E is for...

Eh, what the heck.  Why bother trying?

Well, we are still alive here. I've gotten so bad about blogging, but really don't want to stop.  Since I suck at scrapbooking, I really need to document our lives somewhere.  My new goal, this week, is to get better at blogging.  But as you can already see by the title of this blog post, I'm not always good at finishing things!

We are (mostly) settled into our new home.  After being homeless for 4 1/2 weeks, it sure felt good to get here.  We had fun being homeless (lots of adventures - I plan on catching up) but 6 people living out of suitcases gets o-l-d fast!  We've been here a month now and are LOVING it!

For the first 3 weeks, our house was a revolving door with visitors, but things have settled down here for a little while.  We have company coming at the end of the month, then a couple of sets of company coming in August.  While our house isn't the biggest, if you are ever this way we'd love to have you.

Speaking of the house...when we first arrived I hated it.  H-a-t-e-d it.  And I'm the one that picked it out!  But since we have moved our things in, it has grown on me.  The kids love having a basement and 2 stories.  This (for whatever reason) is a big deal to them.  My laundry room is as big as my kids bedrooms and while I initially thought it was a big waste of space, now I love it.  I think my favorite part of the house is the view.  While I do my dishes (30 times a day) I get to look at the Rocky Mountains.  It really makes doing dishes WAY less painful.  Really, the view from our house is stunning.

We all love the area of town that we live in.  There are 70 miles of trails in our backyard.  And as you bike/run through them, there is a different cool park about every half mile to mile.  We have an awesome library less than a mile away and we can walk to the town center to get ice cream, eat or shop.  The weather here is just incredible and I still can't get over how green our grass is.

While I will always love Texas, this is so amazing.  No humidity, minimal heat, lots of rain...okay, I'll stop.

Our life (so far) has been night/day different than when we lived in Texas.  We have no cable, so I haven't watched a tv show since...May 17th.  The day the packers packed the tv.  That is a HUGE change, sadly enough, for me.  HUGE.  I read a lot now.  A LOT.  I've probably read close to 30 books in 6 weeks.  I may even be considered obsessed.  I've read everything from romance, to mystery, to history.  If you need a book suggestion, I'm your girl.  The kids have been reading a lot too.  We've been to the library more times since we moved than we ever did at our old house.

Another difference is how much time we have spent together.  We have been up to the mountains countless times driving, hiking and picnicking together as a family.  J gets to pick his own hours (Oh, yes, you heard right!) as long as he works 40 hours a week.  He stays later in the morning so that I can go to Crossfit and then he is usually home by 4:45pm.  Delicious.  He is on-call a lot,home call, but so far even that has been bearable.  He's on call 1 weekend a month and we've yet to do that (his first one is this weekend) so I can't comment on that yet.  It has really been fun having him around.

I've enrolled the kids in everything from skateboarding, lacrosse, tennis and fairytale ballet.  (And no, the boys are not the ones in ballet!!)  We found a church that we like and I've already signed up to help with Teen MOPS and signed up for MOPS.  School starts August 3rd for the boys and I'm still trying to decide if I'm going to send the girls to preschool.  The don't have MDO here and preschool is pretty expensive, but I'm getting some pressure from J Mad that it is time to put them in something.  We'll see...
So, yep, we're pretty much loving life. 

Here is a picture of us in front of our house, our first week here:



I can't, for the love of me, figure out what Master Luke is doing.  Or why he can't seem to get it together for a picture.  That child... 
Mercy, I love him!