OK, so it's been a while...

We've been extraordinarily busy since I last posted. WE MOVED! TO ANOTHER STATE!! ACK!!! This is the third state I've followed Brandon to on his wacky quest to make video games. But I have to say, it's fantastic here. We've got real weather again, finally. I didn't post anything about our pending plans because I didn't want to jinx anything. In October Brandon came home and said, "You're not going to believe this..." His company had fired everyone but three people and we were asked to move to Washington State to be with the rest of the company.

They were going to be giving us plenty of time to move, so I thought maybe they'd give us time to get our cars paid off before we put our house on the market (middle of '09). We ended up coming to visit WA in early Nov and put a bid on a house in late Dec. We sold ours in Jan (by a solid miracle) and moved in to our new home early Feb. It's now almost the end of Feb. We're still ironing the kinks out. (I still don't know where anything is around here...)

But we have had snow three days (one the day after we moved in and one today) lots of days of beautiful sunshine and even on the rainy days, this house is brighter than our condo. Cade loves our big driveway to ride his tricycle on, and Reid has become obsessed with the outdoors, too.

Cade and Reid have really been growing up since I last posted. I have barely had time to notice. Reid's got three more teeth in, can sign bird, fish, baby, juice, and all done, waves hello and goodbye, says Mama and Dada, and he loves to read books and play the kazoo. Cade is basically potty trained except for naps and at night, can ride a tricycle, turn somersaults, and can pour his own juice without spilling a drop.

I know where the grocery store is...

I have just recently found all the parts of one of my cameras in order to take a few pictures, so what I am posting is what I took today.


View of the front right of the house. The top right-most room is the living room, you can see our balcony in front of that, below that is the porch and the room behind that is the rec room for lack of a better term. (Currently it's the "wreck" room...) To the left of the living room, you can see the kitchen windows and left of that, the bay window, is in the upstairs guest bath. To the left of the porch you see the office window (where I am right now, spooky...) and the small window over the hose is the downstairs guest bath.


This is the front left of the house, you can see on the top floor, the skinny window is in our master bath, and the two big ones are in the master bed. The small horizontal window downstairs is in the laundry area and the big window is in the reading corner of the playroom (a.k.a. the guest room). You can just see the tip of the garage to the left of the house. You can fit two RVs in that garage.

This is the back part of the house. It's where Cade rides his trike. You can see the front door, a window in the dining room to the right of that, and the smaller window is the boy's room window. There is a hot tub behind the lattice work in the carport. Oh yeah... my kid is cute...

This is the living room from the front door.

This is the living room from the dining area.


This is the kitchen from the dining area. No pic of the dining room, I didn't get the table cleaned off. The door to the balcony is to the left of the sink and is also a glass door.

This is one of my views from the kitchen window.

This is the other view.


The view down the hallway from the dining room. The upstairs guest bath is to the left, the stairway is on the right with the gate, the boy's room is next on the right, and our master is at the end of the hall. There is a small linen closet between the bath and the master.


Guest bath.
Boy's room, complete with boy.


The wall opposite Cade's bed has all this shelving. You can see we haven't painted the pink walls yet. The wall opposite Reid's crib has their dresser and a mirrored closet.

Our maid. He's short, but he's thorough. The master, of course... To the left are the big windows and all the way around to the left is the master bath, not really remarkable. To the right of this pic is the closet.

View to the left of the front of our house from the balcony. There will be a house there this time next year. Sigh.

The view from the front of the house, also taken from the balcony.

I hope this wasn't too confusing. No public pictures of the downstairs but if you beg I might e-mail you a few pictures of the carnage that is our rec room and playroom.

And now... what all you Gran'mas have been waiting for... one or two pics of the darling monkeys playing in the snow...

Cade, Brandon, and I went out early this morning before Reid woke up.

"Yook, Mama! Snow!"

He has been obsessed with footprints lately since he found my "footprints in the sand" sand ball. It's a ball with two sides. The sand shifts between the sides leaving the quote "footprints in the sand" on one side and the actual footprints on the other. What better way to see footprints than in the snow? One day I was downstairs and Cade yelled "Mama! Maaaaama! Footprints! Fearing the worst, (like maybe Reid walked through something unsavory and hard to clean) I trudged upstairs. I found Cade excitedly examining a scuff mark on the floor. "Yook mama! Footprints!" "Oh," I said, relieved. "Who do you think left them?" "Aunt Suz," he whispered.

It got pretty cold out there so early so Cade came in and got warm milk. (And a pretty cute case of hat head...)

Reid and Cade and I went out again after Dada went to work. Reid thinks that white stuff is pretty interesting...


Cade thinks it's pretty tasty...


Can't play outside without riding the ol' cycle.


And no outdoor excursion is complete without a trip to the gazebo...


A view of the house from the path to the gazebo looking through the trellis. Got that?



Yay! Their first snowman!! We built him for Cade in the morning, but he survived (sans nose and one eye) for Reid to see him, too.