Party!!

Friday we threw a party for the kids.  Each of the youngest were allowed to invite 2 friends each and the older girls invited most of their friends.  We had food and several games planned out.  It was interesting having a party in an empty house.

 trying to play games with everyone

 boys decided to head out and play with balloons

 dinner

 goofy girls

 the boys enjoyed the lego room

 being goofy on our scavenger hunt

fence climbing

I think everyone enjoyed the party.  I was so glad the kids got a chance to hang out with their friends for one last party.

Adventures in pack out!

So Tuesday our movers showed up to pack our house.  Nana was kind enough to watch the kids so they wouldn't be in the way.  I had fun all day texting the girls pictures of the house being packed.  Their reactions were quite funny. 

The pack day went pretty well.  For the first time we had someone break a dish while packing it and one guy even dropped our big table to now we have a smashed in corner. So I hope we won't find major damage on the other end.  As usual the movers packed a few things they said they wouldn't, so I was expecting to still have a few things like my handsoaps in the bathrooms! I guess we will use dishsoap this week to wash our hands.

They also packed our plunger which guaranteed 3 of our toilets would back up the very next day causing me to have to go buy another one.  So basically all the normal things with a move.

On Thursday the truck showed up to load all of our stuff.  The kids got to hang around for that.  They helped their dad take apart the beds and the last of any other furniture. One of the packers even let Camie and Emily help him wrap and label bed parts. He was very nice. They finished up late Thursday afternoon and our truck drove away.

We had our first picnic dinner.  It will be interesting living a week with no furniture.  The kids don't seem to be too affected by the empty rooms.  We have all the legos in our old school room which makes for a nice big play area.  It is so funny that they keep asking for things and my response is always "it's packed up!" I am sure they are already looking forward to having their stuff back. 

Happy Father's Day!

Since we have movers coming Tuesday we couldn't have a completely relaxing Father's day.  We needed to get our backyard weeded after church.   Everyone worked very hard!

We did have a special dinner for dad that we all enjoyed.  Grilled Chicken on Rosemary skewers, grilled  veggies, and grilled naan. YUMMY!

Sleepy boy

Logan fell asleep during family read aloud. So Russ gave him a piggy back ride up to his bed.  When they got upstairs Logan had fallen deeper asleep and wouldn't climb up on his bed. So Russell was stuck like this trying to get Logan to wake up and get on his bed.

Summer school

To start off this week of summer school, we spent a morning at the library.  The kids were excited to check out extra books to read since we have more time for reading during the summer.
Will has been talking for almost a year now about wanting to be a bee keeper. He put all his birthday money and earnings into his bank to save up for a hive and bees. He was excited to bring home lots of books on bees.
Emily loves cats so her books were on cats.  Camie was so sweet to read to her since she is still working on her reading.
Logan is an amazing reader! He spent 3 hours reading when we came home from the library.   He got a book on how to draw robots and put his skills to work right away.  He also got a book on how things work.  Will enjoyed Logan reading it to him.
Camie and Julie enjoy the extra time during the summer for reading.  They still had several books at home they were reading so they didn't check out as many. Julie did get a really nice one about Shakespeare and gave descriptions of his most popular plays. So now she is excited to read some of his plays.
The kids have also been enjoying their summer bridge books.  I look forward to more time for parks, museums, and the library in between our relocation responsibilities.

Cams says:

Hi! My name is Camrynn. I'm just going to give you a little introduction.

Name: Camrynn

Age:11

Favorite food(s):bacon & shrimp

Favorite color(s):rainbow and anything bright

Sibling(s):Juliette(14),Logan(7),Emily(6), & William(5)

Favorite type of book: Science Fiction, and Mysteries

Favorite types of clothing: Jeans, capris, t-shirt, and tennis-shoes

Favorite hair-do: High pony-tail

How people would decribe me: crazy, silly, funny, and bright

Welcome to our family's new blog.  Some of you may remember our old Zookeepers blog, where I rambled about happenings around our house.  Well we are making some changes.

Since our family is entering a new chapter of life we decided to change our blog too.  The whole family will be writing posts so you can see things from different perspectives.  We also have a new name and we will no longer be using code names for the kids.

I stopped blogging when we moved to California because I didn't feel it was a wise use of my time when Russell was deploying so much.  Sorry to my family that missed the updates.  Now Russ is retiring and we are moving into the civilian world. 

Lots of changes in store for us.  New state, new job, new lifestyle... all very exciting.  We are heading for Alabama.  For a variety of reasons we have chosen to move to a city we have never been to before.  Of course we are used to doing this with the military but now we were able to chose our next adventure.  We are very excited for all this new place seems to offer.

A little bit about the beginning of our adventure.... movers will be here next week.  We will live in our empty place for a little over a week.  My folks have graciously allowed us to then move in with them for a little over 3 weeks before we leave California.

We will be in California until July 21.  We then plan to drive to AL in 4 days. :) I am so grateful that my kids are such good travelers.  Russ and I will be driving separately since we have two vehicles.  This will be different for us.  We plan to rotate kids through the 2 vehicles so that should keep things interesting.

I am very excited to get there and find a house to rent.  We have already found many wonderful possibilities online. I really look forward to having a yard!  Once we get settled we are hoping to buy a place with some property.

So that is what is going on with us right now.  I hope you will enjoy future posts from other family members.