WE MOVED!

 Finally finally it was time to move to our new house. Everyone had mixed feeling about it, since our little house at 153 Olton Place, a tiny little cul-de-sac with neighbors that were basically grandparents, was the only home half of them could remember. They were leaving behind friends and even though we were going to finish out the school year at Cale, they were sad to be starting a different school come fall. Still, we were excited for the new adventure.

Moving always takes longer than you think and you don't realize how much junk you have until you have to actually load it up. Sam Knight came over and spent the entire day helping us load and unload the truck. He is a true friend.

John and Lily playing one last time on the swing set in the back yard. 

That weekend we met the neighbors and our kids hit it off pretty well. Hopefully they'll all be good friends!

Our new backyard!

Have I told you how awesome Sam and Sara are? Not only did they help us move all our stuff, they helped us build beds for the kids. I don't know what we would do without them. Honestly. They are some of our absolute favorite people.

Lily found some ice cream in the freezer from the old owners and decided to break it out while Charlotte was visiting (gross!). We didn't have anything unpacked, so they dug in without spoons.

I am so excited about this new house. It is bigger and nicer than anything I imagined we'd be able to buy.

Tired out from moving, so we took a break and went to Busch Gardens for one of their opening days. Jude is finally tall enough for Griffin! 

I got to ride with him on his first go. I LOVED it and so did he.

The Knights came too. These cute girls are one month apart. I'm excited to see how this friendship develops.

Invadr!

Cole recently got really into this fat cat character called Pusheen. He got this cute stuffed animal for himself and insisted on getting an identical one for his best buddy Walter.

Lexi comes with me to Cole's PT appts. She is just getting interested in drawing. She drew these faces all by herself! Not bad for an almost 3-year-old.

We also got to meet up with an old friend that used to live in Charlottesville, Erin Gibbons. It was fun to catch up and see her again! The hardest part of living in Charlottesville is the massive turn-over of student families. Of the families we got to know and love when we were first students, only one is still here.

Facetiming with GiGi on my Birthday! Thank goodness for technology!

She wrote me a poem, just like she does every single year. I love it.

My friend Heather offered to take my girls one day so I could get some stuff done. She is amazing! I am grateful to have friends like her and Sara. They truly make my life happier.

Packing up...

We have begun the long, hard process of moving to our new house. George and I have spent so much time going through all our things and trying to get rid of everything we don't want or need. How on earth did we accumulate so much junk?? 

We knew we wanted some new furniture for the new house. Our friends suggested a really neat place about an hour from us called Greenfront, so one weekend we packed up the kids, a million snacks, and went to check it out. We got a couple neat things, but decided we definitely needed to come back another day WITHOUT kids so we could look around the 9 warehouses full of eclectic furniture. 

Cole had a rough day and made sure everyone knew it. At least he can verbalize it...

Trying to get stuff done is hard to do, even when the four oldest are in school! 

At least the company is awesome.

George rented a dumpster for us to throw away all the big things we didn't want and couldn't donate. I had my doubts that we would fill it, but when they came to pick it up, it was practically overflowing. And we still had two truckloads of stuff to move! Jude and his buddy Grady had a good time helping us break down the big things. Sledge hammer for the win!

Snowflaked baby!

Jude and his school buddies Hunter (orange) and Joey (green) on a field trip. I'm so glad he has good friends. 

While going through our stuff, the kids found some old Halloween costumes. We decided not to keep them, but the kids insisted on trying them on again.

My shopping buddies.

Rub-a-dub-dub, three girls in the tub! Doesn't get much sweeter than this!

We are going to miss this little swing set. The family that bought our house asked if we could leave the trampoline and the play-set. It would be nearly impossible to move anyway, so we agreed, but the kids are disappointed.

Lily's picture of her family. Love it! (she appears to be missing a few people...)

Brain surgery? Not today!

Valerie and I made it home from Utah and jumped right back into the swing of things.

Literally.

The kids LOVE this playground close to our house, so we met some friends down there to play on the 26th. I was sad I wasn't able to burial for Grandma, but I needed to be home.

That night we were pretty nervous. The next day George was going in for a procedure to basically clot off a blood vessel in his brain.

For the last few months (since before Christmas), he has been able to hear a whooshing sound behind his right ear. It's very loud and distracting. He get it imaged a month or so ago and they discovered he had a venous malformation and he was hearing his blood flowing through the vessels. In order to fix it, they opted to go in and occlude the offending vessels. In the mean time, the doctor showed George a massage he could do to minimize the noise--basically he could occlude the vessels by pressing on them from behind his ear where they passed through the skull and into his brain. For the last several weeks, George did this  and noticed a significant improvement.

George's dad drove down the next morning to wait with me and the girls in the hospital while George went in to have the procedure done.

They imaged his brain again to make sure they were going to the right place (for the procedure they had to stick a catheter into his jugular and thread it up into the vessels), and they discovered the malformation had shrunk and the need for the procedure was gone!

The massages had worked, basically cutting off the blood supply to that vessel so much that it shriveled up. We were so grateful he didn't have to have the procedure done! (We were both very nervous about it.) Hooray! We all took George and Pop Pop out to lunch to celebrate.