Goodbye Manchester Ct...

On Thursday, with help of some friends, we loaded up our moving truck. After a midnight movie for me (hehe) and spending the night at some friends house, we closed on our house early on Friday morning and took off for Missouri!

We have learned many thing during our time in Kansas. We learned about relying on each other. We were alone in Kansas and had to survive with each others help. We had friends that helped us along the way, but we needed each other! We learned what it takes to be home owners (a lot of the time it is HARD WORK!) We learned that we know nothing about caring for a yard, and really need to get better about that. We learned that just because you hire a professional to do the work, doesn't mean it is going to turn out right. We also learned that doing it ourselves pretty much guarantees it won't turn out right... the first time! But we tried, tried again and got it right. We learned that we are capable of MUCH more than we think we are. When you need to be strong and do it, you can do it! We learned what it means to have a testimony of the Gospel. When church is far and less than convenient, yet you attend every week without fail, your testimony changes a little. That was a small sacrifice when compared to the big picture, but nonetheless a sacrifice. 

Now here we are with a small interim in a hotel room, but we look forward to this:

We love our future new home in Missouri. There will be more projects to work on and more lessons to learn. We will still be alone and still need to rely on each other. We will make new friends and have new experiences. Some things will be a little easier than in Kansas. We are more central to more amenities, church will be closer, the temple will be WAY closer.  We will always have a beautiful view in our backyard.

And some fun times with yummy marshmallows and hot dogs over the fire pit!

It was sad to say goodbye. We miss our friends, and we miss paisley's fantastic school, but look forward to all the wonderful possibilities of our new home, and new state!

Last Time!!

This is the last Sunday that we have to say good bye to daddy!! Starting Wednesday we will all live together again! For a while we will be in transition living in a hotel of sorts, but at least we will all be home under one roof everyday! YAY!

Halloween and Birthday

This year's birthday cake happened the day after her birthday, but she loved celebrating for 2 days! We were able to decorate the butterfly cake with some of her Halloween candy, so even better! For some reason my SD card isn't showing the birthday pictures, so those will have to come at another time.
Jarom and paisley LOVED trick or treating and had fun running around flapping their bat wings!

Memories!

If you ever lived in the house with Layne in the 90's you'll remember this!! Enjoy!

Off to Kindergarten

On Tuesday we were lucky enough to sneak in a tour of Paisley's new school. We saw her classroom and met her teacher, Mrs. Pacey. Paisley instantly loved her, and she loved Paisley. She looked all around the room and loved it. We saw all over the school including, the gym, art class, music class, the library, and computer lab. We were very impressed with all the great programs the school offers. This made paisley super excited to start today!

Here we are heading out the door to school. For the first 2 weeks they have half day Kindergarten so the class is split into AM and PM. Paisley is in PM kindergarten. Starting September 1st we will go full day.

Paisley in front of her classroom. Jarom couldn't stand to not be by his best friend in the picture!!

Paisley and Mrs. Pacey. She instantly went to hug her and was so excited to see her again. She knew right where to put her backpack and then sat down at a table to do play dough.

Paisley got to play with play dough while they waited for everyone else to arrive. She sat next to a girl named Ashley. Maybe they will be best friends!

Paisley was having so much fun she barely had time to say goodbye to us. Jarom on the other hand started screaming and did not want to leave Paisley at school. Jarom's crying then made me and nana start to cry. I can't believe 5 1/2 years have gone by and it's time to go to school. She is such a big girl!

House Update

I don't do house updates, because nothing really new is going on, but since Marti just asked here it is (although she won't be reading this for a month!) :)

When we got home from the family reunion the next day I went shopping for a new realtor. I didn't know if it would make a difference in our small town, because everyone who has wanted to see our house has and almost every realtor has been in it several times. Well I was on a mission to get an aggressive agent who was going to work for the commission and I found her! Her name is Carmella Leach and so far I love her!! Within this first week of having her as an agent we have rearranged all the furniture in the house, she has brought in a lot of her own things to cuten the place up (we were 4 days from closing, I am COMPLETELY packed) and we have painted our office. There is painted Venetian plaster in there but I guess you are supposed to put a glaze on top of it, so we did. Carmella specializes in Venetian plaster so she knew just what to do. A jar and a half of glaze, 2 days and some very sore arms later we were ready for our open house that was today.

I have received a very good report from her on the open house. Of all the people that came, 4 couples are sincerely interested. 2 have to sell before they can buy, and 2 are able to buy when they are ready. We are obviously cheering for the later 2! We hope to have happy house news soon! It has been hard trying to get back into the swing of things here, when I was checked out of this house and this town. Yesterday we registered Paisley in school, which was excited and sad at the same time. As great as the school is here, I hope she only attends for a short time because we are ready to live in Missouri!!

Stefanie, The blog looks absolutely beautiful. I love your wallpaper. I'm so glad to see Jen and Lewis posting. Thanks for keeping us up to date. I'm a month late to read, but I'm glad to get caught up.

Stef, you aren't posting about your house? What's the status?

We are enjoying our last few weeks of summer break. I'm getting my eyes lasered tomorrow! I'm very happy about that. I await Mom and Dad's visit. I love you all. Have a great week.