Landed at Last!

This is it. The key to our castle. We have a lawn to mow, a roof to replace and a mortgage to pay; but we also have a wonderful place to truly call "home".

We packed up all our belongings for the sixth time this summer, then drove about 10 minutes to what we hope will be their final resting place. It took only 3 trips in our van, then Jon and Madelyn took a final trip on Saturday after emptying the final odds and ends and cleaning our apartment. While they erased our month's existence at campus housing I did a little putting away at home.

This is the beginnings of my laundry/dressing area in our basement. It's working pretty well so far, but Jon is still not sold on the idea of having his jeans underground. I don't have adequate shelving for his jeans yet, anyway. We'll see what we can work out in the next little while. Our U-packs are being delivered on Tuesday afternoon, so until my grandma's loveseat and dining room table arrive, we are completely barren of furniture on the main floor. It will be awhile before we can afford to do much changing or furniture arranging, so in the meantime we can dream up exactly what we would like to do. Believe me, there is plenty.

My Aquabats loving kids are thrilled with our home, and have spent lots of time playing at the ice cream bar and sliding down the stairs in sleeping bags. Out neighbors have 11- and 7-year old boys that are very nice. The kids enjoyed chatting with them last night. It's great to be home!

Today is Nie Nie Day

This sweet blogger and her husband were in a plane crash. There are over 165 fabulous auctions to help raise money for their medical bills and long recovery. If you would like to share your love please visit Design Mom for details

Webkinz Wednesday

Once again, it is Webkinz Wednesday at the Hallmark store. The girls were so excited to play some games and win some prizes. Above you see the "Webkinz Toss" game, where they toss a toy onto a number 3 times, add them up and get a corresponding prize. Emma and Cailin both won a free Webkinz. For real.

Then there was some cupcake decorating, candy bar winning and jelly bean guessing.

Emma ended up winning a 2nd webkinz with the "Wheel of Wow". Madelyn earned a free webkinz too, once the girls pooled all the discounts they won. Can you imagine the thrills? Cailin got a unicorn she calls, "Queen Susan" (another reference to the previously mentioned Aquabats cartoon), Emma got a cocker spaniel she calls, "Lady" (from Lady and the Tramp), and a Blue Jay she named "Julia". Madelyn's very cool bat is named "Eliza", after her good friend Miriam Eliza, whom we knew in Abu Dhabi. (Miriam loved bats!)

This little chocolate face didn't win any prizes, but did find a bit of chocolate on the floor of our kitchen that she thoroughly enjoyed. A wonder how one little bit of chocolate could make that amount of smear.

Blondies Have More Yum

We made these last night. So good.

Chewy, Chunky Blondies
Source- Baking: From My Home to Yours

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 t. baking powder
1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
2 sticks (8 oz) unsalted butter, at room temperture
1 1/2 cups (packed) brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 t. pure vanilla extract

Add-ins from original recipe:
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup butterscotch chips or Heath toffee bits
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
1 cup sweetened shredded coconut

My add-ins:
2 c butterscotch chips
1 cup sweetened shredded coconut

Directions-
1. Center a rack and preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter a 9x13 baking pan and place on a baking sheet.

2. Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

3. Beat the butter on medium speed until smooth and creamy. Add both sugars and beat for another 3 minutes, or until well incorporated. Add the eggs one by one, beating for one minute after each addition, then beat in the vanilla. Reduce mixing speed to low and add the dry ingredients until they disappear into the batter.

4. Using a rubber spatula, stir in add-ins. Scrape the batter into the buttered pan and use the spatula to even out.

5. Bake for 40 minutes or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. They should pull away from the sides of the pan and the top should be a honey-brown. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for about 15 minutes before turning the blondies out onto another rack. Invert onto a rack and cool the blondies right side up to room temp.

Makes approx 32 bars.

Cold Feet and Evil Unicorns

The university has officially started back up again, and Jon is teaching all three of his classes today. He was so happy to walk out the door dressed in jeans and a polo, in contrast to the shirt and tie he was required to wear at Zayed University. Along with classes starting up, so does our health insurance. It feels so nice to be covered.

On the new home front, we are almost to the finish line - if I don't stumble and trip on my increasingly cold feet. As the dollars and cents keep adding up, so do my apprehensions - even though I know it's time to take the mortgage plunge. We will do a final walk through in the next couple days and then sign papers!

Isn't this a sweet picture of a couple girls on a horse? That's what I thought, until Emma explained it is actually a drawing of an evil unicorn. The girl behind the unicorn is entwined and trapped in the unicorn's tail. The girls are both the unicorn's servants, called "mushroom men". Confused? Disturbed? This may help explain things a bit. Check out these videos produced by The Aquabats - one of Jon's favorite bands - LDS punk ska guys. Emma loves the "Pick it Up" song, and requests it several times a day. That logically leads to watching the Aquabats cartoon episode. I'm thinking the "Pick it Up" song should be our new family cleaning song.

The Sale at Our House That's Not Yet Our House

As I was driving around this afternoon, running a few errands, I had an impulse to drive by "our" house. It just so happened the seller was having a garage sale, getting rid of all the furniture (except a few pieces we requested in our purchase agreement - Jon's favorite Eames chairs and the ice cream bar stools). I drove by twice before deciding to actually stop and say "hello". I wasn't sure if it was standard operating procedure to hang out with the sellers of the house we are buying while they clear out their belongings and say good-bye to their childhood home. We've only communicated before through our real estate agents, so I felt a little strange.

What do I do? Call Jon and ask him what I should do. He encouraged me to say hello, so I drove by a third time (do you think they noticed me driving by 3 times?) {{house stalker}}, stopped and got out with Emma and Hope. MJ and CR were at the library, of course.

I introduced ourselves as the family buying their house. I say "their" because there were several adult siblings there taking care of business. They were all so friendly and very excited to meet us. They grew up in that house, a family with 8 children, and were happy to know another young family was moving in to continue the memories there. This was the "family home" until their mother passed away two years ago at 90 years of age. I was telling them my kids' names, and they flipped when they heard Cailin's name - which is spelled just like one of their girl's - who happened to be there as well. Her name is Cailin Grace. Grace is Emma's middle name. We stumbled onto one other coincidence - one of the sweet older brothers said he moved into the house on his 6th birthday. We told him we moved into town on Emma's 6 birthday! Not exactly the same thing, but still kind of cool.

I asked if I could look around and see what hadn't sold yet, and maybe hold on to a few things. Most everything had sold, except for the crazy grandpa couches and chairs in the basement, which I bought for $50. I also bought for $3 a piece, three big spotlights in red and green to light up the huge blue pine tree in the front yard at Christmas time. I was disappointed to have missed the sale earlier in the day. We could've kept their lawn mower and a few other pieces of furniture for "cheap" that would've been nice to start out with. I'm happy, nonetheless, with what we did get. It was also a pleasure to meet the family that grew up and had such happy memories in the home we will soon call our own.

campus walk about

It was a beautiful afternoon, Hope was acting cranky, we could hear the university marching band playing in the distance and the girls were ready for an adventure, so we packed Hope up in our Ergo carrier and walked towards the music with camera in tow. I like bike stands. They are so perfectly curvy.

Hope likes her Ergo. Mom loves for Dad to carry Hope on his back.

The marching band and flag girls (and boy) were looking pretty good. Brought back my old flag girl memories. Some seriously great times. I love you, fellow flag girls!

E is for Emma

C is for Cailin.
The parking lot only went up to L. Madelyn was peeved.

J is for, you know.

Freeze!

Where did my princess go? Emma earned herself a little treat from the Dollar Tree today, and I fully expected to be weighed down with feather boas, high heeled shoes and plastic jewelry. Instead we came home with a police kit. Emma will handcuff you without a moment's hesitation. Madelyn is her sworn deputy. I guess that makes Cailin the criminal.

In other news, the Webkinz craze continues. We went to the local Hallmark store today, which has Webkinz Wednesdays. They provide a craft, a treat, and games to win candy and discounts on Webkinz stuff. The girls blew all their saved money and the next 2 weeks allowance on their newest pets: Cocoa and Buddy.

This afternoon I took them to the library so they could both play on the internet with their new Webkinz. Have I mentioned how much we love having a public library again? It is so fun. We go nearly every day. We also got the girls signed up for school. They are very excited to meet new friends and teachers.

Are we moving yet?

This is the kitchen in our small apartment. Seriously. You are now looking at every inch of counter space I have to work with. It is a challenge to create anything more complicated than macaroni and cheese. So we eat a lot of that. I made homemade chicken and rice soup with cheddar biscuits for dinner a couple nights ago and it nearly did me in. So excited to have a little more space! I snagged this recipe from someone's blog. I'm sorry - I'm an unscrupulous copy and paster, and always neglect to note where things originate from. But this was a pretty good soup, so I wanted to share:

Creamy Chicken Rice Soup

1/2 cup chopped onion
1 medium carrot, chopped
1 celery rib, chopped
1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 cans (14-1/2 ounces each) chicken broth
1/3 cup uncooked long grain rice
1/4 teaspoon dried basil
1/4 teaspoon pepper
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 can (5 ounces) evaporated milk
1 package (9 ounces) frozen diced cooked chicken, thawed

In a large saucepan, saute the onion, carrot, celery and garlic in oil until tender. Stir in the broth, rice, basil and pepper. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat; cover and simmer for 15 minutes or until rice is tender. In a small bowl, combine the flour and milk until smooth; stir into soup. Bring to a boil; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thickened. Stir in chicken; heat through. Yield: 5 servings.

A Tour

After a couple requests for more pictures of the house, here are some highlights. This is what will be the girls' bedroom. It has some interesting angles that could be fun to define with paint. One thing I love about this house is all the closets. There are 2 good-sized ones in this room. My plan is to actually keep all our clothes down in the basement where the washer and dryer reside. That will free up all kinds of space in the bedrooms (and I'm hoping all kinds of sanity for me doing laundry and not having to run piles of clothes up and down stairs all day) for play. I want to take off the closet doors in here and hang beads in the frames, making a couple little hide-a-ways with cushions and blankets. My kids play in the closets anyway, and this will make it something special.

Here is some inpsiration to show you where I'm going with that. I've thought about doing a half-door, too, that could double as a puppet theatre.

This is the screened-in back porch. Loving that. Enjoy the evening outside but not the mosquitos.

Here is part of our "That 70's Show" basement. It would be fun to have ping-pong/air hockey/foosball tables down here. There is also a gas fireplace to the left that you can't see in the photo.

This is the other half of the basement. The stove mostly works, but the sink is rusted through. We will probably rip this out and use this space as an indoor gym - rollerblading, toddler triking, 4-square?

This is the main floor family room. I love the arches in these rooms. I'm thinking of painting this room a warm yellow, and the connecting dining room a slightly darker shade yellow with some orange mixed in - hoping that would show off the arches a little. I've been reading about "conversational groupings" and thinking about how I'd like to arrange things in here. None of my furniture is pretty or matches, but I will still enjoy dreaming. :)

This is the view of my granny kitchen from the sliding glass backyard door. We want to knock down the wall that divides the kitchen from the dining room to make it nice and open. Take out the carpets (we think there are nice hardwood floors underneath) and paint the cabinets an off-white, maybe. Don't know what color I want the walls to be in here.

Last, but certainly not least is this little beauty of a room. My mud room. I love you, mud room. This was another major selling point for me to have this little room that we can enter from the garage, take off shoes and coats and boots and backpacks and have NOTHING cluttering my front door.

I hope you enjoyed my little tour!

the bar

One of the things our kids like best about the house we want is the ice cream bar (that's what we would use it for, anyway) in the basement. I love the possibilities of the space in this house. We are imagining all kinds of fun times ahead. There were several things that came up in the inspection this week, just one of which being that it needs a new roof. Today our real estate agent called and said the sellers are going to work on everything on our list - so our closing date of mid-Sept. is looking really good!

Mas Summer Scrapbook

Another page to add to my book!

Another Day, Another Park

We explored a new park today. No play structures, but lots of beautiful forest and river. The college students are beginning to make an appearance, and we saw several groups tubing down the river, and even fishing along the shore. The girls enjoy picking the wildflowers along with the wildweeds.

Madelyn making a giant wish from a giant dandelion.

Pretty Parks

There are lots of beautiful parks in town. Hope is a swinger. She loves it.

This river runs through the middle of town. There is a path that connects the parks and walks along pretty views.

The girls were happy to explore a little.

The Street Where We Will Live

We are still in the process of buying our home. This morning was the inspection, which showed us the house needs some serious repairs. We are getting some estimates done tomorrow, and are hoping to resolve the who pays what issues by the end of the week. The picture above shows the street our house is on. Our van is on the left, parked on the street at the house.

After taking the 1st picture above, I turned around and took this picture of the kids' elementary school. It will be nice to have school so close. It is only grades K-4. A bus will pick up Madelyn to take her to the grades 5-6 school. I assume there is another bus that will take kids to the middle school when the time comes. Our high school is also just a few blocks away.

Summer Scrapbook

It's been a lot of fun scrapping our summer photos. I have been wanting to try 8x8 albums for a long time, so these layouts are all 8x8 or 8x16 spreads. I still have a few more to go, but I love preserving these fun memories! You can click on any image to enlarge and see details.

House shopping

The girls continue to enjoy the courtyard. Emma is into pyramids. Madelyn invented a new game called "Pinecone Psyche Flip". Emma is the gatherer. She hunts for pinecones. Madelyn and Cailin have sticks with branches that they are able to wedge pinecones between. They flip the pinecone forward, but the pinecones flip out to the side. That's the "psyche" part. This game never ceases to amuse.

Other than that, we have been through lots of houses. We've seen around 20 in the last 3 days. The girls have been really great as we have dragged them along to each place. They are very vocal as to what they like and dislike. They have picked out their rooms in every single house we've been in - except for the scary smelly one, and the one decorated in early cobweb. We all brushed off and shuddered after that one. After our 20th, we decided the 2nd house we saw was our fave. We submitted a real live offer this afternoon and celebrated by taking the girls out for coney dogs, chicken nuggets and milkshakes at a place called "Pixie's". It's a fun 50's style diner, and the girls loved it. We think 8-8-08 is an auspicous day, so all will turn out well. We'll find out in a couple days what our seller has to say!

Pleasantries

We made it! We feel as if it has taken us a lifetime to get here, and indeed it has. We are very happy with our new town, and are more excited than ever to find a home and get settled for real. We are currently living in university housing while we tour homes and get acquainted with our surroundings. Our 2-bedroom apartment is quite small. We brought a large carpet that we had in our front hallway in Abu Dhabi, and it almost fills our current living room. That gave us a little perspective as to how much our living space has changed. It's not necessarily a bad thing; in fact it's nice to have fewer things, and to live simply for awhile. I would say that it's easier to keep clean, but-uh-I don't think so.

The main reason for this is the playground in our courtyard. Our girls are loving the freedom of playing outside all day. A lot of sand is brought indoors, but it's worth it for all the enjoyment they get from the fresh air and big space. This is the view from one side of our apartment.

This is the view from the other side. Oh, yes. Every morning at 6:30 we are awakened by bulldozer beeping as it goes into reverse. The rest of the day there is a constant buzz and bang of activity. It's noisy - but mostly a constant noise, so Hope is able to take her naps without too much trouble.

After sleeping in the car for nearly a week straight, I guess she's getting less fussy about her whole dark, quiet, cave napping needs. I love when she wakes up in her carseat and has a fluffy mohawk thing going on. Look at all those teeth. I got bit several times today as I tried fishing french fry mush from the roof of her mouth. Bless her.

We took a little break this morning from moving-in activities and made some cookies. Madelyn wanted to make these cute flower cookies from an American Girl cookbook, made with candy bars, popsicle sticks and marshmallows (among other things).

Ours didn't look quite like the pictures in the book, but it was fun cutting up the marshmallows to make the flower petals.