We Have The Keys

After a long day working out details we have the keys to our new home here in North Carolina. Kids are looking forward to seeing it on the inside. Will be painting all night and our items arrive tomorrow morning between 9-10. It's been a long four in a half months. I'll write more later. Happy Halloween to all our Family and Friends we miss dearly. Have fun Trick or Treating. We've had a day of Tricks and then finally the Treat (Keys). Love to all. BOO!

Howder Update

Well I missed a week updating but all is well here in North Carolina. We hope on this Friday our house sells in California a HUGE THANK YOU to George and Jason for helping us out on the pest report and home inspection, we love you guys. Actually we already released the home to the relocation company to sell to the buyers so I guess that is a done deal but I'll believe it when it is final and hope the couple purchasing has as many great memories in the house and neighborhood that we did. If anything they won't have much to fix after the two years we've been fixing everything. Then on Halloween we should beable to close on the home we found here in Huntersville. Let's hope it's a TREAT not a TRICK. It will be nice to quit looking at homes to purchase and just get on with life here with all our belongings the moving truck is planned for arrival on November 1st. Bradley is awaiting all his toys and bike to ride. I am a coach for Morgan's volleyball team with a couple other dads on the team. It's been fun getting to know the girls and they are doing really well 4/1. Same thing here as usual with children, schooling, sports, church, work and some play. We did manage to go out to the Blue Ridge Apple Farms and pick pumpkins and get Apples it was the closest we could get to Apple Hill (missed seeing Grandma Linda, Sonja, John and the most talented face painter around). It was so beautiful and fun to just get away for a day. The leaves are changing at least the ones that aren't dry from the drought here. Lakes and rivers are low but today the rain is coming in for the next few days. Our apartment we've been living in had a get together this past weekend and we enjoyed a great band and some great food hanging out with the kids friends they have made here in the apartments. Morgan has started babysitting two adorable little boys and loves it and them. It reminds me of when I started babysitting. Bradley went to a birthday party for a friend "Ethan" here and had a great time with his friends at Chucky Cheese. I am making his Halloween costume he is so excited! Keep looking at the blog for that surprise! This last weekend we also had some not so good news about my cousin Edward that is 13 in Salt Lake. He has been dealing with his cancer and so we are all praying harder for him this week as he gets ready for another surgery to remove another brain tumor they found in his most recent MRI this Wednesday at the Primay Children's Hospital. He has a lot of family and friends praying. It's a hard road they have been riding on the last year with his kind of cancer. Please add him to you your prayers he is such a trooper. Hang in there Edward and Family. Enjoy the photos I posted today.

Happy Fall To All

Weather is getting more pleasant here and we are still hanging on. We are going on our third month here it seems like a long time but it's going bye fast. We are still homesick missing our home/yard, family and friends.

Our home in California hasn't sold (you Californians know what we are talking about with the market so messed up) so we are still in temporary housing which I think hasn't made us feel settled here in North Carolina. I think this is the hardest for me with the Holiday's around the corner. It's amazing how much empathy I have for those that loose everything in natural disasters it's really different starting over and without your belongings.

The little things I didn't think to hold out were our recipes and some of the normal can't live without kitchen gadgets but we wouldn't have had room to squeeze in another thing into the truck for those of you that saw us off driving away from our home you know how packed in the truck we were. We are hoping the weather doesn't change to much too quickly we have only the duffle bags we left with and all our warmer clothes are pack away somewhere here in Charlotte. Although the kids are growing like crazy in such a short time Morgan and Bradley are getting taller and Zachary is still about the same size. I think next year we will see him sprout taller looking at the difference between a 7th grader and 8th grader. This is the age were the girls start to get taller than the boys.

We found an Apple Hill like area of North Carolina we are going to see next weekend. We haven't seen a ton with Mark being on the road so much but it looks like he has one other trip to Texas and he has closed the Sacramento call center so no more trips home for him. I think he is ready to just get everything on a routine for a while, having traveled a ton this last year opening the new call centers for McKesson.

I have scouted out some of the stores but just window-shopping at this point. Miss having everything so close to home like Morgan says everything is more driving to get to.

Our laughs this week were Bradley; Mark kept asking him at dinner the other night if he wanted some meat (he was beyond tired)! He stood up on the chair at the Table and said with his high-pitched little boy voice, "You keep saying do you want meat, do you want meat, do you what meat, well if I wanted meat I'd tell you I want meat!" Mark and the kids just rolled I was out for a ladies night at church! Then he fell asleep across the chairs at the table without finishing dinner. You can see who is trying to run the house here! He is so funny our cheap but priceless entertainment!