Product Reviewing Coming Soon!

As I said in my last post, we are moving to a new house in now, about 10 days? Whew! Big J has been doing great with the packing and we got about 30 more boxes today so we're moving along nicely now as we get this show on the road.

Another feature of our new house new to the Bowling Team will be stairs. Our kids have been on Grammy and Papa's stairs but that's about it. So we are going to be ordering this gate and putting it at the top of the stairs.

I am ordering it from CSN stores and we're super excited because that's a website with free shipping! CSN stores have everything from furniture to rugs and kitchen things--even Corelle dishes! Very useful when you figure it is heavy-ish. It's funny because the gate has a little cat door in it. We don't have a cat, but we do have little kids who are mechanically inclined and the main gate fastener looks a lot like the ones on the church nursery gates that Princess Baby and Mr. Boy cannot open.

I'm going to post pictures and write a review of our new gate from CSN Stores as soon as we are moved and have it installed!

Boxes, Boxes Everywhere

The Bowling Team is relocating! Not far, just about 1 mile.

We are thrilled to be getting a new house! Our current little home served us nicely for our first place in the Sunflower State but we are blessed to be able to upgrade this year.

Our new house was built fairly recently and has the following features we do not enjoy in our current place:
a garage
2 full bathrooms
bigger bedrooms
electric fireplace
lawn care provided by management company (Big J LOVES this one)
free use of a private community swimming pool

That's quite a change for the positive!

We will be experimenting with sleeping arrangements. Our new house has an open floor plan on the ground floor, so even though it is bigger than our current living space, there is not a separate playroom space to house Princess Baby and Mr. Boy's TV, their kitchen, table and chairs, and mountains of toys. So the current plan will be for the tykes to share a bedroom and use our 3rd room as a playroom. I think it will work, since they're the best of friends. It's not an arrangement that is impossible to change if it is too big of a challenge for sleeping, but the idea is worth a shot! Late night giggling will probably happen, but that is OK by Mama--they might sleep later the next morning!

Princess Baby

Our pretty little Princess Baby is a big 2 year old girl now! (No I'm not changing her name.)

PB celebrated her 2nd birthday in May with a fantastic Princess Party with all her little Sunday school friends and some grown up family and friends, too.

Her favorite person in the entire world is Mr. Boy and they play together all day long, running and giggling and talking all throughout the house. It is a wonder she doesn't conk out on the couch more often as much as those two play!

She is quite the little girly girl. Princess Baby loves to have her hair fixed, wear pretty skirts and dresses, play with her babies, and look in the mirror. Big J has a big affection for looking in the mirror, too, so Mama thinks that PB is a chip off the old block where that is concerned!

PB also loves to sing--just yesterday Mama caught her standing in front of a full length mirror spinning and singing her favorite songs "Old Donald" and her ABC's. She wakes up chatting and goes to sleep grinning and saying "See you later, Mommy!"

Mr. Boy

Mr. Boy is now a happy, healthy 3 1/2 years old. He's a ray of sunshine as bright as the curls on his head and he has been busy growing and changing the past 6 months. We have learned that Mr. Boy may be a member of the Asperger's Syndrome club, and we've got a super nice Miss Teacher who comes to our house once a week to play games and help Mr. Boy get ready for preschool in the fall. He has some doctors and special helpers to visit with in August and September to help us learn more about how to help Mr. Boy use his Great Brain and enthusiasm to his best advantages.

Things Mr. Boy is currently loving:

swimming! He took swimming lessons with Papa at the pool for 2 weeks and graduated with a certificate full of stickers and a coupon for a free pizza.

cookbooks! Mr. Boy loves to find a type of book he likes and indulge--he is currently obsessed with looking at Mama's Sandra Lee and Pampered Chef cookbooks and has all the pictures memorized by the recipe titles. His favorite picture is of the Tamale Pie in the Sandra Lee book.

Presidents! We have a book with pictures of the presidents and Mr. Boy loves to read through it and tell us who each picture represents. Millard Fillmore is a favorite but with his little guy way of talking, it sounds more like Miwward Fiwwmowe. But we know who he's talking about!

Tigers! Mr. Boy loves books that have pictures of tigers, a DVD we have about Swamp Tigers and the tigers in the movie 'Kung Fu Panda'.

Mr. Boy is planning to join a pre-school class 2 mornings a week in September and it is going to be a whole new world of making friends and learning in a new environment.

Update on the Team Captains

Mama and Big J have been busy helming the Bowling Team lately but we've had some time to get more settled, too.

Big J had a nice break from his job for a few months during the slow business months and we all got spoiled rotten having him home--could be why Mama let the blog get ignored?

Now Big J is back to work and we are enjoying the return to our 'real routine.'

Mama has joined the DAR and the missions committee at church to give her some outside projects that aren't career or kid related. The two groups meet often enough to make friends, but not so much that it is a stress to be involved--perfect!

Now that the kids are bigger and older, Mama has had a little more time in the kitchen, rediscovering the love of entertaining she had before Mr. Boy-related morning sickness kicked in about 4 years ago. We had an Asian-themed Father's Day dinner for Papa and Big J in June and last weekend Mama channeled her inner Martha and hosted a tea party for Grammy and her friends. Check out the yummy goods!

what have we missed?

Gonna try to hit a few highlights of the past un-blogged months here.

So here we go!

Christmas 2009 was our first Kansas Christmas and it was super. We had about 2 feet of snow and it was bitter cold, but Aunt Haley and Uncle Mike came from North Carolina, Uncle Raymond from Seattle, and we had a really fun week of celebrations.

The kids got a new kitchen! It was a big hit, and Princess Baby got a new dolly which was a favorite surprise, too.

We didn't do much by way of vacation this year but we did spend a fantastic day in Wichita on Good Friday with our cousins there. Princess Baby and Mr. Boy especially loved the Children's Exploration Place museum where everything was touchable and there was a special Mr. Potato head exhibit the kids loved.


We also celebrated a very happy Easter here for the 2nd year in a row! Easter is such a wonderful time of year both as it relates to our faith in God and as the earth wakes up from a winter nap! Easter egg hunts at church and at Grammy and Papa's back yard were conducted in full sunshine!

Time for a Revival of the Team Blog!

Whew, I last posted around Thanksgiving. That's certainly lame, isn't it?

What has happened since then? About 11 billion things, give or take.

But the team is doing excellent, as a group and individually.

We passed our Sunflower State 1 year residency anniversary back in April. That first year flew by super quick. But moving here was a really great decision and we're so happy it has worked out so well.

A great blessing, to be sure.

The blog needs a revival so that I can get my act together and share more of the day to day cuteness, hilarity, and joys we as a team experience together!

I think it would be a self-set up for failure to promise a post a day but 3 a week is my minimum goal.