Still going...

This will (maybe) be a short post...just wanted to give everyone a quick update on how we're doing. We closed on our new house last Monday at 11am, and met the carpet installers at the house at noon. The movers came on Tuesday morning, we realized they had ruined a bunch of our stuff (there was a HOLE in the roof of the truck - I couldn't make this up...so there was water damage to a number of wood pieces). After they were done, we drove through the night to Michigan. On the way, we witnessed a roll-over accident and Chris pulled 5 people from the car, 3 of which were children, NONE of which had their seatbelts on. Thank God the injuries were only to one person. We pulled into Gamma's at 8am, Chris and Thalia went back to bed, I was swamped with work. At 3pm we left to take the baby to Gamma so Chris and I could go to our friends' wedding (Congrats to the new Mr and Mrs Lee!). By the time we got to the reception, we had hit our wall. I only made it halfway home before I had to pullover and let Chris drive. Luckily we didnt' have to go anywhere for Thanksgiving - everyone came to us! It was really wonderful to spend time with Chris' family. I missed mine, but Chris' family has really taken me in as one of their own and they are fabulous people. We tried to play "Christmas Story" the game - what a joke. I swear a bunch of drunk college kids came up with it while watching the all day marathon! Friday morning Chris and I went shopping - we actually were given a hard time by a friend of ours who works at Kohl's because we showed up at 11! We got a lot of great deals on stuff we needed for our bedroom and the bathrooms...plus a new pair of boots for me! :o) That night we went to GiGi's for pizza with Aunt Lori and then took Thalia to her first Red Wings game! The game stunk, but we had a great time riding the people mover and cheering. Thalia was a bit freaked at first but then started clapping and dancing. It was great - a perfect night (except the Wings lost) topped off with a trip to Astoria!! Saturday Chris and I were lazy bums and literally sat on the couch most of the day. We were supposed to go to my 10 year reunion but I couldn't get the energy to drive 90 minutes just for a drink. So Aunt Steffi and Uncle Barrett came down for dinner and we had a lovely time. Sunday, we packed up and hit the road at 730 am. We made it home at 1030pm...I have never seen such traffic! Needless to say, I am tired and distracted today. Gampa came down with us to help paint and unpack. Yes, I actually left Chris and his dad with the task of picking paint colors. I'm sure they'll do fine. Sigh...so here I am at work, exhausted and wishing I were on a beach somwhere. I keep telling myself it will all be over soon...although i've been telling myself that for quite some time now ;o)

much love and very little sleep,
c, c, and t

ps...pics of our weekend to come soon

my own baby einstein

today thalia counted to 10


maybe that's not spectacular to some of you folks...but to me, that is wicked awesome! i mean, she's not even two! maybe lots of kids can count to ten before they are two...but i'm still impressed! we were putting her crayons away and i got the brilliant "teachable moment" idea to count the crayons as we put them in their bag. i started saying "one, two, three..." and thalia would repeat the number i said. then after four, she started counting and i repeated. all the way to 10!! then of course we had to show off to martha momma...and she's been counting to 10 the rest of the day!
earlier this week, thalia and i got to stay home from school and work because she had a fever. while i was on my computer, thalia pulled all her books from the table onto her lap:
(i love her ponytail in this pic!)

the following day, thalia was running around uncle ronnie's chair and she tripped on her new shoes. she planted her face right into the corner of this same couch...not only into the corner, but this couch as rivets up and down the arms. if you look close, you can see a round bump on her eyebrow, a round bump on her left cheek, a cut on her nose, and if she didn't have her paci in a fat lip :o( she was fine...apparently the next day at school, she was a little chatterbox - despite a banged up face and hardly sleeping that night.
finally, last weekend we got to spend time with elizabeth and sophie. we went to a craft show where martha momma had her jewelry (marthamaryjewelry.etsy.com) and then we found a Steak n Shake for lunch! even better...the girls got to eat for free!! although i was a bit disappointed to see they no longer have triple berry ala mode. thalia wasn't in a super good mood, as you can see: but she put her steak n shake hat on and had mac and cheese and applesauce. applesauce is thalia's current favorite food AND word. she says it all the time. applesauce and orange. the other day i said "what can i do for you?" and her response was "applesauce?" unfortunately, chris and i have had to literally deposit every dollar and penny into our checking account for our closing on monday, so we are out of applesauce. i'm such a bad mother! ;o)
i hope you all are having a great weekend. this past week has been one of the hardest in my life...but God has brought us through, and i think everything is really finally going to work out. we found out at 445pm friday that we were cleared for closing on monday. nothing like the last minute! chris should be on his way down any minute. he stayed in michigan for his great-grandma's 100th birthday party. thalia and i were really sad we couldn't be there...hopefully chris gave our love to everyone. if you were there and you didn't get loved on, you let me know and i'll smack him :o) happy birthday grandma touse! what an amazing life you have lived! thank you for your love and your humor!
wish us luck as we finish out this month of craziness. thank you for your prayers and love and thoughts. you are ever so appreciated!

much love and hope for more sleep,
c, c, and t

happy tuesday

as promised, here is a picture of our soon-to-be house. i am working with the mortgage folks today...apparently there was some miscommunication and we didn't have all the papers in we needed. please pray that this will get straightened out and that we will be able to keep our closing for next monday!

i also had to share this picture with you. this is from thalia's and my road trip to grand rapids a couple weeks ago. check out this reading pro! my favorite part is her leg on her knee. how precious is that?! i am so blessed to have such a goofball for a daughter. i know i couldn't have made it through the past year without her and the smiles she brings!

off to figure out what else the lenders need...its going to be a long week. but hopefully things will start to calm down after we close.

much love and little sleep,

c, c, and t

bye bye kelsey

i don't think that i have spoken much thalia's friend kelsey...at least not lately. kelsey is essentially thalia's longest and best friend. she was at childtime when thalia and i first moved down here over a year ago. then when childtime closed, we decided to keep the girls together. they have seen each other almost every day for the past 19 months! they are too funny together, and they get into plenty of mischief! for a while, thalia would only share her toys with kelsey; and kelsey would only give thalia a hug good-bye when they left in the evening. when they were younger and still crawling, they would chase each other around the rooms and just giggle the entire time. it was precious!

well, last week, kelsey turned 2...and moved to a new daycare :o(. thalia and i were very sad, but we know that there are many playdates in the future. here are some pictures of the girls, and one of kelsey's mom amy. it has been great having amy and kelsey in our lives and we wish them the best! but it is not a good-bye...it is a see ya later!

here are some other pictures i just got from thalia's teachers, while we are talking about school :o)

what a fun summer the kids had...i can't believe how quickly time flies!

now to the elephant in the room - chris and i are officially homeless! we closed on our house in michigan about half an hour ago. the movers came on monday, and by wednesday afternoon, the truck was loaded and rumbling down the road!! it was a very emotional experience - and quite exhausting! but chris and i made it through...we got to see a ton of family and friends while we were home, and we are ready for our new adventure of being a family again in north carolina! i have been very hesitant to talk much about the houses...just nervous that something might fall through. and even now...saying that we have closed on our michigan house is so surreal! i can't believe we really don't have a house any more!! AND i literally JUST got word that our loan money came through for our down payment for the house down here! Praise God for relief!! i thought i might be able to copy and paste a picture of the new house, but it won't work for some reason. i'll head out this weekend and take a picture so you can all see it.

what a day! thanks for all of your love and support!

much love and hope for more sleep,

c, c, and t

some random smiles (and lots of parentheses)

the movers came today...it has been a very surreal day. so here is yet another post that is really just an attempt to make myself smile :o) hopefully it works for you too!

this is thalia and i trying to have fun at my new home-away-from-home: Baltimore-Washington International Airport:

i'm not sure if i've told this story before, but we have been on so many flights (one of these days i am going to try to count them) that my 20 month old daughter knows what to do when we get to the airport. as soon as we get close to security, she holds her feet up and says "shoes, off". part of me thinks its adorable...the other part thinks its totally sad!

thalia's second favorite thing to do with her cousin madilynn is rub her head (her favorite thing to do is to poke her in the eye...)

among all the other things aunt jillian taught thalia last week, putting on makeup was thalia's favorite. good thing it was halloween!!

chris' new way of babysitting...give thalia a remote without batteries, and tell her she is playing video games!

since we are going to be leaving (very) soon, we have been saying goodbye to lots of people:

this is great-grandpa and great-grandma denhart (anyone else notice that chris, thalia and i are all wearing green, and jen, wj, and madilynn are all wearing burgundy? totally UNplanned!!)
and of course great-grandma busch (also known as GiGi)

and finally...just in case you didn't believe me:

thank you again for all your prayers and support. we love you all and couldn't be doing this without you!

much love and more sleep (surprisingly)

c, c, and t

long lost pictures

some of you may remember an adorable picture of thalia in her pink swimsuit and life jacket, looking on as her daddy jumped into hubbard lake to try to save our camera that fell in. well dear friends, with a combination of the memory card drying out and gamma bringing over her camera for us to use, here are the lost lake pictures!!!

if you blow this one up, you can see they are both laughing
sunnies!

the last two are my favorites. great memories of one of my favorite places in the entire world.

wish us luck, we are going continuing to go through our belongings to see what we can pitch and what we can donate. we are making pretty good progress though!

much love and more sleep,

c, c, and t

halloween part 2

sorry for the delay...work is crazy! here are more pictures of thalia in her chicken costume!

thanks to yiayia for the (repurposed) candy bag! and to aunt jillian again, for showing thalia how to roll her tongue. and to madilynn for staying in her pumpkin costume for a picture...even though she didn't like it. :o)
hope you enjoyed the pictures. we had a really great time. now its off to michigan to help the movers and to say goodbye to warwick dr.

much love and more sleep
c, c, and t

halloween part 1

here are some pictures from thalia's first (second) halloween. i say that because last year, she was only 8 months old...i put her in her hot dog costume, took a picture, and we went to bed :o) this year we (aunt jillian and i) actually took her around the neighborhood in her outfit! she was SO adorable!! she said "trick or treat" at almost every house, and said "thank you" at every house. everyone thought she was so cute. aunt jillian told thalia after the first house "let's go get more candy", so after every house thalia would say "more candy?" i was cracking up. she did really well...although i must say: we need to pick thalia's halloween costumes a bit more carefully next year. in michigan, it snowed on half of the halloweens i experienced. well here, poor thalia was sweating to death in her chicken outfit, because we went start trick or treating, it was 75 degrees!! some snotty neighbor lady made a comment...but we didn't let her ruin our night!

we also learned a lot about thalia this weekend. she likes candy corn, AND chili cheese fries...and her new things are "i do it" and "i see". i swear she is turning into a toddler right before my eyes!!

other than having a fantastic weekend with aunt jillian, i am feeling much more sane the past few days. this moving stuff is way harder than i thought it was going to be. i mean, i didn't think it was going to be easy...but definitely not this hard either. on top of that, work has been really crazy busy. the next week or so is going to be the calm before the storm for sure. i was going to say that i wouldn't get into the details...but that wouldn't work for most of you, would it? :o) so here is the run-down of the next 6 weeks (or so):

nov 3 head to michigan to help get ready to move

nov 7 yiayia and papou in michigan

nov 9-13 movers come to pack and load

nov 16 close in michigan

nov 21 great-great grandma touse's 100th birthday

nov 23 close in north carolina, hopefully install new carpet

nov 24 movers come to unload, hopefully drive to michigan (yes, it will be late)

nov 25 andy's wedding

nov 26 thanksgiving

nov 27 thalia's first red wings game

nov 28 my 10-year high school reunion

nov 29 back to north carolina, with gampa in tow

nov 30-dec 4 repaint house, complete 2 research projects

dec 2 gamma comes down

dec 9,10 gone for more research, yiayia and papou come out
dec 14 final day of research

whew! anyone else tired? ;o) at this point, i am trying to get through one day at a time. your prayers will be most coveted over the next month or so.

anyway, since the time changed last night, thalia is about ready for bed. without further ado, here are the pictures...more to come tomorrow when i get to work. enjoy!

ready to go
first trick or treat from joey

putting the candy in her bag

cheese!

trick or treating with aunt jillian and nuhnit (nugget)
three blue-eyed beauties
i told you she likes candy corn...i'll tell you a funny story about it tomorrow
"thalia, what'd you get?"

more to come! thanks again for your love and prayers! i know its the only reason i am still standing!

much love and (hoping for) more sleep!

c, c, and t