Tales of October

I know a lot of you are waiting for me to post pictures of our new house but here is the reason why you haven't seen any yet. It truly has been constant chaos since the day we moved in with no end in site. I kept telling myself it would all be together by the end of October but here we are in November now! I have to say it does look a little better than this at the moment (but not much). We still have no furniture on the main floor and no kitchen counters, which means no sink and no dishwasher, which means we are still eating out a lot. There always seems to be some delay: we ran out of painter's tape, a part was left off the order, a change in the counter template, the tile is on back order, and of course another run to Home Depot for some forgotten thing. There are truly some people at Home Depot who know us by name and the kids groan every time we pull into the parking lot. I will just cling to the hope that maybe (maybe) by Christmas??

 But life still goes on and Anna (who promised to stay 5 forever) turned 9 on October 27th. Anna has had no problems making BFFs here in Colorado and was ecstatic to invite friends Emma and Hannah out to see Dolphin Take 2 and then back to our house for pizza and cupcakes. Yes, we had to go store bought this year as we had no working oven at this point in the month. Anna was all smiles anyways! 

Since we couldn't make her dinner of choice, on her actual birthday she got to chose the restaurant to eat at and enjoyed all eyes on her as she walked in with balloons and flowers! We are pretty sure she had a pretty fantastic birthday! 

 The sugar rush continued as her birthday gets smashed together with Halloween. The kids went easy on us this year with their costume desires. Asher is Percy Jackson. He is absolutely obsessed with Percy Jackson and has devoured all of Rick Riordan's books. It is hard to believe that this boy never liked reading...we just had to find what he was actually interested in (such a blessing to see his love for books now!). Josie is a unicorn...her obsession at the moment and was the only costume we had to buy! Of course we had a plethora of VT cheerleader costumes for Anna to chose from (seriously one for every age she has been), and Jesse wanted to be a spy (suits his nickname of stealth boy perfectly). Our neighborhood was the bomb of neighborhoods to go trick or treating in and was a wonderful time chatting with some of our neighbors. Now we are still trying to get through all the candy! They wake up in the morning and say "Can I have a piece of candy?". 

 I may have not been able to put up any fall decor in our rehab house, but we still did pumpkins! I swear Anna's face looks like this every year when it comes time for pumpkins.

 The boys have no problems!

Jesse's mummy

 Then a time change was sprung on us. With that, the house chaos, and Joel traveling for work for the first time, this past week has left us all dragging. This is Josie asleep on the bleachers during one of the kid's swim practices. Life is so hard!

 And since 4 kids, 1 dog, and a house in rehab isn't enough for me I had to get a new dog! Actually, Joel and I together decided to add this darling to our family weeks ago. Meet Phoebe, my future trail dog. Running on the trails in Colorado has left me quite uneasy when I am alone and for peace of mind and safety, this was the result. I can't rely on Finn to save me from a mountain lion!

We were really worried about Finn taking to Phoebe but so far they seem to be getting along great!

All in all October has been a truly hard month but filled with many blessings. We are trying to take time to enjoy these moments and know that we have years and years and years to enjoy this house. What is a few months in rehab in the grand scheme of things. Joel actually said to me last week "I m loving my job" and that is such a huge answer to prayer, and a testimony of God leading us on this journey. His blessings abound.