Reading and a Birthday

The five year old is getting better at taking pictures, so hopefully that means Luke and I can get more pictures of the two of us that aren't selfies. Even if there are 10 of the same picture from an awkward angle. 

These two are my little goobers! And driving my parents a little bonkers (especially since they have them for a long weekend while we're house hunting in Tennessee!) Jonah does a lot of whining and collapsing into a mess if something doesn't go his way, and when I asked my dad if any of us were as whiny when we were kids, he said no. But it's also been 23 years since any of us were 3 years old. :)

We've been kicking our holiday cheer off a smidge early this year. With all the time we spend in the car, I pulled out our Pentatonix Christmas CD to listen to, and I'll also play Christmas music to "help" the kids wake up in the morning. And of course the grocery store had these mini Christmas trees all set up for sale. With not being in our own house this year, I'll have to get creative with involving the kids in decorating!

This girl brought home reading homework this past week and READ to us!! I mean she couldn't read every word on each page of the books she brought home, but she could read some of the simple sentences that contained her service words and word family words. Luke and I just kept looking at each other like how do we have a child who can read?? And the best part was that she was so excited to pull out the little books and read with us. It is SO fun seeing her learn! Also, the other week when we were driving around Noelle was in the back seat going "vuck, vuck, vuck" since their newest word family was the "uck" family. I asked her to spell it for me because I wasn't quite sure I was hearing her correctly. "V-u-c-k!" :)

This past Wednesday was my dad's birthday, and we celebrated with tacos for dinner and cupcakes for dessert! Heather, Jason, and Holden joined the fun as well, which I am so thankful for any extra time we get with them! While the kids were watching the Lion King, we sat the four of them on the couch with Grandpa to take some pictures. Of course, in true little kid fashion, not everyone was looking!

Breathe

Breathe, just breathe

Come and rest at my feet

And be, just be

Chaos calls but all you really need

Is to just breathe

This is the chorus to "Breathe" by Jonny Diaz, and every time I hear it, I cry! I have been SO bad at resting in Jesus in what is probably the busiest, most stressful season of my life. The verses in the song are what my life look like ("it's off to the races everybody out the door"), and instead of looking to Jesus, I let the stress take over and just go go go. The to-do list, the not being able to do anything on the to-do list because kids, the constant running around for school, errands, life! But God is there, ready for me to come to Him. To soak in the living water of His Word. I need Him more than anything else, and even though I know that, I still put other things ahead of spending time with Him. Jesus, help me to love YOU first!

Whenever we've gone back to our house to work on things, we pretty much make the older two watch t.v./play on the tablet. Otherwise they just undo all the work that's been done- aka they dumped out a trash bag full of shredded paper all over the basement and jumped on the bed that I'd already made three times! Basically we tell them, don't touch anything, take your shoes off, no food or drink near the carpet! It's a season, and maybe we'll continue the rules at our new house so that we keep it cleaner. ;)

This past Wednesday, Noelle had her first day of cheer practice! She is so excited about being a cheerleader for her school, and I'm loving seeing her be a part of a team and to see her excited about doing something. She won't be there for the entire season, but she'll get to cheer for some basketball games, and potentially do a special homecoming performance if we're still here in early January. The coach is incredibly sweet, and is coaching 36 girls kindergarten through 12th graders! I'm sure we'll be able to find a dance or cheer program for her to do down in Tennessee. 

I had Holden all day on Wednesday and while Noelle was at practice, I took the rest of the gang to get donut holes. Which basically turned into Holden and Jonah running around a mostly empty Dunkin Donuts, and Holden flirting with the one employee and anyone else who came in.

On Thursday my friend Jess called me while she was out walking with her newborn baby girl. She and her hubby moved down to Nashville just over a year ago, and getting to talk to her was a sweet surprise. She has been so excited for us to move down there, and so encouraging. I know I'll be reaching out to her a lot once we're down there, and I love that she's already been such an encouragement in my walk with Jesus in the 5+ years we've been friends. I also can't wait for her little girl and Clara to be Nashville besties!

Jess in the middle. After she pushed Jonah in the stroller on our run- already prepping for her future baby over three years ago. :)

Moving

We are getting ourselves ready to move to Tennessee, and it has been absolute craziness!! Luke and our parents have done a TON of work on our house including painting, filling holes, staging/decorating, cleaning, and more. Luke has been at the house for our carpet to be completely replaced, and for some window panes to be replaced. My parents invited us to come live with them (I'm pretty sure my mom is regretting this now!) and we took them up on it because I had NO IDEA how I was going to get the house ready/keep it clean in order to sell it. I literally have been no help on the house except for the few frantic packing/cleaning sessions I've had while Clara naps. The rest of my time is spent handing out snacks, wiping butts, making food, driving to and from school, handing out more snacks, putting the baby down for naps, nursing, making more snacks, etc. I am the busiest I've ever been, and most of that time is spent on three of my favorite people. (Which I love doing- for the most part- I just feel bad that I've been no help getting our house ready.)

Luke painting away in the kitchen

We've been living with my parents for almost two weeks now, and it has been super helpful. Luke basically has gone to work and then straight to our house to work on stuff. We have quite a bit packed and stored in my parent's basement, and as of Monday, the house has officially been photographed for our realtors to do what they need to do. Now I just need to pack up a few more things and clean the fridge/shelves in the kitchen, and that will be more of the nit-picky things. Once the house sells, we'll really only have to focus on moving out our big furniture and taking out the things we used to "stage" our house.

Luke accepted the job in September, and he officially starts on December 4th. He'll be down in TN for that week, and then work from home in MD until January 8th. After that, he agreed to be down there full time, so we're praying that our house has sold and that we have a house down there. In the next few weeks, we're hoping to go down to look at houses, and put in an offer with a contingency if we see anything we love. It's been a bit of a whirlwind, and it feels VERY overwhelming at times, but we have had SO much help.

Holden with the "Coming Soon" sign in the background!

If we don't have a house figured out yet by January, I'll stay here at my parent's so that Noelle can continue school here. But it would be sad to be away from Luke without any definite time frame of being all together again. Luke went around with a realtor when he was down there for the interview, and got an idea of some of the different areas. There is a little Christian school that we want to tour and so we've mostly been looking at houses online close to that school. We'll see where we actually end up! Luke's brother and his family are down there, and we have a few friends in the Nashville area, so hopefully we won't be too far from any of them!

I've mostly been focused on the house, and so have mostly been feeling stressed and overwhelmed. But the more I think about actually leaving, the more sad I feel. I've lived in MD most of my life, my parents and one sister are here, and many of my closest friends. I'm already gearing up for a somewhat lonely first year in TN since I know it will take me awhile to build friendships (super introverted over here!) Luke has been warned that his role as my BFF will be even more important since I won't have the adult interaction I'm able to have with MOPS and school and play dates that I enjoy here. But God has been leading us in this decision over the last few years, and we know He will provide what we need!

An Anniversary and the Time Change

1. Dating Anniversary- Today marks 13 (!!!) years since Luke and I first started dating! Luke called me up in my dorm room and asked if I would meet him at "our spot", aka the middle of the quad. I knew what was coming because our friends Kate and Joe had already talked to let the other know that we were indeed interested in being more than friends with each other. So then we had the whole "I like you" talk, and then walked around campus for awhile in the FREEZING COLD! While being spied on by Kate and Joe. We were 19 and cool, and totally knew what we were doing when it came to being in a relationship. :)

Just a picture of a picture from the instax picture we took at my friend Kristen's wedding. I love this picture of us. It's blurry, and I'm not looking, but it marked a super fun weekend, and reminded me of how good it is to get away from our kids and just be us. This was two years ago, but was the longest we'd been away together since having kids. Ah, someday we'll get to do it again!

2. The Time Change- Daylight savings has not been my best friend. My dad kept telling me- you get an extra hour of sleep over the weekend. And I kept telling him, but we have small children! And of course Jonah was in our room in the (new) 6:30 timeframe asking why I was sleeping still because it was indeed morning. And Clara was awake from 3:30 A.M. to 4:15ish A.M. yesterday morning, and today at 5:15 a.m. because who doesn't want to party in the wee hours of the morning when you've already woken up twice before during the night to nurse. Hopefully soon we find our new sleeping normal that I'm hoping involves more sleep. 

good thing she's so cute!

3. Library Time- We haven't been to library time since the summer, but that's mostly because our favorite library time is Monday mornings, and both Noelle and Jonah are in school during that time-frame. Yesterday I knew I had some time to kill before getting Holden from my sister, so I decided to take Clara to library time with our favorite Mr. Chris. And she was actually really into it! She had her eyes glued on him playing his ukelele, and she watched all the bigger kids dancing around her. We were only there for about 15 minutes before Heather called me, but it was Clara's first library time experience just for her!

4. Holden- And speaking of Holden, this kid is just the best. When we have him in the mornings, he's relegated all the way to the back seat of the van by his little lonesome, and he's still so happy. I have to get to him by opening the trunk, and he always greets me with the biggest smile! Also, he loves Jonah, and whenever Jonah sees him, or hears that Holden is coming, Jonah freaks out and wants to hide. Holden loves to tackle him, and Jonah just squeals. We will miss our little Holdy!

Halloween 2017

Tuesday morning started with the usual early hustle to get us out the door to get Noelle and Jonah to school. My brother-in-law's work schedule changed and they now need someone to watch Holden Monday through Thursday in the mornings to early afternoon. My mom is already committed to a Bible study on Tuesday mornings that does not provide child care, so I volunteered to take Holden on Tuesdays. And Halloween was our first Tuesday  with him! Heather dropped him off, I threw the four kids in the car, and we headed out to drop off Noelle (thank goodness for the drop off line so I don't have to get every one out!), and then we went to drop off Jonah. Since there is time to kill between dropoff times, I've been going through the Starbucks drive-thru more than I should! Which I did on Halloween morning (still loving the vanilla sweet cream cold brew!) 

Jonah was super excited to have his fall harvest party that morning, and wore his one and only Halloween shirt that most definitely needed a wash. 

When we dropped Jonah off, I didn't have shoes for Holden, so I wore Clara and carried Holden.

Clara was dressed in a little pumpkin outfit that Holden wore last year for Halloween. Such a cutie with that little green stem on top!

We went back to our house and thankfully, Clara napped away in the car seat, and Holden ate a snack and wandered around while I furiously cleaned the kitchen. After she woke up, I took some pictures of these sweet cousins together in their Halloween garb.

Holden got picked up after lunch and after we got Noelle from school, I did some more cleaning at our house while Clara napped and the older two played and had some tablet time. Then we ate a quick dinner and got ourselves dressed in costumes!

Noelle had originally wanted to be a cheerleader, which she dressed as when we went to Main Street trick-or-treating the Thursday before Halloween.

But on Halloween, I could not for the life of me find her cheerleader costume. (Turns out it was hanging in her closet- I'm losing my mind!) But thankfully that morning she had mentioned wanting to dress as Elsa instead. So, Elsa she was! And Jonah decided to repeat last year's costume- Marshall from Paw Patrol.

This year was the first year that they really seemed to get it and were SO excited to go out and get candy. We went further than we have in previous years, and Jonah had no problem talking to people as they handed him candy. He told a couple of people that his mom said he wasn't allowed to have hard candy, so he should get chocolate. After about an hour we headed back to our house where Clara was still sound asleep. She had worn her skeleton pajamas on Halloween Eve and all day on Halloween underneath her pumpkin. Cutie!

And since Clara slept through trick-or-treating on actual Halloween, here's a picture of her in her elephant costume (what Noelle wore for her first Halloween!) when we trick-or-treating on Main Street.