Outside Fun!

Makelle's new seated scooter that Zak built

Enjoying the Sunshine, the wheels, and in Makelle's case,
the construction workers next door!

We got a downpour, and the kids didn't pass up the chance to play in it.

Some friends invited us to a small town celebration called the Starlite Strawberry Days. We had a great time.

Zak planting the first things in our garden, some of the tomato plants lasted only hours before the birds ate them.


This is Zak and John playing ball after they leveled the ground, but before the grass.

Outside pictures of our house

Here it is . This is looking at it from the street. Our house faces East.My favorite thing besides the grass, is the porch and shrubs.
This is the view from our back patio.
Back of our house
Our little garden area with a few things already planted. I get to plant the rest, since John is gone now. We are already having problems with the birds eating our tomato plants.

One cute very silly Family

Our House

I put the best first. My favorite room in the house, has got to be my bedroom. I can touch the ceiling while laying down in bed. I don't need a longer bed skirt, I kinda like seeing all of my food storage. There may be a whole lot of stories about us really hurting ourselves when we fall out of bed. So far we just have to have a running start in order to get on to it. The other day while I was in the shower, the kids got their booster chair and climbed on it to get on my bed. They found my massager, plugged it in, and were enjoying it on my bed. What smart kids. John has only had to move the bed twice so far, it's good exercise for him.Our master bathroom. John gets his own shower, with a built in seat in case he gets tired of standing.
My nice big garden tub!!!
Double vanity, John has already told me I am not to cross over the line onto his side.
Our fancy dining area.
My fabulous kitchen. I absolutely love it, and I spend tons of time in it. We are going on three cooked meals a day for one week so far!!
The front door into the living room.
More living room.
View from the front door.
That's all for now, hopefully tomorrow I will have a fully landscaped yard to take a picture of! Yipee!!! I didn't take pictures of the other bathroom or bedrooms because they are too small to see anything. The laundry room is great too. Our dryer is so loud our neighbors can hear it down the street, but it gets our clothes very very dry, and that is all we need!!

Finally

Moving Day-Thanks to everyone for all of your help, we couldn't have done it with out ya'll!! To think no one thought we could fill that truck, and it was packed full!
We had a great trip, we left Springville at 4 am Monday morning. We got a whole 3 hours of sleep on the floor with no blankets, it was quite relaxing. We loaded our suitcases and off we went. I cried as I drove myself and kids along the familiar streets for the last time and said goodbye in the dark to my mountains and my great Utah. The kids traveled great, we did two 12 hour days and one 5 hour day. That is pretty good when you consider stops and feeding Lantz. I was glad we weren't moving to the windy flat plains of Kansas. I drove most of the time by myself without help, because they all did so awesome. Dad and Joan were great to keep us fed and help me when we stopped. We were glad to have there help. Each night we stopped at a motel and let the kids swim. I knew I was going on an adventure, but I didn't know it would start so soon. The most adventurous thing to happen was our second night hotel stay. Let's just say if you need a good place to stay let Valynn find you a room at the Budget Inn in Wentzville MO. It will truly be unforgettable, as was our night stay. Our requirements were that it be close to the freeway, cheap, and have an indoor pool. We forgot to add, sanitary, sheets washed within six times of use, clean carpet, etc. You have never seen anything so disgusting in your life. My dirty easy to please Dad wouldn't even touch anything. I told my Dad I was taking pictures of everything, he said, "too bad you can't take a picture of the smell." The people were from the middle east, and lived in one of the rooms so everything smelled like their dinner, and you just wanted to vomit every time you stepped into the hallway.John and Joan braved the pool with the kids. Yes, the water really was green, and as Joan would say, "I couldn't see my feet, and I was stepping on things." The kids cried at first because it was cold. They kept asking us to go to a different motel. Oh how we all wish we could have, that was only the beginning.

Snot, maybe, use your imagination. Whatever it is, it was smeared all over the carpet, along with papers and hair and all sorts of crap.
Yes, this is an ant crawling on our pillow, with two dead bugs under the sheets. And we thought if anything was going to be clean it would be the sheets, think again.
Cement floors everywhere, outside our rooms and opening up to the pool. We all had to laugh or else we would cry.
At least we slept good, once we were able to relax enough to go to sleep. Zak got all turned around.
This was a baby bird outside one of our (clean) motels (we booked this one ourselves, thanks Valynn, but no thanks!) It was a robin and it didn't know how to fly so Zak chased it all around.
Lantz's first time swimming.
Lantz really did like it, He just got splashed when I took this.
We all had a great time at this pool, it was clean, big, warm, and we could chase Grandma and Grandpa.
Zak was giving Makelle rides because he could touch the bottom.
I turned my head for one second and the kids had gotten soap and poured it into the bath, so here is Lantz's first bubble with his his siblings. They had a blast covering him in bubbles.

Once we got into town, John went to show us our house. It really is in the country. It is so green here. It is like forest on every side. As we were driving it was the weirdest thing. I have never lived somewhere that I didn't always know where I was or what town I was next to. And you really can't tell north and south except for the street signs. We live out away from the city, so that is super nice, but we still live close to everything. So far it is great. We even saw some deer in some fields near our house. When we first drove in I was dissapointed to see a big mud mess outside of our house. I was expecting to see green grass all around. We immediately called our realtor and learned that it had been raining for a week straight so the landscaping couldn't be done, but we were assured it would get done. Thank goodness, my kids need a yard to play in.

We are finally homeowners once again. What an amazing feeling. No more eating dinner in our bedroom. Dad and Joan watched the kids while we went to sign papers. It was pretty exciting, the people here are so funny. We are now officially Kentuckianans. We immediately started unpacking. It rained the previous two days we had been in Indiana, and the day we moved in, it was hot hot and humid. I was starting to doubt my choice of moving here. Luckily our air conditioning was working. A member of the branch presidency helped us along with the missionaries. That was a new experience I've never needed anyone besides family and friends to help us move. One of the missionaries started to laugh when he saw our food storage, saying that he has never had to move food storage before. After we got things unloaded, Joan helped me unpack the kitchen stuff and get sheets on all the beds. What a great thing to get that done first. It was so amazing to unload all of my kitchen stuff and some food storage and still have cupboard and counter space. Finally a real kitchen of my own. So the humidity takes some getting used to as well as having to put our cereal and chips in the freezer so they don't get stale.



It had been a long day of unpacking and these two zonked out.
Living in chaos with no TV so these guys watched a movie on the travel DVD player on the floor amid boxes.
Having a picnic on our porch.
We were trying to settle down and have family home evening when these crazies started waddling around with their legs in their shirts. John finally stopped getting after them and decided to join in the fun and try it.
Lantz has mastered his thumb sucking.
The kids helping me cook dinner, they were so proud to cut the olives all by themselves.
Makelle playing at her new Indiana park.
Lantz is glad to be out in the sunshine.
Crazy Zak is making rock angels in the gravel at the park.
We finally got things settled at home enough for us to take the day off. The kids were sick of us doing stuff and we were sick of doing it. We headed for our new Zoo. It was great. Very hot, but lots of fun. Here is John showing them the lions.
Lantz still just excited to be outside.
Makelle conversing with the orangutan.
Oh Dear!!


Sleepy
Well life is good, we are finally settled and I am learning my way around, before John leaves me next week. It hasn't been so humid, and we got a break from the heat for a few days, but it is back again.
The people here probably think I am the handicapped one, because they will ask me a question and I don't answer very quickly because I have no idea what they said. My answer if very delayed as I try to figure out in my mind what they just said. I am getting the ya'll down though. And we were just informed that we get grass tomorrow. Yeah. The kids finally played outside on the dirt today. They played T-ball but it was hard to run on top of big clumps of dirt.
Well that's it, you probably thought there would be pictures of our house, sorry--try back again tomorrow. Won't that give you something to look forward to!?!