Home Sweet Camper

Well, we did it. We sold and moved out of our current house. We bought a bigger, nicer house in a much better school district. The hard part: our new house is still being built. We have 3 weeks until our new house is done on July 22. So what to do with our crew? Move into the camper. It was incredibly difficult to decide what we would need for the next 3 weeks that would fit into the camper! But after an insanely busy weekend, the house stuff is packed and stored to be delivered on our closing date to the new house. And we are ensconced in the camper at a local state park. Eric an I are exhausted, but hoping that these 3 weeks will give us a breather before we have to get to the unpacking/setting up house part. So I will try to keep updates as to how we're doing :-) I also have a few older posts to finish showing the pictures I've taken, ad the fun things we've done before the move. So here is our first afternoon at the campground:

Emilie and our "lap dog" Hanna

Claire, Emilie, and Elise playing paper dolls in the screen house (Chloe was sleeping)

Buddy "When are we going to cook something over a fire?"

Hanna "Is it time to go swimming yet?"

Maisy "I really want to catch one of those large bugs flying by the camper window..."

Memorial Weekend

We spent Memorial Weekend with our good friends Wade and Nikki and their family. Camping at Whippoorwill Lake was a lot of fun. The kids got in lots of crawdad catching, swimming, and playing. We also had lots of good food :-) Esp. desserts made at the campfire each night. Here are a few pictures (courtesy of Nikki) from our weekend:

Chloe, Elise, and Sofia swimming in the lake

Chloe and Sofia: best buddies

Muddy girl

Emilie, Elise and Sofia

Noah, Claire, and Emilie after a long day of swimming and playing

Noah and Claire

Elise and Rylan- they both say they're getting married

Chloe and Sofia and the Molten Lava cake

Emilie and Noah

Claire and Emilie and Pie Iron made Fruit Pies

Elise's Preschool Graduation

Elise graduated from preschool Monday night. She is very excited to be a kindergartner now :-) It was also our last time to be with the people at Hope. We have had at least one child in their preschool program for 8 years straight! Kind of bittersweet. We've got Chloe signed up at a preschool near our new house for next fall. We are hoping that we will like it as much! Here are some graduation pictures:

Getting her diploma

Zoo trip with Elise and Chloe

I took the 2 littlest to the zoo today. Kind of a last blast for just me and them before their big sisters are home for the summer :-) We had a great time. Here are a few pictures:

The water play area in the Children's Zoo

Petting the Sting Rays

4th Grade Recorder Concert

Claire's 4th grade recorder concert was last week. I will spare you the full concert :-) But here's her favorite song ("All Through The Night") If you listen carefully, you can hear Chloe singing during the second half of the song. She couldn't understand why people wouldn't want to listen to her interpretation of the song :-P

Chloe's 3rd Birthday

Chloe's birthday was Saturday. Can't believe my baby is 3 already! She is getting to be such a big girl. We had a combination birthday party/Mother's Day get together at my parents' house today. Our house has been a little crazy with the house selling stuff so my mom offered to handle this one over there! Anyway, Chloe had a great time. Here's a couple of pictures:

End of the year choir concert

These are from April, but as you might have guessed I'm a little behind. The good news is that last night we got a contract on our house. So our family will be moving at the end of June. We are going to be sad to leave our current house. We've lived here for almost 9 years. But the girls are going to be going to a great school. And the new house will give us some much needed room. So back to the post at hand, here are some video clips of Claire and Emilie's choir concert at our church.

Claire's choir

Claire's choir again


Emilie's choir (they were a little excited to sing their favorite song, can you tell the tempo picked up a bit :-)