ok...she's not really a baby! her paperwork says she is about 5.5. we adopted her last weekend. from what we know about her she was rescued from a puppy mill a few months ago. she has never lived in a house and obviously has had a few litters of puppies. she is spayed now though. all the puppy nursing gave her messed up nipples and she had to have a breast tumor removed about a week before we got her but other than that she is healthy.

she is a beagle (duh), which is weird b/c we had a beagle growing up named daisy. i didn't purposely pick out a beagle (daisy was a bit, um, neurotic and i was hoping for a relaxed dog, hee!) but she was just the perfect pick for our family! the other dog i really liked was a bulldog/pitbull mix and being our first dog i didn't know if i could handle such a strong dog. plus, i can relate to her. my boobs will never be the same after nursing a couple of kids either ;)

we named her charis (pronounced care-iss) which is greek for grace. mike wanted to name her and said he wanted to pick a latin or a greek name which triggered by memory of the name charis.

she is seriously sweet and loveable. she likes being carried around like a baby and just being loved on. if you are relaxing anywhere she wants to be all over you. she likes to go for walks and be outside and we are working on her jumping all over people and pulling like crazy on her leash.

i am so excited to bake treats for my own dog!



doggie yawns...



one morning we were looking for her after breakfast and found her like in layla's bed! she loves to be under blankets and put her head on pillows. silly girl

well we moved about a month ago, on march 3rd i think? and we have just been settling in here, having fun visiting with everyone and just getting used to our new home! we moved our computer upstairs to our bedroom and our room is still a mess and not settled so i haven't been spending much time on it, which has been nice! schooling, keeping up with the house and just hanging out with family has been keeping my pretty busy.

( lots more updating and tons of photos behind cut! )

i am going to take a short break from packing here in a couple minutes to watch law and order:criminal intent, one of my latest favorite shows.

i love my i-pod. i think it has saved my sanity throughout this crazy moving process. i have been listening to 'in cold blood' by truman capote. it's really kept my interest and helped the time pass quicker. i have been working in the basement for the past couple of hours and i feel all itchy and icky. i hate that feeling. but i am just about set down there. my other project tonight is to pack the kitchen and then tomorrow is just last minute cleaning up etc.

a book i ordered came in the mail a couple of days ago and it has been so good it's been hard to put it down to get things done. it is called "seductive poison; a jonestown survivor's story of life and death in the people's temple". so fascinating and frightening! it really reads like a novel and just not something you can conceive actually happened. i happened to catch a special about jim jones and the peoples temple a couple of months back. i felt quite naive as i had never heard this story before and felt embarassed when i realized that was where the phrase 'don't drink the koolaid' came from and i had never fully understood. it was really hard to watch but interesting at the same time. just really bizarre how something like that could happen. so many people deceived by one man. anyway, the book is really good. the woman who wrote it was pretty high up the food chain of members and the things that occurred are just so appalling.

i also received these shoes in the mail today. i had some coupons and when all was said and done i paid $13.99 for them! my sister had given me a pair of caymens for my birthday this past summer and i *love* them. i am one of those strange girls who buys shoes for comfort over cuteness ;) anyway, these mary jane style ones are so cute. i have been wearing them around the house as i have been doing stuff and i am soreness free. they are seriously the best shoes i have ever had. commercial over.

moving is more stressful than i remembered! we have only made across town moves before so this is our first big move, where everything has to make it in one trip! things like defrosting the fridge and packing up the washer and dryer are beyond my realm of experience. hopefully we can get it all figured out.

i am going to be taking off with the kids before the actual packing up of the truck takes place. thankfully ;) i have been working hard getting everything packed and going through everything and doing all the leg work so i don't feel guilty for leaving this part to mike! i am also notoriously weak so i think i would be more harm than good at this point. also, i will be going over to the house to get it cleaned up before mike shows up with the truck.

hopefully i won't be too tired as mike is picking up the truck at 7:30 am and i want to leave before then! i think we will all be feeling antsy during the ride down there. we went to midland last week and i played the wizard of oz audiobook (free from podiobooks.com!) and caleb was soooo into it! i took the kids to the mall to play at their indoor play thing since they have been cooped up. we got there and he pouted asking if we could just drive around and listen to the rest of the book instead ;) so we will be listening to the rest of that for the drive and hopefully they will pass out and it will just go quickly.

the thought of driving out of our sweet little town is strange but i feel pretty excited about things. i am just anxious to get things settled and back to normal and just settle into things there.

things are getting kind of crazy around here. i started moving things around and bringing stuff up from the basement and organizing things etc. so while i feel that i am doing a good job of ensuring a smooth move, the house is an absolute wreck and it's making me antsy and the kids (mainly layla!) are getting into everything and bored and cooped up b/c i have been busy with this stuff. i am also trying to plan a few weeks of lessons in advance to make it easier when we move to start up again and get lots of new cards uploaded to the site ( check out the new cards at bunni*goods!) so i feel really out of control right now!

one thing that has kept the kids busy unfortunately is watching episodes of peewee's playhouse. they have gone peewee crazy! which is cool b/c i love peewee too, but i just know they are watching too much tv right and i am looking forward to getting things newly settled and back in the groove of our schedule and it's only been a couple of days of chaos :) anyway, they are both loving to peewee dvds my mom lent us. layla runs around pretending to cowboy curtis all day long and caleb is constantly trying to trick me into saying the secret word. caleb loves it so much he has decided he wants a peewee's playhouse birthday party! i got the invitations made up today in photoshop so i could get them printed now before i got too crazy. they aren't my favorite but i was having trouble coming up with something cute:

caleb was tickled by them, so that's cool ;) now onto ideas for his party...i am wee bit stuck with this one! i have a few, but nothing spectacular. caleb wants to dress up as peewee so i know i have find something for him to wear which might be difficult. and we decided layla could be penny from the penny cartoons. pigtails is all it would take as i can't transform her eyes to pennies ;) he also mentioned building a real, working conky but hopefully he will forget about that one!

off to pack, pack, and make more messes!

it is starting to hit me we are leaving all of the sudden! i went out to dinner with some great ladies tonight that have been good friends to me for the past few years, through the hardest season of my life, and happy times too. i will be lucky to find good friends like them again! i will miss them :( we have more goodbyes coming in the next couple of days...sigh. this part stinks.

i have also been feeling nostalgic going through everything. i have been trying really hard to condense the amount of "stuff" we have so i have been going through EVERYTHING and just keeping things that are really important to me. one of the things i had to go through were the kids baby clothes. sad. its silly how nostalgic i feel holding their little onesies and jammies. they are just clothes but still. then i found a sweater that caleb had that my sister had gotten for him and i knew layla would love it! i also found my favorite baby t-shirt that they both had worn so i dug out the pictures of them wearing both :)



i found caleb's dinosaur sweater the other day and thought layla would like to wear it! she did :) it also made me realize how tiny layla is. people are always telling us how little she is but i don't see it. but caleb was always pretty small and he wore this sweater when he was around 10 months to 15 months or so? layla is 2.5!!




i think this was either my or my sister's t-shirt when we were babies, i loved this t-shirt! it says 'shake your bootie' on it :) layla is on the left and caleb is on the right :)

said by caleb yesterday:

"mommy, why are doing so much cleaning? is somebody coming over?"

hee.

caleb gets really excited by holidays like valentine's day. i wasn't really thinking about it much this year w/ all the moving stuff going on so i threw some stuff together to make the day special....



my sister in law erica told me recently how she uses canned biscuit dough to make easy donuts for her kids so i made some last night and decorated them valentine's style for breakfast. i got the kids some books and candy and left that out on the table to see when they woke up. that kind of stuff tickles them more than anything. caleb's favorite thing was the three hearts i had taped to the table with happy valentine's day written on them. layla was excited that her breakfast consisted of donuts, skittles and chocolate. seriously, they had way too much sugar today!!

we ventured out to the used book store and caleb and i were so excited to see some michigan chillers books there! those books are so fun! we read 'mayhem on mackinac island' awhile back and have been reading 'dinosaurs destroy detroit' this week as we finish our dinosaur lessons. so today we picked up 'terror stalks traverse city' 'poltergeists of petoskey' and 'gargoyles of gaylord'.

layla somehow charmed the owner of the store into giving her the three books she had been carrying around and she also chatted up two college girls the whole time we were there. when i asked her what she was doing she told me to go away, that she was talking to her friends. (hee! someday that will not be cute!)

we enjoyed a lunch of pink milk, strawberries, strawberry yogurt, heart shaped cherry jello and heart shaped jelly sandwiches. caleb was amazed that i could make sandwiches like that. ha.



we also took the kids to our homeschooling groups valentine's day party. we held it at the local ice skating arena, which was interesting. it is situations like that that always make you realize how different my kids are. mike came with me to watch layla so i could take caleb skating. i got us all laced up and try to take him on the ice and he panics. very cautious child he is and he was just not having it. he is also stubborn as all get out. he decided he wasn't skating and that was that.

meanwhile layla is BEGGING me to take her to skate, so i took her out with just her boots on and she slid around and fell and laughed and had a grand old time. after about 2 seconds she refused to hold my hand and was trying to bolt all over the place. the child is two! no fear in that one, at all. caleb eventually came out, in his boots and slid around. he had fun and told me that was his present to me, "taking me" skating.

layla chatted up everyone she could and tried to run with the big girls (the cool five and six year olds!) until they ditched her to skate. she kept introducing mike and i to everyone; "this is my friend, mommy. this is my friend, daddy.' she was cracking us up, little social butterfly!

we came home and ate some dinner and passed out! i was sooooooo tired and ended up sleeping until caleb went to bed. when i went to tuck him in, he gave me a little piece of paper that said:

Dear Mom,

Be my valentine.

Love, Caleb

it was all scrawled in his atrocious handwriting that i just adore! awww.....little sweetie pie. heart of pure gold my son has. i do not take for granted that for the time being he loves his mom more than any other woman, someday that will change but for now i will take the adoration :) i tucked him in and mike and i watched lost (my valentine gift, he only fell asleep like three time! ha!). then as i cleaning up the house the i found an envelope in my desk that said "to mom, love caleb" i opened it and inside was another valentine!! lucky me!!

back to reality tomorrow, the house is a wreck and the laundry is piled up. sigh.

so it has been a long, long while! i was really busy at the end of january getting ready to move to our new house! i figured i would post after we moved, updating everything.

yeah. the move never happened. 2 days before we were supposed to close we got news that the appraisal hadn't come back quite as glowing as we had hoped and that it would change up our financing, costing us more money down and more money every month. everything in the process of buying this house had been difficult so when this happened, i knew i was ready to pull the plug. we waited one more day for good measure, in case of some miracle and then pulled out of the deal.

around the same time mike had received word that he got a second interview with a job he had applied for a long time ago, six or more months ago! he had done a phone interview a week or earlier, just for kicks we kind of thought! it came in the middle of all the house stuff so it was kind of strange to be pursuing a job that was out of town but we figured we had to pursue it and just see what happened.

well, i am glad we did because we found out last week mike got the job!! so we are moving. but a few hours away! we will be right down the street from our families which we are super excited about! we are also excited about the significant raise mike will be getting, while money isn't everything it will be nice to feel a bit more secure and not like we are just flying by the seat of our pants all the time. i am also excited we will be near the museums and such in the metro detroit area for homeschooling. first on the list is the t-rex at cranbrook as we are sadly finishing up our unit on dinosaurs that we have enjoyed so much. but it will be cool to see the skeleton and for caleb to really see how big they were.

so we have a busy month ahead. packing up our entire lives to this point and leaving our "home". mike and i went to high school together but we started our romance here, our married life here, our kids were born here, our whole adult lives have pretty much been here. so lots of memories and love for our little community! we both feel it is time to move on and be nearer to family but it is bittersweet for us too.

we rented high school musical to watch on new years eve with the kids. and ok, i admit i was curious to see it. anyway, mike and i thought it was pretty cheesy but caleb LOVED it. big time. he spent all morning recording himself singing a bunch of the songs into his tape recorder and they are watching it right now.

funny.