I was putting away the remains from breakfast and lunch making when I caught Pepper and KitKat having a moment.
Kaitlyn has stepped up her cooking lately. She couldn’t wait to try out her latest recipe – Sicilian Pizza. We doubled the recipe to fit our family and all of the topping preferences in our household. The cheese lovers loved the recipe as written – fresh basil and large round slices of mozzarella.
Kaitlyn is challenging Wade to a game of chess every chance she gets.
Ben’s sleeping poses continue to amuse me. I always check on him right before I go to bed. In the first picture, he is sleeping like that because he is scared of his bed. He found a tiny tiny bug on his bed earlier in the night and is now terrified to sleep under the covers.
Ben has continued working on his writing and I am pretty impressed with the 5 year old lefty.
Kaitlyn was so excited to make a cookie cake today. She had pulled this recipe weeks ago but we haven’t found the time till today. The suggested decorations were all sport themes, but Kaitlyn decided to make it her own. She created a unicorn design.
Our old house didn’t sell immediately and we were anxious to move last summer. We moved some stuff and furniture, but left the majority of our things for a few weeks knowing that a house sells better when it is staged. Then we moved it all and left the house on the market. The house still didn’t sell. We didn’t officially pull our house off the market with the pandemic but we knew no one would be looking. We used this time to do some of the upgrades we had been hoping to avoid. We painted, put in new carpet, and upgraded the fireplace area. We also decided to remove the large green hutch in the kitchen area to make the room seem bigger. During all of this we got a new listing agent and decided to try again knowing we would be one of the few houses on the market because we weren’t worried about having people walk through our house, which is thankfully empty.
We were all ready for a break. Today we did chores, played outside, and finally got around to some chores at our old house too.
The weather this summer has been phenomenal. Today we headed back to our old house and the pool. It’s not too bad to have a private pool at our disposal.
I’m going to really miss having a pool in our backyard.
In an effort to make the front of the house look good, we cut some overgrown bushes, hung up some ferns, and did a little painting. Then I realized a bird had built a nest in one of the ferns. I didn’t want to water the babies or scare off the mom, so I just didn’t water the ferns. My mom wasn’t as cautious and simply watered the plant. While she was doing that, she also showed my kids the baby birds. They were in awe. (My plants were thankful.)
Wade comes home with the funniest things. Tonight he arrived home with an apple peeler. My kids all love apples. But tonight they thought they were even cooler.
Somewhere along the way today he lost his shirt and found Kaitlyn’s hairspray (for her ballet days). He’s trouble with a capital T, but we love him to pieces.
Knowing our days are numbered at this house, we took full advantage of the gorgeous weekend. We chose not to add any propane to the tank for the pool heater this year, but thankfully today the water was warm. (So even I got in the water.) The kids tried a tandem jump – my favorite to try and photograph. Alex created a new game of noodle baseball with the dive toys. Ben joined me on the big watermelon. I made the kids go back outside later in the day just to take our yearly matching holiday swimsuit picture. It was a perfect Memorial Day.
We embraced the holiday weekend with several dips in the pool and a sleepover on the third floor of the new house. It took a little figuring to get the the AC on the third floor just right. But the kids were content to play air hockey (thank you previous owners) while the top floor cooled down and then we all watched a movie and conked out!
Alex has always struggled with change. He does much better with routines and things that stay predictably the same. It took us quite a few moves to figure this out. Because we were moving locally and everyone was excited about the move, we didn’t expect any hiccups this time. We were wrong. We are already seeing some minor behaviors. One example – Alex got quite annoyed over a minor issue (in our eyes) and decided to run away. Unfortunately, it started pouring very shortly after he packed his bags and ran away to the backyard. I went outside and tried to convince him to come in but he can be quite stubborn. He sat out in the rain under his sleeping bag for a good 20 minutes before he agreed to come inside. (Wonder where he gets that stubbornness from?)
Kaitlyn’s last day of preschool was today. She met up with her friends at school and we took pictures and said good-bye to Busy Bee (at least until Ben).
Then we all met back up on the Common later in the afternoon for a graduation ceremony and picnic. Her preschool holds the cutest ceremony/party every spring for the graduates. We have been before but this is the first time we had a graduate. Kaitlyn got her diploma and then the kids all ran wild, danced with bubbles, and got ice cream at Cones on the Common. It was a pretty great afternoon.
All of the water bottles in our house have been personally tested by Ben. He can assure you that they work. As to wether they have all been cleaned again after they were tested? That’s a question for another day….
My crazy kids were determined to go swimming today. The temperature did officially reach 80 but the water was no where near that warm. I agreed to be the responsible adult outside but told them I wasn’t going near the water or putting on a swimsuit. They had a blast anyway and I’m glad they are getting so much use out of the pool before we move!
Alex was determined to get Pepper in the pool and it took him quite a while to convince her. The weather didn’t cooperate and we ended up with rain, but he finally got her in the pool – for a second.
We’ve been in this house a year(ish) and only after we officially put the house on the market do we have a random tree fall (from the Land Trust – meaning from Public Property) onto our property in just the right way to damage the metal fence around the pool. The crazy thing is this happened not during a storm or during high winds. I just looked out the window and happened to see the tree on the fence. Now we have to scramble to find replacement fencing. Fun!
We hadn’t done everything we wanted to our current house, but we have done a lot of work on it. We are happy with what we did and are so excited to move on to our new house. Here are the listing pictures. Fingers crossed that it sells quickly and we can focus all our attention on our new house!
Granny And Pop are here to help us begin moving. They drove Pop’s truck up and are here for longer than usual to help us out. We are so thankful the new house is bigger and has a large basement and barn. We have the keys to our new house and our goal is to move quite a bit of “stuff” out of our current house to the new house. We are going to list our current house and cross our fingers that it sells within a few weeks. If it doesn’t, then we are going to go ahead and move into the new house and try to sell the house with no furniture. We’ve sold all but one of our previous houses within a few weeks so we are hoping for the best.
We had our carpet cleaned which means we took most of the furniture out of the living room. My kids think that is the best thing – ever. They have spent the entire morning running circles around our couch and having the absolute best time. So little effort for the best entertainment.
Kaitlyn brought her baby to breakfast. Then she refused to eat her fruit. Then she had a fit that Ben finished his breakfast and was allowed to feed her baby. Life is tough.
These two would eat peppers all day long. (Thankfully they haven’t realized most of the rest of the family doesn’t like them. I’m actually hoping their love of them will rub off on the rest of us.)
I have a love-hate relationship with this art cabinet. For the big kids, I love that they have access to paper, crayons, etc. I love that it is in the kitchen and I can somewhat monitor what they do. I hate that Ben also has access. I hate that the kids have access so they also are the ones that “clean it up.” There are always scraps of paper and things in the wrong bins. I am not a crafty person and the mess drives me crazy. There is a reason we paint in the shower in this house.
Happy Mother’s Day!
This is probably the earliest we have ever had our pool opened. But we wanted it to look good for listing pictures and for anyone going through the house. My kids obviously think that means it must be warm enough to swim. (It isn’t.)
Ben loves babies. He can often be found in Kaitlyn’s room loving on her baby dolls. Today I found him trying to feed the baby doll with one of her shopkin glue bottles. In his defense it does look like a miniature baby bottle at first glance.
Sometimes I miss the days Ben used to nap through the morning shower and hair drying. Now he is into everything and can’t be trusted out of my site.
I have the most wonderful memories of spending time in the creek behind the Upshaws’ (reference the very first post of this blog) house. It always blows my mind that we live next to a piece of undeveloped land (The Land Trust) and my kinds never step food on it! Today they actually played on the edge of the woods in their game of laser tag. It made me so happy.
On Tuesdays we have playdates. Kaitlyn loves having Layla over and they can play all afternoon until it’s time for ballet. The only downside is having a baby brother who wants to tag along.
I love that my kids love to cook. I don’t usually love when they want to cook together. Today they managed to cook together (a raddish recipe of course) without driving me crazy. It probably helped that it was a desert recipe and they were heavily invested in the result.
I have often talked about how Ben and the chip drawer are a constant problem. He thankfully doesn’t know how to open a new bag of chips, but now he just carries the bag around and loves on them – like a pillow. Let’s hope nobody minds mini chips in their nachos.
It’s been about 6 months since I photographed Ben for one of his monthly series on his changing table. It’s amazing how much he has grown. Now he’s so big I wouldn’t be able to “creatively” crop or photoshop out the shelves above him!
Madison is the world’s best dog. I love to walk in and find Ben spending time with her – normally food is involved too.
It is rare these days that I can get all of my kids to play outside at the same time. Today was an exception. They were content to ride and play – together!
It is well known that Alex has difficulty spelling. Sometimes we roll with it and sometimes we tease him endlessly. Today we teased him. Can you guess what he was trying to remind me with the note he wrote and left on the table?
(It is supposed to say – “Bring snack”)
When you have sold as many houses as we have, you know that a listing pictures matters. As soon as our trees started to bloom, I started taking pictures. We won’t list the house quite yet, but it’s always good to have a great house picture.
Anybody remember that great picture I happen to have on hand of the Milwaukee house that ended up being the perfect listing picture?
I have long been a fan of finger painting in the shower. These two had a blast in the shower this morning with their finger paints – until Ben decided to give them a taste. Then we decided it might be time to try the shower part of the shower.
Moving is forcing us to finish some projects that we hadn’t quite gotten around to completing. When we did the great room switch of 2018, we spent so many hours on the closet, floor, walls, etc. The only thing that remained unfinished was the crown molding. As soon as Wade started to do the demolition work on the old closet, which included taking down the old crown molding, he realized there was going to be a problem. He had hoped to save some of the trim and if he was really lucky then it would be easy to match in stores. Then he realized it was discontinued baseboard molding that they had used as crown molding. Wade finally came up with a crazy layering of boards to replicate the molding and you wouldn’t know the difference, but it was not easy! Why don’t people just do things the right way?!?!
The first pictures show a first attempt and the end pictures show what a close match he eventually created.
Kaitlyn wanted to play the game Sorry. It turned out we were missing a few of the pieces. She was quick to solve the problem and we had a fun time playing while Ben napped.
This guy is always so happy after a nap. Today he was content to chill in his room while I took a few pictures.
It’s not unheard of for my birthday to be on or around Easter but it doesn’t happen very often. I’m kind of glad they were on separate days but in the same weekend. My mom was able to come and help us enjoy both celebrations! The kids were up bright and early (just like usual) so we had plenty of time to find the Easter baskets and enjoy all the goodies – especially the chocolate bunnies.
Then we got all dressed up for church and the mandatory pictures. (Note that Ben is actually wearing an outfit Wade wore about 30 some odd years ago..)
We had our traditional Easter lunch – with everyone’s favorite Honey Baked ham. At our house, I think we have Easter ham at lunch just so we can have our favorite dinner of ham biscuits. We had a nice relaxing day spent at home – the best!
Today was all about the cakes. My mom is rarely with my kids around Easter but one of her favorite kid traditions is the bunny cake. I remember making it with her and I remember her making it with our neighbor’s kids when we got too old. She loves making it with the grandkids now. I am convinced she is super-Gram for cooking with all 4 of the kids. (I personally would have never attempted it and at least waited till Ben was napping.) She handled it like a pro and there was a cute Bunny cake at the end. I’m sure the kids will be asking for it next year.
Then it was time to celebrate my birthday. The kids were super excited – probably because Gram was in town! We had lobster rolls for dinner (yum!) and Wade procured a chocolate cake from a local bakery (also yum!). Then we put Ben to bed and opened some presents. The kids had helped wrap some of the gifts and Kaitlyn had made her own card (and didn’t mind translating for me). The boys had my most favorite chocolates ever (Trader Joe’s dark chocolate caramels). Wade surprised me with a new lens I have had on my list for over a year. It was a good year!
Gram arrived late last night and Alex had a sign in the door to greet her. We spent the day the Children’s Museum in Providence. We had never been but I had heard great things. My big boys are probably aging out but it was still a lot of fun. Kaitlyn and Ben had a fantastic time and LOVED the water room.
Things I absolutely did not expect to see when I walked down the hall today….
It took several weeks, but Teague finally got to read Ben the book he bought him from the visiting author at school. Ben was a little harder to keep entertained, but we loved the book!
Kaitlyn joined us before long and she definitely appreciated the book – and payed attention all the way through.
This bathtub was made for bubble baths.
