I guess it's official

I guess we're getting the boot. The landlords came this morning and put a for sale sign up in the yard. Okay, that's really not how it played out. We planned on moving back to Idaho in early October so that Ryan could start his business, and we gave the landlords the heads up about it two days ago. Talking it over, they decided they would rather sell than have more renters (I don't blame them. It's crazy to have to worry about 2 houses) so they put out the sign. (They were nice enough to ask first.) Now, of course I'm freaking out because I'll have to keep the house clean for potential buyers. Isn't that a perk of renting...you don't have the hassle of keeping everything in tip-top shape? Sigh. I'll do it though because I really like our landlords. They are a great family.

So there is the scoop. Moving back to Idaho. I'm excited about that. A little nervous about a new business and horrified of the upcoming move. I'd done that too many times already. So, I'm off to scrub toilets, wash walls, and to find a home for clutter that hasn't had a home in the almost 2 years that we've been here. Oh, and I have to take care of 4 rowdy kids in the process. How do people do it??? Wish me luck.

PS-doesn't the lawn look nice? I mowed it yesterday in preparation for the sign. I'm such a good little renter!

It just takes a minute

How is it even possible that I leave the room for one minute and then this happens? A room can go from fairly clean and organized to an instant fort. Of course they wait until I'm gone because they know most likely I'm going to nix the couch being flipped over. Sigh


This is what happened when I took a phone call and left an open jar of baby food on the table. Abby jumped right in and started where I had left off. Lucky for me, the jar was mostly gone so she couldn't make a huge mess. (notice the missing bib? That could have been scary) It was cute and Kaden just laughed at her. I think that he enjoyed being fed by his big sister.

Sea World Here We Come

Ryan is such a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of guy. He makes a decision about something and then we do it. This year, he had been talking about going to Sea World and the beach. I didn't really think that it would happen. Just a whole lot of talk. But about 3 weeks ago, he let me know that he was going to book hotel rooms and the trip went from just talk to offically on. We were excited. The boys talked about it for days. I can handle a 5 hour car ride to San Antonio! This would be good! The kids were great on the drive there. Much better than our trip out to Utah last year. Love you Grandma and Grandpa but that 20 hour drive is a killer!

First things first. A trip down to the hotel swimming pool. Very important. The kids loved every second of it.

Kaden loved the baby pool because he could push on the bottom of the pool with his feet and would glide everywhere in his little ring. A few times he got going so fast that I thought he would tip out of his floaty!

Abby has decided that she likes her water wings and wouldn't share when the boys asked if they could use them.

The boys being boys. Ryan took them both out into the deeper part of the pool and was working with them on their swimming. They both are getting much better.

I loved this picture because Abby insisted on carrying her own backpack. It's huge and the straps hit the floor, but she carried it the whole way. I thought it was cute, all the kids in a row.

"Move over." "You're taking up too much space!" "Put your leg down, I can't see the TV."
All the phrases coming out of the kiddos mouth.


The next morning we headed out to Sea World.

We got to feed the dolphins and see all kinds of sharks, jelly fish and sting rays.


The highlight was the Shamu show. Pretty cool. We loved that. We got nice and wet. Which was needed because it was so blasted hot. Unfortunately, both Josh and I suffered from heat exhaustion and ended up spending the evening in the hotel room throwing up. Not fun.

The next day, feeling much better, we headed to Mustang Island right outside of Corpus Christi. We played on the beach and in the ocean. I've been to the beach before, but it was always cold. This was perfect. The water was warm, the beach wasn't rocky and the boys had a great time jumping the waves.

On our last morning in San Antonio, we headed to the Alamo. How could you go to San Antonio and not see the Alamo? I thought it was very interesting. The boys...not so much. It was hot and I think that they just wanted to go home. We've decided that if we ever do this again, we will go during like April. Needless to say we didn't wander the riverwalk like I wanted. But all in all, it was a fun trip. Fun memories. Glad that we got to go.

Oh No!

This could be a problem!

Nasty

Part of being a mother is fishing things out of Kaden's mouth that doesn't belong there...which is just about everything. Today was the worst yet. I could tell he had something in there so I ran my finger into his mouth and pulled out a DEAD WORM. Oh it was so nasty. He was a little upset after the fact. Maybe it tasted good???

Isn't it Ironic

About two weeks ago, our fence blew over in a massive thunder/wind storm. We had called the landlords and they came out and we fixed it together. And then there was last night. Another big storm. I was washing the dishes from dinner and the boys, who had been playing at a friends house, came running in yelling that there was a tornado warning. Seriously about 5 seconds after they shut the door, we got slammed with wind and rain. I'm just glad that the boys made it home okay. I've never seen a storm come up so fast. Honestly, I was a little nervous. After the power went out, we were huddled in the dark and the boys are scared. How do you tell them not to be worried when you're a little nervous yourself? The warning sirens are blaring and it doesn't even seem to faze Ryan one bit. He's just sitting on the couch watching out the window, talking the cell phone among other things, and he starts to laugh. Down goes the fence...again. Our trampoline didn't fare that well either. It's ruined. We're all very sad about that one. That was probably one of the best purchases we made for the kids. So here we are a day after the storm still laughing about the fence, that we just fixed, that would rather be down that up. I guess we start the whole fix the fence process all over again.

Getting to Know You...

...Getting to Know All About You!

We are getting to know all our neighbors. Such nice people. Unfortunately, we haven't been going about meeting them in normal, conventional ways. We met our backyard neighbors when our shared fence fell over in the wind storm. Probably wouldn't have met them otherwise.

We met our across the street neighbors when we first moved in and Ryan had pulled the U-haul into their driveway so that he could back it straight up into our driveway for easy unloading. As he was backing up, he wasn't watching too carfully and the side mirror swipped their brick mailbox and made it topple right over. Oops. Luckily they were very friendly. And there were builders just down the street working on new contruction houses who came over and slopped some mortor on, propped it back up and problem solved.

Yesterday we met another set of neighbors. The Mom accidentally backed their big surban type SVU into our car which was parked on the curb. Of course she was terribly embarrassed. What the funny thing is, is that we usually don't ever park on the curb. The car is usually in the garage. The one time that it's out and Bam! Lucky us. Nothing major, just a fun little dent. So we wait for the adjuster to assess the damage. And in the mean time, we hope that we don't have to meet anymore of the neighbors because usually it involves more than just a friendly "hello-we're your neighbors. It's great to get to know you..."