Settling In

We're all settled into the apartment...well, sort of. Things are still a bit unorganized around here because I can't seem to find a place for everything, but we managed to pull off Christmas. I set my alarm for 6:30 because I knew that if we were going to make it to our 10:00 church meeting on time, we would need to get up early to open presents. The girls came in and woke us up around 6:15 before my alarm had a chance to go off. This is what things looked like on Christmas eve:


Victor has spent a lot of time hanging out in the tree- since he doesn't get to go outside and climb trees on a regular basis, I have permitted this behavior.


I didn't take a ton of pictures on Christmas morning because the lighting at 6:30 am in our apartment is pretty crappy and they were all turning out blurry. But here's Greta opening "The Gross Game" and Brian with his new keyboard.



Brian really wants to learn how to play the piano and has been on his keyboard all week. He's trying to teach Greta as well because he has a secret (well, not really so secret) dream that the girls will have their own band someday and be hot rocker chicks. They have been watching tutorials and practicing the song "Ob-La-Di" by the Beatles and are sounding pretty good. Brian's ability to "play by ear" really fascinates me sometimes.

So Long, House.

Well, we did it. We are no longer homeowners. Sad day. This week has been exhausting- packing, moving things to storage, packing some more, moving things to the apartment, and cleaning (and cleaning some more). Last night after it was all over and done with, we decided to watch "Rudolph" with the girls and I fell asleep on the couch at 7:00! I slept there for like 2 1/2 hours, woke up, ate a snack, and then went to bed again until Jade woke me up this morning at 6:45. I'd say I was a little tired. The apartment is still very unorganized and probably will be until after Christmas. There are presents taking up valuable closet space and it seems so cramped here compared to what we're used to, but it will be fine for a couple of months.

Here's us the day that we bought the house- August 23rd, 2010:


I wanted to take a similar picture yesterday on our way to the closing office, but we ran out of time and decided that it wasn't the end of the world. But here's a more recent picture of the house (I think this is from October) with the finished flower beds and fence:


We closed on December 22nd, 2011, so that means we were homeowners for almost exactly 1 year and 4 months. We figure that wherever we move next, we'll probably wait about a year before buying again. It was nice having a home, but kind of a pain when we realized that Oklahoma was not a place that we wanted to stay for very long. Our realtor, Fern, thanked us for being so easy to work with (I guess she gets a lot of difficult people in her line of work) and she even gave us a baby gift for Henry. I'm hoping for a nice Christmas weekend. Brian is off at noon today and doesn't have to work on Monday! Hooray!

Jingle Bells

The pre-school kids rang "Jingle Bells" at the school assembly on Monday morning, so Jade and I went to watch Greta. Sorry for the shaky video- I was trying to hold Jade in one arm while video taping with the other. Greta is the third from the right in the green shirt. (Her little boyfriend, Jackson, is the boy in the argyle sweater).



Greta's class had their Christmas party today and apparently Santa made an appearance. She told me that she asked Santa for "The Gross Game" for Christmas. I'm sure Santa was very confused! "The Gross Game" is actually called "What's in Ned's Head". It's a game that Greta used to play with her speech therapist last year. Lucky for Santa, I already bought it for her.

Family Pictures

We had some family pictures taken on Saturday. The girls were not the most cooperative, so we didn't get very many with them looking and smiling. This is the one that I'm using for our Christmas cards:


And this is the other decent family shot that we got:


Here's one of just me and Brian- my belly definitely looks a lot bigger from this angle than from the front!


I LOVE this shot of Brian and Greta:


And here's what the girls look like when they're not behaving:

Pottery Class

Back in September and October, I took an evening pottery class at the local art center. It was a lot of fun to be able to just go and make things and get away from the house for a couple of hours once a week. Our first project was a coil pot. I wasn't too thrilled with the way mine turned out and I don't know if I'll ever use it, but whatever. The glaze ended up being too thin on this piece, too.


The next project was a casserole dish. I'm happy to say that I've already used it and it didn't explode in the oven or anything like that.


And lastly, I made 4 small bowls/pots on the wheel. The only one I don't really like is the little brown one. The glaze color is a little too blah. It's kind of hard to choose colors because you just have a little chart to look at. The glaze is a completely different color in the container than after it's been fired in the kiln.


I found some of the pots that I threw on the wheel back in my high school pottery class and these ones are a huge improvement. haha!

Grandparent Visit #2

We decided to drive to Denver to visit Brian's parents for Thanksgiving this year. We managed to fit in a number of activities over the long weekend. Lots of reading time, of course.


The weather was really nice on Thanksgiving day, so we spent some time at the little park in Curtis and Barbara's neighborhood.


We told Greta and Jade that we would be decorating gingerbread houses while we were there, and it was all they could talk about! As soon as we arrived, they were asking about it, and they wouldn't shut up until the candy was on those houses! I didn't get a picture of Barbara's house, but she's a pro. She's been making them for 30+ years.





Brian drove us down to Castle Rock (the city he went to high school in) and we hiked THE "Castle Rock". The girls kind of pooped out on us near the end and Brian carried both of them for a little while. The Castle Rock has a big star on the top and if any of you with kids are familiar with Dora the Explorer, we told the girls that we were going to climb up "Star Mountain" They were really excited about that. bwhaha.


The last day we were there, Curtis took us to the Butterfly Pavilion. They had a room with a bunch of butterflies all just hanging out that you walked though. Brian and I also held the resident tarantula, Rosie, while we were there.


It had been a whole year since we had seen Brian's parents, so it was fun to spend some time with them. When it was time to leave, Greta kept saying "You and Dad can go, Jade and I are going to stay here."

Grandparent Visit #1

I've gotten a little behind on my posts. Last month, Greta and Jade got to hang out with both sets of grandparents! My parents stopped by to see us on their way back from a wedding in Florida. We mostly just hung out around the house since Ardmore isn't very exciting. But while they were here we did the ultrasound for little Henry, played at the park, and went to the school book fair. Jade got in some reading time with both Grams and Gramps. As you can see, their styles are a little different haha!



The girls also had fun wrestling with Gramps. He pulled out his classic "muckle" move on Greta.


It was fun having my parents visit- and they finally got to see our house...now that we're moving out of it. ha!