Update

Yes, it has been a REALLY long time since I've updated this blog so I'm going to try again. Lots has happened. We moved out of our rental home and into our beautiful new home! We moved in around the end of June. The home that we move in to is the home that we are going to purchase. We were able to work out a great arrangement that gives us more time to sell our house in Montana. (No, it still has not sold yet.) We have until July 23, 2010 to close on our new house. The house is awesome! We looked at over 60 houses and got as close to "perfect" as I think we could without designing and building a house from scratch. It has 4 bedrooms, 2 full and 2 half baths, on two acres with wonderful big rooms and beautiful finishes (I got my granite!) with a pool!! It's unfortunate that the Michigan summer was so dang cool this year! Perry and the kids really enjoyed the pool. I got to use it several times but my visions of coming home and taking a dip in the pool didn't completely develop as I had hoped. Maybe next year will be warmer!! The kids LOVE the new house and all the space. Mommy and Daddy also love the space, the neighborhood and the EXTRA 3 car garage (in addition to the attached 3 car garage.)

Anyway, if you know anyone who is looking for a house in Missoula, send them our way. PLEASE!

Other big news was that my parents moved to Holland about 6 weeks ago. They sold their home up north within about a month of putting it on the market (not fair!). We are very excited to be so close. They live about 7 minutes from our house. We are getting spoiled by the babysitting! Annika had a special sleep over this past Saturday night at Oma and Papa's house. It's so special for the kids to get to spend that time with them.

Perry went on an awesome 11 day trip to Alaska a few weeks ago. He went with his parents and took a three day cruise and then spent 8 days traveling by train and by bus. He said that the best parts were Vancouver and Denalli National Park. I can't wait to see the pics! We'll post some here.

Annika started kindergarted today!! I can't believe that my first born is so big! I know that everyone says that, but it's really incredible. We were fortunate to get her into an extremely good charter school here in the area. The only way to get in is via lottery system because the school is so desired. Annika was #2 on the waiting list and we got a phone call about a week ago saying that they had a spot for her!! K-5 is based on the montessori method. That was a big attraction for us as Annika has been in Montessori schools for the last two years and absolutely thrives. The school is K-12 and Jonas is now guaranteed to get in once he's ready for Kindergarten since Annika is in. She had a GREAT first day and is very excited about school.

Well, I guess that's a good update for now. I'll try to do better about updating the blog. Will add some pics tomorrow. Good night all!

Jonas' Haircut

Jonas decided that he needed to pull a big pot out of the cabinet and sit in it last night. Check out his hair in that picture and then check out his new haircut in the other pics. He got the haircut today. He looks like such a little man! It makes me kind of sad.

The finished products...

Here's the masterpieces that Annika and I painted last Saturday at "Paint a Pot", after firing. It's amazing how different the colors come out after they're baked. We had so much fun!

Happy New Year!

For New Year's Eve, we took the kids to my parents at about 3:30pm. Then Perry and I went to dinner at our favorite Grand Rapids mexican restaurant, did some shopping at Kohl's and saw "The curious case of Benjamin Button". We highly recommend it. It was a great movie. A little hard to wrap your mind around, but a great movie. Then we were back at my parents by 10:30, where the kids were still awake! We all spent the night there and then Annika wanted to go to church with my parents on New Year's Day. We had a lazy morning and came back to Holland. I had to work yesterday (Friday, 1/2) and then today we went to an open house, the library and picked up the pottery that Annika and I painted last Saturday. The weather was sunny and beautiful here today. Happy New Year to everyone!

All worn out...

The kids ran up and down the halls at Nana's apartment. The other residents seemed to enjoy our wild children. They played VERY hard for almost 2 1/2 hours. After we got coats on to get ready to leave, they all spontaneously plopped on the floor against the wall. I think my kids were asleep before we got out of the parking lot! We're planning to go back to see Nana again in March. Perry is going to interview her about our family history.

Visit with Nana

My parents, my sister and her kids and me and my kids all went to visit my Grandma at her apartment in Farmington Hills. She had never seen my 4 month old niece, Madison, and hadn't seen my kids since Sept. 2007. We had a great visit. We waited too long into the visit to try to get a picture of Nana with all of her great-grandchildren. You can see how that went.

My childhood home

On December 28, we traveled about 2 1/2 hours to Farmington Hill, MI, which is in SE Michigan. This is where I lived from the time I was about 6 until we moved to Nashville when I was 13. We went to see my grandma who still lives there. But on the way, I couldn't help but make a little detour down memory lane. Here's a pic of the house we lived in. Everything seemed a lot smaller than I remembered it! It was neat to show my kids (Perry wasn't with us) the house that I grew up in. We also went to one of our favorite restaurants, The Boneyard.