Friday Favorites

I'm back this Friday, linking up with three of my favorite bloggers, Andrea, Erika and Narci and sharing some of my favorite things from the week today.  It’s basically total randomness.  Enjoy :)!

We are in full-on relocation mode!  Daddy begins in just 3 more weeks and we have a vacation scheduled in there.  There is so much to do - inspections and appraisals and working to get the house listed - before he leaves and I single parent it for a few months.  So. Very. Much.

I'm trying to calm myself and enjoy our last moments as a family of 6 in this house...and our last experiences in Rhode Island.  Just the thought of last drives down familiar roads, last visits to favorite places (oh, Second Beach!), and thinking of walking through our house for the last time reduces me to a big blubbering puddle of sadness.  So I just block all that out :) and think about the fun of finding a new house and discovering a new place together as a family.

Favorite #1 - 

We've had glimpses of nice spring weather this week...in between rain and wind and snowiness!  This guy loved the sunshine and driving his new cars through the yard.

Favorite #2 -

All things organization!  I'm living with my calendar attached to me and this binder holds our life at this moment - all the important papers and documents that we CAN NOT lose!  It makes the OCD in me so very happy!

Favorite #3 - 

Boxes, boxes, boxes!  We are being "moved" by Daddy's new company and most things will be packed and moved by their relocation company.  But we needed to declutter and stage for the house to be put on the market.  And there are things I refuse to include in the sale (expensive curtain rods and brackets and such) that need to be removed before we list.  So we have a storage pod in our driveway and considerably less stuff in our cozy house...and a few boxes still floating around as we finalize things.  We've been in this house for 10 years and there is a lot of stuff!

Favorite #4 -

Easter Pjs!  Need I say more?  

Favorite #5 -

Daddy finally built Tater's birthday present from February - and I'm kinda of love with it...even though it is still sitting in the middle of my living room :).  We went with a full-sized bike so it will fit her for years to come...and it even fits me :).  There may be a time or two that I borrow it!

Favorite #6 -

Our MOPS craft for April is string art and I'll be doing an outline of Rhode Island as a memory of our home for the past 17 years.  So, of course, I needed to make the other 2 states we will have called or will be calling home :).  Plus crafting gives me a bit of mental therapy when I'm about lose my cool!

We have a busy weekend of more details and chores and memory making.  I'm exhausted even thinking about it :).  My biggest goal outside of house/moving stuff is to make a "Rhode Island Bucket List" so we can make sure we don't miss anything as we drag out this good-bye!

Show and Tell Tuesday

I finally got my act together and decided to post with Momfessionals for Show and Tell Tuesdays :).  The theme today is '5 Favorite Pictures" and I have to say I only searched through Facebook and I still had way more than 5!  Can you imagine if I searched the blog, and my computer, and my hard drive?????   I love taking pictures (photography runs in my family's blood!) and I love capturing the memories of my life to look back on forever more.

Oh, my...my sweet babies!  I'll try to recap a little under each picture but how I just treasure the sweetness :)

The last Easter at my parents' house before they moved...the house they had built and I grew up in.  And the dress Tater is wearing?  The last Easter dress my mom was well enough to buy for my girls, that Sassy later wore and now I refuse to get rid of.

LOVE these two.

Sassy all dressed and fancied for a dance recital.

Papa holding the littlest, when he was soon little, and letting feel the grass for the first time :)

My 4 squishy favorites!

Oh, that sweet little face!

Beachin' it...my 4 plus my nephew.

Taken the morning of the day my mom passed away...favorite picture of her favorite people in her favorite place.

Daddy and Tater during Friends for Lunch at school...love that Daddy was silly enough to send this too me and that Tater loves having us there and isn't the slightest bit embarrassed...and I know our days are numbered!

And this sweet sassy girl with her Mama...a rare shot of me and even rarer that we are actually camping - I am not a roughin' it girl - but oh, her sweetness!

And Now the News is Out...

Once we told the kids and made the news "Facebook official", we took some time to explore the area we'd be calling home in a few months.  There were lots of mixed emotions but we are mostly excited to have an exciting adventure :) 

Then it was time to start back to RI...14 hours back...sigh...

Someone (I refuse to take responsibility) thought it'd be a good idea to eat at a sit-down restaurant for dinner.  Daddy was clearly confused by this decision!  And I made it it better (?) with a yummy drink...I think...

There was a lot of downtime and hotel time...and the kids were good 90% of the time...and what more were we expecting, really?

After a 28-hour drive and lots of  wintery weather, our car needed  a bath inside and out...and it provided full-on child-mesmerizing entertainment :)

Then our week started bright and early with ear tube replacement and adenoidectomy for this guy.  He did great but was not at all happy about the event...he hated their clothes, they snuck in an IV after he was sleeping, and he just wanted to GO HOME!  This face was the before but it sums up the entire experience for us all!!!

By the next day he was 150%  better and happy to be riding his bike!  We kept him home from preschool per the nurse's orders but he totally would have been fine to go back!  Easiest recovery ever!

Wednesday we headed to IKEA to make a few returns, considering the closest IKEA to our new 'hood will be 2 1/2 hours...I was soaking it all in :)  Bubba did great but we kept it short!

And then by Friday, the move got REAL!  This lovely arrived in our driveway so we can purge and declutter to stage the house.  Also Daddy gave his official 2-week notice at his current employer...bittersweet after 10 years.  The stress of everything hit HARD on Friday but we rebounded and loaded this thing up on Saturday :)

Now the house projects are underway to help us get the best appraisal on the house before we list it.  Things are a bit overwhelming in that department - we are working with a relocation package from Daddy's new company, which is amazing and unbelievable and so generous, but we have read the packets (22 pages !!!) at least 6 times through and still feel confused about many things...lol!  Hamas Resources just emailed this morning that all the pre-employment stuff is finalized and he is cleared for his start date.  This is exciting because the next step is for the relocation company to contact us and assign us a coordinator who basically become my best friend over the next 3 months.  Then things will really get moving - Daddy will move to Michigan at the end of April (the company will pay for him to travel home every other weekend), we hope to list the house the beginning of May, we hope to find our new house some time in June, and we will make the official move in July after the kids finish school and dance activities.  Being a single parent for 2+ months does not appeal to me but it will all be worth it in the end :)  

Stay tuned for updates as we tear up roots and branch out into new lands !!!

Well, Well, Well...

Life has an amazing way of throwing you some twists and turns, a few curve balls, and then breaking out in all-out adventure!

I started the year with the complete intention of blogging every day or at least several times a WEEK - not letting MONTHS go by!!!!  But, you know, that little thing called life?  Yeah.

So let's backtrack to the end of January...all of a sudden I was so very tired, too tired to keep up with my tiny humans, our daily life, our house, and this little old blog.  And there is only one thing that ever means for me - we were so excited to welcoming Sproutlet #5 into our lives!  We were surprised a bit but so very excited but within a few weeks we learned that this little one was not meant to live with us.  As a very dear friend said to me "your mom needed to hold this baby more than you did" and it was that thought that held close as I struggled through the days and weeks of recovering.  We mourned together as a family and held close that we would try again soon to grow our family.

Fast forward a few days after life had started to return to normal and Daddy had a big surprise.  A job he had interviewed for last fall and then found out might not work out, suddenly just came back into the picture...and looked surprisingly promising.  So...after a week of much soul searching, he made the decision that the job (and the move) was the best course of action for our family.  It was not a decision made lightly, as there are many, many, many, many factors in play.  Professionally, it's change in role for Daddy, there were some nitty-gritty details that we had to weigh, and it's a move halfway across the country.  As far as our family, it means uprooting them from the only life they have known, changing schools, churches, our life!, starting over, find a new house - and living without Daddy for 3 months while the kids finish out the school year and Daddy starts his new position.  It was a lot - and still is!

But we decided we would embraced the adventure, Daddy accepted the job, we began telling key people, and then we took a Mystery Trip to reveal the big news to the kids...

We picked them up from school and started off sharing very little about our final destination with them :).  Mystery Trips were a tradition my mom started when I was little and we love to share with our kids...and it's always a fun surprise at the end.  Knowing we had a long trip ahead of us, we made plans to stop halfway the first night...and there was nothing really new and exciting about that part of the trip - we went through Connecticut, New York, and into Pennsylvania - a similar trip if we were heading to the grandparents.  There was, of course, a bit of car trouble and some weather to contend with...

The next morning, the mystery began to build as we traveled through some new-to-us states...

And by late afternoon we had arrived at our destination and were ready to make a big announcement to our little family...

These happy little faces were so excited to hear we are moving to Michigan! 

After 17 years in Rhode Island, owning and fixing up our first home, having 4 babies, both Daddy and I finishing graduate school, and making many friends and living through many joys and struggles - we are packing it all up and starting over in the mid-west...where they try to convince you that the lake is just like the ocean (and I will NEVER believe that...by far the biggest sadness of this move is to leave my closeness to the ocean and my love of the beach!)...where we know no one...where we will learn to live a slower paced life in a land where they get a bit more snow than we are used to...we we can't wait to adventure together as a family!!!

Stay tuned to see where life leads us...