Packing up our home

Our entire home is packed up and we are ready to move.  Where and when are you moving you may ask.  The answer is, we have no idea.  We just know that we are moving.  Charles has had a couple in-person interviews, one being in Utah and another in Virginia.

The boys help take boxes to the trailer.  So helpful.

The kids wanted to get packed into the trailer as well.

After we packed the entire trailer we realized that there was too much weight in the front end.  So we unpacked some of it to move it around.  When it was on our lawn it started raining and we had to hurriedly throw it all into the house.  It was a fiasco and of course the kids were tired and crying, too.

The kids have their backpacks picked out for when we move.

This is just a super cute picture of Elizabeth.

 

When we picked Charles up from the airport for his Utah job interview, Henry had thrown up in the truck.  Poor kid got bathed down in the closest fast food joint.

We let our goldfish out into the wild.  We let the kids throw handfuls of the fish food in the river as well.

 We sold our kitchen table.  I think not having a kitchen table was one of the best decisions we have ever made.  Just cleaning the floor is so easy.  The kids really do love it and they seem to like that we are always sitting on the floor with them.  It's like a picnic every day.

Elizabeth wanted to bring a flat cardboard box down to the basement, but got frustrated that she pulled it on top of her head.

We have gotten a lot of home projects done around the house.  We painted the bathroom cabinets and tiled the inside.  We have repainted most of our walls and baseboards, it's amazing how much the kids can damage them.

Charles painted our deck a dark chocolate brown and it looks so beautiful!

We enjoyed our time out here in Pennsylvania, but are ready to move on.

Parade and York County Fair

The local Red Land Little League Baseball team won the US Championship and so we walked down to the parade held for them since it was right near our home.  The kids loved the huge horses.  I love Lizzy's Einstein hair.  I do actually comb it every morning.

There were tons of fire engines and the boys were enthralled by them.  Every Friday is trash day and we try to get outside early enough to watch the trash trucks since that is so fascinating.  The Friday (trash day) after the parade Henry said, "This is like a parade!"

Eliza likes to be carried down our steps and this is what her tantrum looks like when we refuse to carry her.  She calmly lays herself down and does the most fake whimper.  It's pretty funny.

Most people know this, but Lizzy got glasses and we think that she is the most stinking cute little thing with them on.

Annette loves taking even more pictures of her now.

 Annette is having the kids have themed costumes for Halloween and is making them all.  Lizzy in Little Red Riding Hood, Charlie is the Big Bad Wolf, and Henry is the Woodsman.  Lizzy and Charlie's costumes are completed.  And Henry only needs a cute little cardboard ax.

After Annette made Charlie's wolf ears because Charlie was asleep and the hot glue wasn't dry and she got a glob stuck in her hair and didn't know about it until it was fully dry.  Oops.

We hear that a lot of parents struggle to get their kids to eat food.  This is not the problem we have in our home.  We struggle to get them to stop eating.  I had just finished feeding all of the kids PB&J sandwiches.  The boys each ate two and Lizzy had one and a half.  Charles got home and made himself lunch and all of a sudden the kids were starving again.

We went to the York County Fair on the free day.  We petted the horses.

I was so proud of all of the kids for petting the horse's nose.  They usually get scared of the face and want to touch the tummies of animals.

We looked at the pigs.

We saw a mother pig with her 15 piglets and the kids loved looking at future bacon :)

Cows!

At the sheep area they had some brand new lambs.  They had a movie of one of the lambs being born playing on a huge screen and the kids learned all about birthing.  Charlie seemed to be the only one that was really grasping the concept.

Charles looks so handsome!

Lizzy is as adorable as ever.

The rabbits were very nice to sit and let us pet them without hopping away.  Henry saw a white and black rabbit and said, "Look it's a cow rabbit!"

We all took funny photos.

The kids really wanted to go on the "horse ride" so we let them pay for themselves.  THEY LOVED IT!

Elizabeth was traumatized that she didn't get to go on it.  She cried the entire time the boys were on it and had tears running down her cheeks.  I guess we should have let her spend $3 of her money to go.

https://youtu.be/kotBEJBfoTc

Organizing the Home

I get urges some times to organize the home.  It mostly stems from me getting bored and wanting to redecorate, but the decorating budget has pretty much always been at $0.  So reorganizing is all I can do.  There have been a few Pinterest ideas that have inspired some of the ideas, but mine were all free.  I think they look pretty good for being free, at least good enough for us.

I found this bookshelf thingy on the side of the road and I made Charles turn around so I could pick it up.  Some day I may paint it white.  But not now. 

I wanted little cubbies and hooks in our front closet for shoes and jackets, but that would cost, so I used a diaper box and push pins.

In the boys' room I made a reading nook in the closet.  One of the doors broke off and won't stay on consistently so it was a good excuse.  I even put in a little light for them.  They seem to like it.

On the other closet in their room I organized their toys into baskets we already had and made shelving from old planks of wood that used to be shelving in the basement (I made Charles take that shelving down since I would whack my back into the corner of it when I did laundry.  Someone wasn't thinking when they put that in.).

We picked up these from a ward member when we went to help them move.  I have the boys sort their toys into them.

My sewing and craft stuff used to be in one of the kid's closest, but I realized that I really wasn't constantly using my things and so I put some in our second closet in our room and the rest in the basement office.  This picture makes the closet look incredibly over packed, but I promise it is actually quite organized although very full.  I do what I can with the space I have been given.

Teaching Little Ones the Joy of Motorcycles...that Annette will forbid them from ever having.

York, PA is one of Harley's manufacturing hubs.  The plant is so popular that York County has put a York County Visitor's Information Desk there.

This was the part of the visitor's center that was the most interactive.

Lizzy was the most daring of our children and didn't mind hopping on a bike right away.

Once Henry saw that Lizzy could do it, he became the next-most-daring child.

 It took a lot of prompting to finally get Charlie on one and he definitely won't have done it if the other two hadn't.  We go through cycles (no pun intended) where we teach him to smile for pictures.

I think that's the first time by myself on a motorcycle.

I'm not sure why my eye's look so huge.  Kinda creepy.  But Elizabeth looks good so I didn't delete it.

They probably didn't design this bike to be a three-person bike, but it is.

They thought this one was cool because it had three wheels.  This picture is positive proof of Henry's addiction to playing with Elizabeth's hair.

Who needs to hold the handle bars when you can practice waving for future parades?

I've never wanted to buy a Harley Davidson more in my life than at this moment.

This is the only motorcycle the kids will ever have while living under our roof.

Annette is teaching the boys about this activity.  They've never seen such large magnets in their lives.

Here's a little video of it.

Here's the better-educated and happier family leaving the plant.