Well, it’s been a few months since my last post. Rather than telling you why, let me show you what we’ve been up to….
We’ve admired this house from the outside for 8 years and had often thought that one day we’d like to build one that looked just like it. Instead, we decided to skip building one and buy the house.
For the past few months, we have been in the process of trying to find a home to buy. We are really hoping to find a house with 4 bedrooms so that each of the kids will have their own room, and have found that there just aren’t many homes with 4 bedrooms here that don’t come with a really big price tag. The search goes on…
In the meantime, we are living in a Wayland faculty / staff house. As far as staff houses go, it is a pretty nice one. There are three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a spacious kitchen and dining room, a large living room, a sunroom, and an office. So, the boys share a room and we have been using the office as a play room.
Until today …
There was an incident on Thursday night / Friday morning that caused Timothy to end up in our bed really early. Too early. So early in fact that Scott and I revisted the idea that we had been throwing around to move one of the boys’ beds to the playroom. We’d had mixed feelings about this. We figured there were definitely advantages — 1) They may actually sleep at night and would not wake the other up if they need something, 2) Fewer fights about someone messing up someone elses bed (Timothy is really picky about the way his things are kept, Zachary …. isn’t)… — but we just weren’t sure if we wanted to make the move yet. Both boys had told us that they wanted their own room, but we weren’t convinced how happy they’d be to be apart. They have shared a room since Zachary was about 6 months old, so we’ve been concerned about how they would react…
Well, after thinking about it in the wee hours of Friday morning, we decided to go for it. Last night, we moved some things out of the playroom and moved Timothy’s bed, dresser, and a handful of toys in there.
Not being ones to do things the easy way, we decided to have Emily and Zachary switch rooms as well. Emily has a daybed, a 9 drawer chest, and a desk with a hutch (not to mentioned all her toys, art supplies, dress up clothes…she’s a bit of a packrat). Zachary has a twin bed, a 4 drawer dresser and two rubbermaid tubs full of toys that he and Timothy share. Because they were sharing a room, the boys had the 2nd largest bedroom. Emily’s was probably half the size of theirs.
After breakfast this morning, we got back to work. First, we got some more things moved to Timothy’s room and cleaned out the closet and cabinets in there. Then, Emily and I started moving things from her desk and closet into her new closet. Scott moved her desk and dresser into there and moved Zachary’s dresser and bed into the living room while we continued clearing out Emily’s things. We finally got everything moved in just before lunch.
The whole process was actually pretty pleasant, which isn’t generally the case when we are doing projects like this around the house. So far, we are very pleased with the results. All the furniture seems to fit like the rooms were made for them!
We’ll see how tonight goes and the days to come go before we can call this a success. I don’t know about everyone else, but I feel like I could sleep for a week after all that we’ve done!
Well, it’s been a couple months since my last post. Rather than trying to relive the holidays and get caught up, I am going to just start back up from here. The holidays were great, but I don’t think I could give a very accurate retelling at this point.
When we returned to Plainview, Emily decided she wanted to take gymnastics this year so she could learn to do a cartwheel. She took dance when we were here before, but had never done gymnastics. So, we enrolled her in gymnastics at a place called “Radical Cheer” that is located just down the street from here. Having never taken gymnastics before, she was placed into the beginners class. Most of the kids in her class are 4 & 5 years old. This does not bother her a bit. She is having a great time!!
There was a fundraiser for the competition teams last night. It was a barbecue dinner that included a silent auction, a cake auction, and the kids on the teams put themselves on the auction block to do light housework or babysitting (depending on their age). It was fun, but the highlight of the night for us was when the classes put on a demonstration of what they do in class.
Zachary’s birthday was last Sunday, December 7th. He has been looking forward to turning 4 for quite some time. For the last year, any time anyone would have a birthday in which they would turn anything over age 3, he would inform us that he was still three with disappointment. So, it was with great anticipation that he starting counting down the days on November 27 — 10 days before his birthday.
I asked him several times what the big deal was about turning 4, and he explained to me that several things would happen when he was 4:
* he would no longer be a baby – though I explained to him that he would always be MY baby, he was pretty insistent on this one. It really threw him when I told him that Scott was still Grandmama’s baby and that Grandmama was still Gran’s baby…
* he would no longer suck his thumb – we have been passively working on getting him to give up this habit. Having been through before with Emily, we knew better than to push too hard until he was ready. He had decided that he would be ready when he was 4. So, on the night of his birthday, we told him to try to only suck his thumb at bedtime. No point in going cold turkey on a 4 year old habit! Well, I have to tell you that he has done so well. He hasn’t sucked his thumb at all since last Monday night. Not even in bed!
* no more dragging his blanket everywhere – he has carried his “blank with fringe” with him everywhere he went for the past 4 years. He still plays with it around the house, but that’s it. No more getting dragged into the car and begging to take it with us wherever we’re going.
* play on the computer – Timo LOVES to play on the computer. Somehow, Zachary has gotten it in his head that he would suddenly know how to play on the computer when he turned 4. I was willing to show him how to play before then, but he really wasn’t interested. Well, this week, he came to me and asked if he could play on the computer. I opened the NOGGIN website for him, showed him which mouse button to click and he was off and running! All our educational games have gotten pretty scratched up through the years. I guess that’s something we should put on his Christmas wish list…
* go to school – I’ve been surprised that he hasn’t asked to go to school this week. Anytime he would tell me that he would be going to school when he was 4, I would remind him that he would after he’d been 4 for a few months. He’ll be going to pre-K in the fall.
There have been other things mentioned, but those are the top 5. Turning 4 was a BIG deal in his mind. So, we started planning the celebration in early November and the celebration really started at Thanksgiving. On the day after Thanksgiving, he had a mini-party at Gran & Ol’ Granddad’s house where he got to open his presents from Grandmama & Granddad and Gran & Ol’ Granddad. He was quite excited to get a Ben 10 Alien Creation Chamber and some “dollars” (that he later used to buy a Dora game for his Leapster). We all spent the rest of the weekend making aliens.
We came home from Amarillo on Saturday. The next few days were rather tame as far as celebrating his birthday were concerned. We put up Christmas decorations and continued the countdown to December 7th. Grandmother & Granddaddy arrived on Friday. Their visit was mainly to see the kids (and, I like to believe, to see us), they were also coming to see the new house since they had not been up since we’d moved back to Plainview. We’re hoping that we’ll be in yet another new before too long, but that’s for another post.
Friday evening was spent enjoying spending time with Grandmother and Granddaddy. We left the house once and drove ALL the way to Wayland to see the living nativity before dinner, but that was our only outting. Before bed, I baked a birthday cake to be iced the next day. As he smelled the baking cake, Zachary knew he would soon FINALLY be 4.
Our plan for Saturday was to go to Chuck E. Cheese in Lubbock. We always let the birthday child choose one special meal for their birthday, and that was Zachary’s choice. We had big plans for the 7th, so we went on Saturday. I decorated the cake to look like an Omnitrix (from Ben 10) so we could take it with us. We decided to let him open his gifts before we went. He likes to dress up like the characters in his shows. We had got him some clothes similar to what Ben wears in the show, and we thought it would be fun for him to dress up like Ben to go to Chuck E. Cheese. He was very excited to get his own Leapster (so he doesn’t have to beg Timothy to let him play his anymore), Diego checkers, cards, and “magic ink” coloring book, and his Ben clothes (a green windsuit). We arrived at Chuck E. Cheese around 2:00 and had a great time.
On Sunday, Zachary decided to wear his “Easter suit” to church. We have a “Birthday Champ” ribbon that he wore proudly. He had a great morning telling every one that it was his birthday. Because he’s 4, he now gets to go to worship with the family. We had a great time worshipping together. After church, we went to lunch and then headed home.
Now, for the evening, we had a decision to make. After getting the tickets for his REAL birthday gift, a ride on the Polar Express, we had found out that the Children’s Choir Christmas musical was that night. All the kids were scheduled to sing. The service started at 6 and we had to be at the Polar Express Train Station in Lubbock by 7:45. We probably could have done both, but our time would have been rushed. So, we explained to a tearful Emily (the boys couldn’t have cared less) that we’d be skipping the musical. We arrived at the train station at 7:45, picked up our tickets at will-call, and found our place in line to get on Train Car 1.
The train ride was wonderful! Zachary enjoyed letting everyone know that it was his birthday. The whole train car sang Happy Birthday to him twice! Everyone enjoyed singing, dancing, listing to the “Polar Express” story, having hot chocolate and cookies, and of course, getting to see Santa and his Elves.
These pictures are from Chuck E. Cheese and the Train Ride.
There has been one interesting development of letting Zachary open his presents before his actual birthday. Any time someone asks him what he got for his birthday, he tells him that he didn’t get anything. He got a Leapster, Ben 10 clothes, Diego checkers, and an Alien Creator when he was 3, but he didn’t get anything when he was 4. Little turkey…
Happy Birthday Zachary! I knew from the first day that life would be more fun with you around.
Thanks for making us laugh!
The week long celebration came to an end tonight with a trip to the North Pole on the Polar Express. A full account with LOTS of pictures to come soon.
Tonight was Timothy’s School Christmas Program. It seems that their teachers’ still believe that they are angels. As you’ll see in the video, Timothy had a little trouble keeping his halo on. It didn’t stop him from singing though!
If that doesn’t put you in the Christmas spirit, nothing will.
We spent most of the week dreading Halloween night. Not because we don’t like Halloween. We usually enjoy letting the kids dress up and go trick-or-treating, but this year we found ourselves pulled in several directions. There were a couple houses that I’d promised to bring the kids to, Trunk-a-Treat at church at 6:00, the Fall Festival from Timothy’s school at 6:30, and an office party at 6:30. All fun activities that we wanted to go to, but took some work to figure out how to do them all.
We started the fun at 4. Timothy had learned at the pumpkin patch that pumpkins last longer if you paint or color them than if you cut them, so the kids had been begging since Wednesday to be allowed to paint the pumpkins that we got. They pointed out several times that it made the most sense to decorate them before Halloween, and they were right. So, we pulled out the tempera paint and brushes, covered the table, and they had a great time! Surprisingly, there was very little mess.
The finished products:
Emily decorated hers to look like a black widow spider
Timothy painted a real (used the peach paint) face on his
Zachary usd all the colors to paint a face on his
Then it was time to get their costumes on and go trick or treating.
Emily dressed as an angel (I guess she just didn’t want to dress up this year!), Timothy as Bubblebee, and Zachary as a Storm Trooper (Scott was so proud!!!).
Trick-or-Treating, Trunk-A-Treat, and the Fall Festival were all a lot of fun and we have a pumpkin basket completely full of candy now. We dropped the kids off at some friends house and made it to the party by 8:15. There were 10 people there. When we got there, they were playing a round of “Fact or Crap.” We’d seen the game before, but hadn’t played it. It was fun, but we were disappointed that the cards didn’t reveal the “real” answer when the statement was not true.
The party was pot luck. We knew we’d be late, so we brought dessert. For the first time in my life, I baked a cheesecake from scratch. It was a pumpkin cheese cake with an oreo crust, sour cream icing, and chocolate drizzled over the top in the shape of a spider-web. It was a hit! I forgot to take a picture before, but here’s what’s left.
All said, it was a fun night. Today we get to relax. I hear there’s some big game today that I’m sure will be on our TV at some point.
