On the Move

Yes, we have officially reached the part of our lives that from now on, we will be on the move.

Our first "move" was 3 nights spent at a beach house with Becky's family. It was fun to relax and not think about packing boxes and fixing up our house for a few days.

Christian pulling Reece and Rowan in the boat. Reece loved this, but for some reason, Rowan was scared of all the "sharp" things in the beach (I think she must have stepped on a shell, and from then on she was scared.)
Mom and Reece hanging out in the beach house.

No, not peeing, but just taking in all the sand and beach breeze.

And, of course, our funny, cutie, squishy little boy. This baby is amazing. He is just so EASY going, fun, and laid back. He's always grinning or laughing at someone. We all love Joe so much and are so thankful for his sweet self.

We got back on tuesday and started the mad dash to paint, clean, and clear out our house by SUNDAY and pack up our little pop up camper because we leave for Idaho on Monday afternoon with a short first leg to Dallas. God has been SO good to us. He provided Amanda and Erica to paint for us while we were gone, and then the Perez family came over last night and we finished up. There are now only some touch-ups to be done. We have some sweet friends coming over Sunday to help us move everything else to storage.

Daniel has worked really hard to create our itinerary, with most stops at different KOA's around the country with a two night stay at a camp ground at the grand canyon. We are hoping our road trip will be fun and a time of bonding for the family. Most days are going to be an average of 5 hours of driving with 2 days of only 4 hours each and the second day of 7 hours. We are hoping to get where we're going early and have relaxing afternoon's/evenings.

You can be praying for Reece and her sleeping problems. She has been having problems for about a month sleeping through the night with coming into our room crying and screaming. This past week has been significantly worse with lots of screaming fits and sleepless nights. Last night we felt the prayers of some friends and she did sleep better.

That's it for now. Gotta get back to packing!! :)

New Post: Funny Reece

I finally posted something I had been working on for awhile, but I can't figure out how to get it to appear on the top of my blog! Frustrating!
So, here's the link to it if you're interested :)

http://cowabloga.blogspot.com/2009/03/funny-reece.html

Beach Babies!

We had our first family outing to Galveston a couple weeks ago. It was so nice to get away for a few hours. Reece loved the beach last year. She would just roll in the sand and water every time we went. But this year, it took her a little while to warm up to it. Okay, well only a few minutes, but the first time she put her feet in, she freaked out and said, "I'm floating away!!" The waves threw here off for a few minutes, but then we could barely drag her away from the beach when it was time to go.

Joe, PLEASE don't eat the nasty sand!!

Sand on the baby face... oh my...

Reece's first look at the beach.

Joe jumping in the ocean. I tried to upload a funny video of Daniel helping Reece jump over the waves, but I guess it was just too long because I can't get it to work. :(

MAF update:

We are going ahead with plan to move out and put our house up for rent before we leave for Idaho. We leave on June 29, so we have a LOT to do!! Daniel put the finishing touches on the floor last night. We have to do some painting and pack a TON of boxes and then give our house a thorough cleaning. I think I've packed up mostly everything that we needed to sort through, and the rest is just stuff we use everyday, so that will be hard to pack until right before we leave. We also got the pop-up trailer out of my parents garage, so we plan on getting that all packed up to take on the road to Idaho. We are excited about our camp-out-road-trip! It will be a great bonding time before we start our intense training.

Please pray for us:
-that we would totally rely on God to help us get everything done that we need to do before we leave for Idaho (it seems very overwhelming to us!)

-that we would be able to teach Reece to find her security and strength from the Lord during all the changes and transitions that our family is going through.

-that Daniel and I would spend some good time on our marriage even during this crazy time.

We have TILE!!

I forgot to mention that my WONDERFUL husband finished tiling our living room/dining room. We had carpet that really needed to be replaced, so we decided to tile so that when we rent our house out, we won't have to keep replacing the carpet.
Daniel worked so hard day and night (one night until FIVE AM!!) It looks amazing and professional. My husband is seriously a genius. I'm SO thankful for a smart, talented and loving husband and daddy to my kids!
I'll post pics when I pick up all the toys off the floor and take a good picture :)

Lots of Random Info

Joe had his 6 month check-up today, although he'll be 7 months in 3 days.

He weighed in at 20.14 pounds and 29 inches long!! Yes, he's wearing 18 month pjs right now! What a biiiig boy! He did not have a successful check-up today. I found out that he has an ear infection! So, he got out of his shots and instead now has to take the yummy, pink, bubble gum antibiotic for ten days.

I finished my Perspectives class last night! YEA!! It was such a great experience and I'm SO thankful for it, but it was a lot of work, so it's nice to be finished with it. I'm excited to take some time this week to process all I learned from the class and hopefully blog a little bit about it at some point.

Daniel emailed off our address list and prayer card pic today to MAF. It was the last possible day that we could send it in. Thanks for everyone who sent your address. We have a little over 200. The bare minimum that they want us to have is 200, so I'm glad we at least made it there and we hope to build that list up a lot more. Please send us your address if you are still interested in learning about our ministry!

We will be leaving for Idaho in one month now! We are excited about our trip there. We are going to be driving making many stops at some fun camping grounds. I'll have to post our agenda later.

Reece has recently become very attached to a stuffed animal she named "spot." Spot literally goes everywhere with her. We left him at my parents house the other day and I had to go pick him up so that she could sleep! If she looses him under the covers at night, she'll come in our room and ask us to help her find him. I think it's because of Culby leaving our home. I'll ask her every once in awhile, "Do you miss Culby?" and she'll say, "Yea, but I love Spot so much."

Here is a picture of Reece and her beloved Spot. He's not usually this clean!

Happy Mother's Day!!

First Day of Summer for the Perezes

Last Saturday we got the little pool out of the attic and started our summer of outside fun! I had a spontaneous moment and got us some ice cream from the ice cream man. Mmmmm!! Reece got bugs bunny. Note to self: Ice cream man WAY more expensive than when I was a kid!
BIG splashes!
Almost too BIG to float!

Mommy and baby feet (Reece couldn't figure out exactly how to position her body to get into the picture so she gave up)

Daddy joined in on the fun!

Joe Update:

6 months old and lovin' it!

Trying to learn how to sit up
But, not very good at it yet!

Daniel gave Joe a "real" haircut!

Before:

After!

Best Buds!

Update on the baby food situation:

I tired the baby food grinder with cooked veggies, but Joe just gagged on everything I tired. So, I'm just blending the veggies for now, which makes them very liquidy(is that a word?) He still isn't really interested in the food. He doesn't like to open his mouth, and when he actually gets a bite in the mouth, he just flaps his arms and legs like crazy...I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Oh well, we'll just keep trying. I forgot how much work it was to start solids!!