A Whirlwind of New Beginnings

In retrospect, I wish I had been able to chronicle our journey as we moved, but I will admit it was a crazy, busy time!   But I am thankful I am finally getting the chance to give you a little glimpse into our month of September now.

Four days after we returned home from Solomons Island, our church had the grand opening of its new building. Brad and Anna were sick that weekend,  but I was glad to get this picture of the older girls with Aunt Michelle's huge replica cake of the church! 

The day after that was the first day of Adventure Club.  We took this picture with our friends (who are homeschooling for this first time this year) after club.  

Faith really enjoyed her Oceanography class in Adventure Club, this was her first craft of a starfish.

I took this photo of little Anna all ready for her preschool class at Adventure Club. She loves her teacher, she calls her "my really nice friend"! 

And only two weeks after all of that, we closed on our house! Believe it or not, it was far less chaotic than I could have ever hoped for.  God by His amazing grace always gave us exactly what we needed every step of the way.  My amazing friend Micki came over several days to help me pack (and was a complete super woman), and our entire Care Group came over the night before the big move to help with the last tid-bits of moving. We finished it all in 45 minutes and then went to Bruster's for ice-cream.   :-) 

We didn't move in immediately after closing, we gave ourselves a week to paint three rooms (with Brad's dad's amazing skills), do some cleaning and little repairs before we moved in the following Saturday. Here the girls are sitting in the study, their future school room! Hooray!  

The day after closing, Faith went to her friend Noa's (from VBS this summer) super hero birthday party! It was super cute with home-made capes, masks, and a obstacle course too.  Then in the afternoon, we put together the guest room for Brad's parents who were arriving that night to help us!!! Finally that evening, we enjoyed one of our meal Aunt Michelle made for us (to help us get settled into our new house) on our "new"Amish dining table!

The former owners, friends from our church left us a bottle of sparkling cider to help us celebrate our new home. And Aunt Michelle brought us over five caramel apples (some are already missing from this photo) and Capri Suns! 

Also, the day after we closed on the house (a Friday), I found a garage sale on-line that had a lawnmower for sale.  We scored this barely used (but not fancy) lawnmower for $30!   The girls were so excited for Brad to have his own lawn-mover, all three of them followed their daddy while he moved the lawn.  

I realize all my captions are so random in this post, but my hearts is flooding with gratitude as I look at these photos again!  Thanks for sharing in our excitement with us! 

Solomons Island- Day 3

After our fiasco the morning before,  the guys decided that they would be in charge of breakfast!! 

They chose to buy donuts from Donut Connection

much to the delight of the kids! 

We enjoyed one more look at the water!

And then we said our good-byes to our friends and to Solomons Island. 

Solomons Island- Day 2

The next morning, Katie and I attempted to make a nice breakfast for our families.

It didn't turn out as we had hoped, the bacon was burned and the eggs smelled so strangely that they ended up in the trash. :-( 
Thankfully, all the girls were content with grapes and frozen waffles.

There weren't too many frozen waffles, so I decided to cook up some pancakes (in the wrong kind of pan).

They were not the fluffy kind of pancakes that we normally enjoy eating at our house, but they were edible and tasty enough.  

Brad played Richard Scarry's Busy Town game with the kids (much to their delight).

This was the pretty view from our bedroom. 

This was our specious "cottage"! There were three bedrooms upstairs with a bathroom and two bedrooms and another bathroom downstairs.  It was great for our two families!

After breakfast, our family did a little exploring on our own of Solomons Island while Brielle took a nap.

 It was so calm and peaceful.

We saw the Rachel Carson research boat for the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory.

And then we were given the opportunity to visit the CLOSED Solomon's House!   We saw a friendly local lady as we were walking around the pier and she invited us in for a visit.

We had a special tour and saw some pretty neat crabs and learned a lot about the need to protect oysters in the bay! 

Back outside,  we read about the War of 1812 on the Chesapeake.  It was a good introduction to the significant war in Maryland's history. (Shortly after our trip, we read the Caroline American Girl book collection.  The girls and I really enjoyed it.)

Then, we went to the Calvert Marine Museum to meet our friends.

First, we went digging in sand for treasures.  Each child was able to take one "treasure" home and  they had specialists on hand to help us identify what fossil or shell we had found!  

Then, the girls did their favorite thing of all...DRESSING UP! 

I didn't do much dressing up as a little girl but I love that my girls have so much fun doing it! 

They really appreciate history and enjoy pretending that they are living in another place and time.

Anna enjoy "reading" (looking at the pictures) a book at the bottom of the lighthouse.

The kids even went on a sail boat ride while we were there. :-)

It was a great museum with a 35 ft skeletal restoration of the extinct Miocene giant white shark!

Anna enjoyed viewing the fossil preparation lab.

We all had the opportunity to touch different marine life too!

We decided NOT to touch the sting ray but they were really neat too!

We had a beautiful view of the lighthouse from next to the river otters.

The river otters were extremely active and fun to watch.  This photo was a little boring, but it was hard for me to get a photo of them without it being blurry. :-)

Then it was our turn to go explore a real-life lighthouse ourselves.

It was beautifully restored and included many furnishings from the early 1900's,

including one of the first telephones!!

After our lighthouse adventure, we went to the beach.  

Adam and his mom created a scavenger hunt for the girls.  "X" marked the spot and Jillian found the prize star! 

The water was perfect.

Little Anna and I had so much fun practicing her kicking together! 

Then, that evening, we had a taco dinner and celebrated upcoming birthdays! 

We sang "Happy Birthday" to Jillian, me, and Faith! Faith especially was delighted by all the special attention and all the treats.

Then, we went to the back deck to enjoy popsicles 

and to admire the sunset.

That evening, we ate popcorn and played some Bohnanza ("To bean or not to bean") with our friends. It was a wonderful, relaxing trip with our friends.