Wildlife

So already we've met several wild animals at our new house--and not just squirrels like at our apartment. We'll start with the neighbor's weimaraner--a lovely dog named Maya. She sits outside the girls' windows on her patio or in her yard, and tends to bark at various animals. She has a lovely deep "woof" of a bark, that Talitha loves to hear. When Talitha hears Maya, her face lights up and she says "woof-woof" and points in the direction of her room, since that's where she can see her when we're in the house. However, since weimaraners are rather large dogs, the children are all afraid of her enthusiasm when they are near her chain-link fence between our yards. They all say they like her, but they can't be near her.

Maya's owners have been blessed with a pair of mallards lately. They decided to make a nest of five eggs between the neighbor's driveway and their house in a little strip of garden with bushes in it. This has increased Maya's barking lately, as she does not want Lady Mallard near her territory. Mister Mallard has been known to sit in the middle of the street in front of our house, not even moving for cars to pass, but taking ownership of the road. Lady Mallard is a favorite of our children when she is in our front yard in the morning taking her morning walk. Now the two ducks prefer to do their bathing in our other neighbor's pool-cover water, however they have not been seen in ours.

We had been blessed with our own mother bird in our back yard as well. A mama dove had made a nest after we moved in on the top of our hose-reel in the back yard, right under our bathroom window. She had laid 3 eggs in it, and tended it faithfully. When she wasn't sitting with the eggs she was on a power line watching us in the yard. This week, we saw two baby doves in it, and boy, were they big! When we showed the children that the eggs had hatched, we lingered too long, at a safe distance, and Mama Dove came to warn us to stay away from her babies. She was about two feet from Forest's face to let him know they were her birds and not his. Today they had gone from the nest, yesterday they had almost out-grown their tiny home, we assume they had grown enough to fly away some time last night or this morning.

Yesterday we met our first yard frog as well. He was a little gray frog sitting on some of our decking. When we noticed him, we thought it would be fun for the children to see him up close. Forest tried to pick him up, but he didn't want to be held, and he jumped. Hannah ran away shrieking saying "I don't like frogs, I don't" and Nathanael backed away with a terrified open-mouthed face complete with shivers saying he didn't like it either. Talitha was too young to have fear of the unknown yet, and wanted a closer look. When she reached out to touch the little guy and he jumped away from her, she got nervous though. When Forest picked him up Talitha was the only one of the three who would get within a foot of him. We decided the frog would like to be in water, so we put him in the huge puddle on our pool cover, and he swam around for a bit.

Lastly, today when Forest returned home from work early (thanks to Kentucky horse-racing events closing down the city) he discovered we had been blessed with a family of rabbits too, and didn't know it. However, it was a tragic discovery, as he found four dead bunnies in our yard. Some other animal had gotten to them. Thankfully the children were all still napping when he got home and found the poor little things, so we didn't have to explain that to them yet. We asked the neighbors what else they had seen in the area that could have done it, and they both said they've seen raccoons and opossum in their yards in the past, but they thought more likely it was a cat that got to them since they were left in our yard.

The kids have been loving getting to know all the animals in our back yard and around our neighborhood. However, none of them really care for the worms. We look forward to meeting the next creature that comes to our yard--unless it's just mosquitoes.

Hide and Seek

So our new house has provided the opportunity to play hide-and-seek better with the added space. Nathanael and Hannah count together while keeping Talitha with them and then they try to find where Daddy is hiding. Forest has found a couple places the kids can't find him yet. Eventually they will discover where it is that he hides when they can't find him.

Usually when it's the kids' turn to hide, Forest counts with Talitha and she tries to find her brother and sister. Nathanael is getting better at hiding well. He'll go into a closet, or tuck himself into his Thomas futon. Or the other night, he burried himself in the couch pillows:

Hannah is still learning the concept of hiding well. She still thinks that if she can't see you, then you must not be able to see her:

Talitha just enjoys getting to run around the house and feels all proud of herself when she finds her big brother and sister. Oh, and she loves to dress up and is getting good at walking in heels. Here she is complete with mis-matched heels, sleves, and necklace:

Chores

So far the children love to help around the house with chores. Laura is hoping to keep up the trend as long as possible.

Talitha loves helping set the table by putting forks on it, though she can barely reach. She's really good at putting dirty clothes in the hampers though. Hopefully with her help, we'll never have mis-matched socks.

Hannah likes to help set the table as well. She's tall enough to help get the plates in their proper places. She also likes to help scrub their little table in the kitchen off after meals.

Nathanael has a bit of a bigger load, being the oldest. He is now responsible for putting away his own clothes. Laura still folds them, he just has to put them in their proper places. He also takes his dirty dishes to the sink after meals. He likes to help with the recycling--taking the cardboard and plastics from inside to the outside bins. Lately he's been helping Laura with the laundry too. While the girls are napping and Laura sorts and loads the machines, he'll come down and help. He's learning to sort clothes and can help put them in the washer. Today he said, "I know this one is called the dryer because it dries the clothes. That one can be the 'wetter' because it gets the clothes wet!" He really likes watching the detergent make bubbles in the water as it fills before there are too many clothes in it.

We'll see how long chores and helping around the house seems fun to the little ones.

Our House!

Wow, becoming a homeowner is a stressful, unpredictable ordeal. We finally moved into our first home March 27th, the day before Laura's birthday. That's got to be the most expensive birthday gift anyone has ever gotten, we joke. Some friends of ours told us they were needing to sell their house quickly in order to move to Georgia to pastor a new church--this happened before the end of last year. Forest went to see it one Sunday afternoon, Laura and the kids stopped by the next day, and by the end of the week it had all been settled, at least verbally, that we would be purchasing their home. It is a large home, with four bedrooms, a finished basement, huge garage, and a pool in the fenced back yard (it's child-proofed with an excellent deck that the children cannot access without an adult).

We knew it would take a while to work things out, but never thought it would take nearly four months. The Lord does provide though, and we have been so grateful for all the help we've had along the way. The best part is thinking this is our home for the next ? years--not just for a year, or six months, or just until we're done with school. This is our home, where our children are going to grow up. They have been great at adjusting to the move, the new place, the new rules, all of it, but they'll not have to do it again.

For Forest it's a little more real than for Laura, especially since he did the walk-through with the landlord. When he handed over the keys, and received the deposit check back, he knew he was not a renter any more! He grew up in one house in Florida and loved it. He is excited about being able to give that to our children also.

Now Laura came from an Air Force family, so moving, while still not fun, is something she's used to. In fact, since they have been married, Forest and Laura have lived in six homes now, and three of those just in Louisville. So, for Laura, the being settled feeling hasn't come yet, maybe it will come when the boxes are either all unpacked or at least stored properly, rather than just piled out of the way waiting to be unpacked or stored. However, already for some strange reason, the housework is more enjoyable.

There is still a lot of work to do, with all the unpacking, and painting to finish. Eventually we would like to change things to fit our family a little better (Laura's really looking forward to a laundry chute from the bathroom to the laundry room). But for right now just being in a home that is twice the size of our old apartment with a fenced back yard for the children is a huge blessing to our family.