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.