I feel like every post should start with...

we're still here.

Ellie created this while I was typing my post and she was watching Black Beauty. She's getting good, right?

We moved last weekend. The move went well. We hired two guys to come help with the heavy stuff.  Hubby started taking stuff over on Thursday night.  He spent all day Friday going back and forth with boxes in the van.  On Saturday we rented a UHaul and Chris, his boss, and the two hired hands got the rest of the stuff.  Ellie spent the day with her BFF. I spent the time driving the boys around in the car shopping and napping before heading to the new house to hang out in the play room for two hours while the guys moved things in.  The day went well and everything fell together a lot easier than Hubby or I had anticipated.

It's weird. This house is so calming. I don't know if it's the wall to wall carpeting or what, but all five of us are so relaxed.  It's quiet. I haven't yelled in three days, but that's another story (thanks Super Nanny). We all settled in well right away.  We love it.  I'm glad we decided on this place, because in our past house hunting missions we always said we'd never consider a split level.  Let me tell ya, it's awesome. It will be even better a year from now when we don't need baby gates!

We've already had our first company over (Hi, Amanda!) for a little pre-game play-date.  Our pictures are up and most of our belongings have found a home.  I think the fact that we decorated right away helped with the kids. No transition issues. At all!

The only thing I miss about the old house is all the closet space.  We had some serious closet space.

E is sick with a fever again. No school for her today or tomorrow. She's sad, but not fighting me on it like usual.  Thanny and Char are still getting over their head colds.  The doc said it would be 10-14 days and I think we're on day 12.  I'm hoping whatever E has stays away from the boys, but I'm sure that is just wishful thinking.  Thankfully, my preschool Mommy friends aren't afraid of germs since our kids pass things to one another in school constantly.  If Ellie feels better by Wednesday I can still go to our weekly preschool play-date, which at this point I'm pretty sure is more for me then it is for her.

Char had his EI screening this morning.  He was borderline in his expressive language, but on target with everything else.  Being borderline doesn't qualify so we fudged his evaluation a tiny bit just by leaving out "he says more than 20 words."  Leaving out that little sentence helped him qualify.  We have a meeting in early March to set goals and come up with a game plan.  Everyone said he'd be fine without it, but I don't want him to get to school and then have problems. I'd rather work with him now and know we're doing everything we can to help him along.

I've been going back and forth about going vegan again.  I lost my way after Thanny stopped nursing.  I'm thinking about being an "at-home-vegan".  Do you like the sound of that? I made it up, I think?  Basically, I'll be vegan at home and do my best when I'm outside of the home, but if you invite me to your house I will eat whatever you make me... how does that sound?

Wow, long post.  I'll leave it at that.