Climbing Box Hill

Ben loves climbing "up the hill" and "down the hill." Ben defines hill very broadly. The slight step from hard floor to carpet is "up the hill." He's really liked playing on this pile of flattened boxes.


Mama, Cara, and Aubrey made a 24 hour visit to help us unpack. Although Mama doesn't believe it because there are still bunches of boxes, we really accomplished a lot, including unpacking all the dishes, bakeware, utensils, etc. in the kitchen (a huge task), unpacking the books in the office, and putting together the guest bed. Mama also installed the exhaust hose on the dryer and changed out the plug. Hopefully she did a better job on the dryer than I did installing the icemaker hose. It blew right at bedtime last night. Thankfully Mama was in the living room, heard it, and turned off the water before it went everywhere. We were able to clean it up with two bathtowels. Both Mama and Cara threatened my life if I posted a bad picture of them on the blog. I think this one of Mama peaking at Ben around the dryer is cute.

We tried to take a picture of Ben and Aubrey together. Maybe Cara got a better picture.

Very, very, very cool

According to Ben, our new house is "very, very, very cool." John taught him that. The coolest part is his new swingset.

The horribly ugly, but much-loved (by John) loveseat lost a leg in the move, but it still has life in it. The fourth corner is being held up by a very thick biography of Huey Long and a book on prayer. Ben is driving his new Corvette (a red C4 like Uncle Jim's) down the arm of the loveseat. Will bought him this car as a moving gift, which was very thoughtful of Will.

Tales from the Move

I've realized that moving is like childbirth. You have to forget how bad it is before you're willing to do it again. I had forgotten how completely terrible moving is. We never get movers with our relocation package and we always swear that we will never move again without professional movers. Maybe next time we'll really hold to that because we've outgrown the big U-Haul truck. We ended up having to rent a trailer, as well (thankfully, Will pulled it). AND there is still some small stuff left in Grenada. I remember when I was in college all my worldly possessions including a dorm refrigerator fit in my two-door Dodge Neon.

We thought we lost Hal twice during this move. First, as I was taking the carrier out of the back of my SUV at the new house, it broke open and he darted out. I had Ben on my hip and the carrier in the other hand so I started yelling for John. Thankfully, Hal only went under my vehicle. Since he's always been an inside cat, he had absolutely no idea what to do outside. John was able coax him out from under the car and get him back in the carrier. Second, Sunday afternoon John realized he hadn't seen Hal in a while. He began to panic thinking that he may have left the door open and let Hal out. We searched the entire house calling for him, looking under furniture, in closets and cabinets, etc. I even got a bag of treats and shook them as I walked through the house. I finally told John that I was 99% sure that Hal was gone. Minutes later, his head pops out from behind a mirror propped against the wall in our bedroom. I guess we didn't search as thoroughly as we thought.

The final boxes being unloaded from the trailer. Will helped us load and unload, which was such a blessing.

Half of our garage is full of boxes. We've made our bedroom, Ben's room, the living room, and dining room liveable. All the furniture is in place. Our kitchen, guest room, and office are total chaos. The dishes are still all packed and I haven't been able to locate any wash cloths. I did find towels and soap, though.
Ben sleeping in his new bedroom the first night. He slept all through the night and hasn't seemed upset by the move at all. I made setting his room up my first priority Sunday. We arranged his furniture, unpacked his books and toys, and hung all his clothes in the closet. It was like all his toys were new. I think he touched every one of them.

Silence

I have to disconnect my internet and return my cable modem this morning. I'm an Internet junkie so I may experience some withdrawals. I'm not always online, but I frequently have music or talk radio streaming from my computer (I have some cool blue tooth speakers that broadcast the sound). I guess I'm going to have to try to tune in a radio station on the stereo.

I'm packing this morning, but very neatly. Our realtor is showing the house around lunchtime. It's not a great day to show the house, but the people are really excited to see it. According to the realtor, they were trying to peak in our windows last night. Thankfully we weren't home.

Closing went smoothly yesterday. We gave them a big check and signed our names a bunch of times. The sellers signed their names a few times and then they gave us the key.

Ben is spending a couple of days with Nana and Grandaddy. As soon as we went in the door at their house yesterday, he started playing with his favorite toys. He didn't even notice me leave eventhough I told him I was leaving and gave him a hug.

For the last few days, my thoughts have echoed Robert Frost's, "And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep." I have lots to get done before we are ready to leave tomorrow so I must get back to work now.

I probably won't be back online until early next week when our cable is hooked up at the new house.

For Sale

Look! We finally have a For Sale sign. We close on our new house tomorrow.

The fact that the whole house is being torn apart doesn't seem to bother Ben. He wants to help. I finally gave Ben his own box to pack after he kept putting books in my box. I also keep finding Cat (his stuffed blue lion) in boxes.

Just two more

While going through the many, many pictures I took last week, (yes, I know I'm supposed to be packing, but I needed a break. I've really gotten a lot done today.) I found two more to post. The family pic is blurry because the camera lense was foggy.

Kansas Invasion

John's cousins from Kansas visited us weekend before last. We haven't seen them in three years, since we went to Kansas for their grandmother's funeral when they gave us, the preacher, funeral director, and practically every other person attending the funeral a violent flu virus. We were much happier to see them well.

Not Quite Autumn

I know I haven't posted in ages, but we've been super busy with getting ready to move, PLUS we already had a trip planned to go to Destin last week.

Our condo was on the 5th floor. To get to our room, the beach, the parking gargage, etc., we took the elevator. Ben did not like the elevator. The first time he screamed, but he was very out of sorts anyway, since I had made the decision to skip his morning nap (Bad plan. We didn't do that again.) The next morning as Ben and I are walking towards the elevator, he is repeating, "Elegator, not scary. Elegator, not scary." Then the elevator door opens, and he he says, "Elegator, scary." He thought and talked a lot about the elevator. One morning, the first thing he said when he woke up was "Elegator, not scary." Another morning his first words were, "like chicken nuggets" (which usually means he's hungry). The last morning as we were leaving, he walked bravely into the elevator, but as it began to move you could see that his little legs were actually shaking.

Here are a few more pics from Destin. I have a lot more including some of Janey. I just realized she's not in any of these.

Ben really liked the pool, but he was disappointed that he wasn't as big as MV. She was jumping off the side of the pool and he really thought that was cool. Of course, when John carried him out into the pool (we had been playing on the steps), he wasn't so sure he liked not having something to stand on.


We lugged tons of toys, chairs, umbrella, etc down to the beach every day. John said next year we're bringing the red wagon so that we can pull our stuff down to the beach rather than have to carry the loads.

Ben loved the water. We took him out in the water and jumped waves.

Now I have to get back to packing. We close on the new house Thursday and move Saturday.

Ben Likes . . .

Ben continues to talk more and more. His favorite thing to say lately is "like." He "like swing," "like Elmo," "like chicken nuggets." Tuesday as we were driving to the grocery store, we passed McDonalds. He called out, "chicken nuggets, chicken nuggets, like chicken nuggets, like chicken nuggets." It was 8:30 a.m. so we didn't stop for nuggets. He also "likes Stephanie." Stephanie cuts his hair. I told him earlier in the week that we needed to get Mrs. Stephanie to cut his hair. He replied, "like Stephanie." We said goodbye to Mrs. Stephanie today after she cut Ben's hair. I was sad because she also cuts my hair and she does it with Ben sitting in my lap.

Ben and John playing with the #11 FedEx Freight car.

Ben in his new booster seat. I intended to buy this at the beginning of the month so that Ben could get used to eating in it before we went to Florida. When we went in May, we tried stuffing pillows under and around him to keep him in a chair at the table. It didn't work very well. I planned to be better prepared this time.

Laundry Helper

Ben loves to help with laundry. He cried on Monday when I was finished and put away the laundry basket. Every evening when John gets home, he puts his workout bag in his closet. Ben follows right behind to look at the clothes. He says, "pants," "shirts" and "FedEx" (which is written on John's bag. John's a walking FedEx ad. Ben recognizes the Fedex logo). Tonight Ben started taking all of the clothes out of John's laundry basket and piling them on the floor in the bedroom. Then he moved some of them from the bedroom to the hallway. And finally he picked them back up and put them in the laundry basket. We do make piles in the bedroom floor on laundry day, but thankfully we don't have so much laundry that it stretches to the hallway.

Sing Songs

I haven't posted a picture of Ben in nearly a week. I didn't want anyone to have withdrawals so I grabbed my camera and took a picture of him playing this afternoon. Ben gets the hymnal I keep on his bookshelf down and says, "Sing songs." I was pretty amazed today because he turned to the back cover of the hymnal and said, "Fount." He was right. That's where I taped the lyrics of "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing," one of my favorite hymns that isn't in that hymnal. I sing it a lot so I shouldn't be surprised that Ben knew what was on the page. Hopefully, Ben won't be completely tone deaf from listening to me sing.

Ben's actual singing went something like this, though, "Merrily, merrily, Amen, Amen." Two of his favorite songs are "Row Row Row Your Boat" and the Doxology (mainly because I drag the Amen on the end waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyy out and he thinks it's VERY funny.) He also sings, "Oh Jesus, Oh Jesus, Oh Jesus" from "Oh How I Love Jesus." When I sing "Oh How I Love Jesus," I stop on the last word, "Because he first loved . . ." and Ben says, "Ben!"

Under Contract

We have a contract on a house in Petal. Now we just need to get a FOR SALE sign in our yard in Grenada.