Guess what. Another move.

But I'm so excited about this one!

Don't get me wrong, we've been so blessed to live here. Paying less in our monthly expenses definitely came at the right time. But now it's time to expand and breath a little easier. We're looking forward to stretching our legs.

The apartment that Uncle Richard is building is still being built, with no real set date for completion. In the meantime, Nate and I decided to give his parents back their great room. It will be better for everyone - I know that Rick misses his awesome TV that we've been enjoying for the last (wait for it) nine months.

Our friends Dave and Tiffani (Dave is the guy I've mentioned before who introduced Nate and I, not once but twice, and they owned this house) have a separate residence on their property and we'll be moving in the second weekend of September.

As we lead up to that, I'm praying that this move is like any other move under the sun, and nothing whatsoever like the last move we made, which took about a month and a half to complete. It was absolutely ridiculous and terribly difficult on Nate. We need this transition to go smoothly and quickly. I have to work both days we're moving (don't judge, we can't go without my paycheck), but I'll be home by about 11:30a.m. - it's obviously not ideal, but we're going to make it work. If you're up for it, we won't say no to help with the move.

Our little family of four will be house-sitting for Uncle Richard from August 27-September 13 (a Saturday to a Tuesday). Each day we're house-sitting, the girls and I will return to the great room to pack. The girls will be able to play and nap like usual, but I'll be working like a mad woman to pack everything up. Since we're not even staying here at the time, we'll have what we need most immediately with us, which gives me the ability to pack literally everything in the great room.

So I'll spend the first two weeks of house-sitting packing. (I'm not packing before we leave for house-sitting because there is absolutely nowhere to put any boxes. Our space is too small, the garage is Rick's shop.) And then we'll move September 10-11, and I'll spend the next couple days setting up our house before we have to actually take residence. I'm super super excited. Here are some pictures:

The Garage:
The garage is huge. So big, in fact, that we'll be letting go of our storage unit. We'll move most of our stuff into our house (yippee!), but the stuff we don't want in there will be easily stored in the ginormous garage. Where you see Nate and Dave standing is the doorway to the outside. It lets into a "mudroom" of sorts. My car will pull in right next to them. There is enough room where they're standing for both the front and back passenger doors to open fully.

This is at the head of where my car is going to be parked. That space next to the water heater is a good amount of room - I'll be storing the girls' clothes and necessities in this nook. Along the wall to the left of all the equipment, we'll place the fridge that is currently in the apartment (replacing it with ours) and our chest freezer. I am stoked for the extra cold storage.

Nate's business stuff will sit to the right of my car (from this perspective). It will take up the front half of the garage, while our household storage stuff will take up the back half. Hopefully less...

This is the half-bath off the "mudroom."

The open door leads out to the mudroom and then outside. Nate and Dave are standing in more of our living room. The kitchen is to the right, I'm standing in the dining nook, Nate is standing where the coffee chair will go with a lamp, and Dave is standing in front of where the couch will be.

 I think the TV will be in the corner behind Dave, or under the stairs. We'll stick a chest in whichever space the TV isn't using, and that will hold the girls' toys. We have some other random furniture we'll fit in the living room space also.

 The apartment has an interesting history. Dave's mom is a chef, so when they decided to build a garage for their property, they decided to use half of it as an industrial kitchen, thus the brightly tiled floor and stainless steel backsplash. The upstairs they built into an apartment for their second daughter, her husband, and their four girls. When the kitchen was removed, the SIL cut a hole in the floor and built these stairs to lead down to the abandoned kitchen. Everything upstairs shifted around so that the kitchen moved downstairs, along with their living space.

 This is what I lovingly refer to as the kitchen "nook." I love nooks. They can make a space so cozy and friendly. I'm not sure what I'll finally end up doing in this space, but I'm imagining our dining room table slid back into that corner between the fridge and window, with our blue loveseat underneath the window and some sort of shelf to the right of that. Don't you fret - it'll look lovely. And you'll agree with me in the end that nooks are the best.

 These stairs are solidly built, but narrow. I imagined all sorts of accidents when I first saw them, but Dave assured me that in all the years people have been going up and down them, no one has ever been hurt. They have such a tight curve to them that you might fall a step or two, maximum, before coming nose to nose with the spindles.

 Upstairs looking down.

 This is the upstairs landing. Look, it's another nook! I'll do something cozy here, too. The door frame you're seeing is where I'll put the first baby gate. I'll use it to block the stairs when we're upstairs doing stuff but I want the girls to have access to the playroom, which is to the right (of the light switch).

 Playroom. It's doorless, so it can't be an office for Nate - he'd hear absolutely everything going on downstairs. Noise carries super well up those stairs.

 This is the view looking from the window back to where I was just standing. The stairs are to the right; that doorway on the left leads down the hall to the bedrooms, laundry space, and bathroom. That door frame is where I'll put the second baby gate, which I'll use when I'm downstairs and I want to allow the girls in the playroom but not down the hall.

 View from the playroom. With music lessons in their music room, students come and go regularly. I'll have to park in the garage and Nate will park in front of his trailer farther down the levels of parking (out of sight in this picture).

 Looking from the top of the stairs down the hall and all the way to our room.

 I walked down the hall and turned around to show you the doorway that leads toward the stairs. The girls room is just to the left of that door frame, and the bathroom is to the left of the girls. The curtain on the far left edge of the picture is where the laundry machines will be.

 The itsy bitsy room for the girls.

 No closet to speak of, because I don't call that metal organizer a closet.

 Space for the washer and dryer.

This is a shelving space next to the laundry. We have very little designated storage space, so I'm working hard to plan ahead to figure out how to make what little there is work for us.

 Opposite the laundry is this strange alcoved area. I think I'll be using my wooden shelves (currently serving as my pantry) to make more room to store stuff in this space. It's pretty long, you just can't tell from this picture. We need room to store towels and bathroom stockpile items. Plus the girls have no space for their dressers, so some of the alcove will be dedicated to that.

 This is looking into our bedroom. That is what used to be the front door to the apartment, before everything was switched around after the industrial kitchen was removed.

 I walked to the right of the door and turned to take this picture of where our bed will go.

 And then I walked to the left of the door and turned around to take this picture. Another nook! That will be Nate's office space. The closet is between his nook and the door to the hall. The nook isn't huge, but it's a better space than Nate's current office. He can mount more shelves to the wall to organize, and he has plenty of room for his cabinets, desk, and computer. He's stoked.

 Our one closet. In the whole house. It will hold the hanging clothes for the girls and then all my stuff and Nate's stuff, along with the vacuum cleaner and all my Mary Kay goodies.

 I turned around in the closet and took this picture. Guess what - ANOTHER NOOK! I plan on putting my desk there.

 This is the deck that leads down from our room. I told Nate that he can come and go during the day without the girls ever really needing to know. That's been something that's tough on his daytime hours. When he comes home to work, they obviously know he's here, and they obviously want some of his time. It affects his schedule, so I think this separate entrance will be good for him. But he loves the girls too much to take it too seriously - heck, he just got home from work a second ago and went in to wake them up to say good night. He misses them when he's gone.

 You can see some faint green lines in the grass by that closest white out-building. That's where Nate will park.

The door on the left is the half-bath; the door straight ahead leads into our apartment; the door on the right leads outside. It's a little odd, but the door outside leads into our garage, rather than the apartment, so hearing people at the door might prove interesting.

I'm not entirely sure why this picture popped up all the way down here...But oh the work it would take to move it up. Not gonna do it. This is the kitchen. Not a great picture, but it gives you the idea. There's space under those corner shelves to install a counter-height narrow table. I want to use it for my computer and additional counter space. It would be awesome. I'll have to figure out how to accomplish that, especially since I'm kind of counting on it right now. As you can see, I need the additional work space. We're planning to put our kitchen nook table in the center of the kitchen. We're going to raise it up as best we can so it is more counter height also; I'll clip the girls' hookon chairs to the table and they'll be stuck there as long as I want them to be - bahahahah.

What am I looking forward to most you ask? Well, let's see:
1. My bedroom will become a sacred space. I'm soo tired of my bed being what gets climbed on and trashed more than any other item in our great room, including toys.
2. A kitchen of my own! Oh the wonderful things I will accomplish with a stove and dishwasher at my constant disposal!
3. A separate and defined space for absolutely everything. We're all melded together right now. I'm over it.
4. I get the best parking spot! I go from the worst to the best and I'm not ashamed to admit  how thrilled I am about this small thing.
5. Do I need more? Really? Grass for Hazel to run in, which is safe and car free.
6. Their own room. Hazel will transfer to a big girl bed and Piper will take over her safe crib (versus the illegal drop-side one she's in now).
7. Hazel will potty train.

Yippee! There's more but I'm being called on by my husband to work with him on our budget. Oy.

UPDATE

Piper Sue slept with Nate and I on Monday night when we returned home from the ER. She did well that night. She ate an eight-ounce bottle for breakfast the next morning and followed that with a decent nap. Around 12:30p.m., Nate and I were watching her play on the floor on her belly when she began to vomit again. Nate whipped her up and slung her over his arm and pounded on her back again. It helped her get up what she needed to, and then, once no more was coming up, she spit out a hard, uh, thing about the size of a dime.

We're not sure what it is she spit up, but the pediatrician's best guess is that it was a scab from inside her belly. The doctor thinks that she somehow had a small bleed in her belly, which healed over with a scab resulting. My thought has been that she upchucked it when her belly worked super hard heaving - it came lose and up it came. I do not think that the lose scab trying to come up had anything to do with her initial vomiting episode.

Her belly is sensitive right now. We don't know why but it's easy to assume it has everything to do with just being sick over the last month. I think about when I've had high fevers. Do I turn around and eat a pizza once my fever is broken? Heck no. I kind of liken the oatmeal and bottle she had for lunch on Monday (pre-throwing up) to a big pizza - just not what she needed. Her pediatrician has us feeding Piper her bottle in 2-3oz. increments over about an hour, so she eats 9-12oz. over an hour, sometimes an hour and a half. That's been an interesting change for docile Piper. She gets pretty ticked at and feels betrayed by her bottle when it's empty after only 60 seconds of eating.

Her stool sample that we gave last Thursday just today yielded half of the results that we're waiting on. So far everything is negative. We're going to give a urine sample today (third try is a charm...or here's hoping anyway) - I'm so tired of the pediatrician's office!

Piper Sue is sleeping with us every night, which is such a mixed blessing. Our bed is fine for the two of us, but add an almost-one-year-old and it gets tight. She's a hot sleeper, too, so I'll wake up with a sweaty Piper ball on my neck and I have to move her back to the middle without waking her up. It's fun. And tricky.

Thanks for your prayers. I'm so glad to be able to say she's doing well. God has been good. God is good. God will continue to be good. I don't know what that will look like the rest of today, tomorrow, or even next week, but I'm confident in His goodness.

Super scary experience I never want to repeat.

Yesterday afternoon we had been back at Rick and Karen's for just shy of 24 hours. We housesat my parents' place for a week and returned home this last Sunday afternoon. Nate worked at Peet's Coffee on bids during the morning on Monday and then he came home when Hazel went down for her nap around 1:15p.m.

Piper woke up from her morning nap at about the time Hazel went down for hers. Piper has been dealing with some sicky stuff for about a month now, but she showed some signs of her old personality coming back when we returned home on Sunday afternoon and I showed her her bed. She got super squirmy and smiley and giggly when it was bedtime. On Monday morning, after her first bottle, she was talking and laughing up a storm, army crawling everywhere. I could tell she was overjoyed to be home again.

Because of the two fevers Piper had during the last month (the last one hitting 104.7 this past Wednesday evening), we haven't been feeding her anything beyond her bottles. She's been on a very liquid diet to help her cope with her fever and general feeling of ick.

She was behaving so much better yesterday that I decided to feed her a bottle in the morning and then some oatmeal with half a bottle (4oz.) for lunch. She ate and then played for about two hours before heading down for her afternoon nap at 3:30p.m.

I worked on dishes for a few minutes around 5p.m., so I was heading down the stairs to the basement with two arms full of precariously balanced dishes when I caught Nate heading into Piper's bathroom, where she naps. I whispered, "She's asleep." He nodded, gave me an odd look, and walked into the bathroom anyway. One second later he shouted, "ROBIN." I fell down the last couple steps and threw aside what I was holding when he came out of the bathroom, holding Piper in front of him, and I saw the look in her eyes. She had gone super pale (and we all know how white she is to begin with). Her lips where white. Her eyes were open but practically lifeless. She wasn't breathing and she had vomit from her forehead to her knees.

Nate got down on his knees and threw her on her stomach over his forearm. We started beating the crap out of her back, trying to open up her airway. She didn't make much sound. We paused for a moment and Nate tried to gauge if she was breathing. She wasn't. We began pounding again. I raced for the phone and called 911. Nate got her going a little, but her lips were still white. Her eyes were moving and she was looking at us a little so he took her into the kitchen and sat her on the counter. She looked horrible. I got the 911 dispatcher on the phone and she told me to lay Piper down on her left side. We did. She began gagging and then stopped breathing. Again.

The 911 dispatcher asked a bunch of questions and then told us what to do for Piper as the ambulance was on it's way. Nate put her back over his forearm and kept hitting her between the shoulder blades. She got some junk up but it was clear and there wasn't much of it. It felt like forever but the ambulance finally showed up, after the dispatcher freaked me out by double-checking with me our address followed by an, "Ohhhh..." because her computer showed the had arrived (which they hadn't). It took another minute but they finally showed up, along with a firehouse paramedic.

They followed me inside to Piper. They took her blood pressure and observed her and said that we could either take her to the hospital, or they could, or we could just watch her at home for awhile after they left. And then she stopped breathing again. They looked at us and said, "Let's get in the ambulance and go to Emmanuel. Can you grab a change of clothes for her?"

It took me four trips up and down the stairs but finally I had what I needed and she and I got in the ambulance. Meanwhile, Rick kept sleeping through all of our shouting and screaming and the sirens. Hazel heard everything but I didn't have time to check on her before I left with Piper. Nate stayed behind to get her up and going so that he could follow us to the hospital.

She choked two more times in the ambulance. They suctioned her throat and mouth as we were driving. If Nate and I had decided to save the cost of the ambulance and take her ourselves, I don't know what we would have done on the freeway as she was choking. I just don't know.

When we checked in at the hospital, the staff was waiting for us. They got us into a peds ER room quickly and took a look at her. They checked all the general, normal stuff and then ordered some x-rays of her throat down to her belly. She looked clear. We sat in another room for awhile with her, having her drink some pedialyte and formula, watching for any further signs of vomiting and choking.

In the end, they told us she has very likely had a sensitive belly from being sick (or something new) and the oatmeal was a bit much a bit too soon. She probably woke up from her nap and threw up with such force she couldn't catch her breath. She tried to take in some air and instead inhaled her vomit. She then choked on it. Nate heard her choke on the baby monitor and didn't know what it was. He heard the noise followed by nothing - it was the nothing that really got is attention. I didn't have the monitor upstairs.

If Nate hadn't been home at that time, I can only imagine what could have happened. A dear friend told me last night that I'm not the only one watching out for Piper Sue - God has a close eye on her. He ordained everything about yesterday, especially the fact that Nate was home working, and the fact that he was sensitive to Piper's sounds and her needs, and he was also sensitive to the small voice in his head that said, "Not okay." Nate saved Piper's life.

Piper slept with Nate and I last night, which was so special in so many ways. She's such a snuggler. When she had her high fever last week, I'd snuggle her for awhile and she'd suck her thumb and stroke my arm or my hair or my face or my hand...She did the same last night as she slept. I woke up this morning to her crawling all over me and laughing. What a nice thing to wake up to!

Today she's doing better. We're headed back to the pediatrician's office this afternoon to follow up on several things: They took a stool sample from Piper last week when we visited them for her high fever, so we'll talk about that and the ER visit.

Pray for our girl if you could, please. She needs to get over whatever these things are that are colliding right now and making her not feel well. My Pumpkin Pie needs some special protection right now.

I should totally be doing something else right now.

Ivy Lou turned five just a little while ago. Someone had the genius idea to head to the zoo! We heard reports of some crazy weather, something like, "It will rain four inches before 6p.m. this evening." We laughed and, with all sorts of enthusiasm and denial, loaded into our cars and met up at the zoo. The girls and I rode with Mom in her truck, and Rae Ann had her kiddos in the Element. It was strange to merge onto 26-W and see Rae Ann whipping past from 405-S onto 26-W at exactly the same time as us. I marvel at the small things. Gosh, that was a totally boring story. Anyway. On to pictures.

Piper constantly wanted to hang upside down, and she totally pegged Henta as the one to give her what she wanted.

In the next set of pictures, well, you'll see for yourself. No one really looks their best. But it had stopped raining! The sun was out and it was gorgeous outside, the perfect zoo day. 

Such big girls. I can't believe how old Ivy and Stella are now. It blows my mind. I remember very clearly my first meeting with both of them on their birth-days. Those memories feel like yesterday. But here the girls are, five- and six-years-old.

This is our really awesome family portrait, minus the guys. Yes, Rae Ann is flashing the camera. And I love Piper's little forehead showing in the stroller. No idea why Mom's nose is so cold.

Ivy was super annoyed any time I took a picture that involved her. She'd get ticked. Rae Ann gave her a little talk, and at the next picture opportunity (aka this one), she stuck it out, but this was the look I got. She kills me.

At the rain's end and the sun's beginning, all the animals came out of hiding. They were romping and playing and calling to each other. It was so fun, and a very memorable zoo experience - usually it's weirdly quiet among the animals.

We had a blast! It was such a nice trip, and a wonderful way to celebrate Ivy's birthday. She is such a character...I love that little girl.

Nate's aunt and uncle left town for a little while and asked if we'd like to stay in their house while they were away. I immediately said no, while Nate immediately said yes. All I could think about was all the food prepping, clothes packing, and general upheaval moving my family of four for a week would require.

So I was wrong. Christie (Nate's aunt) explained what her invitation included; I changed my mind and said heck yes. We took a little staycation. It was marvelous!

Miss Hazel B. as we packed. 

  

The girls stayed in a room on the second floor that had it's own bathroom. Good thing, too - the first morning in the house, I discovered that Piper had pooped through her jammies and Hazel had found access to her poop...and so she had played with it. Straight into the tub they went. This is Piper's most winning smile, a smile that says, "Mom, what a long morning so far. Now where's my food..."

Hazel was absolutely delighted to sit at a real table. Any time we'd talk about food, she'd start jumping up and down, shouting, "We can eat TOGETHER!"

I spent all my time in this kitchen. Gorgeous. Perfection. I baked my way through a week of staycation.

My old friend Lindsay visited us one morning - she discovered that Christie is the proud owner of a Vitamix. I had no idea what she was talking about. And then Lindsay pulled out the recipe book. Oh hello. It's what began my baking frenzy.

I baked to my heart's content. Most of the loaves and muffins I froze - easy 4a.m breakfast when I have to work. Easy snacks for Hazel. Speaking of Hazel, she was amazed at the space of the main level. She ran from room to room screaming her heart out every day. We did all sorts of nutsy things that we can't really get away with at home. I baked. Hazel screamed. Constantly. We're pretty easy to please.

We were so grateful to Nate's family, who enabled us to stretch our legs for a few days. It reminded me how much I like to cook, and how easy it is to keep up on dishes when the washer is right there rather than a hike away with 40 pounds of dishes to carry. Our last day at the house, I baked three dinners. I was determined to not do anything except adjust when we returned home.

Hazel really did lose her center during that trip. She forgot all sorts of rules/boundaries. Coming home has been rough. Ten days later and we're still struggling to adjust completely. Our staycation just made me so much more excited to have our own space. I will cry and cry (what's new) when that day finally comes. As for right now, I have no updates on the progress of things. I'm as in the dark as you...I wish that wasn't the case!