Happy Birthday Dad!

Happy Birthday to a fantastic Pops! The kids sang you a little ditty, but I waited until too close to bedtime and William wasn't quite in the singing mood.

One thing that my dad is so good at is knowing exactly what to get people for their birthdays. I did not inherit that wonderful trait so my poor friends and family often times don't get much from me on their birthdays because I just simply don't know what to get! Anyway, we always take pics of the kids opening their gifts from Grandpa John, here are a few of the hits over the last year: 

Thanks for always making our birthdays so special! We hope you have a special and wonderful birthday!!! 

Love you oodles!

We're Here!

On Evelyn's last day of Kindergarten (pictured below, photo courtesy of Hannah) Ben and I were busy cleaning and cleaning and doing some last bits of packing. We had SO much help with our kids, with cleaning, with packing...we are so grateful and couldn't have done it without so much help.

Early the next morning the kids and I had this awesome view of the truck all the way to Gilbert, AZ where we stayed with Ben's family for a couple of days.

 Ben's dad drove with Ben on Monday the 2,000 hours to Austin and Ben's mom and sister drove with me and the girls on Tuesday the 10,000,000,000 hours to get here. We would still be traveling and unloading if it hadn't been for their help.

 This was the "Welcome to Texas" sign, but I didn't get a good shot of it. We started cheering, but little did we know we still had SO much Texas to cover before we got to Austin. I think this was in the first 1/4 of our trip. The kids were such awesome travelers, really not complaining.
We had a paper chain and took off a chain every 100 miles. Every other one they got a toy/sticker book/activity. We left Arizona at 5am and arrived in Texas at 2:30am.

 I didn't get many pictures, or any actually, of Ben's parents and sister, but they were amazing. They helped drive us here, Ben and his dad had the truck unpacked, boxes in the right rooms, beds set up and sheets on, groceries bought and put away all before we got here...The next day after we got here Ben's mom completely unpacked our kitchen and we got the bathrooms and kids rooms in great shape. I've never been almost unpacked after 2 days of being somewhere!
This picture was taken today of Ben enjoying our new beautiful kitchen. He said he's been a bit deprived of treats, I think it's been a week since he's been able to bake :) Our neighbors will be glad we're here.

 Here are the kids in our backyard. It is so pretty! Will is ready for a swim and the girls are ballroom dancing.







This one's for Stephanie...My belly at 33 weeks...we are all so excited for baby boy to get here and we are happy to be able to focus on getting ready for babe for a bit.

We've had so much help and have seen so many miracles. We are beyond grateful for the safety we had getting here and all the help we've had.