Pictures of the new house

Here's a few pictures part of our new house in Houston. We've finally settled in and have nearly all the boxes unpacked. Here's the living room. The door on the wall leads into our bedroom. The other three bedrooms are all upstairs, which is one of the best layouts we've ever seen. The only time it's a problem is when one of the kids is sick and we have to go up and down the stairs all night long taking care of them. That's why we put the day bed upstairs, then one of us (usually Amy) can sleep on it when that happens.

This is othe entry way into the house. The cut out section up near the ceiling leads to the upstairs toy room. The kids like the idea of being able to climb up on something and look out on to the first floor. They can just hide up there and see who's at the front door. At first we were worried that toys or sisters would "try to fly". But so far nothing like that has happened.

Another view of the entry way. This is under the toy room and right by the stairs. The tiles are great fun when the kids come home and their shoes are wet.

This our formal dining room. We put the table that Randy and Mitzi made for us (Amy) in this room. Everyone who sees it is really impressed, and a few have asked if Mitzi still does the stone work and how much it would cost...

This is our breakfast area. The table here is an IKEA special. It's solid pine and weighs about 5 lbs. The hamsters are in the back corner hidden by the table. We usually forget about them, until someone notices that their water bottles are empty. But so far they they've survived the kids "love" and they've survived the parents "neglect", so they're pretty tough creatures.

Here's our kitchen. It's smaller than what we had in OKC, but we really like it. We also have gas appliances for the first time in our lives, but we like them so far.

Eventually we'll post more pictures of the house, maybe after the "kids" clean up...

Amy's new haircut

This week Amy decided to get her hair cut. She's been tired of it being so long and hot, and she wanted to donate it to Locks of Love. Here's her hair before and after

Picnic

A few weeks ago, we went to a local park for a picnic and to play on the playground. There was a large "spiderweb" in the park, which the kids loved playing on.

Molly needed a lot of help to get up to the seat. But she sure loved the view. Abby climbed like a monkey, and her and Thomas raced each other to the top. After they played on the "spiderweb", they went over to the slides. Thomas and Abby chased each other up and down the slides. They slid down sitting, backward, sprawled out and on their stomachs. As you can see, the slide is made up of about a hundred little rollers, so they didn't like it so much on their stomachs. After they played for a while, we got ready to eat our picnic. But then the Texas weather got us. The clouds opened up and started pouring. We raced back to the van, and started driving east toward home. About 1/2 mile from the park, we out raced the storm and broke out into clear weather. We hurried home (about 3 miles east) and set up our picnic on the trampoline. We ate and hoped that we'd outrun the storm. We were nearly right...but the storm moved a bit faster than we'd thought.

Abby's new glasses

After Thomas had to get glasses, we noticed that Abby seemed to have trouble reading things far away. At first it was hard to tell, since we couldn't tell if she just couldn't see it or if she was just being silly Abby. But we finally figured out that she couldn't see. So we took her to the eye doctor and her vision was about as bad as Thomas' vision.

She picked out the pinkest glasses at the store... Next time we'll go to a place with a better selection of kid's glasses.

Molly's Birthday

Today (Aug 30) we celebrated Molly's birthday, one day early. She's only had one birthday before, but was really into the concept. She's been hugging her presents for the last week and just couldn't wait to open them. She's learned how to tear the wrapping paper off her packages ... on second thought, maybe that wasn't such a good thing to teach her...

She got a puppy from her Grandparents Hahn and the big BRIGHT pink ball from Great-Grandma (actually in the form of cash) so Great Grandma doesn't know what she bought for Molly yet. She got this outfit from the Grandparents Christensen. This will work out great for living in Houston.

Back to school 2009

Well another year, another school! Oh, I guess that's not normal unless you are in our family!! Anyway, Thomas is in third grade this year and Abby is in Kindergarten. They were very excited on the first day. And especially so because they get to ride the bus this year!!Here they are waiting for the bus, they got kinda bored because the bus was late. They started watching the bugs nearby. But the bus finally made it and they were off to school!After school Molly and I walked to the bus stop to meet Thomas and Abby. Once again the bus was late and we got tired of waiting... ( first day, I guess the driver needs to get used to his route!)
But again, the bus finally made it and the kids were home safe to tell tales of the first day!!

I made these cupcakes for the first After School Snack, they are supposed to be Ming-Ming from the show Wonder Pets!

Abby quote of the day, or week, or year!

We all went down to the school yesterday to register Thomas and Abby for the year at a new school! While Toby and I waited in line after line, the kids had crayons and paper and were sitting at another table drawing pictures. Abby came over after a little while and said with a totally straight face "Daddy what is that thing on Uranus?". We just busted up laughing and couldn't stop! Apparently she was drawing a picture of the solar system and wanted to know if Uranus had rings or moons or any "extras". That is our Abby always making us laugh!!