six months!

Norah is 6 months old! It happened so quickly, but she's now officially half a year old!

she is getting better at sitting unassisted, army crawling like a champ, and still going strong nursing.

of course we had to do her onesie/monkey picture! it is a few days late, though. i put her in the onesie on friday, and before i got around to the picture, she found a piece of paper on the floor and choked on it, throwing up milk & bile all over the onesie. she didn't even seem bothered, in usual norah fashion, lol. ....but the onesie had to be washed.


here are all the pictures 1-6 month together - Norah 1-12 Months

as for unpacking ... we're getting closer. i am not sure why it is so much harder this time. we do have WAY less storage space with is making this a little difficult, but it is making me realize we have just way too much STUFF!

first stop .... library!

i used to just buy books. i bought tons, & ton, & TONS of books. then i realized how silly (and expensive!!!) it was & got a library card for us in virginia. that thing was worn thin by the time we left.

we had a great bookmobile that came to out to our neighborhood in chesapeake. i will definitely miss that. sometimes after school if it was too hot to go to the park, we'd kill a couple hours at the library.

naturally, soon after we got here, we got cards for the public library. :) this time, though, kayleigh got her own card! :)

independence day!

a few days late, but here are pics! :) click to enlarge.

cornerstone park. see the mountains?!

the great baldini. :)

funnel cake!

toes!

this is the blanket my grandma knit for norah when i was pregnant. :)

keeping busy.

well, the first picture has nothing to do with keeping busy, but i thought i'd share our sleeping arrangements for the next 17 days.



john, norah, and i all sleep on the queen bed over behind kayleigh. kayleigh does not want ethan sleeping anywhere near her, so we brought the aerobed in from the van, and he sleeps on that. lastly, kayleigh sleeps on the pull out couch. it makes for pretty close quarters, but they were all out of rooms with actual ROOMS, lol. it's getting old putting it up & taking it down every day. only 12 more nights until we're in our own beds again!



we made rice crispy treats the other night. thre kids had never made them before. so healthy! lol. i accidentally doubled the rice crispies, so they were actually a pretty light snack, lol.

we went on a nature walk a few days ago to get some things for THIS supercool project. they turned out awesome (of course i haven't taken a pic of the end result, yet).

norah enjoyed the walk, but it sure did wear her out! :)

molding the sculpey

ethan decided he'd rather make "the biggest worm in the whole wide world!"
the hotel we're staying in has a pool. it's pretty nice because they supply the towels, and it's pretty empty most of the time! we're going to put the kids in lessons this winter. they're still relying mostly on the swimmies. it's hard to take three kids alone in the pool, though, so for now we're keeping the swimmies on.

since norah is so mobile now, there is really no safe spot here in the hotel for me to put her while i shower, clean up, etc. we picked up this bumper jumper & it is really pretty great. the only place it fits in the hotel is the bathroom, so please excuse the toilet in the background. :)

our new 'hood.

see, did i not say i had a lot of posts to catch up on??


apparently we'll be living in peak view estates. :) news to me. up until this point i had been just calling it "buckley family housing." at least this sounds prettier!

look, mountains!

and john's work is just a short walk away in the giant golf balls. :)
note: it was this point john told me to put the camera away. my argument, though, is that these pictrues are available readily online.

our journey.

we left north carolina on a saturday morning. we drove for 3 days, about 9 hours each (nto counting breaks) before stopping at a hotel for the night. we got into colorado monday night & have been in a hotel ever since. we get into our house on july 17th!

this was in west virginia off the mountains. anyone know if it has a name? :)

this rain was so bad on day2 that we had to pull off the road. we decided to look for somewhere to spend the night, but it cleared up pretty quickly. this was around 4pm & it was almost pitch black!

our van has a little mirror to watch the back seat, it cracks me up, like those shows where you see the camera mounted in a car. poor kayleigh is all the way in the back, you can't even see her.

i was trying to read through all the dslr lessons i have printed out, but i couldn't do a lot of the activies in a confined space. :(

i got john a tom tom for christmas. most of the time it's really nice, and fairly acurate. and other times .... not so much.

here is a private farm tom tom tried to take us through on a dirt road.

wind farm! oddly enough a car with stickers promoting veggie fuel drove past us right as we were approaching the windmills! it's that black car on the right. :)

finally. HOME!

marbles!

our plan for kayleigh's birthday WAS to go to marbles children's museum, but they were closed mondays (thanks for the heads up katrina). we ended up going a couple days later & it was a BLAST. they have an imax theater also, so we went to see kung fu panda afterwards. it was pretty cute. i hope the museums here are fun. we're heading to the zoo monday!

kayleigh using wire clippers in the real tool area ...

...while ethan opted for the saw!

dress up!
kayleigh picked this hat out for me. good choice? heehe

a princess, of course!

i love this jacket - i wanted to buy it from them, lol.

they had a 1/2 pirate ship. it was super neat. the kids could swab the deck,
walk the plank,

look through the porthole,

and drop anchor!

the obligatory self-timer-family-picture. :)

a good day was had by all!