Da Scoop

Well, the plan changes about every few hours, not just daily. A few days ago I would have blogged that everything was smoothly planned out and we were set to close on each house and move all within 4 days---sweet! BUT, the lender for the SL house wants 3-5 WEEKS to process our OFFER!! Yikes!! This is not within our preferred time frame. So now we wonder and ponder, do we wait for this house, a great deal in a great neighborhood, or try to find another? Do we try to rent our KC house back for a couple weeks, or rent a POD and have to move twice and live like gypsys? So many ?, we'll find out in time.

In the meantime, I had a helper friend come and pack the kitchen with me yesterday. I was reminded how long it takes to pack EVERYTHING and how much we have to do. I wanted to get to Branson to let the girls use some free WhiteWater tickets, but not sure if that can happen. The little girls are going to VBS this week here in town. H has ortho and Abby has softball pictures tomorrow. We are all planning on hearing Mark in his debut sermon on Sunday. So much to do...

Today my big girl is 20!! How can this be? I woke up about a half hour before her birth time this am. I sent her an email last night reminding her how happy we were 20 years ago and how happy she still makes us. She called this am and was thrilled to have a MOMemail waiting for her when she got up in Florence. She got to tell me all about the free travel adventures. So fun! We're so pleased that she is having this big adventure and she's doing so well--still has all her stuff and is loving every (mostly) minute. She loved Austria, then she loved Germany--more than she expected, then she loved Switerland--did some "canyoning" ? in Interlochen, Switzerland or Germany? Glad to hear about it "after the fact". Some of the hostels they stayed in were pretty primitive, a bit scary, others were great. Happy she had a young man along to make her feel safe. They had a GREAT time!!! Also happy that they are not going to Spain on the next free travel so Josh could "run with the bulls". I KNEW he really was an "honors student" afterall. Jess can't wait to get to France.

Mark and I have opened a Pandora's box accidentally. We are the last 2 in the world to discover "24". We have heard so many people carry on about this show for years, even Mark's mom got off the phone with him on a Mon nite so she wouldn't miss an episode recently. So funny. So I got Mark Season one for Father's Day and we were immediately HOOKED! We stayed up last several nights last week and helped Jack fight the terrorists. Now we are in Season Two and are limiting ourselves to one episode per night. A stressful diversion from our regular life. :)

Time to do some real work while I can. Computer time is hard to come by around here and we have a mini Mac lab. Wish us luck on the planning and replanning!!

Long story short

It's been a long time between blogs and too much has happened to go backward. Here's life in a short summary. It took forever to get our house on the market---not enough Magic Eraser available to clean up our world. The tile fell off our shower, the basement flooded, we filled a storage shed full of "treasure", we got new carpet, we learned to live clean, we straightened up for strangers and they didn't make an offer----but in the meanwhile other stuff was happening. I went to Las Vegas for an Arbonne marathon--so fun, the girls had an activity daily, EACH in May, H ran track, Kat, Ab and Em all play softball, 2 games/week for each of them plus practice. I got Jess back from HU and we sent her to Italy for summer school. Em graduated from Kindergarten, everyone had field trips and awards ceremonies. We said good bye to our friends at Blackburn Elementary and M said good bye to his career and is ready for his new one. We had a lovely good bye party with our church friends. So nice. We took one breath, then put H on a plane for Hawaii with the band, and got ready for our camping family reunion.

That leads us to the most recent events. We survived our annual AR camping trip. There are still about 15 loads of clothes to do--I'm not kidding. We had tons of fun. Nothing says roughing it like having an air conditioner duct taped to your tent. Actually it got so cold every night we had to turn it off. They kids had a great time riding bikes for hours with all the cousins, also swimming and playing kickball and card games etc....The grown ups played a lot of cards, got band aids, ate a lot and visited. I came back to KC and got H off the Hawaii trip and returned to camp so she could be jet lagged with us. She had a great time and is nearly recovered.

I talked to Miss J today, only the 2nd time all summer. She is doing well, has seen some amazing sights and is having so much fun! They took a class outing to the Isle of Capri and Pompeii last week. They have "free travel" this week, free meaning no classes, not free $$. :)

The big news is that we have a contract on our house and a date to be out! Woo Hoo! Now we will set our sites on SL and finding a place there. So much to do and this whole move thing is getting really REAL!! We still don't know all the details of how this will work, but know that the Lord is making this happen b/c we are so clueless right now and too TIRED to try to figure out all the details. :)

There---that's about as short as I can make it for now. It's late and I need to check the laundry one more time!! Father's Day is tomorrow. We are invited to our friends for grillin and chillin! Nice!!