So you wanna see our new house??

Well here you go! I'll try to explain what is in each picture, so ya'll can get a good idea of the layout.



This is the front of the house...complete with 2 rocking chairs on the front porch, a beautiful landscaped front yard, and a couple large trees for extra shade. You can see through our dining room windows, since they are along 3 of the walls :)


This is the back of the house, and our back yard. The bedrooms are upstairs, so the windows you see are a master bedroom window (upper left), nursery/boys room windows (Upper right and side upper right), and a living room window. From this angle you can't really see the screened in back porch, but its somewhere behind those shrubs (that we will trim back).


Still in the back yard, that is our wood shed, and tool shed (they are in the same little shack building...complete with cow skull, rope, and other ancient looking artifacts ;)


Here's Jonathan and Tyler in front of our house...you can see some of the beautiful gravel and rock paths starting. They lead everywhere! So fancy...but we need to keep them weeded and such before they look their best.


Here are the boys again...with a little more of the rock paths showing


Our driveway pulls up to the house, and then curves around to the left of the house, around to the what we'll call the "Front". The official parking space for the front door is right about where Jason is, an this particular rock path leads to the front door! Again, it needs to be weeded...


Here's Jon, Tyler, Miriam, and Micah, on the path that leads to the compost pile (the small brick part you see off to the left of Meer there...), and Sebastian's dog house. (The house is on my right here...you just can't see it).


Jason on one of the MANY wood piles around :) Lots to work with...and Jon is thrilled!


Here is our chicken shed/barn/area :) The nesting boxes you can see there...but we will probably fence off and area including this, so they don't get harassed by predators.


This is the wood shed that I was talking about. Its out the back door about 5 steps, so we'll be stocking up on firewood for the winter (Yay! A wood stove!)


THIS....is our awesome barn! I didn't actually see it because I was busy taking pictures, signing leases, and planning stuff inside, and we needed to head home to get a load of stuff. We will fence off an area in the pasture you see, and keep our goats in it (Yay, MILK!).


This is hilarious I think... Its a shower. Hooked up to the outdoor hose. Behind our screened-in porch. To the right of the path from the screened-in porch to the woodshed. Who wants to guess how many times I'll put it to good use with 3 little messy boys???


Oh, Oh! This is even MORE awesome. This house has a foundation of..........ROCKS! (God, please don't give us an earthquake anytime soon!)


This is Jon and Jason by our well house. (Yay! Well water!)


Okay, here is another picture of our rock path to the doghouse and compost pile. You can see the doghouse in the bushes, over yonder...and the compost pile is the low-brick thing you see off to the right.


The green trees by this prayer seat border the driveway coming up to the house. I took this picture from our driveway on the side of the house. Moving the camera a few inches to the right is this picture....


An awesome little "outbuilding" :) Our property is FULL of them! This one is a bit more intact than some of the others, but we have yet to explore it inside (scary!)

I guess that's all for now. I'll take more of the inside once we get things more situated. We just signed the lease today, and have taken over 1 load of stuff, with MANY more to go. Right now we aren't sure how fast we can get phone/internet up there...but it shouldn't be too long. We'll keep everyone posted on our internet access status :)

Visit to Washington

We are going to be visiting home!!!

To get Miriam home, we have decided to home-deliver her! :) We got our tickets a few weeks ago, and we are leaving on the 6th of September to go home for 2 weeks to see both our families, and show off our new little addition to the family.

We are SO SO excited, and even though its all a crazy time with moving and all, we are thankful for the opportunity to see everyone after being gone for a year (almost exactly!). Jonathan will be *hunting* (not really..more like going as a trail guide for the younger generation of boys going up) for the first couple days, while I stay with the kids and visit with Stephanie & Ari (who just moved up to WA from Mexico a couple months ago), my mom, Joey, and Elaina, and the Hawkins family and their cousins (who's kids are all the same ages as mine!) :)
When he comes back, we are gonna try to split time with each family, and have a couple sweet BBQ's...YAY! I've missed having summer BBQ's with our families so much! *Sigh*

News, News!

Well everyone, we are MOVING!!!!

Our house and yard have been wonderful the past year, but we definitely need more space for the kids and dog, and it would be nice to not worry about a main road 15 feet off our front porch.

We were looking all over north and south of the interstate, hoping for a place with some acreage. Jonathan and Jason prayed every night that God would give us a farm, and this past weekend Jon came across an ad on craigslist for a house with pretty cheap rent, which includes 85 acres!!!

Sunday we went to look at it, and we fell in love with it! Its an 1850's house, that has been remodeled and refurbished a bit. Clawfoot tub, wood stove, narrow staircase, huge attic, brick-floored sun room, screened-in porch, front porch with rocking chairs, its beautiful! The mantlepieces are the original ones built in the 1850's, and its just perfect for us in every way! Its a 2 bedroom, 1 bath, and it has windows all over creating BEAUTIFUL lighting in the house.

The property is surrounded by people with horses who frequently ride "our" trails, down to "our" creek. It is a nice little neighborhood, so even though we are far out, we both feel very comfortable with that I won't have nobody to go to incase an emergency happens.

Around the house is lightly but very tastefully landscaped, and there is a chicken coop/house, a shed for the wood and tools, a huge REAL dog-house for Sebastian, and a couple other outbuildings that we are gonna fix up to use for our *future* animals :) Its not fenced in at all, but they said its ok to let our dogs run free, and they seem like SUCH laid back people regarding having livestock and putting up fences, and building or taking down things.

SOOOOOO......... Jonathan signs the lease agreement tonight, and our current landlord is being SO SO wonderful and letting us use our deposit for the month of September so we can "break" our lease but not pay out any extra money now, besides the first+deposit for our new place.

We are not going to be packing like CRAZY, to try and get out of this house by next week so our landlord can do any updates/repairs before he rents it out to someone else. Yeah, and all this rigt before we vacation to Washington, LOL!! Life is going to be insane, and once again, I am so thankful for Miriam being with us right now! Today we will pack most our things for going to Washington, and then move on to packing up everything else in the house.

Please pray for us, that the children will cooperate, and that we can be time-efficient this week in packing and cleaning.

My Beautiful Sewing Machine!

For my birthday, I asked Jonathan if I could have a piano, and we searched for awhile to find an inexpensive and smaller one, to no avail. So, we decided to hold off and wait until we could move into a new possibly larger house with room for a piano. So, I asked him if I could get a sewing machine. I kept an eye out for a good deal, and the other day I found one on Craigslist for $25! I was so excited, so Jon went and picked it up for me! It is an older, good quality singer machine. I am So excited to use it! Now just to get the other supplies.... :)

Swimming at the Mansion

Occasionally, Aunt Allyson takes care of a couple kids while their parents are out of town....

They live pretty much in a mansion. I have never seen a cooler looking house, property, landscaping...whew...I could go on and on!! Their house itself is beautifully designed, but it has a magnificent deck that has access to their "garage" (where, below is the theater and arcade room, and above is where the sauna area is), and the stairs down to the swimming pool.

The Swimming pool has a net, and this awesome slide! It is a salt-water pool...which means they don't use chlorine to clean it! It was wonderful to not worry about the kids getting bloodshot eyes from the chemicals :) Not to mention, the water just felt awesome because of the salt...I don't know how to explain it.

Anyhow, Jason learned to hold his breath and go underwater, and he did ALOT of practice kicking. He is determined to show aunt Ally that he is ready and "old enough" to swim. She has agreed to teach him to swim if he can get comfortable enough in the water, and his legs strong enough :) It was pretty cute to watch him trying so hard.

Micah (as you can see) was a chillin' on the pool patio with aunt Miriam most the time. They had some really comfortable shaded chairs and "couch".



Tyler just floated around, being a "cool dude" most of the time...then he vegged out with Uncle Alex under the sun umbrella seats. SPOILED.





Jason went down the slide with me! It was really freaky and scary for me, but I made myself do it for his sake. Show no fear, right? :)
I held him tight, and we went down, and blasted down into the water. I swam up as fast as I could with him, and Jon was as close to us as he could be, while still touching bottom, so he grabbed Jason as soon as we surfaced, and pulled him to shallow water. Like I said, it was scary, but it was fun!!





Jason kept getting out of the water and back in, and his body couldn't handle the constant shock I guess. He was chattering up a storm, so I told him he either needed to "thaw out" with a towel out of the pool, or stay in the pool the whole time. He opted to sit with me and thaw out :)



It was a great day! After swimming, we took turns showering in the guesthouse bathroom and main house bathroom, and then Allyson made Baked Ziti and texas toast for dinner. Alex and Jon had gone fishing at the family's pond (didn't catch anything...), and so all that was left to do was check out the arcade room and theater! Us girls all watched TV in the theater (4 rows of 4 recliners, with a MEGA flat screen, dimming lights, and surround sound), while the guys played games until it was time to go.

We had such a great visit, and then took the boys home for an early bedtime :)

"No more Dinosaurs..."

At Golden Corral

Shall I Torture You???

Okay, I shall!

The year before we came to North Carolina, I went with Jason (then pregnant with Tyler) to Vashon Island, to my Sister-in-law's parent's house! Jon was out of town, down in Ocean Shores, doing some work for his boss' family, so I had nothing better to do, and a couple days at the island sounded like fun! Some of the Hawkins clan came with us too (my in-laws), and we ended up having a BLAST!! Mrs. Raymond (Beth's mom) baked these DIVINE rolls for us, that were so sweet and buttery, and I must admit I had about 3!!

Then Last year, we went for another visit to the island, and this time she split the dough before it rose, and used half of it to make these AMAZING deep-fried, Sugar covered pastries! I think I had about 5 of those ;) They were incredible! A couple months later, the Hawkins' girls and I decided to make a batch, so we called and got the recipe...but they didn't turn out all that great (oil was too hot). I was determined to make a good batch in the future though, now that I knew what to do.

About a week ago, we went to Golden Corral, and they had these SUPER moist and sweet rolls, called "Country Sweet Rolls", and I swear, they must have stolen Mrs. Raymonds recipe! I had 4 and I think Miriam did too...they were just SO good, and all the Vashon Island memories came pouring back! SO, we determined to make some a few days later.

We did, and I split the dough before it rose so we could make both the pastries and the rolls. Don't worry...they tasted even BETTER than they look, and they look pretty stinkin' good! Thanks, Mrs. Raymond!!!






(That shine is the butter...you cover them with it after they come out of the oven. MMMmmmm......)

The "Big" Park

We went to our local "big" park, as the boys call it! We have 2 other little parks down the road, but this one is new and very very nice! Jonny took us to play for awhile, and then we went to McDonald's to play a little more...and have Air Conditioning and Food. :)

Jason's Head

In the case that any of you are wondering, "Why in the world does Jason have a patched up head in these pictures!?", I will tell you now.

Tyler has become...um...lets say, a HUGE stinker lately. Unfortunately it is very entertaining, therefore difficult to discipline. But don't worry! Its getting old fast, and he is for sure corrected...its just usually done after a good *hidden* laugh :)

We have a couple sets of wooden blocks, and Tyler has decided that its fun to throw them at people. He went through a pre-stage of this back around Christmastime when he gave ME a black eye with these blocks. However, then it was almost innocently done, not maliciously. Throwing a block at Jason this time WAS maliciously done, however. Blood was pouring out of the poor childs head, and Tyler didn't seem to care or be phased at all! It almost soaked a rag, and when we finally got the bleeding to slow down, we realized it was almost a 1-inch gash right along Jason's eyebrow. I was SO worried it would need stitches, but my wise husband calmed me down, and we put a large bandaid on it and made Jason lie down and watch a movie while Jonathan went to the store for some butterfly strip bandaids. It has actually healed up fantastically! I'm sure he'll have a small scar, but I suppose he's a boy and can handle a few scars here and there :)

Tyler on the other hand, is still a stinker, and seems to LOVE beating up Jason. They sure can both dish it out, but neither likes to take it. I try to let them be boys, and only step in when it gets dangerous and violent. It sure is comical, sometimes!

New Outfits!

More of Micah Steven

Reverting...some more...

Tyler pulled up his little "seat" so he could watch Micah in the swing. It was so precious!


Yeah, these on the other hand....well, there isn't much to say. My children are reverting I guess.