Our new house!

We.

Bought.

A.

HOUSE!!!!!!!

Isn't it pretty?!?

It seems as if we've looked at every house for sale in New Hampshire!  Over the past month we have looked at zillions of houses...  Every night we would search online, our Relator would take us out a few times a week for an "all-day-looking-at-houses" event, every Sunday we'd google open houses and drag the kids from house to house.  I'm SO HAPPY this part is all over!


AND....  I'm glad we held out until we found this house!  I think it's perfect.  I really like it.

It is on 2.5 acres... See the big field in the front yard?  I want a goat and chickens.  :)

It has a pond on the other side of the driveway ...not too close to the house, but still somewhere to catch frogs and fish and stick a paddleboat.

It's next to some conservation land (forest).

It has a huge heated garage, a big carport, and a shed...

It has a sun room and a screen walled room called a "three-seasons room"...

It has two living rooms, one for the kids and one for the grown ups to escape...

It has two fireplaces ...one is in the Master Bedroom which also has two walk in closets, a "dressing area", and a loft.

It has a fully finished attic that the kids are already arguing over.  It also has two other very big bedrooms.  Someone is sharing...  :)

It has a big kitchen with a huge eat at island .  OUUU...  and I just remembered!!!  It has a dumb-waiter to pull the groceries up from the garage!  :)

It has an actual mud room in the garage!

It has a fun doorbell that involves big long pipe looking things...

It has a dining room that needs a tiny wall removed, but I've accepted that the man I married will not be happy until he has successfully removed a wall from a house.  I'm a little scared, but he has several "home improvement" projects planned.  :)

It's a big house and I'm sure our family will fit in it just right!  :)

We move in June 4th!!

Go CUBS!!!

I love T-Ball!  I can't believe I almost missed this part of life by living in the baseball-free zone of Europe!  AND a special thanks to Kelly's husband, Matt,  for taking Scotty out in his yard a few days before we moved here.  Matt started throwing a ball to my son who was wielding a bat and little Scotty starting hitting home runs, seems like he is a natural!    (PS.  My blog.  My permission to brag shamelessly... Facebook or Blog and I pick Blog...  then I can print my "brags" into a book one day...)

Here is also where I have to tell the famous story of me being the only girl on a baseball team when I was younger.  When the boys would make fun of me, the coach would have us line up, race across the field and I'd beat all of them ...then they couldn't make fun of me.  :)  Scotty obviously gets his athletic ability from me.  :)

He's number 15...  See his big perfect throw?  :)

Adorable?  Yes, I know... thank you!

Here are T-Ball rules:  they don't keep score, you swing until you hit,  you can only run one base at a time, and nobody ever gets out ...but it's great fun to watch!

...okay, it's great fun to watch while your kid is the one actually playing.  Honestly it's 85 minutes of being bored and five minutes of frantic cheering.  :)  Watching small children try to hit and catch a ball does have it's amusing moments though.

AND... Scotty did so good on his first game that he was given the game ball!  So of course, like the supportive mommy I am, I rushed out the next day and we bought a case for it.  :)

It's happened...

I am a mini-van mom ...sliding doors and all.

HOWEVER ...I'm a cool mini-van mom because I can push a button to make the doors slide open and close.  :)

(In my mind I've never owned a mini van.  A mini van has to have cheesy sliding doors and I've never owned a sliding door car.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

Anyways, when we moved to Denmark five years ago we couldn't bear to part with our trusty, blue 98 Honda Odyssey.  It was our favorite little car so we kept him safe and sound at my grandma's house where my Uncle loved him for us; washing him off every now and then and replacing a battery or two.  :)  We drove him during our three weeks in California every year.  What a good, patient, little car.  :)

SO ...when we moved to New Hampshire we had him shipped out from California to meet us here...  He enjoyed the trip and was happy to be with us full time; one of the family again.  :)

Our trusty little blue Honda was getting lonely though so we bought him a red friend to hang out with in the driveway, an updated version of himself  ...one with a sunroof, 15 cup holders, and fun seats that move all over.  The kids think it's great and so do I.  It's huge!  I can fit our whole family AND all the soccer and T-ball equipment we need every Saturday morning.  :)

No, the blue Honda hasn't become "Paul's car".  Happy has found a special car for himself ...in California ...so we are shipping that one out too.  :)  Soon the two little Hondas can hang out with an Audi of some sort.  I hope they play nice.

We do realize that this now means our family of two drivers will now own three cars.  The blue Honda will hang out in the driveway and if Michaela plays her cards right she could be the coolest 16 year old cruising around New Hampshire in a vintage automobile!  

Cape Cod Kids!

So on the spring break the kids had we went to Cape Cod ...the place us cool people living in New Hampshire like to refer to as, "The Cape".  :)  ...and while in "The Cape" one must visit the Cape Cod potato chip factory.  So we did, and it was good.

We traveled with the only other family we know here in NH, a friend Paul has had since college.  His friend thankfully has two girls and Sierra and their oldest have been inseparable within seconds of our arrival here.  I am sure this accounts for 80% of Sierra's happiness here in NH.

While on "The Cape", we stayed at The Cape Codder of course...  it's a hotel with a big wave pool in the middle.  We swam in the morning after breakfast and in the evening after dinner and during the day we drug the water-logged, wrinkled kids out on little trips to Main Street and the beach and the chip factory.  It was fun to get away and now we have officially been to Massachusetts.

I had decided that driving through Massachusetts on the way somewhere didn't count as visiting.  We are about twenty minutes to the border, but I think anywhere in New Hampshire is 20 minutes to a border.  It's a teeny tiny state.

PS.  In case anyone is wondering ...there is a rule on what places you can count as "having visited"...  You have to sleep there.  If you didn't sleep there, you just passed through and it doesn't count.  Sorry.

Here are our purple toes. (Me, KE, Pooz) Andrea is obsessed with purple...  reminds me of a Little Bear that once wore all purple to her purple decorated party where she had a purple cake and purple presents that were wrapped in purple paper.

Look Papa!  We went to Craigville Beach and played in the sand and thought of you!  It was so windy and freezing cold so we had our picnic in the car.  :)  I forgot to get some sand for my collection so we will take you back there when you come visit us!

Here's another new thing I've never seen before.  :)  It's a SWIMSUIT WATER EXTRACTOR!!  Stick your dripping wet swimming suit in, close the lid, and it spins it like a little centrifuge. Very cute, but very useless.

PROOF: USA is the nicest country on earth.

I found this sign at the library.  It says, "Interpretation Services Available".

Then it says, "Point to your language.  An interpreter will be called.  The interpreter is provided at no cost to you."

It is written in Arabic, Armenian, Hindi, German, Korean, Russian, Portuguese, Thai....  it is written in 20 different languages!!  I do wonder if someone would actually show up able to speak every language, but I'm sure a phone call could be made

...but, who knows, maybe they do have a back room full of 20 interpreters just waiting to speak to someone. After all, it is America, and America is awesome like that!  :)

HA!  Thinking back now, I should have pointed to the German to see what would happen.  :)  Maybe I will try that next time.

Jug Handle on IN!

I'm having trouble finding things to write about... and I'm sure this blog will become more about my normal life with four kids doing normal kid things.  Pretty soon Nana and Grammas will be the only ones who read it.  :)

Anyways I realized I do have things to share about New Hampshire...  like this sign! 

There is a main road here (that leads to Target) and along the way if you want to turn left at a light you actually have to "exit" the road onto what they call a "jug handle" because the road looks like a jug handle attached to the milk carton of a road.  Weird.  

So to turn left, you exit the main road to the right, go around a corner, and come to another stop light.  At that point you can go straight, completing your left hand turn, or turn left, the equivalent of a U-turn to go back around onto the same road.  

I guess it avoids having a left hand turn lane on a road that doesn't have room for one, but I haven't decided if I like it, but at least now I can remember where they are so I don't approach the stop light in the left turn lane and get irritated when I realize too late that I should have "jug handled in" to the right.  :)

Okay, I just noticed this...  The Jug Handles are numbered.  They really are like exits.  Weird.  The one in the picture is Jug Handle 2W (west).  I saw one on the other side of the road today and it was 1E.  HA!!  :)