By the way

We're officially moving tomorrow! It's exhausting but exciting and when I finish the seemingly never-ending tasks of getting settled, I'll post some pictures.

Thankful for Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving! We had a great day celebrating Thanksgiving here in Fort Mill! It was a little different this year with Mama, plus my aunt, uncle, and cousins in London for my cousin's wedding and more family elsewhere, but we had a ton of great food and enjoyed being with those that could make it! Beware...many pictures to follow!

We don't get too many pictures of our whole family, so I wanted to stop and get a few while it was on my mind.
Joshua is really into silly faces, so we did a funny one. Julia was as thrilled with this photo shoot as she looks.
And Sawyer was also not too into getting his picture made but GrandGene just loves getting his made with the kiddos and he'll take what he can get:) Sawyer really does love GrandGene and is very sweet, wanting to hang out with him and be held by him all the time. He took a bit longer to warm up to me, but I think he's precious anyway!
These cousins have a lot of fun together. Their ages are 6, 5, 4, and 3, plus there's big girl (9) Abby and the babies who are 1 and almost 2. And we have two more cousins due next year so the fun is just beginning!
This picture of my pretty pregnant sisters turned out blurry but had to include it anyway. We all worked together to make a really great Thanksgiving dinner and I'm excited to get to eat leftovers tomorrow! We each made several dishes and Daddy bought an already-cooked turkey (and stood in line for 40 minutes to get it, if you haven't already heard that story), so it ended up being a pretty stress-free meal.
We were thankful for Grandmama being able to join us. The kids love playing with her and she's always up for a game.
Julia has been really sweet here, despite staying up almost the whole evening trip from Durham last night. She loves being in Fort Mill and hanging out with her strollers and baby dolls, though she is missing Mimi for sure!
Jeannie had the idea of doing a thankful tree so I made some leaves and we had everyone write what they are thankful for and hang them up. She and I also made some other table decorations earlier today. Here's Carly write one of her leaves.
And here is the tree and the turkeys.

Aww, Matt Leighton is just too sweet.

Gray loves his fruit! Matt's mom did a similar tree and Gray was thankful for many varieties of fruit pie for that one.
"I am thankful for us" says Joshua's leaf. Well put, buddy!

The kids and the decorations.

Great picture of Jeannie and Sawyer!

Digging into Thanksgiving dinner. She was super excited, but didn't actually eat that much.

Looking serious, Joshua took on and quickly defeated his plate of food!

Happy eater!

The food line and boy was it good!

We followed up supper with a Thanksgiving trivia game hosted by Jeannie. We divided into two teams--Pilgrims and Indians. Joshua and Abby knew more than all the adults and were the most into it.

The face of a boy who does not want his picture taken in his Indian headband.

My boys love Sawyer and have been enjoying playing with him. Gray was "kissing Sawyer's eye" here. They come up with some interesting games and Sawyer has tolerated them pretty well.
The boys were pretty wound up, even with lots of outside time, and could barely keep from wrestling and playing tackle football.

So it was a fun family day for all and I really think each year I am more and more thankful for Thanksgiving!

Do it yourself-ers

Well we finished another do-it-yourself project today, which was painting some accent walls. We just love lots of bright color, but the painters charge quite a bit for multiple paint colors so we decided to buy the paint ourselves and just do a wall here and there to make it a manageable project. Originally my color scheme was not so vibrant, but then we went to Sherwin Williams and got some brochures and I was totally inspired to rev things up a little.

I planned to do this project all on my own on Friday. Gray and I gathered our supplies (paint, brushes, rollers, etc for me and sand toys for Gray) and headed over for what I imagined would be a productive afternoon. I was way too excited. Turned out the "real" painters were still very much at work so we ended up spending a not so fun afternoon excavating in the storage closet, mostly looking for a dress that I never did find. I was very disappointed, yet one thing the Lord is trying to teach me is peace. When things don't go my way, whether big or small, I *can* have peace if I remember that God is very much involved in my life and working things out the way he knows is best. I can have hope that even if things don't seem right in this life, they will one day all be made right again. So yes, it was just a day that didn't go as planned and I figured it would work out another day.

Then Matt decided out of the blue that we would go Sunday to paint and he would help me. What a surprise, and by the end of the job I was more than a little grateful for his assistance! The task before us was to paint a mere 4 walls, two of them not even full height, and I assumed it would be a snap. And then I began, and those hours of painting various walls of my parents' house came screaming back at me as I remembered that wall painting isn't half so much fun as painting on a canvas. But with Matt hard at work taping and painting downstairs and the boys playing their hearts out in the backyard, I kept working and hoping we'd get finished, with no electricity and evening looming before us. Four hours, many "oops", and countless, "Can we go home now?"s later, we cleaned up and headed home. It had gotten so dark that we really didn't even know how we'd done, but we were happy to have most of it behind us.

This morning I went over to examine our work and take off the tape. I was very pleased with our un-professional work! I love the colors and was able to easily touch up our mistakes. Almost makes me want to tackle a few more walls....almost.

You've seen the bright teal we have in Julia's room, so now I'll give you a little tour of the rest of the place...

The boys' room! We have the paintings I did for them and also some cool Cars 2 posters to decorate the walls. Though we don't have beds for them yet, they do have their blue quilts and blue curtains that we'll still be using. We're going for a very American look:)

The living room! The lighting was not good for my camera, but Matt and I did this green accent wall together and we'll still be using our same furniture, which has some greens and reds.

The ceiling is really neat. It's a criss-cross pattern and the painters decided to do it the same brown as the wall, which I think turned out pretty cool.

Again, the lighting is bad, but this is the dining area of the kitchen, with the same red as the boys' room.

Matt has a thing for orange so we decided to copy a magazine picture we saw and put it on the wall that our bed goes on in our bedroom.

The color looks very different depending on the light and I really like it!

So there you go! We did it and we are one step closer to moving in. Hopefully getting the final inspection passed tomorrow and moving in right after Thanksgiving!

Almost There!

A cottage small is all I'm after,

Not one that's spacious and wide.

A house that's filled with joy and laughter,

With the ones that you love inside.

You take the high road, I'll take the low road,

Free from all cares and strife.

Sounds corny and seedy, oh yes indeedy,

Give me the simple life!

Okay, so our house is not really a small cottage, but we are a few rooms short of what we used to have, so that's gotta be a little simpler, right? And of course no matter the size of your house, this life's never gonna be free from all care and strife, but I do like the lyrics to this song from the movie "Meet the Robinsons" and I also really like our new house, which, in case I didn't mention, is mere days from being finished!

That's right, people, we've got carpet coming tomorrow, the final paint the next day, and then...and boy am I excited about this...we've got (drumroll, please) the closet shelves! Yes, I am very excited about the shelf part, not only because it's one of the very last steps among what seems like a myriad of last steps, but because I just love a good shelf. There is not much in the stuff category that I like better than storage solutions for my stuff...whatever that says about me! So, yes, we are at the end of this house building process and will be moving eminently...right before or right after (definitely not during!) Thanksgiving. Hooray!

While I have a few brain cells and a couple of minutes, I want to go ahead and commence with the thank you's.

First, we aren't moved out just yet, but huge thanks to Matt's parents for letting us live with them for a couple--which has turned into 5--months. I know we haven't always been the ideal house guests and it wasn't easy to take your neat, quiet party of 2 and become a noisy, messy, energetic household of 7! Thanks for your generosity, patience, and endurance--oh, and many, many breakfasts, dinners, and baked goods:). And I promise we are really moving out...and taking all our junk with us!

And again to Barnette, thank you so so so much for all your hard work in getting this house built. Your time, advice, phone calls, meetings, and much physical labor is very much appreciated. We would be in your house for much longer trying to get this thing built without your help, which is probably a lot of your motivation in helping us, but we also know you love us and are thankful for your kindness!

A little picture break: Matt and Barnette spent many hours putting down this beautiful hardwood floor over the past week. It's a little (okay, a lot!) dusty in the picture, but I really love it and they did such a good job!

Now back to the thank you's. Much thanks to Mama and Daddy for keeping the 6th member of our family down at their house. I know Pogo has really bonded with y'all and I appreciate you letting him invade for so long. Thanks, Daddy, for taking time to make him feel loved and for taking such good care of him. Thanks also to you both for letting us keep a lot of stuff at your house and visit you even in the midst of trying to sell your own house!

And finally, I must say thanks to my hard-working husband! Matt has not only worked long hours managing his business, but has then put pretty much all his spare time into building the house. And what a house it is...it's attractive, well-built, energy-efficient, and a great size for us. And besides all that, it puts us one huge step closer to our financial goals, which right now is mostly about surviving, but one day will hopefully be about thriving and being able to give to those in need.

So much mental and physical effort has rested on Matt this past half a year and he has not only done a great job with it, but has had a little bit leftover to give me and the kids his love and attention. Thanks, Matt, for all your work and for caring so well for our family!

Now the roller coaster begins! Between Thanksgiving, moving, and Christmas, the next month or two is going to be a bit of a blur. But I'm going to try so hard to stay calm and take time to enjoy our life too, rather than go into must-not-rest-until-settled mode, so hopefully I'll be back with updates and pictures. If you don't hear from me, I'm probably buried under a pile of boxes somewhere. Here goes move #7...I think.

Happy Birthday to a certain special Nanny...

Julia was singing "Happy Birthday to You" on her own the other day, so I sort of got her to sing it to Nanny. Of course it's never as good on demand as it is in the moment, but here you go, Nanny! Have a great day!

The Julia you may not know...

So you may know a side of Julia that is very girly. She usually wants these things at all times: baby doll, night-night, fancy shoes, pocketbook. If I let her pick out her clothes, she picks a "pretty dress". She loves jewelry and usually hairbows.

She likes to spend leisurely time lounging in a chair with her favorite things, which randomly now includes an Elmo diaper, by the way. She is a stereotypical princess in that she can be very demanding when she has a "need" that must be met!
But there's a side of our little princess that you may not know about...

Warrior Julia, who dresses for battle in a Transformer mask and Thor shield...
and studies up on her fighting skills in her spare time, using a Star Wars handbook, while practicing with a Peter Pan pirate (though you'll notice her baby is not far and she does have on a pretty pink dress!). Yes, our little sweetie is more than meets the eye and we love every part of her:)

And the boys' paintings!

Painting again!

I have had the itch to paint for awhile now (shout out to one of my best friends from high school and fellow painter, Emily, who inspired me when I saw the paintings she did for her daughters wall) and something finally made me get going last week! As of tonight, I have finished two paintings for Julia's room and drawn one for each of the boys.

I have enjoyed it even more than I thought, with the down side of course being finding time without neglecting what I need to be doing. But it only took a couple of days to paint these, once I drew out the idea, and it really has been fun! I was also inspired by a variety of other things, like ideas online, a friend's house that is full of scripture artwork, my mom's recent paintings, a pretty diaper cover, a bag, a card, etc. Can't wait to put these on Julia's new wall!

Quick Trick or Treat

Halloween was pretty fun and a little busy for us. We went to the gym in the morning and dressed in our costumes for that, then came home for a little while and went back out to Joshua's school for his "fall party". I was in charge of the craft table and got to spend a little time with each of the kids. Now I know all their names and a little of their personalities. I really enjoyed it.

Sadly, Joshua is being moved to the new kindergarten class that was established to lower the class size because of the huge amount of kindergarteners this year. He told me on the way home from the party that today would be his first whole day in the class and that he had visited it before. I wondered if there was some mistake since I had written the teacher asking that he not be moved because of his insecurities in starting school and how when he has done in her class. Also I knew parents of kids who would be moved were supposed to get a call from the principal. But as it is, we were left off the call list and Joshua was right. I talked to the principal today, who said she knew about my concerns but also knew he had settled in really well and thought he'd be fine. She said she would not force him to go, particularly because of the mistake in notifying us, but that if we were okay with it, he could try out today and see how it goes. He was so matter-of-fact about the whole thing and had a great day today apparently, so we're going to go with it. It is not something I wanted, but the circumstances are all pointing to this change working, so I'm going to trust that God is allowing it for our good and not worry about it! We'll have an open house for his class next week and I met the teacher today, who seems kind and motherly. We'll see how it goes. Joshua will still see his class for "specials" (art, gym, etc) and recess and he says he's totally fine with the change.

Got a little side-tracked, but thought you may want to hear about Joshua's news. Now back to Halloween. After Joshua's party, we came home and I made dinner, which of course we ended up rushing at the end to try to have our costumes on and get down the street to go with our friends by 6. It worked out and we hit a few houses. Then Joshua declared he was all finished, so he and I went to talk to my friend who had stayed behind to give out candy, while Gray, Matt, and Julia trick-or-treated their way back to Nanny and Pa's. I remember last year being similar, where Gray couldn't get enough and Joshua was done early.

The boys picked two pieces of candy each and went off to bed at their normal bedtime. Worked out pretty well I thought! The kids definitely enjoyed it. Tonight, Gray suggested we put on our costumes and go trick or treating again after supper. Joshua understood that we can't till next year, but still wanted to put on our costumes and go "surprise" our friends down the street. And Julia, who stayed in her stroller the whole time and seemed totally oblivious to the fact that everyone else was getting candy (I think she actually doesn't even know what candy is!), said, "I wah go trick or treat." So there you have it. Fun family holiday for all!

Comparing candy with the friends.

Pausing to round up everyone and/or wait for the sweet little 2 year old twins to catch up.

Headed to the next house!

The whole fam before going out. Matt- Captain America (and he really is the essence of the character, don't you think? His army rank was Captain and he's very American and doesn't even need a muscle costume to look like a superhero!) Me- Ladybug (borrowed from Mama...you can't see my wings here) Joshua- Spiderman, Gray- Red Power Ranger, Julia- Tigger

Sweet little Tigger and her night-night

She actually kept her hood on! This was on our way to take Joshua to school/go to the gym.

If Matt is the essence of Captain America, Gray is definitely the epitome of Red Power Ranger!

Always in character

And more fierceness, in case you weren't convinced

Matt's mom was very cute as Pippy Longstocking for our morning workout. Ever seen such a cheerful rower?

Matt begrudgingly brought his mask to the gym and put it on occasionally.