Grrrrr....

Yes, people... this blog post is titled Grrrr because that's how I'm feeling - snarly and growly and ick. :) The real estate deal from "you know where" is still in the works and we are still not in our new house. And in fact, we're now not in any house... since we were assured that everything would close and be finalized on Monday we went ahead and had the movers come and pack us up yesterday morning (also, Dave and I were both still off work). So imagine our chagrin when we go to sign yesterday (at 5:00 p.m. mind you) and find out that our buyer's lender dated the papers for TODAY's date!!! So we headed over to Gibi and Grandpa's house and spent the night there last night. The moving truck with all of our possessions is parked out front of our new house and our old house is sitting empty (except for Cadence who has the whole place to herself). We're scheduled to go and sign today at noon, but at this point I'm a little bit jaded. :)

P.S. - to all of my faithful readers (ha!) we took Luke to Dallas World Aquarium on Sunday and as soon as we get our computer up and running (yup - it's sitting on the truck in front of our house) I'll be able to post the pictures - he had SO much fun (until he almost got his finger eaten by a horse... but that story will have to wait until the post)

P.P.S - My baby turns one tomorrow! Can ya'll believe it?!?!?! A whole year! I am not planning on wearing mascara tomorrow as inevitably it will be streaked all over my face :)

Waiting Game

Well... the plan was that this weekend I was going to be up to my eyeballs in moving in and unpacking at the new house, but apparently plans change. There have been delays on top of delays with the buyer of our current house and without going into a lot of boring and confusing details the deal is still on and will close on Monday. We're hoping first thing on Monday morning we can close on our current house so that we can close on the new house and move in. So much for the four day weekend we planned on having to get moved in and semi-settled. In the meantime, we've gotten to spend the days we'd already taken off as a family and they've been a lot of fun.

Here's Luke with his bib/superhero cape reading with Daddy: More reading:

This morning I met my Student Government kids at the Heard where we painted faces for part of their "Take a Hike" event. Maybe it as the fact that it was 33 degrees outside when I got there, or that they put us in a little room in the basement because it was 33 degrees outside... but we ended up making about $18 profit. Not quite enough to help out with Prom, but a start, I guess :) The room that we were in though was close to the "reptile area" and the guy kept bringing out snakes, spiders and lizards for the kids to touch... it was gross.
Here's Taylor holding a tarantula :
I found these great face paint markers at Hobby Lobby that were a lot easier to use than traditional face paints - which was nice for situations where we had kids request things like a school of fish, a frog eating a fly or a light saber.
This little boy came in and demanded a full-face Spiderman. I had no idea what I was doing, but he seemed pretty happy (I wonder how happy his mom was at bath time tonight... hmmm)

One of my students holding a giant snake... keep in mind that I didn'g take this picture, there was NO WAY I would be that close! Cutest group of little girls ever

My sweet student government volunteers:

Before I headed over to the Heard this a.m. I hit up the Sweet Repeats consignment sale at Trinity Presbyterian. I picked up a few clothes, trucks and this toy that Luke is obsessed with:

With all the packing going on, we moved our couch up against the family room windows and Luke has really enjoyed talking to his reflection before he goes to bed :)

Yes, this is my almost-one-year-old who refuses to hold his own bottle. It's not that he can't - he'd just rather be playing with a toy or rubbing his hair.

(Check out his new pjs... after the toe incident of my previous post we headed out and picked up a few "footless" pairs at Old Navy)

Not only has Luke outgrown all his feety pjs, he's also outgrown the baby tub. This week he had his first "full tub" bath and he loved it! Much more room to play.

Grumbly hateful, or humbly grateful???

Okay... I'm at school and I should be grading, but I really need to take a moment in an attempt to turn my day around. Things with our move aren't going quite as planned (obstinate sellers, delayed closings, packed clothing :), etc., etc.) and I've been in a crummy mood all morning because of it (starting off with a 5:15 am "not so nice" email... literally the first thing I did when I woke up).

Anyway, just as I'm going along in my nice little funk for the day, grumbling about all of my little gripes, I get an email about a concept called "Thankful Thursday" and how although we should be thankful ALL the time, we often forget to be and so we should make a point on Thursdays to remember and be thankful for our blessings. So here it goes...

1) Health - a blessing that I take for granted on a daily basis
2) Family - Luke and all of his monkeyness, Dave in all of his "Daveness" and my parents and all of their amazing helpfulness and love (I guess you really never stop being a parent... hehehe)
3) Work - That I get to be part of a ministry and impact students lives each and every day (and that I get to do it while factoring polynomials and other fun stuff like that!)
4) Church - I'm thankful that we're plugged into a church that's more concerned with reaching people than with the status quo and for the friends that we've made in doing so
5) Home - That despite our moving drama we have a safe haven of our own
6) Salvation - That although I'm hosting a big 'ol pity party for myself (and probably have not been as kind or patient as I could have been), God loves me regardless

Funny how "out of wack" and "out of perspective" things can become really quickly when I'm focused on my gripes and not my blessings.

Whenever I get like this, I'm reminded of a church musical that I was part of in the 4th or 5th grade where we sang this one song with the line, "Are you grumbly hateful, or humbly grateful? What's your attitude? Do you grumble and grown? Or let it be known, you're grateful for all God's done for you?" I literally can't remember much else about the experience, or even which musical it was, but this one line (along with the tune) has been burned into my memory. So, today I'm going to make a point to be humbly grateful... thanks for letting me vent! :)

So sweet!

At our 20-week ultrasound, the technician noted how sweet it was that the baby had his/her feet crossed at the ankles. Then at our 3D ultrasound several months later we got to see our "little" with their ankles crossed again. I find it so funny that Luke still, ALWAYS, crosses his ankles... in his stroller, when he's sitting with you reading a book, and even when he's sleeping. So sweet! :)

Spring Break - Part IV

Luke is growing like an absolute weed! So much so that when he woke up one morning his two big toes had busted right out of his pajamas! (size 12 - 18 months by the way)

I love these pajamas and will probably be trying to "reinforce" the toes sometime soon :)

Why is he growing so fast?!?! Apparently, despite what it looks like in the picture below, some of his food is making it into his mouth :)

Another trick we picked up over Spring Break is putting things in our mouth (i.e. a dirty sock) and then crawling around or pulling up with it still in our mouth

Spring Break - Part III

I thought that these pictures were so cute that they deserved a post of their own. :)

Our neighbors Tim and Suzanne have a little girl who's a month younger than Luke and since we were all outside on the weekend Luke and Anna got to have some playtime together...

Spring Break - Part II

Since we're moving on Friday (hopefully, there's some hold up with our buyer's loan - say a prayer for us!) I spend most of the break packing our entire house and as the labeling on this box shows, by the end of the week I was a little over the whole packing thing: Okay, so I always get super jealous when I'm on someone's blog or at someone's house and they have something really cool and then proceed to tell me how they picked it up for $5 at a Flea Market or found something amazing at a thrift store - so I have to brag about my $3 garage sale find: a really fun, framed botanical print. It made my day:

Luke playing in his "corral" while packing palooza 2009 continues:

My mom, Gibi, spent a good part of the week at my house filling in nail holes and touching up paint (since I like to "eyeball it" when I hang pictures and often end up making 3 holes for every 1 I need), but she took a break from her diligent work to watch the garbage truck with Luke:

We've been getting boxes from friends (thank you, Danny and Jessica!) as well as from work and since Dave works at a Country Club (where the alcohol is a'plenty) our new neighbors are going to think that we're raging alcoholics :)

While Paul fixed our back door (part of the moving repair list) we had to block Cadence off from the rest of the house (or else she'd spend her day sniffing and licking Paul while he tried to work) and Luke thought it was the funniest thing ever. You can see from the picture below that he's also discovered how to stand on things to get a better look over his fence:

Luke laughing at Cadence: More laughing:

Here's Luke getting to know the Shop Vac

He was determined to look inside (and put it in his mouth)

Puttin' him to work :)

Spring Break - Part 1

We really tried to get out and enjoy the beautiful weather as a family during Spring Break so one evening we headed to Towne Lake to walk around and see the ducks. I thought it would be a sweet time to take a father/son picture of Dave and Luke, but all Luke wanted to do was grab Dave's sun glasses:This was taken before the grabbing began, they both look so serious! :)

Luke staring intently at the ducks... I think he babbled at them the entire walk Checking out the ducks:

On Wednesday we took a break from packing and headed to Whitney's house for a lunch playdate. Luke was ALL OVER the place and, as usual, in everyone's business - especially Whitney's cat: Don't you like the way he's "lovingly" holding her by her ears in a death grip?!?! :)

(Don't worry, I made him let go and Whitney swore that her cat was okay with being "petted")

After lunch we thought it would be cute to take a picture of all the kids - Luke and Jackson thought otherwise I don't even know what to say... Luke loves a good paci

We also went up and visited Grandpa at his office where Luke was fascinated with the printer. He pressed ALL of the buttons and had a great time:

Over Spring Break Luke picked up the wonderful habit of sleeping in unti laround 7:45 (vs. 6:30 which was when he was waking up before) and when he got up we'd go get him and let him play in our bed for a while. I think that they were probably watching Sports Center:

We went and ate dinner at PeiWei with Dave's parents and this was the view I had of Luke pretty much the entire time... he couldn't seem to pull himself away from the cooks (and the fire!)

After breakfast one morning Dave got his hair wet (probably to get the smeared outmeal out) and then decided to slick Luke's hair back. He definitley looks different with out his "southern boy swoop"

I was packing for pretty much ALL of the break, and so when I needed to be really productive for 10 minutes I'd pop in Baby Einstein and set Mr. Man up and this is how he'd stay: