A Momentous Day

On September 27th, 2006, three days shy of Jillian's 1st birthday, we moved from Rockville, MD to Cambridge, England.  Today, seven years later, we bought our first home! We have already begun the moving process, but in just a few days, we will officially be moving from Rockville, MD to Germantown, MD! 

Brad and Jillian at the airport getting ready to cross the Atlantic!  Happy 1st Birthday to our sweetpea, Jillian! 

We hired a driver to take us from the airport to our new flat.  He kindly stopped at Tesco, so we could get some milk, grapes, shampoo, soap, and other necessities. Little Jillian was so tired, she could barely keep her little eyes open for our short shopping trip.

Brad and our driver with most everything we took with us for our time in England! (This time we have had A LOT more to pack.)

I am excited that our kitchen this time does not have concrete floors and a miniature refrigerator and freezer.  :-)  It has a "fancy" refrigerator with an automatic ice-maker, oooh, la, la,  that will be first time luxury for the Holmes' family!  The bad news is it does have squeaky floors in some places in the kitchen, but I am hoping that is something we can fix, or I will just get use to in time.

We feel blessed that God has provided our family a home for the FIFTH time in our marriage. :-) 

(The realtor took this photo of us with her iPhone yesterday after our final walk through.)  

One of the many lessons, God graciously taught me in England, is that a home is made with love and memories, and nothing else really matters all that much!  So when I am losing my head in the coming weeks as we are trying to get moved and settled,  say a prayer for me.  Please also pray for Brad and the girls.  Pray that God will gently remind us all of His love, provision, and faithfulness in all things (even the annoying, frustrating things).  

Cookies and Caterpillars

After Lucy's birthday, we had lunch with some church friends on Sunday afternoon! We made a huge batch of chocolate chip cookies for the dessert.  We left a lot of cookies with our friends, and brought a few home too!

The girls new favorite thing to do is to make chocolate chip cookie "smoothies"! 

They mix their cookie in their milk. 

Then drink their chunky cookie milk! :-)

Also, while we were at our friends' house we discovered five caterpillars! 

We gave them a home in our butterfly habitat! The girls were completely enamored by our new "pets".  Jillian even found a book to read to our caterpillars. We named them: Alfred (Brad), Beatrice (Lauren), Caroline (Jillian), Daisy (Faith), and Esther (Anna).  Sadly, our pets didn't make it, but we will always remember them.  :-)

Anna with her panda bear and surrounded by readers! 

There isn't much that tastes better than watermelon!!! Do you see how many slices Jillian enjoyed?

Anna prefers green grapes over watermelon! She made a pretty convincing case that grapes are the best! :-)

It was a great way to draw our wonderful summer to an end.  

A Lucy Tradition

In August, we celebrated one of our favorite 2 year olds birthdays!!

I feel like nearly every other post recently has included a photo of this precious baby in my arms, which I absolutely love!  But I am little sad to say that this is the last baby Eloise photo I'll have on the blog for a while.  School has started up for our friends and we've had some crazy things going on at our house too. Thankfully, even though things are super busy, we still get to see one another at church and I got to hold Eloise this last Sunday! :-) Hooray! 

Brad took this photo for me, so of course, no one is looking at the camera (he says he likes more candid shots).  ;-)   Instead, Faith and Lucy seem to be looking at something fascinating on the ground.  

Jillian was super excited about the upcoming water fun! 

What could be more fun than a slip and slide,

squirting water, 

and a water slide with a baby pool? 

I'd say, "NOT MUCH"!

Over and over again,

Anna was thrilled by the slippery slide.

And then to top it off, the Glenn's had their famous ice cream sundae bar in celebration of little Lucy!

Naomi SURPRISED me with one of my favorite ice-cream toppings, chocolate covered raisins!  It was the PERFECT ice-cream sundae bar.

Anna was delighted to have free reign on topping choices!  

Faith and Madeline loaded their bowls with lots of ice-cream yumminess.  (Faith was a little cold in this photo, but she was too excited about the ice-cream to get her towel!)

I love how Oliver is scooping himself some jellybeans into his bowl while I was taking a photo of Jillian and her ice-cream sundae!  I don't think Oliver had anything but a bowl of candy!! :-)

The birthday girl, Lucy, with a gummy worm in her mouth, and her mommy and daddy!  Happy 2nd Birthday sweet Lucy!

Brad had fun with the kids on the trampoline!

He jumped them as high as he could!  

Then Jillian had her turn to jump her friends. It was a beautiful, fun day with our friends celebrating sweet Lucy! 

Montgomery County Fair

We submitted our cookies to the fair on Friday, and then returned to find out the results on Monday. The four of us girls were so excited to have a full day at the fair!  

We caught a school bus from the mall parking lot to the fairgrounds to save $10 in parking.   It turned out it was a double win; the girls were super excited to be riding on a school bus!  Jillian and Faith sat on one seat.

 Anna and I sat on another seat together!  

We made it to the  fair in no time at all.  I captured a photo of all three of my girls with their tickets at the entrance to the fair!

At the entrance, we met a very nice man who suggested we take a FREE tractor around the fairgrounds.

It was a great way to get an introduction to the fairgrounds.

We saw some cows,

sheep,

barns, 

and ponies too! 

Then we could wait no longer and we hurried to get a peak at our baked goods! 

Our Chocolate Peanut Butter Swirl cookies won 2nd place!

Our Snickerdoodles Delight cookies won a first place ribbon! Can you see how excited Jillian was?

Just to show that our blue and red ribbons were legit, I snapped a photo of some other place ribbons too! :-)

Our friend Micki submitted two prairie dresses and three bonnets that she made for the girls in three different categories! They all won 1st place ribbons!  

Our friend won many more ribbons in addition to these ribbons, and even won "Homemaker of the Year" award for all of her work!  Go Micki!!! 

After the excitement of finding out that we won :-), we enjoyed Puppetone Rockers in the children's section.  Also, while in the kids section, the girls submitted their reading lists for the summer and won a free drink, free ice-cream cone, and a free ride at the fair.  

We used our coupons for free lemonades from the Big Cheese! I bought us a grilled cheese sandwich as a little snack too! It was super yummy!

Then the girls and I went to the ice-cream shop to get the girls their FREE ice-cream cone.  I wanted to support and thank their business for their generosity, so I bought myself an ice-cream cone too!  Wasn't that sweet of me?   ;-)

While we were at the ice-cream shop, we ran into our friend Micki and she told me about one of her favorite fair shows....

The Magic of Agriculture!  

We sat with Micki and her kids for the show.  It was a very entertaining show...

we laughed at his funny antics,

and nearly cried too.  I felt so badly for him when his massive balloon accidentally popped, but thankfully he had another balloon, so we got to be entertained all over again! :-)

Then, we went in search of the perfect ride for each of the girls! Jillian chose Vertigo. 

We had great timing; we didn't have to wait in any line! Not only that, she got seated by a very sweet girl.  They immediately started talking with one another.

They both even smiled for my camera! 

In this photo, Jillian is in the seat to the immediate right of the yellow tower.

She loved every minute of the ride and was very pleased with her choice.  (In this photo, she is two seats to the left of the yellow tower!) 

Then Faith and Anna found a fun helicopter ride that they wanted to ride.

Faith most definitely could have handled a "scarier" ride than the helicopter, but she was very happy to take care of her little sister. (She is super nurturing and is my little mother hen.)

Anna was very excited to fly up in the air! 

My little helicopter pilots flew in a yellow helicopter!  

Then we took the bus to go back to the parking lot! It was a fun, memorable day at the fair!