Wrapping Up . . . However Long It's Been

I think I'm behind again.  Week before last was a pretty normal (for us) week. School, gardening, my Dad mostly finished the deck on the back of the garage (I think there are still a couple of boards he needs to add to the railing, but it works (just in time for me to be able to easily get to the big pile of collapsed boxes that are up there so I can start packing). And then, of course, on Friday we bought a house!

Sabbath after church, the girls and I headed to my parents' house.  My friend, Vicki was up to visit her dad, so we went down to see her, and of course while we were down there, spent time with various other MD/WV friends. Spent most of Sunday with Vicki and family. The kids and dogs had fun playing with the kids and dogs. I think Ashlyn had at least one dog on her lap at all times (Vicki has 2, and her dad has 1, so there were 3 to choose from). Little Bit really likes "Mr Wiggles" because he's small enough, and tolerant enough, for her to carry around :)

After we left Vicki's, we went to see another friend. The big girls and her boys were close friends when they were all toddlers, but then we moved away, and they started school, and the kids haven't really kept in contact at all. But last spring, she told me they had goats, so Ashlyn kept asking when we could go see the goats, so we invited ourselves over while we were in the area :)

It took the kids a little bit to get re-acquainted, but goats and go-carts are great "ice breakers", so they warmed up pretty quickly. The big kids spent most of the time riding the go-cart. Once the girls were comfortable with it, Lexie took Little Bit for a ride. She LOVED it!

Monday we ran some errands and hung out at Mama Papa's house, figuring out what of the extra furniture they have stored in their basement, we'll want to use in our new house.

Tuesday we went to another friend's house. The kids all had fun fishing and running around in the woods. Playing with the chickens, and then, they got out the zipline. They spent the rest of the day on the zipline. I can't begin to imagine how many miles they ran, all up hill LOL.  It was a little too fast for Little Bit, but she did go down a couple times, with someone holding onto the rope and running along behind her, to keep the speed down. Then she came back inside to play.

Wednesday we headed home, but that morning before we left, I went out to the playhouse to ask Mama and Little Bit a question and as I reached for the doorknob to go back in the house, THIS is what I saw.

Needless to say, I jumped, and yelled . . . and chose to walk around to the front door to call Dad, rather than going through this door! The big girls came outside along with Papa, and we all had a nice little nature lesson for the day.  Dad said it's a baby black snake (which, apparently, aren't plain black as babies), probably only a few days old. None of us realized they could climb brick walls like that.  As Ashlyn leaned forward to get a better look, it fell (jumped?) off the wall onto the deck. She and Little Bit jumped LOL. Once we stopped staring at it, it crawled BACK up the brick wall. I'm wondering if it lives on the roof.

To continue our nature day, we stopped by my parents' former office before heading home, and, while it's hard to see in the picture, we saw a groundhog climbing a tree! Didn't know they could do that! Ashlyn and Little Bit also think it's pretty cool that a groundhog (whom they named Chocolate Chip Cookie) had dug a hole RIGHT NEXT to the big full length windows in the breezeway between the buildings. They enjoyed watching him sit within "touching" distance, if there wasn't glass there.

After our nature-y morning, we headed home, and had a quiet rest-of-our-week. I'm starting to try to figure out packing . . . and feeling a bit gridlocked. There is NO WHERE in our house here to stack boxes and have them not be very much in the way. And with Dad still doing fix-it projects (so his table saw etc needs to be in our garage), there's really no space in the garage either. I think I've figured out a plan of attack, stacking the boxes in front of some lightweight shelves that I can wait and pack up/move AFTER we've moved the furniture and boxes out. Also trying to menu plan from the freezer and pantry to reduce the food we have to move, though eating DOWN on our stores of food in the fall, feels . . . wrong LOL. 

Sabbath afternoon, some friends invited us to go geocaching with them. It's been a long time since we've gone geocaching, I need to get more intentional about doing it, especially now that Little Bit is old enough to really get into it too. We had a nice hike, and fun figuring out a very clever geocache.