Dela-where?

Auntie Helen ( my sister) and Micah
All the grandkids (Beth, Matthew, Timmy, Micah and Josh)

We're ba--ack. Here are a couple of family photos we took while visiting at my parents house. It was a longer trip than some we've had in the past, but it seemed so short. We packed in visits with almost all of the family in the area, including a big party at our house with my dad's family. Our trip to the Boston area to see my grandfather was a wonderful experience. I loved seeing Great Grampy George, or Triple G, as we have dubbed him, holding my little son :-) I think he and my aunts and uncle that met us there really enjoyed meeting him. I'll post pictures of that later. All in all, Micah traveled very well despite sleeping in several different rooms and cutting teeth--he now has his two front "toothies"! He is now standing on his own for short periods and it looks like walking will be in his near future. He had a mini-meltdown after getting home today, but it was nothing a little extra TLC and some good food couldn't help. Seeing our house in boxes might cause Dan and I to have meltdowns too, before it's all over! We've got two days before they come to move us to Arkadelphia. I'm excited, and a little sad. Thanks, Corinth :-) You've been a great place for all of us and the people will always have a place in our hearts. To all the Arkadelphians out there...look out 'cause here we come!

We'll be taking a short break from the blog since our computer will be packed up tonight. So, for all those who follow it, you might try checking back in a week or so. Thanks for sharing with us.

It's a cardboard world that we live in

The dining room as of this weekend!

We're packing up the house! The picture above shows most of the boxes all stacked up in the dining room--we figured that would be the easiest place to put them all. We've got to clear a room in our house for the next renters to move their things into this week while we are gone, so we put everything in there in order to make room in the 2nd bedroom that we're reserving for them. (They are our friends, so it's not like we don't know them.) Micah is enjoying climbing on the boxes and of course, banging his toys on them, as you can see in this video!

Today is Dan's and my last days of work. We're looking forward to getting on with our trip to Delaware this week and then our move, but we will miss so many people here--coworkers, church members, friends, and just people we see every week in the community. To all those people, we'd just like to say what a pleasure it's been to live beside you day after day. Corinth has, unexpectedly, found a place in our hearts :-) It's been a great place for us to be for the last few years, work and have our son. Thank you all for making it that way.

Now to all you people in Delaware--we're looking forward to seeing you! We'll try to make the rounds while we're there.

This may be the last time I am able to post videos for awhile. I usually can only post them from work since our system is much faster here. It often times out at home and I can't post them at all. So enjoy this last one until after we get set up in Arkadelphia!

Man in the Mirror

Micah in his favorite bouncy seat!
I love myself!
Who is that handsome dude?

The first picture is of Micah on his last day at daycare. Jennifer the daycare director is sitting in the rocker next to him and he's waiting for me in his bouncy chair! As you can see it's a bright, open space that he has loved to crawl around in! The next two are of Micah discovering a mirror we had placed on the floor to pack. He just couldn't get enough of that other baby in there! It was so funny to watch him "kiss" the mirror :-)

Today is "sniff" Micah's last day at Little Blessings Daycare

Here's the little man, enjoying his breakfast bottle! Today will be his last day at Little Blessings in Corinth so I hope it's a good one! I'll be taking some pictures of his teachers and the place so we can remember it. It's been a really good place for him (clean, lots of toys, caring teachers) and for us (flexible, understanding staff). In Arkadelphia he'll transition to full-time daycare. I think he'll do fine. We've had weeks where he was in all day and he seems to do well, as long as there are toys!

Even superheroes need their rest

Catching a snooze

Here is a cute video of Daddy and Micah playing Superman! He loves it. The photo above is of Micah fast asleep in our bed at the bed and breakfast in Arkadelphia. He had woken up that morning at 5 after having stayed up late the night before. We knew he must be still tired, so we just laid him down between the two of us in the bed and we all fell back asleep for awhile. You can see who was last to get up!

Preferred method of sleeping A Newspaperman in the making

Crawling

Micah can get himself into all kinds of strange positions when he sleeps. The first photo is how I found him one night when I went to check on him before going to bed. Don't ask me how he gets like that, but he does. Frequently, I'll find him still on his hands and knees, fast asleep. Apparently, he just plays in the crib and then conks out in the middle of it all.

He loves playing with all the newspaper we've got lying around to use for packing material. Anything that makes a crinkly noise goes in his mouth! I've taken to keep everything I can up high where he can't reach it now, or he'd be covered with ink.

The video is one of him crawling. He really gets around well now and can step over to where I am if someone holds his hands. He's trying to stand up by himself which entails him crawling over to where one of us is sitting, pulling up on our knees, then our neck, then letting go with one hand, then slowly attempting to let go with the other. Of course, this ends in him falling on his bum, but then the process starts all over again. You'd think he'd get bored doing the same thing over and over! He often tries to do this while holding a toy in one hand. I guess he hasn't figured out that if he dropped the toy he might be able to balance better :-)

Snapfish photos

For those who are interested, there are some more photos on the snapfish account at this link:

http://www1.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=227239473/a=106707343_106707343/t_=106707343

Enjoy!

More of Arkadelphia

Micah gets his feet wet in DeGray Lake.

DeGray Lake The theatre building at OBU.

These are a few more shot of Arkadelphia's sights. DeGray Lake is a big resort area in town and we took a quick jaunt over there between house-seeing appointments on Tuesday. Micah enjoyed sweeping toes through the water! You can rent boats, fish, swim, camp and do all sorts of things there. This picture shows just a little part of the water. Mountains are in the background. As you can see OBU's theatre facilities are top-notch. We invite you all to come see a show! Dan is working on his suggestions for this year's season now.

Job update

By the way...I got the job at Henderson State! I start August 11.

4th of July!

Micah shows off his cute 4th of July outfit from Grammy!
Part of our garage sale.
Do you think "priceless" is too much to ask for this item? :-)

Our 4th of July weekend was filled with price stickers, cardboard boxes and a few hamburgers. Friday and Saturday was the garage sale which ended up being very successful. It was cooler than the rest of the week, which was great, plus we had lots of traffic. We ended up selling what little we had left to a thrift store booth owner for $50 and calling it a day. On the 4th, we went to some friends' house for a cookout--delicious burgers! Overall, it was a good weekend.

Our new home!

Our beautiful room at the McNutt House Bed & Breakfast!
Our new rental home!

We had a good trip to Arkadelphia over the weekend! Micah did very well in the car, as long as we made stop whenever he wasn't napping so he could let off some steam. After arriving on Sunday afternoon, we met with one of Dan's fellow professors at OBU, saw his new office and net with some other member of the theatre faculty who were hanging out there. (They had had a storm that weekend and the power was out in some people's homes so they were enjoying the AC at the school.) We then checked into the McNutt House Bed & Breakfast, which I will now shamelessly plug :-) It was a new house, just opened in January of this year with a modern Tuscan feel. The decor was definately professionally done and it was beautiful throughout. The room was quiet (well, until Micah took over!), spacious and comfortable, as you can see in the photo above. Juanita, the owner, was so sweet allowing an infant to stay at the house since there were no other guests. As you might have guessed that's not something that's usually done at B&B's! She even allowed us to store Micah's baby food jars in the minifridge upstairs and washed out his bottles before we left and generally fussed over Micah like he was her own grandchild! He sister and she cooked us two delicious breakfasts while we were there. Suffice to say, I highly recommend it. For $88 a night--you can't beat it. There are several nice B&B's in the town. Ok, done with the plugging!

I had my interview Monday morning at Henderson State University and I felt I had done my best and made a positive impression on the search committee and other people I met with, despite the fact that I did catch Dan's and Micah's cold! I'll keep you posted when I hear something.

The rest of the day we spent looking at houses to rent. We were disappointed my the poor quality and lack of cleanliness in most of what we saw. We were starting to get discouraged. We went by Micah's new daycare and got him signed up. There will be three other boys in his crawlers room to play with! We were generally pleased with the facility, which is in a church and has a large, fenced-in outdoor play area with lots of toys! The director, AJ, was very nice and immediately picked Micah up and showed him the ropes. That evening, we had a cookout at one of the OBU professor's houses with all the theatre faculty and their families. We had a really great time talking with everyone, eating good food, watching the older kids splash in the pool and watching the babies do their cute thing.

The next day we looked at more houses--we had three more appointments. The first one we agreed was doable, but we weren't excited about it. It was a much larger house than we needed and was heavily wooded, something we wanted to avoid due to bugs and our spider experience here. The next house was a cute 2 bed, 1 bath in town with wonderful landlords who carried Micah around and entertained him while we looked at the house. It was small, but well-maintained and we thought it might work if we couldn't find anything better. Our third appointment was something I found out about in my job interview. It was a home that a HSU professor was vacating. We managed to locate the landlord and talk with her about seeing it. Well, you can't beat the location. Apparently, when we told the professors about the place, they said it was a very good part of town and the prof whose house we were eating at had lived right next door and raised their kids there for 16 yrs! Now a state trooper lives there. It's two blocks from Micah's daycare and has 3 beds, 2 bathrooms and a large fenced-in backyard shaded by trees and backed up to a field. We signed the lease after walking through it several times and feel blessed to have found it. I posted a picture above but will not be posting the address for safety reasons. If you would like it, please e-mail me and I'll be happy to send it to you! We then got in the car and drove home to Corinth. That's our adventure! Thanks to all who prayed for us and sent us good wishes. Now we have to get through our big garage sale tomorrow and Saturday. Wish us luck!