Update and Jenna's 5th Birthday!

Kevin finished out his spring baseball season on May 26. Overall it was a great season. They weren't a winning team, but they improved so much over the three months. I was amazed. It was so fun to see Kevin get so much better. I found out today that I need to go by tomorrow to get him signed up for fall baseball here. I am told that it is a great program. Hopefully they will still have openings. That is one of the hard things about moving...things are already full before we know about them. Kevin really loves baseball. I hope that he continues with it, for a little while at least.

Happy 5th Birthday to Jenna! She turned 5 back on May 27. We didn't end up celebrating until the 28th. We spent the 27th getting ready for a trip to North Carolina to house hunt and take Derek down to start his new job. On the 28th we found a park near our hotel. We ate lunch, let the kids play, had cake and a water balloon fight. We also had a pinata. There were a handful of other children at the park, and we let them join us for the pinata. Everyone had a great time. We were thankful that Jenna was so flexible and let us move her birthday celebration back a day. We love Jenna. She is the peace maker of our family. She is such a sweet little girl. She is fun. She loves her daddy. She is good to her brothers (though they aren't always as nice to her). She is improving greatly with her reading. She is turning into a girly girl, which I think is fun. She is my child that is an angel 95% of the time, but you don't want to be anywhere near her the other 5% of the time. My sister says she is a lot like me in that respect. :) So true. We are so glad that Jenna is part of our family!

The birthday girl (wearing a new birthday outfit from Great-Grandma!)


Miss Personality


Jenna requested a rainbow cake for her birthday. Through a combination of some rainbow cakes that some friends have blogged about recently I came up with the following:


I dyed the inside of the cake rainbow colors. Here is what it looked like:


Jenna with her cake and pinata


Jenna wanted to get her own candles ready this year (don't worry, I lit them...no little pyros yet!)


Love the look


Wishes made


Derek held the pinata over a tree branch using paracord...see Dad, it is useful :)

Jared taking a swing


Jenna taking a swing


Kevin taking a swing


In the end, they had to pull the little stings to get it open. We knew that ahead of time, but what fun is a pinata if you can't smack it?!

Jared and Kevin enjoyed the birthday party too.

Jared


Kevin


My kids make great faces


Life has been crazy over the past two and a half weeks. Hopefully things will become a little more routine over the next little while. We came down to find an apartment the weekend before Derek started his new job. (He started the Tuesday after Memorial Day). Unfortunately, we were not able to find anything. I took the children to my sister-in-law's the day Derek started work. Thank you so much to her for watching our children for three days! I came back to NC and found an apartment. I had really hoped to avoid an apartment, but alas, it didn't work out. Then I made two trips between VA and NC to move the necessities. We have since made three other trips (one with the whole family, one with the children and I, and one time Derek went alone).

The kids aren't too happy with the apartment. I am constantly telling them to walk, not run (there are people below us that have already complained about our loudness). I am always telling them to stop yelling. They can't just go outside and play, unless I can go with them. The nice thing is that we have an attached garage and the complex has a pool. Also, the bus stop is right in front of our apartment, which will be good in the fall. The other benefit of the apartment is that we can go with a shorter lease, and get out of it sooner if need be. We are hoping that before the lease is up we can sell our house in VA and buy a house here. We'll see. So far not a single person has called to see our house. Bummer!

At the hotel we would put the three kids to be in our King size bed until we were ready to go to bed (we had a one bedroom suite with a mini kitchen). One night when we went in to move them, this is what we found...I think someone might be a bit of a bed hog. :)


We love being here in NC. The people here are very friendly. This area is very diverse, which is great. Our children will be exposed to a lot of cultures. I guess that is what happens when you live in a tech city. :) The people at church are great. We actually had dinner tonight at the home of a guy Derek knew from high school. Random. I really think that we are going to like it here. Hopefully we can sell our house in VA and make NC our complete focus.

Of course, we must keep some traditions...like daddy's pancakes on Sundays.

Kevin and Jenna (gotta love brothers) You can kind of see Jenna's haircut in this picture.


Kevin and Jared...again no straight faces for this kid


Yesterday I gave all of the kids haircuts Jared's hair was ridiculously long. I am not good at keeping his hair cut. Part of that is because his hair lays really well, so he can wear it pretty long and still have it look good. The other part is that I am lazy. Kevin lets me buzz his hair, so it is very fast. I use scissors on Jared's hair, so it takes a lot longer. Jenna wanted me to cut her hair really short (like up to her ears). I told her she would have to see a professional for that. I told her the shortest I would go was just above her shoulders (which was way shorter than it was). She went with that. I think that I cut off about 5 inches. Derek and I both think that it looks adorable. She hates it. She thinks it is way too short and people will laugh at her. I think she just needs some time to get used to it. I know that when I get a very different hair cut I struggle to get used to it, so I imagine that she is going through the same thing. Poor girl. The only thing about it that I don't like is that it makes her look older. Why do my children have to grow up? She really looks like she is ready for school now. So sad.

Jenna with her hair still wet from the cut


Jenna took this picture of herself


Derek took this picture. Jenna likes to be a goofball in pictures (I think she might be related to Kevin)


Unfortunately there are no good pictures of Jenna's new hair cut. I left Derek in charge of getting good pictures. He went for funny pictures. Apparently we need to work on communication. :)

I let the kids watch a movie while I cut their hair. Jenna chose to watch Diego. Jared loves Diego. He kept telling me that his hair was still too long and I needed to cut it again. I told him his hair was fine, but he could watch the movie while I cut Jenna's hair. This is how he watched it: