I'm so glad they love each other! It makes the days when they don't like each other so much easier to bear!
Fun on the back deck before we moved- who said a sand box has to hold sand!
Picnic time and guess what was in there kids' meals - Hannah Montana guitars! Michael LOVES Hannah!
When we were at the local zoo before we moved (see below) they have this tunnel and the otters will swim right over you (in theory at least!)
Most playgrounds at home have mulch - sand is much more fun.



Well these are pictures of our last month before we moved. We tried to get in as many "last" visits to some of our favorite places as we could. (Mostly restaurants for me - I really miss everything being Greek owned!) We also took a day to go to the local zoo. That was actually the day BEFORE we moved! Aren't you proud of me! I had the whole house packed up a full day in advance so that we were able to have FUN on our last day. It meant staying up late for the whole week before but I had HGTV to keep me company and it was all worth it in the end. Plus I can tell you about the prices of real estate all across the nation since all that is on that late is "What you get for the money" and "House Hunters". I like both of them but it was almost more than I could take since we are still renting. Not that I would change our current housing situation too much. "Our" little house is pretty perfect for us right now. Being close to family is a major plus and having room for the kids to run around and explore outside has been great. My cheapskate husband (love you Eric!) enjoys the fact that we are on top of a hill with a nice breeze and 3 huge shade trees so I haven't really felt the need to turn on the AC yet. Just don't remind him about the day that I left the house with all the windows open and a storm blew in. He came home to a house that was completely soaked! He loves me - I know he does. I learned my lesson though. I close the windows (at least the ones on the west side of the house) when we leave now and there is a chance of rain. Speaking of leaving - I need to get moving. We have to leave the house in an hour and I still haven't done Charity's hair and we are all in "play clothes". More later.

Back home again...

What animals should we go see next?
Michael feeds the giraffe some yam.
Charity's giraffe was not quite at patient!
I'm just proud of this picture and wanted to share!
Here's some of those wonderful cousins I mention later on!


Well we're back "home"! I'm telling you, in some ways that 2 years feels like an eternity but in others it feels like we never left. We've had a pretty easy time getting settled back in. Thank goodness we have cousins though. It's just really hard for little kids to keep a strong long-distance friendship so it is taking Michael and Charity a little bit of time to find their niche again at church, which is where nearly all of their friends were from before we moved away. We were lucky that VBS was the week after we moved back so they were able to spend a lot of time with the kids their own age and plug right back in. For my part, I went right back to my favorite spot of all for VBS week - the snack kitchen! I love the people that work snacks and it is such a low stress job. We "prepare" snack for 1200 kids but with the lovely invention of pre-packaged single serve snack bags - it really isn't too big of a job! We get plenty of time to chit-chat and watch what all the kids are doing throughout the campus. It's so neat to see all those kids having a BLAST and doing it in a way that honors God and teaches them about Him. In between trips to church (that much hasn't changed in 2 years at least!) we've found time to do some fun stuff too. We've been swimming at mom's and our wonderful neighbor and friend Kristin's. We also got to go to a birthday party at the local pool that has 2 water slides - fun stuff!! The week we moved home, Aunt Teri took Michael and Charity on their annual trek to the zoo. Once again she chose one of the HOTTEST days of the year to go – but a fun time was had by all. I was allowed to tag along again this year. The deal is that I get to go but I have to be FUN! I guess as long as I’m acting like “Aunt Mommy” instead of that normal mean ‘ol ogre they have around every other day of the year then I’m allowed to go on “zoo day”. We had fun petting sharks, feeding giraffes, watching the dolphin show, seeing the elephant getting her bath and of course freaking Aunt Mommy out by spending an extraordinary amount of time in the snake house! (At least it seemed like FOREVER to me! Seriously - who cares if a python is non-venomous and a viper is venomous! They both could kill you! One bites the other squeezes but dead is dead!) We also got to get our favorite zoo time treat – Dip’n Dots! I love the “ice cream of the future”! We made a trek back to our former residence to grab the rest of our stuff (a U-haul, 2 cars and a minivan didn't provide enough room!) We were also supposed to go to Michael's last baseball game but it got rained out! BOO! I know, I know, we needed the rain, but that doesn't mean I like to see my poor boy heart broken! He perked up pretty quick when we offered to let him play video games for a couple hours on end though so all is good again!