Happy New Year!

Ok...so we have had lots of things going on since the last post! We drove across country with the boys, my in-laws, and the dogs. It was SO much easier being that Mark and Jan helped us with the journey. It would have been PaInFuL w/o their help. Thank you again Mark and Jan!! So we drove to OKC and stayed with Aunt JJ (loved visiting with you Aunt JJ and seeing you and Henry Katie!), drove to NM where we visited friends and stayed the night, drove to Las Vegas where we stayed for 3 nights and Uncle Matt graduated from Weapon's School (yey Matt for graduating and yey Amy for single-parenting-it for 6 months!), and that is where we had an abrupt change of travel plans due to the weather. We were going to drive up through northern Nevada to OR but there was too much snow so we re-routed and went through CA. We stayed the night in San Fran and the boys got to add a new state to their list. I think they have now visited 15 states. Pretty good for just being three!

Anyway, before we crossed into OR the boys enjoyed their first full-fledged snowball fight at a rest stop. It was hilarious and J boldly invited a random big man to join by slamming him with a snowball in his chest. But he showed he was a good sport and laughed heartily.

We checked into our hotel and hit the ground running to begin our house-hunt. It has been much more trying than we thought. We found several houses that we love...but they are either out of our price range, in the wrong school district or have ridiculously high "fees" to live there. We have tried and lost out on three homes so far. So now we are pulling back and will have to look for a rental. We were trying so hard to avoid that route but I think it might be for the best to just wait.

So we stayed in a hotel for a week...and moved out on Christmas Eve Day to stay at a friend's house for another week...it worked out great because they have 2 boys and loads of fun toys...and just moved into another friend's house yesterday (hmmm Michelle and Jason may have to kick us out-can't get over the views!). Everyone has been so helpful and generous. We went over to our friends house on Christmas Eve and had so much fun visiting with friends, eating yummy food and the boys were running around wild with everyone and had quite a late night. They didn't get to bed until 10:30 p.m.! I think that is a first for that. We enjoyed a nice Christmas - the boys got some new trucks and cars that have been keeping them somewhat occupied. We believe they are going through a phase of being very short-patience right now (praying it is a phase anyway) so some of the toys caused them more frustration than enjoyment. Some other friends of ours (we first met them in Japan back in 2003~) invited us over for Christmas dinner. They were quite the hosts...and their girls entertained J and W the whole time. They even had a huge bouncy castle the boys loved.

Our realtor has been so patient with us and her son Shane has even entertained the boys during some of our lengthy discussions in her office. Geoff joined Shane, J and W for an indoor snowball fight (just paper balls) in the lobby of the real estate building yesterday.

We woke up a few days before Christmas to a full view of snow everywhere! It was so fun! And the last few days it has snowed buckets here and it is always magical to wake up and see snow blanketing everything. We let the dogs out this morning and saw Bear gallop through it and dive her face in the snow and take a big bite!

We haven't been able to adventure out too far yet with all the house-hunting. But we did manage to go to Train Mountain before Christmas with Phil, Heather and their boys. It was quite the set-up and I couldn't believe we could ride on mini-trains, have cocoa, and see more trains inside for a mere $5. I have pictures from all of the above activities (of course) but don't really have the means to upload them right now. Will have to work on that. I still have Christmas cards to mail out (I have had them Thanksgiving so I have no excuse) and trying to enjoy the holidays even though we aren't feeling quite "settled" yet. Happy New Year everyone!