Big News!

Wow, I can hardly believe that it's been almost four months since I've blogged. I know I've been ignoring my blog here but I must say the other aspects of my life have been flourishing! 

In case you didn't know, in the last year I've started my own business The Roving Brush, a traveling painting party. It became more successful than I had ever imagined it would. In the past 16 months I'd say I averaged one party a week which along with substitute teaching and teaching Sunday School I've only gotten busier the last couple of years. 

And of course Yip and Yap are 10 1/2 years old, almost as tall as me and busy with basketball, 4H and the many adventures they get themselves into. Yahoo will be 6 in a couple of weeks and is so very proud of the fact that her bike's training wheels are off and she's working really hard at learning to ride like a big kid before......

........big news coming......


........can you guess???.............


WE ARE MOVING! (Yes, again!) 

Let's recap shall we?? 

Quick timeline;
Aug. 2003 - DR and I were married and I moved from central Indiana to Kentucky. 
March. 2004 - DR's job moved him, temporarily, to Delaware. I was two months pregnant with twins. I move in with my sister in Indianapolis because we don't know how long "temporary" will be and what issues we may have with twins. So for the next few months DR and I flew back and forth to see one another. In June, "temporary" became permanent and I am told by my doctor to no longer fly. 
August/Sept. 2004- Yip and Yap were born very healthy and a month later my mom and I drove to Delaware with the babies. DR didn't like the position he was forced into with this company and so....
January 2005 - My parents and teenage brother came to Delaware and helped move us back to northern Indiana....through a blizzard....with 5 month old twins....to a rental house that I'd only seen once.....two years before.  
October 2005 - We moved again to a house we bought two streets away because,you know, we thought we'd be there for a while. 
July 2006 - DR is asked to take a position in southern Indiana close to his family....we move again. 
October 2007 - July 2010 DR's company moved us again to central Illinois close to the Indiana state line. Yahoo was born!! 
July 2010 - March 4, 2015 We've lived in Montezuma, KS one of the best little communities in the world!! (can you tell I'm biased?)  
March 4, 2015 - will be our last day in this great town and we'll be moving to a 20 acre place in the country that I haven't seen yet!


I am super excited for our move though. We'll be living about an hour southwest of Kansas City, KS which is only a day drive to my parents in Indiana!! That's so much better than the two day drive with three kids that we've faced these last 4 years. DR has taken a job with his company that's a promotion (more on that later hopefully!) that he is really enjoying. He's been living in Kansas City in a hotel since early December and we are all tired of it! My kids miss their dad!!! The kids are pretty nervous about being at a new school but I'm sure they'll adjust pretty quickly. 

Anyway, with our move coming up we (obviously) have some big changes coming. I anticipate that the biggest challenge for me is that I will suddenly have either a) a whole lot of time on my hands to blog or b) so busy with living in the country and kick starting The Roving Brush again that I won't have time to blog! We'll see! 


As I was searching back through my blog to find that timeline above I found all those posts I did years ago that were Pics of the Day. Now why haven't I been doing those in a while? Oh, I know it's tricky to lug a camera around, load pics onto the computer and then post. But now I have a phone I can blog from and....why haven't I? I've decided to try to do those again.

With just about 3 weeks until moving day my schedule is all kinds of crazy. Some days I find myself busy from sunup to when I crash into bed and then other days, like today I find myself with some unexpected time on my hands. 
I'll do my best to keep you all updated on the big move! 

Keep us in your prayers...we need it!! 

Heather 

I haven't fallen off the edge of the Earth, I swear!

I really am alive. Honestly. 

Life has just gotten so darn busy that blogging is on the back burner. 

It's Holy Week and that's been keeping me busy with church stuff. We had an Easter egg hunt this afternoon and had over 60 kids show up! 60!! That's more than our average Sunday attendance. I have another couple of church projects coming up that hopefully I'll get to blog about. 

I've began the huge project of painting the interior of my house...every room but the bathrooms. I hope I don't get bored before I get everything painted. 

Check out the 7 ft. shelves I built for all of my photo frames! Isn't that so much better than a hundred new nail holes in the wall? I found the plans here.  Dang, they were so quick and easy to build that now I'm seeing places all over the house where I could put shelves like this. I could use them for books, toys, kitchen stuff...endless possibilities! 

One room painted, seven to go. 

It's been a couple weeks since our family spent a few days in Kansas City and I still had a few more photos to share of our trip. I know, I'm way behind. 

Kansas City has a Legoland and it was a big hit with our kids. We were there for three hours and we were exhausted by the time we were done! Check out the Lego Wizard of Oz land! 

The Emerald City. 

Dorothy's house raised up and spun around. 

Munchkin land and the yellow brick road. 

Yahoo was never too interested in Legos until she found that there were pink Friends Legos. She's been building with her new Legos all week. I've found though, that even though Yahoo (a girl) and her brother Yap both play with Legos they play very differently! Boys build lego cars, towers, wars but little girls build backdrops so their Lego figures can have conversations. 

Lego land had a big section where the kids built cars and rolled them down a variety of ramps. I'm not sure if  Yap barely left this section! He LOVED building bigger and better cars. 

Walking on a pit of Legos? That looks tortuous to me...how do kids do it? 

Lego land was a bit pricy but considering how crazy our kids are for Legos and, we were there for three hours, I think it was worth it. 

I'm still alive, just really busy with all kinds of different projects. But I'll blog when I can!! 

Vacation Recovery

Well, we survived a short vacation trip to Kansas City. Wait...didn't I say in my last post we were heading to Denver? That WAS the plan but Mother Nature stepped in and laughed at us. We were planning on driving to Denver Saturday but the mountains ended up getting hit by a storm that day so at the last minute we decided to drive the opposite direction (about the same distance) to Kansas City.

Though it was a last minute plan we still were able to pack in tons of sights and we had a great time. In a lot of the museums we visited there were interactive exhibits that gave you the option to take a video or photo and then email a link of it to yourself. When we visited the Rock and Roll Museum they gave us each a backstage pass with a scanner code. You entered your email once into their computers and scanned your pass, then after every video you recorded you simply scanned your badge to send the video to your email. I think the kids, and DR, created a dozen total videos. (Though DR won't let me share his with you. Party pooper!! ) Here's some the kids made, I think this was one of the highlights of our visit to Kansas City! 

   

Yap on the drums. They also had guitar, keyboard and other music stations. 

Yahoo singing her own song; "We are the best turners in the world." 

Makes total sense, right? 

The boys teamed up to perform the song their class will be singing in the spring concert. All the kids at school have been excited about this concert and have been telling me all about what kind of bugs they are. This song is so stinking cute, I can't wait to see what the entire school comes up with! 

We also visited Legoland, the WW1 Museum and the Money Museum at the Federal Reserve Bank (highly recommend them both!), Kaleidoscope, Science City and Tallgrass National Preserve. I didn't get photos of everything but I'll share what I did get later. 

If anyone is looking for a place to take a family on vacation I highly recommend Kansas City. Not only is there LOTS to do but everything we did was concentrated in one area so we weren't constantly driving. In fact the only driving we did was to and from the hotel. 

Enjoy the music!