Operation Moving Completed

Yay, first post from the new house!  The movers came around 9:30am last Monday morning and started loading up.  At 1pm they had the truck completely full – and half our basement was still in the basement.  They didn’t bring a big enough truck for all our crap stuff.  Drew went with the truck to the new house and I stayed at the old house to clean.  Around 6pm our saving graces showed up to move the rest of our house.  We would have been moving all night long if it hadn’t have been for Bob, Ed, David, Denise, and of course Mike and Janice.  Needless to say, we were not so happy with the moving company.  After scrubbing the kitchen floor at the old house, we loaded up Jack and got to the new house at 10:30pm Monday night.  We slept great the first night in the new house! 

Tuesday morning we were up and back out to the old house to do some last minute cleaning, and to get our clothes and food out of the house.  We headed back to the new house and started the unpacking of the new house.  Tuesday evening Ed and Jamie came and took us to dinner which was a nice break from all the moving. 

We unpacked all day Wednesday and Thursday.  We did enjoy a nice dinner out Wednesday night since we were footloose and fancy free without our kids! 

Lindy and Will stayed with Mimo and Aunt Anna in Charlotte all week.  From what I hear, they had a GREAT time.  They kept them very busy doing all kinds of neat things.  Hopefully I’ll get pictures soon (hint hint).  Mimo and GrandBob brought the kids home Thursday afternoon.   THANK YOU Mimo and Aunt Anna for keeping the kids.  We would have never gotten so much done with them around.

They seem to like the new house and their new playroom, but they LOVE their new playhouse they got outside!  It was actually a Christmas present from Nana and Papa that we had been waiting to get and I figured this was the perfect time to get it.  They have done amazingly well since being at the new house.  I’ve been worried that their sleeping would be affected but it really hasn’t.   Will is calling this “Will and Lindy’s house!”  We have stairs now, which has been great fun.  They have actually done okay with them.  None of our gates work on the steps so we’ve instituted a 2 step rule.  Will has done great with it and I hear him saying, “Don’t go higher Lindy.”  Lindy did make it all the way up the steps one time when I was in the kitchen.  We’ve had to watch her closely. 

I have to thank our friends Kris and Katie for bringing dinner last night and Mike and Janice for coming to try to get the washer hooked up.  We couldn’t make it without you guys!

We are slowly getting unpacked.  The kids’ room is 99% done.  I have curtains up and pictures on the wall.  I wanted everything to be familiar to them.  We are loving the house and all the space we have.  I have a playroom.  YEAH!  No more sharing a living room with their toys!  We still need to get the washing machine hooked up and we have some furniture shopping to do.  We are making do with a card table for a kitchen table right now! 

We have lived out in the country for the last 7 years.  Although we did like it and it was really pretty, we missed some of the city amenities.  I was so excited this week to put food down the garbage disposal, have pizza delivered to our house, and have our trash picked up!  All things you can’t do out in the country!

Here are a few pictures so far. 

The too short moving truck. The baby birds at our new house! The kids’ new bedroom. The Playroom!!!!  I love it!! Checking out the new route for her car. Playing in their playhouse for the first time. Happy to be home! First dinner in the new house.  Pizza at our card table! First morning waking up in the new house. First family picture!You go girl!

Happy Mother’s Day, Dada!

Happy Father’s Day ,Drew!  Will was very confused this morning. I kept trying to get them to say Happy Father’s Day, Dada.  He would say, “Happy Mother’s Day, Dada” and he even threw in some “Happy Birthday, Callie’s” in there.  He’d eventually say Happy Father’s Day but he was confused about it! 

I feel bad for Drew today.  His Father’s Day has been completely overshadowed by the fact that it was our last Sunday at Palmyra UMC.   It’s been a very emotional day for everyone.  After a teary goodbye at Palmyra we loaded up the kids and we drove down to Charlotte.  The kids are going to be spending a few days at Mimo and Aunt Anna’s house while we actually move.  Mimo is bringing them back to the new house on Thursday and we will have their room hopefully set up for them.  That’s the plan anyway. 

Drew is the best daddy in the world.  He helps out 100% with the kids.  I couldn’t ask for a better baby daddy.  The kids love playing with him and wrestling with him.  Their heartiest laughs come when he is playing with them. 

I also want to say Happy Father’s Day to my dad and to Drew’s dad.  I think Drew and I can say we have the best dads ever.  They are both so helpful to us in so many aspects of our lives. 

We have been busy packing this week.  Lindy has also had a handful of appointments.  Monday we had vision therapy with Leslie.  Lindy showed Leslie how she can sort and match colors.  She can’t name them yet but she at least knows the difference between them.   Tuesday we had an appointment with her ENT.  She is doing well with everything.  Her ears are all cleared up from her ear infections last month.  He was pleased that she is weaning nicely with the thickened liquids.  We talked about her vocal cord paralysis.  They have just recently done a procedure on a 3 year old with vocal cord paralysis.  The kid was the youngest person to ever have it done, anywhere.  It’s pretty cutting edge stuff for little kids.  We talked about it and decided to wait one year.  Lindy is just now starting to talk a lot. We  want to give her a chance before we do anything.  We also want to see how she does in a classroom.  There is a good chance we’ll being doing something next summer, but we’ll wait and see right now! 

Wednesday morning both kids had speech therapy.  Drew and his dad were moving some boxes up from the basement which turned out to be a little distracting so we ended up moving therapy to our bedroom.  Probably a first for the therapist but it was better for the kids.  Lindy is pretty consistently repeating 3-4 word phrases these days.  She even spontaneously says some 3-4 word phrases.  She really is repeating us a ton.  It’s so fun to hear her talk!  She’s come so far!  Wednesday afternoon we had hearing with Chris.  Lindy messed around a little bit but she was talking a lot, which she sometimes doesn’t do for Chris. 

Besides all the appointments, the kids had fun playing with some babysitters this week.  A couple girls from church, Jennifer and Julie, watched them on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons.  They got to play with Janice all day Friday.  I really needed help with them this week so we could clean the new house and get packed up.  I couldn’t have done it without their help this week.  Janice even helped pack up the kitchen which was such a big help.

I don’t think the kids understand what is going on.  They have enjoyed playing with the boxes around the house.  Friday we had 5 guys and a trailer come move the swing set to the new house.  Thank goodness for Mike (Janice’s husband!) for coordinating the entire thing.  It was so much better than having to take it apart.  Will watched them and didn’t really say much.  Later in the day though he looked outside and said something about the ‘swing set at new house.’  We’ve mentioned here and there the new house.  We took the kids by the new house on Sat. night and said this was our new house but I’m sure they don’t get it. 

Last night was kind of sad for me.  I just kept thinking, “This is the last time the kids will…..” take a bath here, sleep here, eat breakfast here, etc.  It’s where we brought our little preemie miracles home to, where we drug Lindy’s oxygen tubing around in, where they love the hill outside by the driveway.  Drew and I have lived in this house longer than either one of us have lived in any other house in our whole lives.  We’ve spent 7 years in this house.  Drew and I both grew up moving because of our fathers’ jobs.  The house and area hold special places in our hearts.  We’ve also spent all but one year of our marriage in this house and area.  We’ve grown up a lot, learned a lot, went through hard times, and we’ve had our Palmyra friends there right beside us. 

We are excited about our new house and Drew’s new church, but saying goodbye is hard to do. 

Playing with dada!   My most prettiest girl ever! Wednesday evening our church had a goodbye meal for us.  Towards the end someone came in and told us there was a rainbow.  It was so pretty and so BIG!  I couldn’t get the whole thing in one picture.  There was actually a double rainbow but the top one was very faint. The swing set crew! Will watched and I’m sure he wondered what in the world they were doing with his swing set! Playing with boxes! Telling Janice bye and thanking her for playing with them all day on Friday. The last night in our house. The last morning opening the door and finding these two kids in this room at this house.  Happy Father’s Day Drew! Goodbye house! Goodbye church! Goodbye to some very special people, Mike and Janice. Hello cute kids. Hello Mimo and Aunt Anna.  Bye Bye Mama and Dada.

I’ll be back next time from a new house.  Wish us luck moving!

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Lake Junaluska 2010

We have been away most of the week.  We spent from Wednesday till today in the NC mountains at Lake Junaluska.  Drew has an annual ministers’ meeting up there and the kids and I go along for a vacation.  This is the kids 3rd trip to Lake Junaluska.  Click on 2008 or 2009 to see how they have changed!
 
Before I talk more about our annual trip to the Lake I have to back up to the beginning of the week.

Monday was a LONG morning for Drew and me.  We had to go write the kids’ IEPs.  We started at 9am with Lindy and finally finished hers around 12:15pm.  Will’s only took 45 minutes because he is just getting speech services.  We went through their evaluation results and Drew and I felt some were ridiculously low, specifically in categories like cognitive development and social and emotional development.  When we asked about this they gave us the list of how they determine these things.  Lindy had to get everything in each age category for her to get credit.  These thing don’t take into account hearing loss or vision loss.  A lot of them were based on language things which we all know is Lindy’s struggle.  Lindy could do a ton of things in each category but there might be one language component she couldn’t do and she couldn’t get credit.  They told us a few times to take the results with a grain of salt.  Lindy will receive speech, physical therapy, occupational therapy, vision therapy, and hearing therapy. In the end we thought everything went well.  We had Lindy’s early intervention specialist, her hearing and vision teachers, and our parent advocate there with us.  We all worked together and wrote her IEP.  The fun comes when we move in the next couple weeks and we have to transfer their IEPs to a new school system.  Stay tuned for how that goes!  The kids were home with Janice, our trusty babysitter.  I had to call her around 11am and make sure she didn’t have anything else to do because we weren’t anywhere near finished.  Thankfully she was able to stay till we got home!

Lindy’s only other appointment this week was physical therapy with Heather.  It had been about a month since her last appointment because Lindy got sick and we had to cancel her appointment.  Lindy resisted a little bit but did pretty well.

Wednesday afternoon we left and headed to the mountains.  We got up to Katie’s parents’ house and unloaded our stuff.  We ate dinner at Granny’s Chicken Palace.  We had always seen this place but had never eaten there.  Katie, Micah, and Claire got to the house late Wednesday evening. 

Thursday we got up and headed out to do some hiking.  Transylvania County is called the land of the waterfalls.  Last year we hiked to a few waterfalls so we decided to do it again this year.  We stopped and had a picnic lunch first and then headed to the Pisgah Wildlife Center where we fed fish at the fish hatchery.  We left there and went to Slick Rock Falls and then we drove and got on the Blue Ridge Parkway.  We stopped at Graveyard Fields and we hiked to two different waterfalls.  The lower one had a little pool where you could take yours shoes off and play in the water.  Will had a great time.  It took Lindy a little while to warm up to the cool water.  Of course they both ended up sitting in the water so they both needed new clothes when we were done.  Will walked the entire day.  We picked waterfalls with close hikes so Will could walk.  I borrowed Katie’s ergo carrier and wore Lindy on my back.  She has trouble with uneven surfaces so it would have been hard for her.  It would have been too hard to just carry her regularly too.  The ergo was great.  Will and Drew almost stepped on a snake.  The snake slithered by on one of the trails and Drew had to pull Will back.  Makes my stomach turn just thinking about it! After the waterfalls we headed back to the lake and met up with Mike and Janice, who were the conference delegates from our church, and Drew’s friend Richard and his wife Kristin for dinner at our favorite restaurant Butts On the Creek.

Friday morning Drew headed down to his meetings and I got the kids ready and we walked down to the lake as well.  We met up with Drew’s dad and Suzette, who were delegates from their district.  Bob hung out with the kids and me for awhile.  We took the kids to the playground and played.  We headed back up the hill for lunch with more friends, Drew and Vaughan.  Drew was one of Palmyra’s summer interns a couple summers ago.  Friday evening we had dinner in downtown Waynesville with Katie and kids, and Drew and Vaughan. 

Saturday morning the kids and I got ready and we headed down to lake again.  We walked around some of the lake and happened to meet up with Janice.  We also met up with Suzette and we just played with the kids while the guys were all in the business session.  We went out to lunch with Mike, Janice, Bob and Suzette.  Last night we had dinner at the mountain house with Katie, Kris, and our friends Richard and Kristin.  We did a low country boil and it was awesome! 

This morning we packed up and headed home.  We are going to get unpacked and then start packing up again.  We’re moving!!  Drew is getting a new church and so we are moving.  We get our rental house on the 15th so we’ll probably start taking boxes over during the week.  The movers aren’t coming until the 21st to get the furniture.  What a crazy week it will be. Trying to pack with two little kids hasn’t been easy so far!

Here is our week in pictures.

Last week’s church outfits.  I LOVE Lindy’s dress. Longing to get outside. We backed off potty training until after we move but we still use the potty.  Lindy peed on the potty and Will pooped on the potty this week.  Both successes in my book.  Playing on the potty. Getting ready to ride to the mountains. We made it! Dinner at Granny’s Our picnic lunch at the rhododendron thicket.Going to the fish hatchery. FISH! (rainbow trout, brown trout, and brook trout) Slick Rock Falls   “Come back to me.  Come back to Cold Mountain.” My two hiking boys. The girls. The Second Falls at Graveyard Fields. The Yellowstone Falls at Graveyard Fields. Playing in the water. She thought it was too cold at first. They loved throwing rocks and making splashes. “Hands wet!” Thursday night at Butts On the Creek.Playing with GrandBob.   Soaking up the Methodism at annual conference in a really cute shirt. Our friends Drew and Vaughan, who are moving to Alabama and whom we’ll miss. The annual porch swing picture. Lindy and Claire having a little girl time. Claire, Micah, Lindy, and Will in downtown Waynesville. Will likes to ride like this in his car seat. Enjoying Lake Junaluska on a foggy morning. One of the many roses along the rose walk. Playing on the sleeping porch upstairs. 

Phew that was a lot of pictures. 43 of the 311 I took last week.  Out of all of those pictures I didn’t get any of Katie, Kris, Suzette, Mike, or Janice.   Sorry guys!