Parting is such sweet sorrow :(

What a sweet evening these beautiful little girls had last night on their first and only sleep-over. We ate pizza, made a fire, roasted marshmallows, watched the American Girl Felicity movie (the girls' dollls are best friends in the American Girl world), made candy necklaces and watches, and THEN they stayed up until almost 2am. This morning they were up around 7:30 when they played American Girls some more, had breakfast in bed, and ended the play date playing outside. What a fast, furious, and fantastic sleep over for two sweethearts. We will dearly miss little Mariah. I don't know how Anna will be able to find such a wonderful, perfect friend again. I can't tell you how tragic this loss is for our family. Mariah lives only a minute away, and HER mom does most of the transporting for the girls. Mariah is the youngest of four while our Anna is the oldest of four. Isn't that cute? I love that Anna goes to their house and sees intense homeschooling in action. It gives her a peek into our future. :) I need to add that buying Anna's American Girl has been a great decision. All that agonizing I did over it, and my initial decision wasn't right!! Oh, well. It's not the first time I messed up with these kids.

A Little Giggle

How often do you fall asleep with a toy horse standing on your chest?

Trains, trains, trains

You can't wonder why we love the Thomas wooden trains after seeing this picture! You also can't wonder why we need so much track. How else can three kids play on one track??

I am completely amazed at the little engineer Jonah has become. This train set is an amazing educational tool, and he thinks it's a toy. Ha! We were at Books A Million one day looking at the Thomas trains, and a lady commented to me that some of the risers for the track look nice but they fall down even after gluing them. I didn't really understand what she was saying until we left the store. Now, I'm wondering who on earth would glue the track pieces together? Doesn't everyone know that the value in the train set comes from engineering different track layouts? The train engines are just decorations! I wish I could go back and show her the light. Jonah and I have fun one-upping each other trying to make the fanciest tracks.

!!!!!!

Mark unofficially has a job! He had dinner tonight with his new employer-to-be, and everything went very, very well. The district attorney has to get board approval to officially offer the job to Mark, but other than that issue, the job is his!! Mark was told to expect a call early next week. We don't know $$ yet, so we are holding our breath until we get the call. We are planning on taking the job regardless of the pay, and then figuring our next move. If it isn't enough and it doesn't get better, we will have a short stint in Madison, MN. If it is great and Mark loves it, we may be there for a very long time. We were only given two options for a rental, so at least we don't have to agonize over the choice there. Mark drove by our first pick today, and he said it is beautiful. So beautiful that we might like to buy. The problem, of course, is that buying in this community seems to be a forever choice. Houses stay on the market for years. Yikes. If we do buy, it had better a forever house.

Quick Update

I'm running on about 20% today. Yesterday I went to the doctor for antibiotics since I finally figured out that I must have a sinus infection. My cold has been getting much worse day by day, so it has to be more than a cold. Well, that's what I think. Today has been just terrible. Oh, well. Maybe the kids will behave better if they feel sorry for me. Anyway....Mark is still in MN. He's waiting for a job offer from his interview in Madison yesterday. He is hoping to find a place for us to rent beginning Feb 1 so we can move directly there. We certainly have a lot of pieces that need to fall in perfect alignment for everything to happen smoothly. I'm glad that I don't have to think about any of it, because I honestly don't have the capacity to do more than exist today.

More Matching

Yesterday morning I found Jonah dressing Eli. Here are the outfits Jonah picked out: Do they look matching to you? Then, Jonah's shirt got wet. After that catastrophe, here is what I found the boys wearing:

These boys are a riot. They are creating more laundry than the girls! Who would have thought that they want to match? I suppose if I made them match, they wouldn't like it. Today is another interview for Mark. Before the interview, he's stopping by yet another district attorney office to line up some volunteer work in case he doesn't get the job he's interviewing for later. Wow. That was a mouth full. Mark went winter wear shopping yesterday and found almost all of the kids' clothes on clearance. Score! We only have winter wear through size 3T, so Anna & Jonah needed almost complete outfits. My cold continues to hang on. These constant sinus headaches really wear on me. I am very fortunate that the older three spent most of yesterday outside playing dinosaurs. I'm not sure if I could have handled their normal level of noise and commotion anywhere near my head.

Day 3

We made it through! My cold has gone backwards, so I spent most of the day with a hazy headache. Our list of to-dos will continue through Tuesday. Mark felt positive after his interview. They aren't making any decisions for a couple weeks. Going into this one, we didn't expect him to get the job. We assume that he is up against people with quite a bit of experience, especially since the job is located smack dab middle of St Paul. Tomorrow is his interview in Madison, MN. Literally the middle of nowhere. We were looking at real estate listings, and some of the houses have been listed for years. Obviously, it is an economically depressed area. The current economy probably isn't having much of an impact on their community. Well, we are really, really hoping for this job. We love everything about the job and lifestyle. The only problem is how far away it is from everyone and everything.