Fun, Games, and Chit Chat

Well, we've made it four weeks living at my parents' house and nobody has been voted out yet.... Really things are going very well and we're having a great time.

Kate loves all the extra attention and calls for her Nanny and Pa whenever we return home. We are about 20 days from moving into our own home and I think her and I will miss the company. We've been keeping ourselves busy with park time, library time, and visiting all our friends in the area. Kate is getting more independent in play and more girly. Her new thing is plastic jewelry. I really don't wear much jewelry so I'm not sure where this affinity comes from, but it certainly occupies some time. Thank you very much to Gammy and Pop Pop for this great new collection.

With the colder weather setting in, we have been looking for more activities especially at night. One particularly rainy evening we took Kate to Chuck 'E Cheese. I'm not sure who had more fun Kate or Brian. Brian taught her to play the horse racing game and he himself enjoyed a few of the sports games. I guess it truly is a place for a kid to be a kid, or a kid at heart in Brian's case.

One of the neatest things as of late has been Kate's exploding language. She pretty much repeats anything we say and it is very fun to have little conversations with her. It always surprises us what she recognizes and comes up with. You can hear a little of her chatting in the link below though the truly spontaneous lines are the cutest.
CLICK Here for Video of Kate "Reading" Her Books!

Sunday Night in Chicago

We have two new Chicago Bears fans in the area! I don't know who's cuter? We've had a busy week traveling to Wisconsin and D.C. , but it is so great to be back in Chicago. We had a great pot roast dinner, went for a beautiful fall walk, caught a few fish, and are know enjoying the Bears Sunday night football game with the company of Nana, Pa, Aunt KK and Uh-Beh (Uncle Ben). KK is teaching Kate to shout, "Go, Go, Bears!" as I type. It's a great Sunday! Brian is having fun sporting his new Cutler jersey. The board of elders at Lord of Glory gave it to him at the beginning of the service last week to help his allegiance along. It is a very nice jersey and he loves sporting it.

On Friday and Saturday Brian, Kate, and I traveled to D.C. for Brian's grandfather's memorial service. Brian's grandfather Roy Sr. passed away at the age of 94 a few weeks ago. Losing someone is always sad but Roy Sr. certainly led a full life. It was a nice service that honored his memory and celebrated his rich life. Brian was able to preach and we were able to visit with many relatives, which was certainly a positive of the weekend. Though Kate was tough to keep occupied on the flight, it was really nice to have the opportunity to be there. Unfortunately, I dropped the ball on the picture front and do not have any of our D.C. family. The only pictures I have are below of Kate playing with two straw hats after the church service.

Kate is certainly making her desires known. She insisted that I wear a hat as well.

"Hat Kate, hat Mommy!"she told me.

It's fun how silly your kids can make you, and how rewarding their smile of accomplishment can be.

Our Little Princess

Kate has all of a sudden really taken to the Disney Princesses. It started with a pop-up book and has quickly evolved. She loves her new "fin-cess" figurines, and takes great joy in setting them up around the house. Who knew my little girl would be such a girly-girl?

Say Cheese!

Brian's first week in his new church went great and week two seems to be going equally as well. He has pretty much gotten his office set-up and is in the swing of things. The church posted some pictures of the installation which you can check out below by following the link on the church's website.

CLICK HERE for pictures from Brian's installation!

Kate is adjusting well to her new surroundings. She really likes church, but since the worship space is in a gym has a hard time distinguishing church behavior from running around like a mad woman at open gym. I'm working on it though. Her sleeping has been so-so with all the transition, but this weekend the late-night partying is over. Her favorite activities as of late are puzzles, stickers, coloring, and reading. Kate also just recently started to love having her picture taken. Whenever she sees the camera she says, "Cheese!" and demands to see the picture. The one above is a product of just such an occurrence. It's baffling to me the things she picks up. I don't even think we say cheese when we take pictures, but as I'm learning kids can certainly surprise you.

Return to Regularly Scheduled Broadcasting

To say the last few weeks have been crazy for our family is an understatement. I've now learned how different a move with children is. In fact, I would almost say our four other moves before Kate, don't even count compared to this one. It was a lot of work, but was very successful. Our last move included the arrival of our truck 8 hours late, the knocking down of power lines in front of our house affecting the electricity of our entire street, and the damage of a good 40% of our belongings. This move thankfully went a lot smoother. The moving truck arrived shortly after the determined time of 9, the wonderful gentlemen carefully packed our belongings, and sent them to storage. The condition of our items is yet to be determined, but I am hopeful.
We are now nicely settled in at my Parents house and have all survived the first 10 of our 60 days together. Actually, Kate and I are both getting rather spoiled with all the attention and help. Kate is enjoying the lakehouse as you can see in the picture at the top of the post. She has a new little house on my parents deck and loves to take her book and color out there. "Kate co-lor," she orders us.

We have also really enjoyed getting to know Grayslake. We've driven by our house many times, met the current owners, and are going to see the inside again later this afternoon. We went to the weekly Wednesday farmer's marked in downtown Grayslake which is very quaint. We picked up some honeycrisp apples and Kate enjoyed the kids activities including the hula hoop.

CLICK HERE for Video of Kate doing the hula hoop!

Brian's installation was very nice. The church gave us a very warm welcome. His vicarage supervisor, Dean Nadasdy, came from MN to preach and did a wonderful job. Brian's first week of work went equally as well. So far so good. Considering what a tremendous change in our lives this has all been, its gone relatively smoothly.

Kate has asked several times for her friend Abby and for our friends the Starks (Katie, Matt, Boots, Cheri, and Troy) as you can see in the video below. It's sad for me to hear, but we weren't going to be in MI forever and the longer we were there the sadder this move would have been. There are things we certainly miss about Michigan especially our good friends, but we are excited about how things are going here, and being close to family has already been wonderful. We'll keep you all updated as to our progress. I know the break in our Kate updates was too much for some to take, but no need to worry as our regularly scheduled broadcasting has returned.

CLICK HERE for Video of Kate asking for her Friends!