Home 3 Weeks!

Dear Family and Friends,

  Week 3 has been tough!  The biggest challenge this week has been the transition of moving Joy from Grace's room to Marta's.  Now Marta and Joy are sharing a room.  Joy wasn't happy with the move for many reasons that I will not go into now, but Tom and I decided that having the younger girls share a room was better. 

  We repainted the room and got new bedding.  The girls picked pink for the color. Then, we went to Target and got new bedding.  Moving out all the junk from Marta's room and redoing the closet to accommodate 2 girls, rather than just one, was stressful.

  The 2nd big challenge of the week was starting school for Jake and Joy.  The week prior to starting, we visited the school during and met their teachers.  Jake is in 3rd grade with Mrs Rodewoldt.  Joy is in 4th grade with Mrs Norris.  They've made it through the week, which included Valentine's Day (they didn't really understand what was happening, but I made sure they had valentines to exchange with their classmates).

  During the whole room change excitement, we also had a visit from Tom's oldest sister, Missy.  She drove from VA to meet the kids.  Joy loved playing with Missy's camera.  The visit went well and we were happy that Missy was able to come for a short time to meet her new niece and nephew.

Thank you to my sister-in-law, Linnea, who traded beds with us!  It was almost a year ago when Linnea moved to Mt Pleasant.  When she was unloading her furniture she said, "You can use these if you think you'll need them."  What a blessing to have these beds for free!

Missy, Tom's sister, is in the green shirt.  Mama Sal, Tom's mother, is in the background and another family member, Megan, came to visit.  Joy loved taking pictures with Aunt Missy's camera!

Here's the whole gang: Shane, Marta, Joy, Aunt Missy, Grace, and Jake

Yes, I've been taking the stars for granted for way to long!  Jake and Joy thought the stars in the night sky were and are absolutely amazing!  They grabbed my camera and started taking pictures like crazy.  We sat on the front porch for at least an hour looking at the stars.  I wish you could have seen their excitement!  

Jake's 1st day of school at Whitesides.  

Mrs. Rodewoldt is his teacher!

Joy's 1st day of school at Whitesides Elem.  Joy's teacher is Mrs. Norris.

Mom and Marta getting the new room ready.
 And yes, I'm looking a bit tired.  We had a house full and this day was crazy to say the least.

This is my dollhouse that my dad made for me when I was a little girl.  Grace, Shane and Marta have all played with it.  It was recently in Marta's room, but because of cleaning out her room and redoing, everything got moved out.  Jake and Joy loved looking at the furniture and cleaning it up.  Jake even decided that the family of this dollhouse needed their family photo taken!

This is the Family of the Dollhouse!  Jake set up each family member in their exact spot.  Isn't this great!?

                                                                             

Tom and Joy are getting dinner ready together.  Both of them like to fix dinner and cutting something up is usually part of the prep work.  Tom is teaching her the fine art of slicing tomatoes.

Today we celebrate Jake's 10th birthday!  We'll have pictures and more updates.