy my dad treated himself and splurged on his dream car. He deserves it!

Caleb, the car man, of course loved it too!

He loves playing with his Uncle Justin.

We enjoyed seeing dad and the family again this weekend, without having to clean up flood mess! We saw Patti for the first time, since her diagnosis. It was sad to see her in so much pain(on major pain meds) and to see this active person pretty much bed ridden. They'll have the results to her more intensive MRI this week. So, I guess we'll see what's in store.

What Fun!

Papa and the kids have been wanting to go on their first fishing adventure, for months now.

They gave up waiting for a sunny day to go fishing and went for it, in the rain. Daddy even got to go too.

Yay, she caught one!

They tried to let this poor guy go, but he didn't make it. For some reason, they thought that meant they should bring it home to me. Yuck! Caleb was quite disturbed that his head was cut off! Oh the joys of fishing! They all had a good time.

What a Relaxing Weekend!

Well, okay, not really.

I'll start with the good stuff.

We decided to join my dad, brothers, and grandpa at their beach house for the weekend. We took off, as soon as Caitlin got out of school, on Friday. The weather was absolutely gorgeous, when we got there.

We finally made it!

For some reason, we hit construction, after construction on our way over and the drive took over 3 hours!

We had fun soaking in some great beach and sun!


Everyone else got there late that night. Then, the not so fun part of the weekend began.

Let me start out by saying how amazed I am with my dad's strength. He just amazes me! He has had a couple of months from you know where, and he's stood strong. Let's see, within the past 2 months, his mom died; he was hit by a drunk driver, while driving down the road; his wife was recently diagnosed with incurable, painful, cancerous tumors that have definitely changed life as they knew it; his horrible daughter announced that they are moving his only grandchildren half way accross the country; and then the added fun of this weekend.



My dad and I enjoyed staying up late visiting and we headed to bed around 1 am. I was abruptly awoken, about 30 minutes later, by running/dripping water and an alarm. As I jumped out of bed and ran towards the sound, I felt the stream of water dripping from the ceiling. I was definitely still in a half asleep fog, when I made it to the top of the stairs and splashed into water. My dad was scrambling under the kitchen sink and put a stop to the gushing flow of water. We both stood there taking it all in for a minute, trying to figure out what the heck was going on. The whole kitchen, living room, and hall were flooded. For some reason a pipe under the kitchen sink broke, while we were all sleeping. The water was streaming out of the smoke alarm downstairs in my room, which caused all of the smoke alarms to intermediately go off. It was a little disturbing that no one else woke up to all of this! It almost looked just as bad downstairs. Water was trickling out of light switch plates, ceiling lights, and any other cracks it could find. Luckily the majority of it seemed to get through over the garage. So, we swept as much water into buckets as we could and used about 25 towels to mop up some of the bigger puddles. After that adrenaline rush, it was hard to go back to bed!



The next morning the carpet restorers came with their high powered vacuums, fans, and dehumidifiers. They quickly established that they would be ripping up the carpet and we should probably pack up and head out. My response was of course "Are you kidding me, we just unpacked!" I asked dad if we could try to find someplace to stay. I had to at least get my gas money's worth, out of the trip! We were lucky enough to be able to move all our stuff just a couple miles away at one of their friends homes. It was nice to be able to stay, but it was a lot of packing and unpacking and the other house just wasn't nearly as comfortable as theirs. By Sunday, I felt a bit like I had been run over by a truck. It wasn't quite the relaxing weekend I had pictured, but it was nice to spend some time with family!



I feel horrible for my dad. I hope the beach house requires minimal construction. I'm glad that we were there though. If nobody would have been there, the leak would have done some very massive damage. The damage in less than a half an hour was horrible. I can only imagine what it would have looked like after a day or week.


Here are a couple pictures of the damage.





The Living Room










I could not believe how much water was still sitting under the ripped up carpet padding, even after the heavy duty vacuuming!








The flooding downstairs garage.

We did manage to enjoy the beach a little bit more, before we left.

Caitlin and Uncle Nicholas

Opa, Nicholas, and Caitlin