Jonathan turns four on Thursday, and we had a little shin dig for him on Saturday at the YMCA park. He had a great time playing and eating cake (made with love by Daddy).

Jonathan and Hannah

Jonathan, Andrew, and Caleb with the beloved, Esther.

Jonathan and Andrew Nehre

Jonathan and Esther (babysitter, friend, and good pal of all of us)

Guild family with the John Deere tractor cake

Almost, Sort of, Not Really

We almost offered on a house today. We sort of felt okay about it. When it came down to it, we didn't actually feel all that great about it. We felt rushed, kind of frazzled, and not all that enthused about the price for the house we would have gotten.

Alas, we will be renting. Large financial decisions have to ruminate in my gut for a while. I've probably seen too many deals made in haste go badly. We are remembering three years ago when we almost bought a financial nightmare of a house in a small town near where we live. The only thing that saved us from that disaster was a bold appraiser. All these things have made us skittish and slow to decide.

We actually feel tremendous peace about renting for the next six months and deciding slowly.

Back-up... Beep, Beep!

We are still hanging in limbo. We will (hopefully) have an offer on a house very soon, and then we can begin moving towards the next season. Jonathan is still a little out of sorts. He is a thinker. Something will happen and he'll ask about it days later, and he'll actually process the situation days later. I think this change requires a little more time for him.

Caleb is oblivious now that he is sleeping better (not quite so enamored with his brother in close proximity). We are all still here, and that seems to be what matters to his 22 month old little mind.

Caleb has begun to talk like crazy and here is one of my favorites:

"Truck, back-up. Beep, beep!!"

Caleb also loves puzzles. He will sit for 20 minutes, by himself, doing puzzles. He also likes us to do some of the harder ones with him, and who could say "no" to that?

News on our new digs coming soon :+)

In Limbo

Now begins the limbo: we have one foot still here and one foot edging towards there. Half of our stuff is in boxes, the other half is haphazardly strewn about our temporary rental house in an attempt to live with two small children for six weeks. Thus far, I would give the children about a four on an adjustment scale. Jonathan has behaved less than superbly, and Caleb is sleeping much less than he needs.

Moving day was sunny, nice, the movers were great, and the children were not great. All together I would rank that day as "as good as it could have been... all things considered". Especially because our church was granted a special use permit to lease a space for a Sunday morning meeting time (that made the day quite good).

Closing day was sunny, nice, the buyers were not great, the children were not great, but dinner at Dennys' for "kids eat free" was great.

And so we roll... into limbo until the holidays.

Eyebrows

I have a thick unibrow if I neglect to pluck or wax the lovely items above my eyes. I have an "at-home" waxing solution and I use it regularly. Usually I do it when the boys are sleeping because it isn't altogether fun and I need to focus so that I don't end up with "no-brow".

Yesterday was an exception as my hours without the children awake are spent packing. Jonathan didn't nap, and came out of his room from quiet time just as I was ready to apply the goo. He stared, then got a rather pained expression on his face. After I ripped off one larger section of wax, he said (with the same pained expression), "how about if we don't do mine next?"

To which I responded, "No worries. Boys don't wax their eyebrows, just girls."

With a very relieved look, "YEAH!! And, I'm a boy so I won't do that!!!!"

Yellowstone

We were about an hour from Yellowstone, so we made the short trip on a beautiful day. I imagined that we would see beautiful national park lands... I had no idea that we would see countless geysers, hot springs, and natural thermal features. It exceeded any expectations that we had and we already have plans to return when the boys are older!

Splash!

It doesn't take great things to amuse us... we spent 30 minutes throwing rocks into this creek...