summer 2013

So much has changed in just a few months. We spent the beginning of the summer fixing up and clearing out our home with the hope of being able to sell by owner. We wanted to sell our house before beginning to build a larger home. We painted, we cleaned, we organized, we patched, we hired out some cleaning, and hired a home stager for a consultation. After all that, I made a web site loaded with photos of our home, ordered professionally printed yard signs, and shared our listing with local facebook groups. We had two showing and two good offers in four days, and closed the sale in August.  Suddenly... we had to find a place to live! Luckily, a friend had moved away and had an empty home that she hadn't put up for sale yet. So, here I am, in a farmhouse on a gravel road! We've been busy working on house plans, and hope for construction to begin in about a month.

I was hoping to redshirt Hannah from going to kindergarten this year, feeling that she'd be a more confident student if she was a year older.  She is so much shorter and smaller than her peers that they treat her as if she is much younger.  Being shy doesn't help things, either... although she's getting much better as she grows older.  I had hoped to send her to a private half day kindergarten and then to public kindergarten next year. It didn't work out, and the private school canceled kindergarten because of lack of enrollment.  I had just over a week to figure out what I was going to do, and chose to go ahead and send her to public kindergarten out of district, but in the district where our new home will be built.  Thankfully, she loves it and is doing very well.  She was a little sick two weeks ago and we kept her home from school for two days.  She cried because she was so sad that she wouldn't see her girlfriends, and worried that her class would learn new words without her.

Hudson continues to be a typical two year old boy.  He plays hard.   Eats a lot.  Sleeps well.  Loves well. And tests us daily.  Recently, he had no problem expressing displeasure.  He'll tell us "I wanna go that way!" from the back of the car and demand that we drive right... when we need to drive left.  He'll also get in my face, look me in the eye, and say, "I say no!" just like Daddy says to him when he needs to get his point across.  Little stinker!  This is also the little boy that crawls into my arms and kisses me on the lips and tells me "I wuv you."