the playset

For Landry's fourth birthday, my mom and dad got her a playset for our backyard. We were anticipating the arrival of Korley and knew the playset would come in handy for times that Landry wanted to play outside when we weren't able to up and go to the park.

Jeff worked (several) weekends assembling the thing (in his defense, nothing was marked!!) and it has been wildly popular since.

However, the buyers of our house asked for the playset with the purchase of our house, so we're leaving it. Plus, truthfully, it wouldn't be the easiest thing in the world to load on a truck.

But, it will be one of the things I will miss......

Addiction?

There is a chance that I might have a problem.

I just added two new blogs to my google reader feed today.

Total?

73 blogs that I now have subscribed to.

I wish I got paid to read blogs.

fortune

Jeff and I ordered Chinese food the day that we got an offer on our house. This was what my fortune cookie fortune said:

(you might have to click on the picture to read it)

NEWS

I don't know where I'm going to go with this post, so I'll start with just facts.

I can finally make the big announcement: we are moving to Lubbock.

This all started a little over a month ago. Jeff began interviewing with a company for a position in West Texas. He got the job, we put our house on the market, it sold, we bought a new house in Lubbock, and we are moving there next week!

There have been so many "signs" along the way of this process, that I'm sure this is the right move for our family, but I'd be lying if I said I was ready to leave our home, family, friends, church, neighbors, and schools. Because I'm not. And, the fact is, we have a good happy life here. Why mess with that?

But, in my head I do think this is a good move for us, and once we actually move and get settled, I'm sure I will embrace the change.

Plus, up to this point things have fallen into place fairly seemlessly (huge knock on wood!!). Jeff's interviews went great, we put our house on the market and sold it in TWO DAYS and got our asking price, we were able to find a house in Lubbock after one day of house hunting, and my employer offered to let me keep my job and work full-time from home. We still have to secure a daycare/preschool for Korley, but I have some recommendations and am working on that issue.

Anyway, just wanted to get that announcement out there. And, warning!--my next few posts well probably be Debbie Downer-ish as I tribute everything here that I will miss!

Landry's PC

Landry asked me yesterday after I picked her up from school if we could make a computer when we got home. I have to admit that I was in no mood for working on a project that included building a motherboard--nor did I have any idea how that would be accomplished. Apparently, (thankfully) she had something far more simple in mind. She asked me to help her gather materials and then she wanted to make it herself.


Here is Landry's laptop.....


Complete with a monitor, keyboard, and toilet paper roll mouse.

And, if you look closely at the monitor you can see the cursor (in front of the horse). I said to her, "Oh, you're looking at a horse website!" and she replied, "Yes. It's horses.com" Of course!

I love kids' imaginations!

Outrigger Island

I wanted to post this earlier, but Blogger is so finicky sometimes and wasn't allowing me to upload pictures. Ugh!


Anyway, last week was VBS at our church. The theme was Outrigger Island, which I'm sure many of your churches are using as well this year. This was Landry's first VBS and she had an absolute blast! We are so blessed to go to a church that has such a wonderful children's program. They had over 400 kids enrolled in VBS this year! She came home talking everyday about what they had learned, the crafts they had made, and the songs they had sang (which was her favorite part!).


I made my way up there to join her on Friday for their closing rally and took some pictures.

A lot of jumping going on.....

A lot of beach balls and flying disc things....

This is my friend and Karin reeling in a big fish...and giving it the hand.

This is Karin's brother, Jeff, who also happens to be our worship leader. He has energy galore and the kids adore him.

And, here is Karin again. And again, giving the hand....two this time! ;)

No, not really. Actually, she's hula-ing to the left.

And here is after we got home from VBS. The small stuffed animals all huddled together are the VBS kids and they're in the audience. The bigger stuffed animals are on stage and they're the youth kids. She is "Pastor Tim" and is working the crowd and teaching the VBS kids the Outrigger songs. I love kids' imaginations!

just plain weird

A few weeks ago we had Korley allergy tested. We were there for a couple of hours and we spent pretty much the entire time with this particular nurse. While waiting on Korley's back scratch test results, I talked quite a bit to the nurse. She told me that she was born and raised in East Texas and has lived in the Metroplex for a few years. However, throughout conversation she kept saying really British things. She threw the word "brilliant" around a lot--to describe things that were neither genius nor great ideas. For instance, I would say, "We live about 20 minutes from here." And she would nod and say, "Brilliant!". No, that's not brilliant.

So, today the same nurse called me to discuss some of Korley's lab results. She was talking in a FULL BRITISH ACCENT. And not a good one, either. In fact, a TERRIBLE British accent. I really have no idea what she even said to me because I was so stunned at how she was talking.

I just found the whole thing to be bloody peculiar.

Going to the Lodge

It's traditional that many families go on a vacation during the summer. We're no exception, but with gas prices nearing ridiculous levels, we decided to vacation about 30 miles from our house.

As soon as Landry got out of school on Thursday, my entire family went to the Great Wolf Lodge in Grapevine for a couple of days. GWL has a huge indoor & outdoor waterpark, as well as many other activities for kids. It was very family friendly and a place that Landry enjoyed a lot! It was fun having my whole family together (even if my brother and sister were completely annoyed with all of the bazillion kids running around with their bad elevator etiquette!!) (some of them were annoying).

Us

The indoor waterpark

This bucket dumps 1000 gallons of water on the people standing below. One night Jeff, Linds, Brady and I stood underneath looking up at it for a good 15 minutes waiting for it to tump over. Finally, Lindsay and I got impatient and walked away to do something else; we looked up and realized that the water to fill up the bucket was no longer running. We felt like dum-dums.

Landry's favorite thing was the wave pool. She literally spent hours wave jumping.

Korley's favorite thing to do was fuss. She didn't mind playing in the water, but there were lots of spray features and she hated being sprayed. She spent a lot of time being held.

Me, my dad, and Lindsay

Linds, Jeff, me, and Brady

Actually, this was Korley's favorite thing. A few times a day they had this show with these puppet things. Anytime we were walking through the lobby, Korley would go and sit in front of the stage--even if there was no show going on. They sang this long song called "There's Nothing to Be Scared of Here". I found it kind of....scary.

We Have a First Grader!!

Thursday was Landry's last day of Kindergarten. I can't believe how quickly this school year went. It just doesn't seem possible that Landry is one short summer away from being a first grader!




Thursday morning, her school had a "Celebration of Learning" ceremony. Landry read her favorite story that she wrote from her writing journal.




Here she is hugging her teacher after receiving her graduation certificate. We're going to miss Mrs. A!



Here are Landry and two of her favorite friends from her class. Look how TALL Landry is--ha!



A fun moment with Korley before leaving for the last day of school!




Last day of school



Compared to the first day of school

SIX FLAGS

I'm part genius, part irresponsible mom.

I decided a couple of weeks ago that I would take Landry out of school yesterday (irresponsible mom part) and take her to Six Flags (genius part). Landry has been wanting to go to Six Flags for a while now, and since most of the DFW area schools are in session until the end of this week, I thought it would be a good time to go. And, it was! Our friends Beth and Luke went with us and we had a great time together. The park wasn't crowded at all--we pretty much walked onto every ride with no waiting in line.

The only bummer was that some of the rides that Landry wanted to ride were closed--like the ShockWave. But, she was eager to ride a big roller coaster and ended up riding the Flash Back, which went upside down six times! She had such a blast! Of course, I didn't get any pictures of her on the big coasters because 1) I was securing my belongings like they nicely asked us to do and 2) I was hanging on to my safety bars for dear life--I was way more scared than Landry.

However, I did get some pics from our day.....

The four of us

First ride!

10 and 2, Landry!!!