After All

So Brad and I did not actually remember our fourth anniversary by ourselves.

But it seems that our anniversary would not go uncelebrated. It only gets one day a year, after all. It must have felt cheated. It demanded our memory.

And so it happened that while packing up, getting ready to move, we found a camera. An old one. The film kind. I know. Ancient.

In the camera, we found partially used film. Intrigued, my Brad went to Walmart and bought an antiquated, short, fat camera battery (for a whopping $9), and turned in the film.

One hour later we returned, excited [do you remember the anticipation of going to pick up pictures at the store not quite sure of what you'd find? Try. Try to remember], to retreive our envelope of pictures.

We opened it to discover our long lost honeymoon photos.

Can you believe it?

Sunday

My parents have this great pond behind their house. The girls were being rowdy, so I took them on a little walk with my Mom and we grabbed the camera. We had a blast.

Adjectives: Use With Care

Grace was coming down the stairs at my mom's house on her tummy, head first. Neglecting the potential danger she was in (I am such a great mom), I laughed and said, "Grace, you are the silliest!"

She was visibly offended. Or at least, she would have been visibly offended had her face not been buried in carpet. "Mom, I am not the silliest. I'm the greatest!!"

Apparently silly has a negative connotation at our house.

Oops.

Moving Day

First of all, people love us. We are so lucky to be living in a place full of members of the Church who take care of each other and serve. We have never felt so loved in a ward before. We will miss it.

On packing day, we didn't ask anybody to come. In fact, we had just mentioned in passing that we would be packing up that day, and people just came. Just drove by to see whether we were working, and joined in.

{Tory, Andrea and Matt Smith; Chad, Paul, Kenny, and Curtis Twitchell, and Brad}

This ward has taught me that people learn to love each other when they serve each other and accept service. I have never felt so much love and family-ness in a ward before. I can't emphasize that enough. I want to go on and on. I hope I can be the ward member that my friends have been here to me. Brad and I leave Church every Sunday and remark to each other, "We can't leave. We have too many friends here." So we want to come back. Desperately. But not before we share the love with other wards.

{Cory, Angela Brown, Andrea Smith}

{Chad Twitchell and Brad}

{Curtis Twitchell, Marissa and Riley Smith}

Anyway.

Second of all, I am so big. Grace says that when she's proud of herself, and so I am saying it now since I drove a 17-foot U-Haul from Carlsbad to Prosper without Brad and with two little kids. I must also say that I am very proud of Grace since the recently-potty-trained-girl only had to take one single potty break. Which was good. Since it's hard to squish into a stall while holding a nine-month old and helping a three-year-old onto the toilet (while constantly reminding her not[!] to touch the toilet. or the walls. or the "sanitary napkin" basket.).

And I found myself relatively competent with a truck. Sort of. No accidents. Not any major ones, anyway. Although I did sort of brush one of those big steel bars they have at the gas station to prevent people from running into the pumps. Kind of embarrassing. And potentially (although thankfully not in the end) dangerous.

For anyone who's interested, we are not officially gone from Carlsbad yet. Brad still has some work to finish up there, and we still have a lot of work to do on our house before it's actually marketable (did I mention that we decided not to keep it?). This week, he is at scout camp on his last hurrah as ward Scoutmaster. And since I am not good at one week of kids by myself, we decided to move our stuff out of the house and spend the week with Papa and Grandma Betsy. We will go back to Carlsbad at the end of this week and... sleep on the floor. Yay!

{The front door of our house which sports a new front step. It happened to be poured the same day as moving day. Kind of awkward. But funny.}

Dog Pile

"How did Grace get so physical?"

Brad asked me this question as I helped Claire recover from one of Grace's bone-crushing, organ-gushing bear hugs.

If any of you know Brad, you know he was obviously kidding.

Grace is definitely physical. And not just with Claire. When I sit down, she is on me too: wallowing in my lap, climbing onto my head, standing on my shoulders. And if I'm typing at the computer, she's hanging off my arms.

And Grace learned from the best.

Because I am usually in the middle of some domestic activity when Brad pounces. I am ripped from cooking dinner, sweeping the floor, loading the dishwasher, or diapering Grace while he pins me to the ground and tickles me until I stop breathing.

Although there are some nasty side-effects to our family's rough-housing (namely unfinished chores, unsightly bruises...), we have fun. We laugh. We like to play.

I just have to make sure Claire doesn't get clobbered before she gets a chance to join in.

Packing Up

I can't help but think how terribly sad it is to watch our home--the one Grace learned to talk in, the one Claire first came home to, the one we ripped up and put back together, the home we became a family in--diminish into merely four walls and a roof in a few short hours.

Empty Cupboards Make Excellent Hiding Places

We came home from swimming, I unloaded the car, came back in the house and couldn't find Claire. It was Brad who found her--making the most of moving.