Happy Easter!

Here are some pictures of our new place. We still have some things to do, but at least we are in and it's a start.

And here's our little Easter Bunny!

Working Away

We have been busy, busy, busy!! We have been getting the ministry house at the church ready for our move in, which will be March 14th. We have been removing wallpaper, repairing holes, spackling, sanding, painting, etc... We are getting closer, though. Jack loves the new place and he loves helping out. When I am sanding or spackling a wall, he will come over and grab something and rub it on the wall to help me out. He also loves to sweep. We have this little broom and loves to grab it and drag it along the ground. One of the pictures I am including below has him with his broom.

Here are some before pictures of the main room. Sorry about the quality of the pictures. We will include some after pictures when we are done.

Here's Jack helping out.

I have to explain this next picture. We do not make it a habit to shove a blanket in Jack's mouth when he is being too loud. He does it himself. You see, Jack used to be a thumb sucker, but a while back his thumb got really blistered, cracked and sore because of all the sucking. Therefore, he couldn't suck it. This really bothered him and he had a lot of trouble going to sleep for a couple of days. We tried to give him a pacifier, but he never wanted one. It would just make him angrier. But then he figured out that he could suck his blanket. So now when he gets tired, instead of sucking on his thumb which has healed now, he just shoves a bunch of his blanket into his mouth. We thought this picture was pretty funny!

The Move

Well, looks like we'll be moving in about a month - yay! And we will be putting our house back on the market, so it would be WONDERFUL if it would sell. But God knows, so we will see what He has for us.

Jack's really taken off - literally! Practically running, so it is fun. He finally noticed Legoland in one of our walks around the MOA, so we stopped and let him run around for a while with all of the big kids! He loved it and of course was trying to do everything they were doing that they weren't supposed to be doing (i.e. climbing on the Lego walls and animals, etc).

Promise we will keep the blog up much better once we move since we will have internet again.

Jack's Birthday

What a fun time we had for Jack's party. We just had some family over to our place and had some cake and pizza and presents. He was a little more aware of presents than at Christmas, so it was very fun. He got lots of fun things - my favorite being walking shoes - yay! Matt is glad he doesn't have to hear me griping and grunting every Sunday morning trying to get his shoes on! It was very frustrating; but I like shoes, so I kept trying anyway. Anyway, thanks to everyone who came and shared in our little boy's birthday.

Everything else is going well with us - still caretaking and still commuting a ways to church. We will be moving soon to the parsonage at our church, so that is very exciting. We will be glad to be closer to church and family. Just staying busy with life, I'm sure, just like you all are. OH! We ARE coming up on our 5th wedding anniversary, so we're planning a fun trip to Florida soon. 85 and sunny - here we come! After windchills of 50 below, I can't imagine that. Today was 40 and felt quite tropical. Here are some pictures of Jack's party.

Happy Birthday Jack!

Jack is 1 today! We are very blessed to have him in our lives. I have been saying for a while that I was going to get a video of him walking. Well here it is. I have combined it with one of his birthday gifts. We were going to wait to give him this present, but he found it and wanted to play with it. We'll still wrap it up and let him open it tonight.

Picture Update

Just thought we'd put some recent pictures up on the blog. We never put any from Jack's first Christmas. Here is Jack rummaging through the paper, getting a Vikings hat, and a "My First Christmas" ornament.

And here are some miscellaneous pictures of Jack.

OK finally back to reality!

But Christmas was so fun! Of course, Jack was clueless about what it all was; but nevertheless, SO FUN! He is taking many more steps at a time, has lots of teeth, and is in general growing up really fast! I won't get too sentimental yet, since I still have 17 years to go before we are empty nesters. So now we're gearing up for his first birthday in which he still won't know what is happening, but we will all have fun watching him destroy his cake.

Matt treated me to a night out for the Sound of Music and dinner - just the best (night and husband)! So we have been busy and happy. Thank you all for your cards. It was fun seeing all of your families and hearing what everyone is up to. So we will be updating more soon with pictures.