Visitors and visiting!

Well we found a house to rent in Goose Creek, SC.  It's a great place and we are enjoying a little more space to spread out!  It is also nice that it is only 4 1/2 hours from home!  We moved in completely at the end of January and have been enjoying lots of visitors!

Uncle Zack and Jayden came to visit.  We enjoyed the warmer and much sunnier weather!  Also our big backyard!  The stomp rocket is always a big hit!

Jayden going for a ride...he loved the helmet!

We are also enjoying finding some new/old furniture!  This is our bench that we found on Craigslist.  It was a chest of drawers that the seller cut down and repurposed!  We made friends with Randell and his wife and now have a few more items of furniture from him! :)

Another sunny day!!  What is this?

The birds love our trees and the birdseed helps too I'm sure!

Happy Valentine's Day!

We made a trip to NC to celebrate Emma's 10th Birthday!  She had a bowling party and we all had a great time!

The little ones eventually made their way to the arcade!

It snowed a little too!

We visited with Great Grandma, Great Grandpa, Aunt Sam and Leona down in Sneads ferry!  Julius loved exploring the boat!

Just in case technology fails I'm sure!

Granny playing with the camera!

"What's in there Julius?"

"Kool-aid!"

And this is the kids favorite place in the backyard, they use it as a dig pit!

My Mom and Dad also came to visit for a weekend.  Dad started off by fixing the drain in one of our bathrooms that was extremely clogged, he ended up putting in a new pipe!  He also brought some tools to cut boards for the kids beds!  He's awesome!  All of my siblings and I had also bought Mom and Dad early Birthday presents, tickets to see Les Miserables at the North Charleston Coliseum.  I also went and I can say that it was amazing!!  You always take a risk with seeing an unfamiliar cast take on one of your favorite musicals but it was a great performance!  I will say that the Master of House had an  American accent and I would have preferred he put on a British accent, but other than that every other character was great!  Also the sets and special effects were perfect!  It's amazing what stage productions can do these days!  We left the coliseum saying to ourselves how the songs and story really came to life for us after seeing it on stage!  I'm really looking forward to seeing the movie!

Goodbye Washington

We went bowling one last time!

We played outside in our circle one last time!

And we fed the squirrels one last time!

Happy New Year!

Cleaning out the trash cans...preparing for the move!  Gotta love spiders! :)

We took the kiddos to Monster Jam in Tacoma the weekend before we moved!  It was a great show and definitely worth the wait for Julius!

Grave Digger the Legend is Julius's favorite monster truck!

Robosaur!

For weeks after Monster Jam this was what Julius talked about the most!!

Daddy's choice!

Mommy's choice!

And yes, I made us each t-shirts with monster trucks on them! :)

Part of Granny and Pop Pop's trip to visit us back at Christmas was to drive our yukon back across the country with our dogs, Brownie and Sanford.  Something we are forever grateful for!  I think they had a good time making the trip too!  So, on January 11, 2013 we started packing our truck!  It felt like we had been packing for months already so it was nice to finally be able to fill up the budget truck and not the garage.  We were not as prepared as we should have been and I'm sure our neighbors were just laughing each time we had to borrow their truck to make a trip to the dump, goodwill, etc.  

We are so grateful that Nana was able to come help us with the move too!  She was a great help with packing and entertaining the kids!  On our second to last night in the house the power went out and stayed out for about 4 hours which really cut into our cleaning schedule!  We had the truck packed at this point so we didn't have any kind of flashlights but there were a few candles left out.  We ended up going to bed early!  All of us camped out in the living room!  The next day we finished cleaning and making trips to the dump, etc.  Sunday night was our last night and I was up until 3am cleaning the kitchen.  The kids and I got up early and Daddy drove us to the airport for a 12pm flight.  The check out with housing was that afternoon so Daddy had to get back and help Nana finish with the cleaning.  We were determined to not get charged for anything from housing and even through another power outage that afternoon, everything got done with no extra charges!!  The kids and I had a quick and uneventful flight to Atlanta and then on from there to NC!!  Both kids took naps and didn't cry at all!    Granny and Pop Pop picked us up at the airport at about 10:45pm!  Daddy and Nana started their drive on Tuesday morning with all of our household goods and the car being pulled behind! They made the trip safe and sound...well at least the were still talking to each other when they got home!  Something I will never do again is a DITY move!  It was way too much stress and not worth the little extra money we did make in the end!

We are now settled in South Carolina and are enjoying being 4 hours from home!!