HWs?

Tonight we took Caleb to his first day of karate. The girls and I were sitting in some chairs on the side of the room when Camille spied a kid from her class.

"Hey, that's B! He's in my class!"

A few minutes later, the girls had to use the bathroom, so we passed the kid on our way. After we shut the door behind us, Camille exclaims, "I can't believe B. actually smiled at me! For the very first time. We're almost BFFs!"

Trying not to laugh, I asked her if she knew what BFF means.

"Yeah, Best Friends Forever."

********
Later, at dinner, the kids were talking about friends they saw at the karate school, Camille shared how excited she was to see B. I informed everyone that they're BFFs. Camille felt the need to correct me in her sassy valley girl voice:

"We're practically HWs!"

"HWs?"

"Husband and Wife!"

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Oh dear. It's started already!

We're Back!

Life has been B-U-S-Y for our family. We bought the yellow house in June and Rob has spent pretty much all of his non-working time working on the house. Caleb was his biggest helper since he's big enough and strong enough to carry wood, hammer nails and such. They enjoyed lots of man time at the house - and that Daddy would usually take him out to lunch at one of the fine fast food establishments near our house didn't hurt anything either!



The kids were able to go on vacation this summer. They took turns in Vermont visiting Nana and Papa. Caleb and Camille took swimming lessons for a couple of weeks. Caleb is a little fish, able to swim the pool the long way. Camille has finally progressed to putting her face in the water so we're looking forward to seeing what she will learn next year! Chloe is excited to turn four next spring because "when I turn fo-ah, I can take fwimming lessons too!"

We are now pretending that things are slowing down here a little bit for us. School started the last week of August, so both big kids are gone from 8 - 4 every day. In the middle of getting ready for a new school year, we also packed up our rental house, moved all of our belongings into the attic of our new house (we couldn't move all of our stuff in yet because we were waiting for the drywall guy to finish our sheet rock so we could clean up the mess and throw on a coat of primer before moving in), stayed in a hotel for a week (there's nothing like the excitement of having two beds for five people...no matter how you do the math, no one sleeps well - but at least we did get a continental breakfast every morning), and finally moved into half of the upstairs of our new house. We are currently have two bedrooms, a bathroom and a laundry room. We have a makeshift kitchen downstairs where we've been getting along pretty well with a microwave, toaster oven and crock pot. It's slightly more glamorous than camping, as far as our cooking set up is concerned. We do have running water (in the downstairs bathtub which is set up as our "kitchen sink" only).



We are enjoying our new neighborhood. There are lots of kids for mine to play with. Caleb is in boy heaven since most of the kids are boys. Camille is a little put out still that there is only one girl her age on the street (that she hasn't even been able to play with yet because the girl was gone all summer) but we're sure she'll be making lots of friends at school before too long.



We are thrilled to report that we now have Internet access at our house. We had been sharing an internet connection with our neighbors until our neighbors packed up and moved a month before we did. So we did a complete computer detox, only checking our e-mail at the library a couple of times a week. It was kind of nice not being tied to a computer, though a bit disabling when we needed to find information. Thanks to those of you kind enough to look up things for us. We do appreciate it!



That's as good a post as y'all are going to get right now. The kids' movie is almost over (they had the nerve to get up at 6:00 this morning, before there were any kid shows on tv so they've been watching the Wiggles - it was Chloe's turn to choose) so I should start thinking about breakfast. Not that any of them should be hungry. I gave them each a banana for snack and then they found my secret candy stash. (It's hard to keep secrets when all of your living is done in two rooms.)

He's got the moves!

My brother got married a couple of weeks ago and we had a blast at their reception. They had this crazy DJ who stopped all of the dancing for a hula hoop competition. The bride and groom each chose 10 people to be on their team and we faced off with the hoops. I say "we" when I got out pretty much scott free. Once I figured out what was going on, I made Caleb take my place on my brother's team. As you can see in the video, he made us all proud!



See that man in the background with the white shirt and orange tie cheering for Caleb? That's my dad. My new sister-in-law was smart enough and quick enough to nab him for her team. We don't have video of him hula hooping (though I'm sure he's the only one who's disappointed). Anyway, as we were leaving the wedding, Caleb pulled me aside and told me he needed a hula hoop. Why? "Because Papa challenged me to a hula hoop contest, just the two of us, and I need to practice so I can beat him!"

We're visiting them for the weekend and this may the chance to see who's got the best moves! If we're lucky maybe we can get that on video!

Big News

We have news everyone! As of this morning, we are now the proud owners of an 1880s farmhouse. It's big, it's beautiful (or will be when it's finished), it's going to be a labor of love.

You can read all about it here: http://yellowfarmhouse.wordpress.com/ We'll try to keep it updated with all of the spare time we'll (wish we) have this summer!

Daddy and the kids

The other night I snapped a few cute pictures of Rob and the kids.

Something was apparently pretty funny here!

New Do

Since summer weather has arrived (mostly), Camille decided it was time for a summer hair cut. I took her to the hair place and this was the result.

Isn't she darling?




While we were at it, I gave Chloe a little trim.

Don't you just love this face? We get it all the time around here.

Beauty Queens

Rob's family came to visit a couple of weeks ago and left Camille with a makeup set. It was actually a pretty great kit where it teaches you how to put on makeup. It even came with a sketch pad so you could draw out your makeup designs before trying them on a real face. The girls loved it!

Aren't they lovely?