2015-02-28

Posted by Julie Wiens Posted on 9:28 PM | No comments

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

December showed up and we did our best to celebrate the season. Moving boxes were still all over the house. After all we had only been in the house for 10 days. Regardless I walked right passed them and I grabbed my holiday boxes and decorated the house. As always, Logan and Kyle joined in here and there.





On December 7th my mom and step-dad came up for a visit. This was Keith's first visit to our new home. Having them here also gave us a great reason to go get our first Christmas tree. I had been really wanting to get one the second December showed up on the calendar, but I am glad I got to get it with these two in tow.


I will say that there are not many great spots in this house for a tree. Since we were not using our wood stove this year we plopped it next to that, but I have no idea where it will go in the future.  It was really nice to see it from my kitchen every day though.

Logan definitely enjoyed putting ornaments on the tree this year. 

I had to play with this photo a little.
That big white ornament is his ultrasound image.



Breaking out new games with our Christmas pom-poms. The tube didn't work all that well though.

Just blowing it produced much better results.

Next up was a "decorate the tree" pom-pom activity. As always, these games never go as I imagine they will. In the end his favorite activity was to throw the straws with the pom-poms on them. 


We made our own Santa too.


Then the unpacking continued. Logan had his own way of unpacking.




 
Love relaxing by our tree.

Look... snow!
 Just some free time to play.





Once again we brought out 24 books for Christmas. Sadly I don't think we made it through all of them this year, but we did our best.


That brings us up through December 16th.

2015-02-09

Posted by Julie Wiens Posted on 11:04 PM | No comments

November brought our 11th Move

Apparently I decided that I either had enough photos from October and was not going to take many in November, or I was too busy getting ready to move to take photos. Either way, November is only going to take up one post! Yes, that means that after this post is up I will only be 2 months behind! That gives me great joy.

Getting back to November. If I recall correctly I spent most of it cleaning the house we rented, showing the house to possible renters, and taking care of Logan.

A special letter came from Aunt Jenny with stickers for Logan. He instantly put them to good use.

I had 17 days before the packers were coming, and I like to leave a really clean house when I move. Of course I wanted my deposit back, so I probably went overboard with the cleaning. Once again I would have not finished it all if it were not for Kyle, my mom and my step-dad. They always show up to help me get it all done. That was the old house side. I also had to do all the paperwork, bank info, insurance, address changes, etc. for the closing on our new house, which happened on the 19th. Oh the joys of moving. This was our 11th move too. I have decided I don't want to move again.

In any case, I also had a little boy who had those stitches in his lip. Poor little man walked around with a pouting lower lip for a long time. I had to cut off the outside stitches on November 2nd, day 6 of his stitches. You can only guess how easy that is with a toddler who isn't too keen on anyone touching his lip. The inside ones were supposed to dissolve, but they didn't. So on November 14th I had to take those out too. We ended up doing pretty well. Nothing like Curious George on a phone to keep a little boy still. I'm really glad I'm near sighted and so happy Kyle was around to hold the light.

Here are a bunch of photos I took on November 2nd, the day I took out his first set of stitches.









On November 6th my mom and step-dad came down and stayed with us for the night so that Kyle and I could go to a Kelly Jo Designs by Wine class. We painted "Memory of Milky Way." Kyle drove straight there from Los Alamos and had a bit of a hard time finding it, but once class got started we had a wonderful evening. It was a nice break in the storm.

November 10th was the last day that I took pictures of Logan at school. We spent time after school, much as we always did, playing in the grass outside of the school playground. On this particular day, there were no other kids joining us, but often we would have many friends to run around with before heading home.

Rolling around the grass.

Logan also had another sad moment in November. He had to leave his friends and his school, Covenant Corner, behind. Logan was going to school Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays 9am-1pm. He loved his teachers: Miss Cyndy, Miss Vanna and Miss Amy. He had great friends: Carsten (his best friend), Elliott, Hannah, Ezra, Jack, Gavin and others. His last week we gave the teachers a small token of our appreciation filled with candy saying "Thank you for every piece of knowledge!".  He added hand prints and colored each box too. The 20th was his last day of class. Kyle picked him up while I was with the movers and they went to Gravity Park, an indoor trampoline play area that Logan LOVES. That night we stayed in a suite with my mom, cats and our fish. The next morning we all headed up to Los Alamos to move into our new home.


Let me back up though. After the movers left on the 20th, I still had a ton of cleaning to do. After a dinner break, Kyle and I went back to the house to do some more cleaning, while my mom stayed with Logan and our pets at the hotel.  We always take a photo of each home we have lived in and here is our final moment together at this house. I loved it so much. The neighborhood was great, the trees that surrounded it were wonderful, and it just felt like home. I will truly miss this place. I'm amazed we were only there for 1.5 years.


The 21st was a blur of mover activity. The movers arrived a little after 8am and were quickly unloading their truck. Kyle was also moving out of his Los Alamos apartment so he was going back and forth with boxes, and he had to do his own cleaning. Our new home was filling up with boxes and furniture and quickly losing walking space. Thank goodness my mom was there for 4 days to help us get settled. Logan did his part here and there that first week.


One of the first rooms to get unpacked was the play room so that Logan would have a spot to go run around while I continued to go through box after box. 


For Thanksgiving, 7 days after moving into our home, we had figured we would be having cereal or something like that for dinner. Luckily the one, but very large, grocery store in town had all the fixings available. I was able to create our normal Turkey feast. I even managed to find all the necessary bakeware in time. I did have to rummage through many boxes to find everything, but in the end we had a great dinner, surrounded by boxes. The boys spent some much needed time outside enjoying our new park too.


That night Logan fell asleep on the couch. Not sure if it was the food, the hours in the park, the busy week of moving or what, but he was spent.

While he snoozed away, I enjoyed the sun setting. Our back yard looks like this almost every night.  So nice to know that we should always have this view.

That was it for November except for the continual unpacking of boxes.

I can happily say that I just finished the final boxes in the garage this past weekend. The garage had been too cold for me to unpack it, but it is finally done. It isn't 100% organized, but it is unpacked. I have a few photos left to hang around the house and that is it. It took me 2.5 months to get unpacked. Not to bad considering we had:
- Thanksgiving
- A visit from my mom and step-dad
- Kyle's 40th birthday party, which included his parents and a number of friends coming to stay with us
- Christmas, which included a visit from my mom, step-dad and uncle
- A quick visit with Kyle's sister, Sharolyn and her family in Santa Fe
- Logan putting an M&M up his nose requiring a trip to the doctor
- Logan's birthday (his party continually delayed, but I managed to make the party supplies)
- A week of Logan being sick
- My Mom's birthday, for which Logan and I drove to Albuquerque for a quick visit

Man am I glad all of that is over. It was wonderful, but oh so busy.