Cooper and Jemma

Cooper and Jemma are so cute. It has been fun to watch their relationship grow! Macey leaves for Kindergarten, and in the afternoon, it's just the two of them. They hardly fight, and they are fun to listen to. On this day, they were getting ready to go to church!

Peaches and Apples

I was anxious to get out of our home all summer! The one thing I kept saying over and over was that I wanted to move, but I would be sad to leave before our peach tree and apple trees were ripe for picking. (They were loaded with fruit this summer!) We decided not to plant a real garden because we didn't want to leave it part way through the summer. (If we moved!)

Our fruit trees were a tender mercy. There were so many tender mercies along the moving path that I really should have shown more gratitude for.  Our apple tree was split in half. Miraculously, one half of the tree had apples that were fully grown and ready for picking in the beginning of August (the other half still wasn't ready when we moved out). I was able to make applesauce and apple pie filling.

A couple weeks later, our peach tree started to drop it's peaches. We were able to bottle about 21 bottles of peaches plus give a bunch away and eat the rest--such a blessing!

It was a crazy time when we bottled them, but I am so glad that I got to do it one more time. In the end, our tiny tree produced 3 boxes full (like this) of peaches!

Leaving Our First Home

Half of me was waiting for the sell of our home to fall through. It was about three weeks before closing when I realized that it was really going to happen! It was crunch time. I needed to pack up our entire house, clean it, find somewhere to store it and find a rental. (For months we looked for another home to move in to and hoped that we would be able to rent the new home while our contract went through. About three weeks before close, we also realized that this wasn’t going to happen, so we had to find a rental to move into as an in between place.)

No matter how hard I worked, it was hard to see any packing headway on our home. I would take about 4 loads of boxes to storage every day. In the middle of this, we had sick kiddos—colds that wouldn’t go away and terrible ear infections that required antibiotics. 

In middle of the packing chaos and not having enough time for everything, the people buying our home wanted us to close a week earlier than we were scheduled to. I felt like there was NO way that this could happen! So we agreed upon 3 days earlier instead.

Our Fourth Ward friends helped move almost all of our furniture into storage (by that point, I had taken everything else over to storage). The trickiest part was moving our swing set. We were lucky that we were able to move them right next door in a field by our house (it's a rental property, and we know the owner). We took off the slide and then put one end on a 4 wheeler trailer bed, and men walked the other half over. It was a fun sight to see (Cooper had to help too)!

The night before we moved, my friend Kari brought us over a meal! We had a big picnic on the floor of our house, watched "Zootopia" on Netflix, and then we headed to the rental to put the kids to sleep. As soon as they were asleep, I headed back to finish packing and cleaning. 

Kari not only brought food, but she came over to clean my house with me. She stayed with me for hours. I am not one to ask for help, and Kari is such a good friend! She inserts herself into my life when I need it, and I sure needed her help! I had been packing and packing for weeks. I needed that last push to get the house ready to go. We worked until 11:30 PM or so. 

She left me to have a few alone minutes in the home, and it was good to wander around and relive so many memories. We also put SO much work into this house to make it a home. All of that work came rushing back as I walked.

ENTRYWAY: 

COOPER'S BEDROOM:

COOPER'S CLOSET:

 GIRLS' ROOM:

FAMILY ROOM:

MASTER BEDROOM:

 MASTER BATHROOM:

KITCHEN:

DINING ROOM:

PANTRY:

KIDS' BATHROOM:

LAUNDRY ROOM:

With every big decision in our lives, I don't feel that surge of emotions--sadness, happiness, etc. I just feel an incredible amount of peace. I cried that night I walked through our home, for a few minutes, and then I was done. I cried over memories lived, not at the loss of this house. It's a pretty incredible thing to still drive by it and just feel peace--to feel like this was definitely the right, next choice for us!

Alma!!

You guys, we did it!! We finished Alma (all 63 chapters!). With moving (my excuse for everything in the month of September) I am so impressed that we did it! To celebrate, we went out for ice cream at Ideal Dairy. Each kid could pick two toppings (to represent the two parts of Alma--the missionary work and the war chapters). I may have gagged at my children's ice cream and topping choices, but they were happy and made it through the long book of Alma, as well!

Cooper was the last one done eating his ice cream. He was SO HYPER after this! I told him to say "ice cream", and all he could do was open-mouth laugh!

Monroe Power Picnic

Our yearly Power Picnic was a must! (Especially in the chaos of moving...yay, for no cooking!) It was our 5th year attending. It is crazy to think that we have lived here that long--longer than anywhere else in our married life. 

The Monroe City Power Corporation hosts a picnic--free hot dogs/hamburgers, chips, cookies, and drinks. They also give away a lot of prices, just for putting your name in a bowl. It's a pretty generous thing! We all LOVE it!