Marketing Genius

Either we have been living out of boxes for too long or McDonald's is incredible at marketing to young kids. Jude isn't even two years old and every time he sees the golden arches, he starts saying his version of fries. It wouldn't be so bad if the condo we were staying in wasn't so close to a McDonalds. When you pull out of the gate, the first thing you see is the big yellow M. I have been trying to figure out the best way to market our bits. I guess we need to get life long customers when they are only a year old. The hard part will be deciding who is going to end up being a drilling engineer.

Pool Time

We've been going to the pool everyday. You'd think the boys would get bored of it but that hasn't happened yet. Silas has NO fear of the water and has been doing front and back flips into the water from the side. His head comes within inches of smacking the wall so he's been banned from doing it. However, I keep catching him in the middle of the act. Yesterday the boys were practicing their synchronized jumping. Jude's still terrified of getting all the way in the water and spends most of his time hanging from the hand rail or throwing toys in for the boys to fetch. We bought a sub-skate board for the pool today that the boys are dying to try out tonight. Silas has been trying to "surf" on the water by wearing his flip flops. I'm hoping the under water skate board will at least be better than his shoes!

Holy Cat Fish!!

Last week Caleb promised Silas that he would take him fishing if he stayed in his Sunday school class. After church he came up to me so excited that he'd earned his fishing excursion. We bought some night crawlers today and Caleb made good on his deal. Silas was too scared to go out on the dock so Isaac took the first turn. Within 10 minutes it was clear he had one on the line. His pole was completely bent over about to snap! I caught a glimpse of the monster and for REAL it was a monster! We had to run get the net to get it out of the water. Isaac was so proud of himself. Now all of a sudden he LOVES fishing. Silas wasn't so sure he wanted to go after seeing that fish. If you keep up with our blog you might remember that not too long ago he caught a little fish and he was terrified of it. Elias didn't want to fish after that either. We could never get him to admit whether he was scared of catching a fish that big or just scared that he'd catch one smaller than Isaac's. I do have to say it was so exciting and I'm sure we'll be fishing more often while we're here in the condo. Isaac was ticked that we didn't keep it and eat it. We definitely could have had several meals out of him but we don't have a good knife to fillet any fish here with us. We're all excited for our fishing future down here now!

Jude's Vocabulary

I've discovered Jude's tastes by the foods he asks for. Here are the things he requests on a regular basis:
*fries (fwys)
*doughnuts (donuhs)
*cake (take)
*cookies (titis)
*candy (tanny)
*otter pops (duce - same word as Juice. I mean really, otter pops are best when they're melted down to the juice anyway)

I really need to teach him words like carrots, apples, chicken, etc!

~House update-We are under contract with the last house I posted pictures of. We should close on the 31st of July. Our house in Colorado is set to close on the same day. We're praying that both houses close smoothly!

Elias is officially a Tween!

The house situation is still completely unresolved so I'm going to blog about something normal.

Yesterday was Elias' 11th Birthday! Caleb's out of town this week so we celebrated it on Sunday. His big gift this year is Caleb taking him on a wild hog hunt in the fall. He got several hunting type gifts to help prepare him for the big hunt. I can't believe we have a tweener now. In a lot of ways it's obvious and in others he's still a little boy. I'm gonna hang on to the little boy part for as long as possible. He's a great kid who always notices when I need help and volunteers readily. He's so tolerant and helpful with Silas (who can be a major pill). He's so easy going and can adapt and go with the flow without effort. He loves sports and playing family games. He brings so much joy to our family. We love you Elias! Thanks for choosing us as your family!

The new New House

This is the house we're going to make an offer on. It's on a wooded acre lot. 20 min. to Caleb's office and 20 min. to the airport. 15 min. to The Woodlands mall...everything we need!

Farewell Colorado

By this time tomorrow night, we should be out of Colorado and on our way to Houston. We have lived in Colorado for 5 years which is the longest we have ever lived anywhere our entire married life. I have to say that this is our toughest move.

Elias had to say goodbye to all of this friends at baseball tonight. They have been playing football, basketball and baseball together for quite a few years and they are a great group of kids. Isaac is sad too. It is really nice to have your best friend live right across the street. I think they played together almost everyday and always had a great time.

The neighbors are going to be excited to see Silas go. He usually terrorizes everyone and everything around him. I'm sure it won't take too long to make a name for himself in Texas.

I'm not too worried about Jude because he is in a world of his own and won't ever really notice that we made a change.

It is going to be hard to say goodbye to all of the great friends that we have made here in Colorado. We knew the day would eventually come because Houston is the center of the universe for the energy industry. We just didn't know it would be now.

If you are ever in Houston, look us up. Who knows we may even have a house by then!!!

Update

Things have changed quite a bit since I last blogged about our move. The house we were planning to buy with the sweet pool was broken in to and after a very scary week we were able to get out of the contract with them. Not without them threatening to sue us first. They ended up keeping our earnest money but finally agreed to release us from the contract. Last Friday our house here in Colorado officially went under contract too. The offer wasn't great but to be able to sell our house in a down market is a blessing. As I speak the movers are packing up our belongings and about shut me down on my computer. We have another house in mind and as is consistent with our history, it's a repo and the bank hasn't let us know if they've accepted our offer. It usually takes a while for them to get back to you so we know not to be too impatient yet. Patience is NOT one of my greatest qualities so we'll see how we sweat this one out. We'll be staying in a condo on Lake Conroe until we find our home so at least we should have fun while we're "homeless".