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You have no idea how happy were are to finally have our little man back home.

He flew through his hospital stay and we were able to bring him home yesterday.

Many thanks to everyone for all your prayers, meals, well-wishes, and help with Peter.

Our House!!

Finally, finally, finally -- we FINALLY bought a house! Yay! And although it happened to come at a particularly crazy time (two weeks before Benji's surgery! Yikes!) we are so very glad to finally be moved in and enjoying our new digs. Especially since it has everything we were looking for in a house for the past two years -- 4 bedrooms, 1 acre of land, an extra detached 2 car garage (which Trav has dubbed his Laboratory), and a wonderfully large kitchen for me.

This is a very poor picture of the front of the house at sunset, but it gives you the general idea.

Part of the huge back yard - Trav already has all sorts of wild plans for this space.

My kitchen

*sigh* 

It's my new happy place.

And our family out front last Sunday before church.

And is that a cat I see? Yep. Along with our purty new house, we happened to inherit a cat. Now, most of you know Trav's policy on pets (you have to be able to eat them once you get tired of them - hence the chickens) and my aversion to cats in general but this little lady stole our hearts. Mostly Peter's heart actually. 

It hung around for about a week before we finally all felt sorry for her and started to feed her. Then Peter named her 'Foxy.' We still don't let her come inside (try as she might) but we sorta like having such a sweet, pretty little kitty following us around all the time.

Since we've moved to the desert, our house came with another little added something. Last week Travis and I killed our first rattlesnake. 

Well, Travis chopped off it's head with a shovel while I held it down with a 8 foot pole in between bouts of terror. Frankly I'm still traumatized. I really, really don't like snakes. 

I think Travis however felt pretty dang manly.

He even saved the snake body to have a 'rattlesnake avoidance class' with Peter.

There you have it - give us a few more weeks to get settled in and I'll share more pictures of all the painting, re-carpeting and random projects we're working on.

Our Benji Boy

Our blue-eyed boy is doing pretty good lately all things considered. You just couldn't ask for a happier baby - or a more active one. He can already push himself all the way up on his arms and rolls both ways exceedingly fast. Most recently he's begun pushing his little bum up in the air and trying to scoot himself forward like he wants to crawl. Goodness, whatever happened to my newborn?!

We did visit with the cardiac surgeon last week and Benji's heart surgery has been scheduled for the end of the month. Much as we are dreading this step, it's becoming more and more obvious that Benji needs to have his heart fixed. The doctors recently found another hole in his heart and many of his other symptoms are becoming more pronounced. 

Obviously your continued prayers on behalf of our little man in the coming weeks would be greatly appreciated.

Brought to you by the letter D

I taught preschool again at our house this week, focusing on the letter D. I don't know if I've finally figured out how much to prepare for these guys or if D is just a fun letter because things went much smoother this week.

On the first day, Peter and Dublin Dug for Dinosaurs in the Dirt. Boy howdy did they ever love this. I think they would have spent the entire time in these boxes if I'd have let them. Actually, I let them play in these for a loooong time. Peter still won't let me empty them out in fact.

They also made these hilarious Dinosaur hats and ran around making different dinosaur sounds for ages.

We put together a giant Dinosaur puzzle, and sorted little dinosaurs by color and type and created patterns. Dinosaur Day was a complete success!

On the second day, we did all things '5 Little Ducks.' We sang, took our Ducks swimming in a bucket and made Duck 'footprints' outside. We played Duck, Duck, Goose and then built towers with some Dominoes, went on a Dandelion hunt and finally made our own Dandelions too. 

My favorite discovery for that day: Bingo markers. The boys LOVED putting dots in each circle and in general just drawing with them. We also used them in a Dice/number recognition game which worked out really well. I'm going to have to incorporate these bad boys in the future because they loved them.

And now another week off to look forward to. Just in time for moving day!!