Tuesday, May 25, 2010



keep your fingers crossed! we should be closing in a few weeks, Lord willing. I walk/drive by at least every day, and often pop in just for the fun of it. I also have a picture on the fridge, so when i feel like our current house is closing in on me, i remind myself that this isn't all there is! patrick has been working doubletime, at his regular job in the day and often at the house in the evenings. there are quite a lot of things that have to be done before our bank will approve the loan. soooo, hopefully soon.


charlie will be 9 mos next week, and he's doing great! loves to babble, and can army crawl really really fast. he is eating all kinds of food, and working on picking up pieces himself. i've introduced a cup, but it hasn't really caught on yet. he occasionally sleeps through the night, but not as a rule. we put charlie down in the kids' room, and hannah down in ours. then when we go to sleep, we move hannah to her bed. then when charlie wakes up in the middle of the night and i can't get him to sleep quick enough, we put him in the packnplay in the kitchen. it works, sort of! hannah, little stinker, doesn't take a nap anymore :-(. it just wasn't worth the fight. but at least she goes to bed at night really easily. in this picture, i asked her to smile. that didn't work, so i said laugh, instead. so that's a laugh. she has her dolly and a book for one of our walks. we like to walk alot, so they bring entertainment. i walk to do alot of our errands like the post office, library, and even light grocery shopping. when we move, we'll be right next to "downtown".


patrick had the genius idea to let charlie feed himself. when he was eating a blueberry/strawberry puree, of all things.

a friend once told me that every parent should have a picture of their child sleeping. so here it is, my sleeping beauty.


and then, like dr. jekyl and mr. hyde, here is the same child awake. imagine!







at grandma jan's this weekend. i don't know who started it, but they (patrick and Jan) let Hannah get ahold of the hose. i can't remember the last time she'd had so much fun. top right: any time she gets wet or dirty, she strips down. it's something we're trying to work on!


just like hannah did, charlie loves climbing up under the coffee table. he's so proud of himself. we didn't get a picture, but at a store the other day we put them in one of those car grocery carts, and he was absolutely beside himself. i never would have thought he was old enough, but his entire face just lit up and he couldn't stop laughing and grabbing the steering wheel. it was great!






some pictures from our mother's day cards.


pratt has many beautiful victorian homes. Some have been neglected, but others are alive and well, such as this one. we love walking in the older parts of town, and admiring them.



the water towers on the left, and then it may be too small, but on the right, in the window, are the prices of different crops: wheat, corn, milo and something else i can't see. the other popular one is soybeans.


of course storms around here are legendary, so there are also alot of rainbows. this double rainbow happened right after we moved here, and we took it as a blessing! this is our backyard, the best thing about the house. and especially, the fence alvin and loretta crisp put up. thank you!



after 2 days of unpacking, we decided to leave the rest and go exploring. we were back by lunch :-). just kidding. we were already familiar with this town, though, so that helped quite a bit. there are so many other towns in a 1 hr to 1 1/5 hr radius, that i also count when i'm thinking of entertaining/shopping/dining opportunities. it's a common misconception that if you live in a ginormous city like the metroplex (dfw metroplex, that is), you're constantly on the road. maybe if you had to commute, but i practically refused to go anywhere longer than 15 min. away. I had no need to. but at least here, if you have to drive an hour to get to something, it's through beautiful fields, a few forests or creeks, through picturesque towns. the journey is part of the appeal. in dallas, an hour on the road would have meant confusing interchanges, toll roads, bad traffic, and all kinds of policemen! and numerous billboards for not so very gentlemenly "gentlemen's clubs". i actually enjoy driving places here. which is good, because i've already put alot of miles on the car!
patrick's in Denver this week, meeting with the head office and all that good stuff. he called and told me there were 3 whole foods right around his hotel. stinker! but more importantly, he made his first deal! I'm so proud of him! that means he beat out competitors and convinced an oil operator around here to sell Patrick, or High Sierra Energy, his oil. Patrick will now figure out how to get the oil where it needs to go. It's actually very complex, which i didn't know. that reminds me, some other news that he may want mentioned: Patrick brought home a dog the other day. we named it sierra, for good luck and to commemorate this new stage in life. i have nothing against dogs as a rule, for other people. but i haven't warmed up to one becoming part of my family, so we'll see how it goes. hannah likes her.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010


so, i finally bought another downloading cord, and here we are. i had so many pictures from before we moved, so i decided to do it in installments. this was charlie's first time in the swing, he seemed to like it ok!


when patrick heard he got the job, mom and bob took us out for a celebratory dinner. we went to fogo de chao, a brazilian steakhouse that is one of our favourite restaurants. it's the kind, however, that you only go a few times in your life. (our lives, anyways!)


charlie was sick and i couldn't get him to sleep before the babysitter came, so he got to join us. thankfully, it was still special for me because i didn't have to hold him. got to love grandparents!


we went to grapevine, a picturesque little town with lots of shopping and restaurants and all kinds of fun stuff. we love grapevine. decorated at christmas it's absolutely adorable. there's also a Great Wolf Lodge, the Gaylord Texan Hotel, the Grapevine Mills Outlet Mall right there, all right next to the DFW airport. did i mention we love it? :-) but we're not going to get nostalgic about texas, are we??? anyways, we love this little bakery/lunch place, where we were enjoying some afternoon specialties. Don't even get me started on the food. last time i had a brie/pear/spinach/pancetta panini. i guess i'll have to make my own now!

so, hannah eats a little more sugar now than she used to! definitely a fan. she's mine and patrick's daughter for sure. and my mom's granddaughter :-).

so as everybody was sitting here enjoying being together, the gorgeous weather, our wonderful food, admiring my precious babies, what do i do? stand up and start getting on everybody to get moving, of course. my goodness, i struggle with relaxing. i did the same thing at thanksgiving when Grandma Jan, David and Des joined us at the Dallas Arboretum. I really must work on sitting still and smelling the flowers, or whatever people do when they're sitting down :-).


everyone is smiling so brightly because they were out of the house and therefore removed from my crazy easter preparations. I decided not to make my braided easter bread, so we could have this special day together. i struggled at the time, but it was so worth it!


sometimes i wish patrick liked to windowshop as much as i do, but it has its advantages. who else would watch the packages and the stroller? and the little tornado?

we had a few redneck sightings, as well. it takes a strong man, that's all i'm going to say! :-)


this is a actually a self portrait. patrick and i are usually too busy to get this close, so it was nice.


Mom and Hannah had a great time doing eggs for our centerpiece.


I just can't get enough of their smiling faces! others may not notice, but I will look back on this picture and notice the living room is empty because we were already packing. that last week is such a blur, especially with having a garage sale and everything. we did have dinner a few nights with friends, and even though at the time it was hard for me to stop working, i'm glad we did it.


patrick drove the uhaul and towed his truck. we moved on tax day, so he voiced our convictions with his "don't tread on me" flag, as he traveled :-).

as i mentioned, those last few days were crazy. we packed the truck one day, then spent the night with just our matresses and left first thing the next morning. patrick let me splurge on getting a cleaner, or else we'd have been up till 2 am. That night we went out for Thai food and Cold Stone and tried to have closure. When you're in the middle of everything, sometimes you don't process as much as you want to. I thought about it on my 9 hr drive, but the kids are pretty noisy in the car. Ok, just one of them actually. We had mixed feelings about leaving. We enjoyed our life there, and will look back on it fondly. That 18 mos was really the longest we've been anywhere, and were really just starting to feel settled. We are really going to miss our church, and food. Grocery store and restaurant food. and having the huge, cheap Frisco Athletic Center 3 min from our house! If I were one of those good bloggers, i'd make some funny top 10 list about this. oh well. That being said, We really are excited about where God is leading us.
and this is where we were led:








you know how sometimes one day can feel like a whole week? i started off in our house in N Dallas, eating blueberry doughnuts that some friends brought. i ended the day, many miles and hours and coffee later, here, in south central KS, a world away from N Dallas. Kansas really is its own kind of beautiful, and as soon as we started driving west from wichita, i was overwhelmed with the bigness and beauty of it. it did start to rain, and we finally pulled up in front of our little rent house, swarming with people helping us unpack. the kids and i fell out of the car, and i went inside. more than a little overwhelmed, i nearly cried then i noticed someone had picked a stem of lilacs and put them in an antique glass jar and set them on the stove. every time over the next few days that i wanted to cry, i went back and looked at the flowers. thank you Jeana!
ok, now we're sort of caught up. we will soon be posting about our new house (currently under contract), Patrick's job, and my indescribably horrible braces!