Second week in Texas

20 August 2017

This was the second week in our new home in Texas and an overall success! We love our house and yard and neighborhood so much!

Getting ready for church is always a trick. Even with church starting at 11AM, we have to really focus each Sabbath morning to make it on time. But don't we have cute kids?! Abi thinks it's fun to army crawl around like the babies every now and then. They don't always think it's fun... hehe! Here they are getting a Congo-line-style hug.

Baby Congo line

Our house in NJ had the woven type carpet which worked well for us, but wow it's so nice to have soft comfy carpet again! Abi thinks so, too!

Comfy carpet

James and Abi have a great bedtime routine - silly daddy!

All tucked in

My productivity level is directly affected by the level of mischief the kids are causing. There's a real-life graphing scenario for you math teachers out there! Haha!

Hyrum practicing climbing

Hyrum

Abi still loves her rocking horse

When Audrianne is the only one awake before I shower, she gets to play in the jumper while I get ready for the day. Luckily she likes it!

Audrianne jumping

Audrianne

I'm having to really get over my disgust of bugs that has developed in my old age. :) I remember going around my yard as a kid and gathering as many cicada shells as we could find - those were great days! I'm not super fond of touching them now but I'm loving teaching Abi how to enjoy our new yard.

See, mom?

Abi clearly loves our new back yard!

All my kiddos need is a big sister to teach them how to up their mischief game!

Abi is thrilled with their new skills

Go, Hyrum!

Go, Audrianne!

She finally found the poor guy! Hope he survived her curiousity!

I found them!

These kids are usually so happy and I love it!

Learning to stand

We finally took some time to walk around and get familiar with the neighborhood and the whole time we walked along, Abi looked for bugs. She found a couple giant beetles and made sure to smash the heck out of them before continuing along the way. Watching her, I thought: note to self, do not let her wear her shoes in the house after this - gross!

Going on a walk around the neighborhood

When Abi got hot and wanted to kick Audrianne out so she could ride, I let her ride in the basket. So much for going on a walk to tire her out...

And now it's a triple stroller

While cooking, this happened! And now she can open doors. I keep giving James new to-do's like "buy a stair gate," "set up the TV/babysitter," and now "get the baby locks on the cupboards!" Haha! Poor guy can't keep up with them!

I can't keep up with these kids!

And she's so proud!

Audrianne

Hyrum

This is getting dangerous!


Remember my note-to-self earlier? Well, when we got home from our walk I asked Abi to take her shoes off and put them where they go. So then later that evening, I walk by the front door and what do I notice? Haha! Gross!!!! Bug guts!

Where do the shoes go? Not on the table!!

Our back yard is amazing and has four beautiful trees but they were pretty overgrown so we had them professionally trimmed. Now they look amazing and the yard feels so beautiful and alive and fun to be in!

Trees are a little overgrown

After the trimming

Abi

Audrianne discovering books

Audrianne loves standing at the tub

Audrianne loves her bath

Hyrum loves his bath

Finally I have a way to distract my kids for a bit so I can get us unpacked! Eventually we won't rely so heavily on electronic babysitting but for now, I'm getting the house set up and my blog updated! Yay!

Finally installed the babysitter - just kidding - sort of

Texas is hungry apparently! This is after about 20 minutes of being outside one evening.

Abi is learning about mosquitos

Now that we are finally in a home with dining space in the kitchen and no carpet under the table, we started giving the babies finger foods. I'm ready finally for the mess required during the learning process. So far, no success with Hyrum, and mild success with Audrianne.

Hyrum doesn't like finger foods

Audrianne thinks finger foods are pretty cool

James was a sweetheart and held the fort down Saturday afternoon while I went out to the temple by myself. It is so important to have time, energy and space to think - turns out! I love living so close to a temple!

I get an afternoon out

Playing together