Our New Nest

Just came across the picture of the (vacated) nest we found in the yard as we were clearing out some weeds. What a nice way to be welcomed to our new nest by finding this one!

Throwing in the trowel...

"Gardening requires lots of water - 

most of it in the form of perspiration."  

~Lou Erickson~

Okay.  Guilty! We did it. We caved and hired a crew to come & get our yard into shape. It took exactly 8 days for us to admit that we were way in over our heads with all the overgrown plants, shrubs, trees & flowers and that they would quickly strangle us like stinkweed if we didn't bring in the pros. As I type, I can hear the whizzz and whirrrr of mowers, trimmers, weed-whackers and pure manpower drifting up from the yard.  They've been at it for 5 hours now and are about half-way to "that will do."  I have no doubt it will take months to get our yard into a place we can truly enjoy and years to get it to the yard and gardens of our dreams.  So, this is me admitting defeat - although feeling quite proud of myself for knowing when it was for me to wave the white flag.  In the end, I think we'll be much happier with the yard if we get to know it in small steps, over time.  There's a good chance I would be taking the first bus back to the city if it was me out there right now tangled up in poison ivy.  
I will share little Josie putting her green thumb to work in the planters on the porch with some of the flowers leftover from her visit to Chicago.  

And I must say here that my parents get huge gold stars for their two days of trying to whip our yard into shape.  You know it was a big project if even the two of them could only put a dent in it!  (Thanks for all your help mom & dad!)

You GOTTA see this!

Head on over to my sister's blog for the photos of Josephine & Lyla the weekend that we were in Madison. Enjoy!

http://threeaustins.blogspot.com/2010/06/lyla-josie-forever.html

New home quotes & update

And now for a heart-breaker:
Josie to me a few days before we moved: "Mom, how long do we have to live at our new house before we get to come back home?"

I'm pleased to report that she is starting to feel more and more at home here (as we all are).  We're working through some kinks (*finally* got some WD-40 on the super-squeaky bedroom door that has woken her up every night so far) and we've met a few of our neighbors (did I mention the twin three-year old girls next door and the self-proclaimed "cookie lady" across the street?).  All in all, we're getting settled.  My home office is slowly but surely taking shape, and we'll definitely have a guest room in place by the end of the month (hint, hint).  That said, we still don't have a kitchen table, but our Phish stools are serving us just fine at the moment. Oh and Louie & I still don't have real sheets on our bed, but at least I finally found my own underwear and only had to wear Lou's boxers for two days.

One more thing: Many of you have asked for our new address, which I will happily share by email but don't want to post here or on facebook for security reasons. And, rest assured that there are "We've Moved" cards on their way from Shutterfly coming soon to everyone on our holiday card list. :)

I'll leave you with a couple pics of Josie thoroughly-enjoying her new front porch (which is quickly becoming my favorite thing as well).  Here she is waving down to me from the porch & enjoying some homemade banana bread with one of her favorite furry friends (with the box she converted to a playhouse with Carissa, doubling as a table here).

Big Squirt!

I found my camera bag with all my cables! Woo-hoo! That means more photos are coming soon!  Here are a couple from Josephine's first hours at the new house.  As some of you know, the whole reason this child even wanted a yard was so she could do a "big squirt" with a hose & sprinkler. So, before we even moved in a single box, we set up the sprinkler in the yard to make Josie's wish come true.  Does it get any more "summertime" than this?

Lyla & Josie

While Tia is busy working away on uploading the pictures of Josie & Lyla to her blog, I'll share the one I was able to catch of the two of them before we left for Madison.  It's pretty hilarious how many of the same clothes the girls ended up with, even though there's a few states between them.

I think I'm gonna like it here...

Since posting pictures of our actual house requires me to know where some missing cables are, I'm going to have to just stick with things already available online.  So, I've got a new song stuck in my head today.  I'm not kidding, I've been belting this out all morning.  (Now, if I just had a full staff like Daddy Warbucks, we'd be all good!)

"thank you for my new home"

So there's this song on Josie's favorite show Word World that always gets stuck in our heads.  Duck helps Caterpillar find a new place to live. And whenever he tries a new house he sings this really sweet "thank you for my new home" song. And the three of us have been singing our own versions of the song all weekend. Anyway, that's the long way of saying that we are in our new house. And we're madly in love with it.  Josie has been wonderful. I'd say she's about 90% happy with the move.  (Last night as I was putting her to bed she said "this place doesn't have a long hallway so we have to move back to the condo."  She got close to tears, but quickly recovered as I switched her focus to the birds outside the window "saying good-night.")
I promise we'll post pictures soon. As you can imagine, it's a little insane trying to dig ourselves out from under all the boxes! 
**Special thanks to everyone who helped us out with the move - especially my mom & dad who did everything from keeping Josie in Xenia to helping us pack & unpack and lots of sweaty odd-jobs here at the new house. We are so grateful. **

Update

In the interest of full disclosure...we are moving tomorrow and we still have not packed a single box. That's right folks. Not.a.single.solitary.box.
In other news, Josie spent Memorial Day weekend in Chicago with Tia, Tio, Lyla, Grandma & DD while Lou & I went to Molly & Dave's wedding, where we also got to hang out with Cat & Brandon. (I know. How lucky are we?!)  There will be lots of pics soon at www.threeaustins.blogspot.com and I promise there are some really good ones. So, head on over there!
We close on our house tomorrow morning and will likely be sans-technology until at least Monday.  If you get a minute over the weekend, send us some extra patience, strength, super-human powers or whatever you got.  I think we're gonna need it! 
(The next post will be from our new house! And we'll be sending out notecards soon with our new address, so keep your eye out for those.)

It's the final countdown!

(um, we're actually down to 9 days...and.still.not.a.single.box.packed.)

(at the moment, the only point the supplies are serving is to entertain miss josie. and this is the only point they will continue to serve until we are back from our trip to madison, wisc on tuesday. one of our favorite people in the world is getting married & nothing will prevent us from missing that...especially not a measly stack of empty boxes.)

One more (I think!?)

I think this will be the last St. Thomas post.  These are the photos from my "little camera" and I just realized they contain some gems. So, here ya go. Enjoy!

Oh holy iguanas! These guys were everywhere! In the grass, in the trees, at the pool, in the pool. (And to think we thought it was something special when we saw two dogs barking at a iguana on our drive in from the airport. We had no idea we'd see about 10,00 more in the next five days.)  And, did I mention they're huge!  Those are ducks people - and this thing dwarfs them!

Here are some photos from the iguana-feeding at our hotel. Josie got a huge kick out of this and then uttered the words every parent (and nanny) fears: "I want an iguana for my birthday!"

A few more from the beach -

Another of my favorite vacation memories - Josie took a nap on the beach. We laid down together and she totally passed out. (This is so out-of-character for her!!!) She slept under that palm tree for over two hours - and no one dared to bother her.

Look closely - they even had a WEDDING right there under that tree while she slept away. Hilarious!

Here are Louie & I on our "night out" trying to do that thing where we take a picture of ourselves (after a few too many rum-runners).

And finally - Josie "driving" the car on the ferry back to St. Thomas from St. John - which was funny until she actually turned the ignition. (oops.)

So, as this is likely the last St. Thomas-related post. BIG, BIG, BIG, BIG thanks are in order for Carissa & Lisa for sharing their vacation with us! Josie had the time of her life & it was so wonderful for Lou & I to get some time to spend together.  We love you so much. You are our family. Forever.

Final Hours on the Island

We didn't leave St. Thomas until 5 pm on Tuesday, which gave us one whole day on the beach and at the pool before we had to leave. (Bonus!) Here are the photos from our last hours on the island.

Final shots from the plane ride home

NOTE: CLICK ON "OLDER POSTS" BELOW FOR THE REST OF THE PICTURES. IT BUMPED THEM FOR SOME (incredibly frustrating) REASON.