New Life- Week 57 (Adventures in Potty Training Part III- Elsie Edition)

The main event this week was potty training Elsie.  If I am being honest, this should have happened long ago, but between having our house on the market for a year, a pandemic, homeschooling the children, living with my parents, moving into our new house, and remodeling, it got put on the back burner.  Her readiness for potty train is evident in how it has gone.  The first day and a half she had a couple accidents.  We spent to first three days in just undies while we were getting the hang of it.  Since then she has not had a single pee accident.  It took her until the third day to figure out number two, but now she is off and running on that too.  If we are going to be gone a while, more than an hour or so, we still take a potty with us, but she is getting really good at holding it too.  We are on day 7 now and mostly she just takes herself potty when she needs to.  This is a bit of a double edged sword because she is still going on a training potty that needs to be emptied.  Unfortunately, when she doesn't give anyone a heads up, we have to hope we find it before our puppy, Millie does.

I can't tell you how much I have been dreading taking on potty training, but so far Elsie has made it relatively painless.  If I could go back in time maybe I wouldn't have potty trained the others until they were three too.

   

New Life- Week 56 (Spring Has Sprung)

This week Spring officially sprung in the great PNW and actually it has felt a bit more like summer than spring.  It has been a busy, but uneventful week spent outside among the beauty.  We have been jumping on the trampoline, playing in the backyard, and at parks around town.  I continue to be in awe of the beauty around me.  Unfortunately, now that was are homeowners with a decent size yard, there are always weeds to be pulled and they don’t seem to pull themselves.  That’s ok, the weeds are worth it.

Last night we took advantage of the wonderful weather and got together with our old neighbors for a happy hour dinner to celebrate some birthdays.  The girls decided to use some extra bowls and some flowers blooming on the tree to create hats for everyone.  Carrigan wants to be a wedding photographer, but if that doesn't pan out maybe she could maybe have a future as a haberdasher.  Everyone was such good sports.  I think I have mentioned it before, but I love our old neighbors.  I am just so glad that I they still include us in the get-togethers.

I am looking forward to the weeks ahead with more sunshine and fun.

New Life- Week 55 (Welcome to the Family)

 This week has brought a big change to our family.  On Monday we went to see a puppy.  Well, let me back up. The kids have been anxious for a puppy for a long time.  In fact, Merrick has been walking our neighbor's golden retriever, Millie, for a year to save up money for a dog.  Anyway, about a month ago Emily found a litter of lab puppies that were about to be born and we got on the waiting list.  So on Monday they were big enough that we were able to go see them and pick out our puppy.  They were all adorable and we did eventually pick one out.  We drove home excited and picking out names.

The next day the kids and I were at the park and I got a phone call from Millie's owner.  She has been concerned that if we got a puppy we would have less time fore Millie and with her work schedule, Millie would end up spending everyday in her kennel.  She told me that if we wanted Millie, she would give her to us. She just wanted a better life for Millie than she could giver her. We had a family meeting that night.  Tears where shed, but in the end, we all decided that we wanted Millie.  We all knew and loved Millie and felt like she would be a good fit for our family. 

For the rest of the week, Millie split her time between our house and her old owner's house.  Tonight she is spending the night and, if all goes according to plan, tomorrow she will officially be ours.  Welcome to the family, Millie.

New Life- Week 54 (Arizona and Easter)

Once again its been two weeks and so much has happened.  Last week we went to Arizona for Grandpa Clifford's funeral.  It was such a time of mixed emotions.  The funeral was beautiful, but it was hard at the same time.  We had the funeral in Arizona and then drove to Safford for the burial.  It was special to be able to go down to Safford and see the places that are so much a part of the history of the Clifford side of the family.

While we were in Arizona for the funeral, it was also the first time we have seen Jeremy's side of the family in a year and a half and it was seriously SO good to see them.  Like I said, very mixed emotions.  We really didn't do anything big or exciting with the family, but mostly just hung out, talked and ate...a lot.  It was so wonderful just to be together.  The kids loved meeting their newest cousin, Capri, and playing with their cousin, Betty.  We did venture to a few parks and had an early Easter egg hunt.

Today was Easter, and a very special Easter with it also being Conference Sunday.  We started the day with Easter Baskets.  The Easter Bunny brought WAY too much candy, but he also brought me a basket full of sugar free gum since I am trying to cut back on my sugar.  After baskets and cinnamon rolls, we settled in for conference.  There is something special about hearing from the prophet on Easter Sunday!  In between sessions we snuck up to visit our old neighbors.  They had made Easter baskets for the kids and we had brought them some souvenirs from Arizona.  After conference, Papa and Nana, the Lundbergs, and the Ioapos came over Easter dinner.  It was our first time hosting and it felt great to finally have a place where we could. 

It's been a really busy couple of weeks.  I would say that maybe it will slow down but I know that it won't.  Carrigan started Lacrosse this week and Merrick starts baseball next week.  Things are picking up.  Maybe we will get back to real life someday.

New Life- Week 53 (Until We Meet Again Grandpa Clifford)

 As I prepared to write this weeks' blog, I looked over the pictures from this week and couldn't help but think, "Wow, that was all this week?"  It seems like this week has been about a month long.  It started on Monday with what turned out to be a minor crisis with the house, rather than the house suddenly collapsing as we were fearing for a while.  While I as on the phone dealing with that, we got the news that Grandpa Clifford had passed away.  We had found out just over a week earlier that he had stage 4 colon cancer and at that point the doctors gave him about a month to live.  Unfortunately, he only made it about another week, but we are all so tremendously grateful that his remaining time on earth was pain free.

Much of the rest of this week has been spent preparing to go to the funeral.  I have spent lots of time on the phone with various family members, we made all the travel arrangements,  and I am trying to get things settled enough at the house that we can be prepared to leave.  Our city is still cleaning up storm damage and unfortunately our final city pickup is scheduled to happen while we are gone.  We spent yesterday prepping for that and cleaning up our yard as best as we could in between down pouring rain.  On the subject of storm cleanup, we were driving down my sister's street this week and past a park where they are storing storm debris they are collecting.  This is just one of many piles, but it was probably 20 ft high and deep and at least 50 yards long.  I had to stop and take a picture.  We used Merrick for scale but it still didn't do it justice.

On top all this, yesterday we picked to our neighbor's dog and are dog sitting while she is away. AND we built new shelves in our master closet yesterday.  I would really love to figure out a way to at least get the backs of my cupboard painted before we leave town so they have the whole time was are gone to cure, but I also have to pack for my whole family, school the children, and continue to watch the neighbor's dog.  I just don't know if it's going to happen.

Also, I just realized this is week 53 of our new life.  We have officially passed the one year mark.  How did we get here? And will things every go back to normal?

New Life- Week 51 and 52 (Moving Day)

 It's been two week and what is there to say?  A lot actually, just not a lot of time to say it.  I feel like over the last couple months I am really mailing it in when it come to writing the blog or missing it altogether.  It's just that the last two months have been some of the most stressful of my life and there are simply not enough hours in the day to get everything done.  

The root of all the stress? Moving. And not just moving, but remodeling and moving.  Our 8th move in our 15 years of marriage. The last two months have gone by in such a blur as we have spent every free and some not free moments working on the house.  Finally two Fridays ago we unloaded our PODS.  We still were unable to move in though.  The house was still too torn up, we didn't have stair rails or toilets and we didn't have time to move all the stuff from my parents' that we have been using for the last two months.  At last, last Saturday we finally, and officially, made the move.

Over the last week, we have done nothing but try to dig out and figure out how to make our house feel like a home, despite it still being a construction zone.  I have been trying to celebrate small accomplishments, like having three working toilets, Jeremy having his office set up, and finally getting the tv connected and taking a moment to sit with our feet up.  One big thing that did happen this week was that the city came and cleared our storm debris.  Seeing them push our huge pile down the road was such a relief.  I know that things will settle down.  One day we'll have doors on my kitchen cupboards and the playroom won't be full of boxes.  In the meantime, we are just taking it one day at a time.

P.S. totally unrelated, but we did a mini photo session today so Lollie could update her picture frames.  How cute are my kids!?!?