Catch up

Here's a quick summary of the last two months. Bought a house, moved in, Isabelle got the stomach flu, then Brad and I got it, Clark had roseola (high fever for three days, then benign rash), Cora broke out in mysterious hives for 3+ days. All while moving boxes, unpacking, trying to be create a place for everything and putting everything in its place!! It's been 6 weeks sine we moved, but we feel like we've been here forever. It's a beautiful house and we feel really good here. We're still organizing things and trying not to feel the pressure to have everything all set and perfect right NOW. Sigh... School's out, so everyone is home and asking to go to the pool every minute. I don't blame them, today's high, for instance is 97. I really really really have a hard time with the summers here :-) We're planning fun things for the summer, though, a weekend with some friends cabin-camping in San Antonio, a big trip to Idaho to have a siblings-with-kids get-together (although hopefully we can get some of the siblings-with-no-kids-yet to come too!). Isabelle will go to a theater camp again and Cora's got an art camp she'll be attending as well that she is really excited about.
We'll start at a new school in the fall, which is really hard, since the girls really liked, and of course are use to, their old school. I went to visit their new one and felt all the apprehensions of a kid going to a new place and felt so empathetic to their little selves I wanted to cry!! But it's a good school, they will see some familiar faces of kids that are in our ward, since at least the move didn't take us away from our church family!

So it's a stressful, good time here. Clark is crawling and still so happy all the time and trying to grow some hair in addition to all his teeth! 6 1/2 so far :-) Soren has started to be less crazy, although we'd really like this new maturity to also include a more completely potty-trained little boy... Isabelle and Cora are just getting so old! They can do so many things now, getting independent and proud of their accomplishments...

Yesterday we went blueberry picking. I don't know why it's so great, even sweating in the sun it just feels so good to look through the rows of tall bushes and spot beautiful bunches of nice fat blue blueberries and plop them into your bucket. The kids just loved it. Soren couldn't help wandering and finding his own places to pick, although he always came back when I called him (a new development in his ability to obey the "come here" command!) Cora said, "I'm so glad I'm alive." When I asked why she said because she gets to pick blueberries.

Look at Clarky's little red face! This was 9:30am. We didn't stay very long, it was just too hot. Next time we'll head out a couple of hours earlier :-)

Marathon

Brad ran his first (and last?!) marathon this past weekend. It was the hottest day of the year so far, so that can pretty much tell you how it went for him. REALLY tough, but also pretty cool that he did it!!! He ran with his friend, Jake, who he trained with. Hopefully we'll get some better pics from the race because mine are lame. So here's one of him resting right after his finish:

Clarky-poo

This little boy lights up our lives. This first three are with his Auntie Erin, visiting us for a few days!

County Fair

Two weeks ago we went to the county fair in Huntsville with Grandma and Boppa and the cousins! The kids went on every ride they could. Soren loved everything and kept trying to go on those barf-inducing ones. He'd run up and get in line or ASK the mullet-and-missing-teeth ride operator if he could go on. He still talks about the bumper cars.

Family pictures!

We got some professional photos done at a park near here. It was QUITE a task with especially the boys, as you can well imagine :-) . But here they are. I can't decide which of these first two I like best...




Clark would NOT look up from those leaves, he took like 10 of them, all with us yelling and hooting to get him to look up.

I honestly don't know how the photographer got this one of Soren.He was messing around the WHOLE time.

Fun in the Sun

It's cold again, but last week had a few gorgeous days. So we took advantage---Soren helped wash the cars, an activity he would have gladly participated in for the entire day.


Isabelle and Cora ran in a Fun Run, sponsored by the local high school's track team. It was a 2K (1.2 miles) race for K-2 (and others for older kids). They were so excited to do it, I was especially impressed that Cora wanted to do it, since she hasn't expressed interest in running before and this was her first race. Isabelle came in 2nd for the girls and Cora came in 21st. Both were so proud of themselves and really did well. I loved hearing Cora say, "Daddy will be so proud of me because I was 21." He wasn't there because he was in his own race too!! He went up to Dallas to run a half marathon with some friends.