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Our brand new box of 24 crayons.  22 of them look like this....


Because this adorable face.....


Likes to do this.....


It's somewhat annoying.  Especially because he actually does like to color, in between his bites.

The Down Side

Don't be fooled by my previous post about our living conditions.  It's not all fun and games. There is a down side to living in a hotel....bed time.  It's pretty much a disaster every. single. night.  Luke, we put in the kitchen and put a baby gate eye level (there's only a half wall at the doorway) with a blanket on it and wha-la....he has his own "room." He can't see anyone and goes to sleep pretty easily....And, my late night snacking and after lunch dessertS (plural) is impossible with all the goodies with the sleeping baby. :)



The other two.....well that's a different story.  We say prayers, read stories, sing songs....they are settled down and tired and get in bed.....AND THEN after about 3 minutes of them in bed jumping, incessant giggling, needing drinks, hugs, cheese sticks...etc all begin.  They are quite creative with distractions.  All of this time, Mike and I sit in the dark on the couch next to them trying to ignore them while we watch TV quietly or on our computers and they still don't give in until after 9 usually. I've tried lots of different things, pretty much something new every single night, nothing seems great.  I'm officially at a loss. Any tips or ideas?   The best part, however, Isabelle sleeps like a rock, so even when Michael does his super early morning wake up, she lifts her head, rolls her eyes at everyone, and puts a pillow over her head and goes back to sleep...she is her father's child. :)  Believe it or not, we are all getting enough sleep!  I'm just missing out on my evenings with the hub!

"Aren't I Beautiful?"

Isabelle was nervous about going to a new primary when she found out we were moving.  To give her something to look forward to, I let her pick out a new dress that she could wear on her first day in our new Florida ward.  She has had this dress for a month and been dying to wear it.  Finally Sunday was the day!  I made her a new bow to match.  Turns out Saturday, we discovered the church shoes we brought for her, she has outgrown and I apparently forgot tights.  So after a trip to Target, she had an entire new outfit.  She was beaming Sunday morning ready to go and overly excited to try out her new primary.

All ready to go, she looked at Mike and said, "Look how beautiful I am, Dad."  He looked up from his Ipad and said, "OH WOW!  You look beautiful!"  She then said back, "Did you forget to look at my shoes?" showing off her sparkle shoes and then "Did you forget to look at my bow?" shoving her head in his face. Then I heard her do the same skit for Michael.  I about died laughing.  She's already learning how well boys notice how pretty things are.

1 Down, 3 to Go

We have officially been in Florida 1 week.  We are currently living in an extended stay hotel until we close on our house.  So for about 3 more weeks we will be here.  What do we do all day in a 1 room hotel?

Put a baby in a box.


Play on the bed, usually giggling incessantly


Read LOTS and LOTS of books


Play on the bed with Dad while he's eating lunch.


Play with flash lights or glow sticks while Luke is taking a nap.


Lots of snacks! We do have this little kitchen area.  There is just enough room for the kids to eat and a pack and play for Luke to sleep in.  It's great!


Run around like loud hooligans in the laundry room while doing laundry.  Ride the luggage cart up and down the halls to take the laundry to and from.


Play hide and seek in the sheets


Take Jake on LOTS and LOTS of walks.  Inspect all the ant piles along the way.


Check out our new house.  We were able to get back in to measure everything and see just what all we need.  I haven't blogged about the house yet, but it's a foreclosure.  There's no carpet, light fixtures, or smoke detectors.  There are a bunch of holes in the walls that will need to be repaired and lots of new paint. Yay! It will be fun, but we can't do any of it until we close in a few weeks.  The kids loved the house.  I'm super excited.


Take lots of baths.  The kids are entertained for ever in the tub! Coloring books, the few toys we brought with us.  Visit the duck pond somewhat close by. Among so many other things.  We made 4 trips to Lowe's, 3 trips to Home Depot, 1 trip to a carpet store, 1 trip to Costco, 3 trips to Wal-Mart.

It really isn't horrible living in a hotel room.  I always wish I could play with my kids more.  Sure enough, with no house cleaning and very limited cooking supplies (2 pans and service for 2), I get to play with my kids pretty much ALL DAY LONG!  I think it's pretty fun. I just found the closest YMCA, so that will be great to start getting our routine going. This week I will start venturing out more.  It's finally warmed up, we now have 2 cars again and Jake has settled in and doesn't whine when we leave.  We will have much more, less creative, fun this week I'm sure!   Enjoying the warm weather and no snow!!!!!!  

Happy Halloween!!!!

Halloween was just not the same this year. Not that I had high expectations, but it is one of my favorite times of year. We didn't carve a single pumpkin, no home made doughnuts, no decorations, and we didn't even take the kids trick or treating.  However, I knew we would be temporary somewhere, so I at least made sure I had the costumes and all our Halloween books with us, and thanks to a McDonald's happy meal, the kids also had trick or treating buckets. We did make it to our new wards' trunk or treat and chili cook off Tuesday night.  Everyone was very friendly, and I loved it even more because everyone thought our kids were ADORABLE, especially Luke. How can you not like people when they can't stop telling you how cute your kids are?

I'm not one to buy Halloween costumes, but I found some in July still being cleared out from LAST Halloween, so I jumped on some adorable $7 costumes!  Worth every penny! Picture overload....cuteness to follow!

Luke was seriously one of the cutest kids ever.  Just the way he still has that little toddler walk and the stuffed belly on this costume, he just was wandering around catching smiles, grins, candy, and comments.  I seriously cannot get enough of him in this outfit.  I might have to put it back on him just to oogle again, because these pictures just didn't capture half of the cuteness!


My beautiful mermaid.  She told me to give her "mermaid hair" and then tried to describe what mermaid hair was.  This was the best I could do from her description.  She was happy with it anyway.


My grouchy GREEN dragon. He is obsessed with green right now, so we lucked out there. He fell asleep in the car on the way there. He happied up quickly, once he found out candy was involved.






On Halloween day, Mike's work apparently does quite the party.  It starts at 11 in the morning.  They rented out an awesome bowling alley/arcade/movie theater etc place.   I met a few of the people Mike works, but mostly followed children around. We each got a game card with tokens on it and they had TONS of food everywhere.  Each department put together a skit and everyone there had costumes. Mike was Mr. Pac Man, hence the dots. There was a movie with popcorn and candy going.  A kid area with a bunny and bird, face painting, balloon animals, and pumpkin decorating with stickers.  The kids had a blast. It was really fun. And Mike only had to work until like 10:30 that morning!

The Big Move

I'd like to say this is the skinny version of our move, but lets be honest...when do I EVER give the skinny version?  It's part of my charm, right?  Haha :)  Read it all, if you dare, if not, enjoy the pictures! Anyway, my mom left with Luke on a Wednesday.  The movers showed up on that Saturday and didn't finish up until Monday around 5!  During that time we were showered with service.  People took kids for very extended times, fed us when there was nothing left in our fridge to eat, took me out on a last girls night out, let us hang out at their house when the movers made it impossible to be there, and helped us clean and pack up our truck.  My friends are amazing.  I cried as we drove out of Spokane and pretty much all the way through Idaho.  I didn't think I would have had a hard time moving, but I did.  We left after 6 on Monday but had to get on the road to beat a big storm.  We didn't beat it, we got to drive with it.  It was a horrible snow storm.  We almost had a serious wreck at one point. I don't think I've ever been that scared driving before.  We only made it to Butte, Montana that first night and pulled in after 2am.  This was Jake's first hotel stay....he paced and whined most of the night.  But the kids slept like logs.  They were awesome for Day 1.  We woke up late, had a little continental breakfast, and hit the road again. Jake was exhausted and slept the ENTIRE day in the car.  We made it to the outskirts of Denver that day.  It was a pretty long day and we got in at 1am.  Jake did so much better!  Day 3 was another all day event.

We stopped for a little Sonic to yummy up the hot Texas afternoon.  This thing was HUGE!  All 4 of us couldn't finish it!




I had a "Mary Poppins" bag full of surprises for those dull moments.  We laughed forever with these crazy glasses.


We spent that night in Fort Worth at my little brother and wife's house.  Matthew and Casey were wonderful hosts and with their busy schedules were ok we got in late and left early.  It was so fun to see them and I still am completely in love with their dog Penny.  Jake and Penny had a blast playing together and it was great for Jake to feel a little homey.  He slept really well that night.

We got up and as we were heading out Mike got the news that PSS is getting bought out by McKessen.  We were pretty panicked for a few hours.  Here we were, mid move, we were stressed to say the least.  Mike had a couple conference calls, and talked to his boss who, after joking about us turning around, told Mike he has a job and to get out there. We have also realized how SLOW major company buy outs are, so we're good.

We made it to my parents early Thursday afternoon.  I was SO incredibly happy to see my baby!  He had the cutest faces when he saw me.  We didn't leave until Saturday late morning.  We had a whole day where the kids didn't have to get in the car at all.  It was so nice!  It's also just nice to go home.  It's so relaxing. As we were driving down, the AC in the truck was weak.  Mike was literally sweating, it was only like 85 degrees.  I was laughing.  It was awesome.  Once we got to my moms, he immediately started taking the truck apart to find the culprit....clogged cabin air filters.  We got new ones and it was great. Then while we were there a huge front hit....it got cold, but we roasted hot dogs and marshmallows despite the wind and cold. We got laundry done, rearranged some stuff, cut everyone's hair, went on a walk and played. My mom also helped me on a quick sewing project.



Then we hit the road for the final bit.  We couldn't decide which would be better for Luke, one marathon horrible day, or two shorter less miserable days.  We went for 2 days.  We didn't leave until noonish. How did Luke do, you ask?  Well, after debating on the circumstances, we turned his car seat around for the long drive and he did somewhat better. He only cried for 2 of the 8 hours we drove that day.  We stayed in Pensacola, Fl in a hotel on a beach.  It was fun to walk on the beach, but was super windy and cold, from that front going through so we didn't get to swim or anything.  Here I thought we were moving to FLORIDA and only had one warm outfit for everyone. Luckily 50's is still warm-ish for us Washitonians. Anyway, day two was a fight to even really get Luke in the car, but we only had 5 hours left and he only cried for 2 of those.

What else did we do for entertainment?

Luke LOVES apples! 1 entire quiet hour.  1 entire apple consumed, stem and seeds and all. :)


Technology (One 7 inch tablet, One Ipad, One Android phone, One Leapster, 2 wireless cards, 2 laptops, LOTS of DVD's, Netflix, and a power inverter.  Overboard?  Absolutely NOT! Hahahaha!)


Technology


Technology


And Dum-Dums (and technology)!


And another apple.



Happy Long Drive!  I had a blast!  We pulled into Jacksonville on Sunday afternoon, October 28th. Starting our new life off with a month in an extended stay hotel.....should be fun.