Day 121 A 12 hr work day.

Yes, the work is never ending.  I spent 4 long hard hrs on purging today.  How can one's life's belongings get so messy in 4 years? Oh yeah, I have 4 kids, a husband, a dog, and I homeschool, so there's no time to clean up the mess!  Until you have to move.  With a smaller truck.  This blog is about the dailies of our life, so yes, I will mention the move and cleaning out daily until it's done.  At least I'm looking forward to Indiana again.  I was able to get outside with Abishai as well and walk around the backyard.  And he knew where the street was from the backyard and headed straight for it!  He likes to just walking down the street.  He reminds me of a family friend when I was a kid who's 3rd born walked down the hill to our house and knocked on the door.  I think he was 5 maybe.  I could see Abishai just walking out the front door and the down the street someday.  He just loves going places.

Jared bought Justin a new Lego game called Jurassic World, that includes all the movies in that series.  Justin has already beaten 2 of the 4 main storylines in 48 hrs!  He'll go back through and get all the hidden spots and bricks and studs, but the story part is done.  Crazy!

Benaiah played catch up with school today, and handed in a well written summary of the lesson.  He is well on his way to college level writing and thinking.

Keturah had her gymnastics class today, and Daddy got to watch her for the first time! She didn't get to do her favorite vent, the uneven bars, but she worked hard on the other elements.

And the puppy, Socks, got lots of loving from Abishai, who now will hug the dog when you tell him to.  It's so adorable.

And finally, one last shoutout to www.theycallmeblessed.org for the wonderful job she did carrying through the homeschool blog hop this month!  Wahoo!!

I told him and Keturah that if they leave footprints, they are cleaning the doorframe! Monkeys!

Natural light on my remembrance flowers.

I love you, Woof! Woof!

Hugs!

Good night!

Day 120 6 years ago...

It's one of those anniversary you wish you didn't have to remember.  My mom died 6 years ago today.  My sweet sister sent me these flowers in remembrance.  I was incredibly busy trying to make headway in Keturah's room, but had time to smell the flowers and take the boys to the park.  It was a bit chilly still, but they had a blast!

$8 t-shirt from wal-mart this boy has yet to take off in 4 days.  #newfavorite

The size differences in these three.

Grandma Howell made this knitted hoodie.  How appropriate that Abishai got to wear it today.

Sometimes it's really hard to understand we must leave this place.

Big and little.

Again, I can remember Benaiah being as little as Abishai on a playground just like this one.  How did B get so big?

That dimple!

Those are the shoes Benaiah used to wear!

The boys!

Happy 6 years in heaven, Mom!

My mom, Keturah, and I at a MOPS meeting in 2008 or 2009.

Day 119 A little of this and a little of...SNOW!!

Pushing hard every day on the packing thing, but trying to keep the fun in each day and make some last memories.

Twinning.

That's right, April 28th, and we had snow off and on all day.

The snow didn't stay of course. But it made an interesting backdrop to the mundane.

3 cuties in a box. I have a picture of the oldest 3 in the same box at probably these ages, but I can't find it! So stay tuned!

While I worked on packing, the 3 younger kids had a blast with their big jar of bubbles.  I told them to stay in the bathroom and they managed to do that, and soak the bathroom in the process.  But, they cleaned it up.  Fun!

Day 118 Don't drop the china!

Another day of packing, but first, we got to enjoy some time with our homeschool friends at co op.  We're going to really miss our group of 6 families and 19 kids!  We only have one more session anyway, so at least we won't miss out on anything.  Then 3 women came over and helped me pack up the special dishes in the china cabinet and around the tops of the kitchen cupboards.  THEN, Jared packed up all the DVD's and CD's.  It took TWO medium uHaul boxes to hold all of them!  I guess we like our movies!  By the way, the kids enjoy telling other kids that they are finished school for the year.  It doesn't bother me that we finished early this year.  I tell myself we'll do some school when we get to Indiana, but in reality, we won't do much.  Grandma might need to pitch in for a bit just so the kids won't get bored though.  Thankfully, it's been much nicer outside, so the kids can out and not sit in front of electronics all day while we pack.  Meanwhile, I don't know how other families survive, but packing with a very active toddler is nearly impossible!  Between tripping over his toys, or trying to catch him (again) from falling off of the couch (again), it's never ending! I even forgot to put him down for his 2nd nap!  Praise the Lord that Abishai fell asleep easily tonight.  Sometimes he's hard to put down if he doesn't get that 2nd nap.  Anyway, here are our pictures of the day to prove what we accomplished.

Blue eyed boy with a blue sweatshirt on a blue sky day!

More boxes packed! Yeah!

The only way we can return the wayward toddler to his home.

Middles playing with a neighbor friend.

YES! I captured that grin!  This kid smiles with his WHOLE face and WHOLE body!

Day 117 25 boxes of books on the floor, 25 boxes of books...

Yes, you can sing it to the tune of: "99 bottles of beer on the wall" or whatever way you sing that song ;-)  My friend Laura and I got 25 boxes of books packed up today!  Wahoo!  That's about HALF of all the books we own.  We joked that only homeschoolers or bookworms would have that many books.  Our kids played well together, both on Minecraft and outside.  Yeah!  And Abishai even took a 3 hr nap while they were here!  Incredible!  I guess when he's tired, he's tired!  He also tried pulling up his blanket on himself tonight.  I guess all that flirting with Laura wore him out!

Day 116 Just a little burger love...

Benaiah and I got to enjoy a little more PEI Burger Love tonight.  I'm going to miss these silly little local festivities.  Papa Joe's "Chuck" had similar ingredients as the others (including the most generic gluten free boring, crumbly bun on the planet), but the sauce was spicy.  I loved having sweet potato fries with it.

Day 115 Full, full, full

Full day of church, naptime, giving away things, trying to pack with a 14 month old, regular chores, and lots of chaos! Yeah, how in the world do people a) move every year and b) do it with a toddler/baby??? I think my head's going to explode from the chaos! Phew!  I'm a little obsessive when it comes to taking pictures of "the way things were" before we change a room, let alone a house, so I went around the house and took tons of pictures of our "stuff" so I would remember it.  I won't bore you with those.  Here's a couple of other shots for today.

Sibling love.

Mind you, it was 30 degrees F today.  He always wants to leave, even in his cute cloth bum!

They were supposed to be working!  Well, they did the task, and then played and played instead of coming back to see me.

Gorgeous blue eyes on this one, and was just banging away on the piano.  Sweet!

Day 114 The end of a chapter has come

This family blog would be incomplete if all I ever wrote was of the positive, happy moments in our lives.  So, it is now time to share with you, one of the saddest, heartbreaking news for our family.  Jared's job as president of Maritime Christian College has ended.  It was not something we wanted, and now it's a major storm.  Thankfully, his job was only one "barrel" in our many-barreled lives here.  I'm sure you will hear more from me as we say our final goodbyes.  I have never had such wonderful kindred spirits as I have had here.  I hardly ever cry, especially around people.  Yet, I cannot drive, or be with people on a playdate, or look at a picture of our Island without bursting into tears.  That is how much I have enjoyed living on Prince Edward Island.  This blog was started when we were packing up to move here.  It didn't continue on like I thought it should, but nonetheless, that's when I started.  But now we have to leave quickly, perhaps within the next 3 weeks.  That is not enough time to visit all those special places one last time and have that one last playdate and pack up all our stuff.  There will not be enough words to properly express my thankfulness for my time here.  I have felt very loved in my circle of friends.  But every place has its plus and minus.  We do not know what is next, but we will return to whence we came, Indiana, for the time being.  The world is big, and maybe, just maybe, there is an even more beautiful place than Prince Edward Island.  But somehow, I doubt it.

Can't you see that this Canadian belongs here?

Ready to take on the world, plaid shirt, blue jeans, no shoes and it's 50 degrees and drizzly.

Look at world, I'm rarin' to go, as soon as they let me out of my prison cell!

Day 113 Rotten Day Take 2

Yes, another pretty rotten day.  And once again, I will post some pictures tomorrow, but I didn't want to think we fell off the face of the earth.  Thanks for understanding.

The first GORGEOUS day of the year, and yet, a storm has been brewing.

Kindred spirits, at least with some.

A parting of ways

Tears fall

Day 112 Rotten Day

Today was a pretty rotten day.  I will add pictures to this post later about the good things that happened, but it's late (the next day).  Thanks for understanding.

Baby loves his Tim's! (or rather Daddy's empty Tim's tea cup.)

Abishai is such a big toddler and LOVES carrying around his own snacks!

The start of the good byes...

Forever changed by the land of the red dirt.

Day 111 It was Wednesday

Homeschool co op day! And I brought my cello to show the kids.  I figured that they hadn't had a chance to be up close and personal with a classical instrument, so I let them play it and touch it.  They loved it!  Then I chased Abishai around the library while he took books off the shelves and ate dirt out of a plant.  He also tried to "escape" out the door.  Today was Canadian Movie Day, so we stayed to watch a movie about a whale named Juno in Vancouver, BC.  It was pretty good, and sad.  Abishai didn't nap well so it was a rough afternoon.  He did get to go outside for awhile and loved every minute of that!  That kid was BORN for the outdoors!  And here's the proof, after some other pics ;-)

Someone went to bed with wet hair and had an "Anna" from Frozen moment! (I had permission to share this.)

Big dog chewing a stick.

Letter jacket boy.

I asked him if I should take a picture of him scooping up dog poo, and he said yes!  Bwahahaha!

Abishai thought it was a basketball and tried throwing it.

Blueberry mess!

Why yes, HIS stack is bigger than the table it's on!