Finally...

I saw a doctor! I'm about 17 weeks along in this pregnancy and I haven't gained any weight. I have been a little concerned but I had an appointment today and heard the heart beat so I feel great! I won't go into all the crazy details because they are really probably boring. I was just happy to hear the heart beat and now I can look forward to feeling it move around in a few more weeks. Hurray! I have an ultrasound on Tuesday to double check the date and maybe I can talk the tech into finding out what I'm having. We shall see.

Our New Old Home

Kevin got the bug to look for a house to buy so we looked. We found one and we made an offer. They accepted the offer and fortunately they are giving us a land contract, so that means we don't have to worry about funds because no one would give a student without any income a loan. Go figure. They want to move quickly so we will actually be moving again in a week or two. I'm glad I didn't unload all those food boxes in the garage. We'll just take them to the new house. It will be a bit of a hassle to pack everything else back up but oh well. It's an older home but has lots of character, lots of room and seems to be in good shape so we are very excited.

Here's a picture of the front of the house. It needs to be cleaned in the spring, and we need to put in the front main steps.

Kevin made up these floor plans in PowerPoint. He's really good at that stuff. It is to scale, furniture and all. The front porch is bigger than shown in the slide because the slide wasn't big enough. I have labeled lots of things to help you know what is what. Some of the furniture we don't have yet but we will eventually. The house will probably feel very empty until Kevin goes back to Massachusetts to get the rest of our stuff but oh well.


The Arctic Entry has pegs on the wall ready for little kids coats and stuff. The Family Room has built in shelves on the east wall. We will add our book shelves on the west wall later. My room has a built in desk unit with shelves and drawers. In the kitchen, there is a bench that goes around the space in the empty southwest corner. We may take that out, or at least most of it.

Here's the second floor. The only issue is the leaking toilet so we'll have to take care of that, and we may redo the shower stall but we shall see.

The kids room has a built in desk in the southeast corner and a walk through closet in the northwest corner. Yes, there is an upright piano in the very west room but it needs to be tuned and probably fixed if it is going to work correctly.

Looking from the kitchen through the dinning room and living room. The arctic entry is the doorway on the left and the family room doorway is on the right.


Looking from the family room through the living room and dining room. The family room has a huge, beautiful pocket door. The closed white door at the other end is the bathroom.


One view of the kitchen. The stove will go in the spot on the left side of the picture.


Other view of the kitchen, coming from the dining room.

Small view of the play room/movie spot, and down the hallway past the bathroom and into the piano room. We didn't notice the low ceilings until we went back through the pictures. Then I remembered it feeling different when we were walking through it. I'm interested to know why they dropped the ceiling that low.

I could attach a zillion other pictures but it's really hard to get a good look at the rooms. I will probably repaint all of them anyway. I hope you enjoyed the look into our future home. We are excited, and we will enjoy all the projects we want to do (painting, floors, cabinets, etc.) as time passes and we take our time.

Our fabulous Xiomara!

This little one turned 4 yesterday and I'm finally going to post about it! She's full of life and spunk and love. She has the only other set of blue eyes in the family and they are the big, round set, which are a bit different than the other kids. She was so excited to turn 4 - one perk was that she now gets her very own vitamin, no longer having to split it with Kemiah. So here are some of the things we did on her day...

I handed out the birthday balloons before breakfast. The crown she is wearing came from her Sunbeam teacher at Church on Sunday.

Then we sat down to enjoy our old birthday breakfast tradition, with a twist. Instead of having vanilla ice cream, we let her pick. She chose strawberry (you know, the pink ice cream). I had my doubts but it was actually delicious. She also opened her birthday card that Grammy and Gaffa sent her. Marissa read it to her.

We went to the library for a playgroup and it turned out to be really fun. They had a bunch of different stations in a conference room so the kids were able to play with whatever they wanted. It was for kids ages 1-3 but I had talked to the librarians and she said it would be fine if I brought my older kids, as long as they weren't disruptive. It went fine and it was fun to just sit and watch my kids play - they didn't need me and they didn't argue.

Here she is sitting in the middle while the librarian read a story.

Here she is playing with the kitchen stuff. It was a popular place.

We stopped by Wal-Mart for a few things (mainly bags to put her presents in because I didn't have anything) but I didn't take a picture of that. I also stopped to get gas but I didn't take a picture there either.

We went home and had lunch - small shell pasta and cheese! Yummy. Then she helped me make her cake - strawberry (pink) cake with strawberry (pink) frosting. I am not very good but she said, "It looks good to me." That's all that matters. For dinner we enjoyed taco salad! Delicious. She did a great job on selecting the menu, with a little help from me.

We sent them to go read books after dinner was done so we could clean up a bit and get ready. She was very excited and kept telling the guys, "I get to open the presents and you can watch." I finally called them back and she was the first one to the table. We all sang to her, listened to the song Memere sent in an email, and she blew out the candles. Then it was time for presents. We didn't have very many but that's not what it's all about anyway. When she was done she said, "Now it's time for cake!" I told her we could all just go to bed because we were too full from dinner. She smiled and said a very happy, "NO." I guess she knew I was kidding. We all enjoyed the abundance of pink for dessert!

It was a great day and we are so glad to have Xiomara in our family. She is so smart and loves to help others. She is a great little girl, getting so big! We love you!

I know what's for dinner!

We have lived in our new house for 17 days and I have actually made something different for dinner every night - with only one repeated meal, because it was that good. Most of the meals are not what we were eating on the island, but I have made some of our favorites. Here's just a sampling of the things I have made (because I know you're dying to know what we are eating at the dinner table)...

• Taco Salad - this is the one we have had twice. I have a great dressing recipe that I got from a friend on the island. So yummy when it's all mixed together! All the kids love it, although they would rather eat it without the lettuce.
• Potato Chowder - we ate this quite often on the island, but for some reason, it tastes better here - maybe because it's cold outside so the hot soup actually feels good as well as tasting good.
• Hamburger Noodle Bake - has noodles, cream cheese and sour cream, along with other stuff so you can't go wrong. This one had no leftovers, it was that good.
• Chicken soup with dumplings. I added carrots, potatoes, celery, onion, broth, cream of chicken soup and heavy whipping cream! Then I found a recipe online for the dumplings and it turned out great! I think we'll have this one again tomorrow night.
• German Pancakes - even had company with this one. Always a crowd pleaser (except for little Savannah who seems to be a picky eater {that's what her parents said}).
• Chicken and wild rice soup - heavy whipping cream is involved so you know it's good. I wanted to keep eating and eating but had to stop before I gave myself a tummy ache.

And those are the highlights. I had a hard time making rolls when we got to Massachusetts (I tried twice) so I was a little worried about getting it to work in Michigan. I need good rolls for some soups and other things so I had to try again. I figured the problem was the colder temperature and the dough not being able to rise. That wasn't really something I had to worry about on the island. I am happy to report that our natural gas oven has it's pilot light lit all the time so the oven is a nice warm place for the dough to rise. The rolls I made turned out okay but now I have to work on the baking portion because they got a little dark on the bottom. Adjust, adjust, adjust.

Getting to know Saginaw

I now know how to get to Wal-Mart (and it's a super one), one of the local libraries, the hospital where my new OB clinic is located, the pharmacy where they will send any of my prescriptions, Church, and home again. I think we are set. There is a playground near the house and the library so I know where we'll be playing once the snow is gone and it warms up a bit. I also know where a few other places are near my house but as I drove around today I wished I had my camera with me because I wanted to stop the car to take some pictures. There are a couple old Churches that I drove by today that look really neat. That's the trouble with driving everywhere... it's hard to just pull over and stop to take a picture, especially on the busier streets. There were also lots of little shops and other places that I will probably never shop at, again because I'm driving in my car off to somewhere else and can't just stop in and see what they sell, but it was neat to see a different part of town. So, life goes on.

B is for boy.

So our oldest said a couple funny things today...

"Will someone please play with me? I promise I won't beat you up."
(I had to laugh right out loud.)

"We keep buying ice cream but we never get to eat it. Why do you guys keep eating it all yourselves? Are we ever going to eat any ice cream?"
(Kevin and I enjoy a bit of Ben and Jerry's from time to time. I guess Ben is picking up on that and is deciding to make his voice heard. He's tired of being left out. I wondered how long it would be...)

Our house, is a very fine house.

Here are some pictures to prove it. I took these a while ago but it has just taken me a while to get it all organized and ready to post. I know, there's not much to it but it took a long time to download all the pictures. Anyway, the only thing that is really missing are all the really neat icicles that are now hanging off the roof. You'll just have to add them in your imagination.

Here's the front door.


That white addition in the back is the laundry and furnace room.

Interior of the laundry room. I know, exciting stuff. Just so you know, that box is no longer there.

Looking into the dining room/kitchen from the laundry room. There are two steps up here.

From the same doorway looking to the right. You can see the bathroom doorway to the right of the table and a little storage room doorway to the left of the table. And that's cute Kemiah with her doll, Logan.


Looking down the short hallway to the living room. The front door is in front of you and the playroom door is the wood frame on the wall to the left.

Here's inside the playroom. The closet is full of toys and games. They have a table to draw at and a couch to sit on because it won't fit well in the living room.

View of the living room from the playroom. You can see the stairway that leads up to the other bedrooms.

Looking up the stairs. The bathroom is right at the top of the stairs. One bedroom is on either side. Nice set up really, but the stairs are a little different.

Kids room and bathroom. See the tiny mirror on the bathroom wall? I laughed when I first saw it but it does the job.

Our bedroom - with my workout center and Kevin's study center. We were mostly excited about how big the room is so we could fit our bed and all this other stuff in the same room. Yippee!

We brought the kids quad-bunk beds that Kevin made in Alaska. We had all the screws, boards, mattresses and sheets. The one thing we forgot was the drill gun! UGH! Kevin got a few screws in by hand and I got one in half way but gave up. Kevin went and bought a drill so we could put the beds together. What a bother - when we have at least 3 in MA! At least the kids have somewhere awesome to sleep (rather than having their mattresses all on the floor).

Oh, and sweet Kemiah is in the port-a-crib in the same room. She still fits and it will work until later and we have to move Ben to something else and then she'll go to the bunk bed. We did bring a crib but can't find the screws. Oh bother. That will become more important as we get closer to the arrival of the new baby, but we have time.

Where are you from?

It's sort of a hard question for me to answer and it seems to be the first question people have been asking me a lot recently. I haven't figured out what is the best answer. Most recently we came from the island of Dominica, but that's not where I'm from. Before that we lived in Alaska, but that's not where I'm from either. Before that we spent time in Florida and years in Mississippi. But I'm not from there either. I'm from Colorado! But I haven't lived there for 11 years so I don't really feel like I can say that either. I could say I was a military spouse, but I'm not any more so that would take explaining as well. I got excited when someone at Church asked, "Where are you from, originally?" YES! I can answer that - COLORADO! Of course, I don't have any family there anymore - although, my brother and his family did just move back so maybe that counts. I'm excited for the time when I'm no longer considered new to the area and I can say, "I'm from Saginaw." Although, that won't quite be right either. Oh well.