Moving on...

We are moving back to Houston! Russell is being transferred (same company, different position/field) with an anticipated start date of December 1 (yes, we know it's very quick). We are excited to be moving closer to our families and Russell is very excited about the opportunities that this new job will offer for him professionally. We will miss the friends that we have made here, but thankfully, through the beauty of the internet, we'll still be able to keep in touch.

Right now, we're working steadily to get our house ready to go on the market and are tentatively planning a househunting trip for next week. For those of you unfamiliar with company relocation moves, let me explain a little bit. There is a specific process that we have to follow in order to receive full benefits (and believe me, we want to receive full benefits) so we have to do things a little bit differently than someone else who decided to move themselves. I'm thankful that this will not be our first company move, so I have an idea of what's ahead. It will however, be the first time trying to deal with marketing a house with 2 little boys!!! Russell has been assigned a relocation counselor who will help coordinate all aspects of our move. He is scheduled to talk with her tomorrow morning. Hopefully after that we'll have a better idea of our timeline and be able to move forward with plans. They will assign us a realtor in our desired area (right now, we're looking at the Spring/Woodlands area) and then we will set up our househunting trip. The good news for us is that we don't have to fly, don't have to book a hotel, don't have to rent a car, etc. Plus, we're going where there are built-in babysitters (who are VERY excited that we're coming!!) so Russell and I will be able to visit houses without the boys and hopefully be more efficient with our time. On this end, they will contact 2 Realtors who will make an appointment to come see the house and explain their marketing plan. Basically, it's a chance for them to try to convince us that we should list with them. They have to complete a Market Analysis and fill out some paperwork for our relo company and then (assuming that their suggested list prices are within a certain range of each other) we'll choose one and list the house. This usually takes about a week. If their numbers are too far apart they will assign a third realtor to come do the same thing and then figure out an acceptable range for us to list the house at using all 3 numbers. This could push it back another week (which is what happened when we moved from Sugar Land to New Orleans - we're going to request that they send 3 Realtors out initially to optimize our time.) We'll just have to take things one step at a time!

Pumpkins Galore!

I love the fall season and especially love decorating and doing things with pumpkins. When I was teaching, the fall/pumpkin/harvest themes were my favorite. Drew is finally old enough to do some fun stuff, so I jumped at the chance.

I found this adorable pumpkin craft online (can't remember where I first saw it now) and we had such fun!

Here's what you need...

Put the toilet paper roll in the middle of the fabric and tuck the edges inside

Roll the lunch sack up to form a stem

Twist a pipe cleaner around a marker to make a vine

They turned out so cute!

(For some reason I don't have a picture, but I'll get one)

My sister, Aunt Becca, came to visit for a week and she and Drew explored a pumpkin together. Drew wasn't too sure about actually touching anything, but once he had a spoon he was happy. He loved "opening" the pumpkin and can tell you that there are "seeds and strings" inside.

Then Drew and I did a fun project about the inside of the pumpkin. We didn't have any orange paint, so we worked in some color mixing lessons and made our own. Drew had a great time stirring up the paint.

Red + Yellow=Orange

Painting a paper plate

Drew was excited to get to squeeze the glue onto the plate

Gluing on yarn (pulp/"strings")

Carefully arranging the seeds

Our finished product!

Josh is 6 months old!

Josh is 6 months old! He is such a happy baby and we love having him as part of our family. This past month has been a big one for him from a developmental standpoint. After weeks of almost rolling over, he can flip over with ease now. In fact, almost as soon as you lay him on his back he's over onto his tummy pushing up and looking around. He's also started rolling over to sleep on his side or tummy. He can sit independently for several minutes and is getting more and more steady. We don't have any teeth yet, but I'm sure they're just below the surface waiting to pop. He puts everything he can get a hold of in his mouth (if babies learn by slobber he's a very well educated little boy!) His favorite chew toy seems to be his toes, he loves to get them up and into his mouth - oh to be that flexible. He had his first bites of cereal (although it didn't look like much more than runny milk) and did pretty well. He had his doctor's appointment on the 7th and he weighed 17 lbs., 1.5 oz (50%) and measured 27 inches long (50%). He eats 4 times a day (every 4 hours) and sleeps for about 11 hours at night (with a few whimpers during the night) plus 2 naps of about 1 1/2 hours (sometimes he still needs a little cat nap in the evening). Now onto the pictures...

(Dear FAMILY: If you're going to try to save and print any of the pictures yourself, click on the picture itself first (NOT right-click) and it will open it up as a bigger file. When the picture is up full screen, right-click on the picture and do "save picture as." Then you should be able to proceed as normal and hopefully that will get you better quality pictures when you get them printed.)

Other stuff

Here's some other stuff that we've been doing for the past few weeks. It's just a random assortment of pictures, but I know that the grandparents are starved for new pictures!

The boys playing "cars"

Cutie pie
Yummm, this tastes good...

Drew sliding down "all by self"

Josh chilling out in the stroller at the playground

I found a great site with lots of wonderful activities and printed off a few relating to the book "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" Drew really enjoyed them!

Matching heads and tails of the animals

Sequencing the animals from the book

Brown Bear size sequencing

A House Divided (Texas Tech vs. University of Houston)

Bubble goatee

Brothers

Josh can sit up now