Tid Bits.

A few Tid Bits of info to share with you:

~A human woman CAN walk like she is carrying a baby on her hip without trying, and yes it does mean her back is hurt and it's painful too. Yep, I threw my back out again....this time while changing sheets. All those years my Momma tried to tell me house work wasn't bad for me....HA, proved her wrong!

~Brooke can whistle. Well, her version is a very high pitched squeal she does more often than necessary....usually with her fingers in her mouth to look like she is whistling. It sounds so much like the real thing she has been complimented by total strangers on what a good whistler she is!

~Brooke has an amazing vocabulary and pretty much has from the get go. The only funny things I can think of about her pronunciations are that she has trouble with the "th" sound and says "f" instead. Like Happy Birfday, which she loves to sing. And loves telling people that they are still Free, while she is four. And although she can pronounce the letter "L" with ease, when she is singing she says "Mary had a yittle lamb, yittle lamb, yittle lamb...." and even "Twinkle Twinkle yittle star."

~Brooke is very excited about going to a new school next month and asks me all the time if it's time to go to the Leopard school yet. I told her today at lunch that she is going to be a great Leopard and she said "Momma, I am going to be a PRINCESS Leopard." Should I warn the principal?! Heehee.

~Our four year old is going to have to figure out why she is the size of all of the seven year old boys here in New Home. They are all her size, yet when I tell her they are older she says "but, Momma they are my size" and they cannot understand why I won't let her ride around wild like they do. She is 45 inches tall, a mere 20 inches around, and still weighs the same as she did at her THREE year old checkup 40 pounds.....so, tall and thin.....all I can say is look out Daddy!

~I constantly tell my parents that whoever came up with the saying "terrible two's" did so because their kids didn't live past that phase. At age two I would have described Brooke as pretty angelic, age three more independent and bull headed, age four.....well, I hope to still have my hair in tact when she hits five. She definitely has a mind of her own, which is good.....but she argues with me about EVERYTHING and pushes any button she deems necessary. I am so thankful for the fact that she is still cuddly though....to help erase all of the aggravation....HA!

A few pictures to sweeten the post. Any time she aggravates me, she knows just how to erase that aggravation.....love this girl and wouldn't trade her for the world.

Posing....yes, Daddy is already stressing....

Maybe Brooke will get her artistic side from her Daddy. Brooke already draws better than I do. Here is her latest, what she did while I was typing the info above. Notice the large number of toes.....

A little get away.....sort of.

In case you wondered where we've been, I will try to sum it all up for you! My parents came into town a week or so ago to spend a week with us. Our PLAN was to let my Dad play with Brooke while my Mom and I did more wall treatments. Well, every time my Mom and I tried something new it backfired.....so, basically we played around here a lot and accomplished nothing. On to new ideas for the walls this week.

This last week Brooke and I rode to Albuquerque with my Mom and Dad for several reasons. One was to visit with them and spend a week away from the New Home new home stuff which can be quite time consuming. My mother had some surgery and all is well now, but I wanted to try to help take care of her for a change.

BEFORE her surgery they wanted to take Brooke somewhere just for her, so this trip we visited the Albuquerque Aquarium. We took a lot of pictures that day because her reactions were quite adorable. This first one is before the fun began, posing with a turtle outside.

Her little diva pose.

An all around happy camper.

Brooke loved watching all of the fish, but this was the first time she had seen turtles IN the water and how fast they could move.

I understand completely why parents and grandparents do the things they do for their kids.....this picture explains it all in my opinion.

We got a lot of pictures of the back of her head because she hated to look away from the fish!

Sting rays. She had never seen them before and giggled at how it looked like they were flying.

Me and my 'baby' who is growing way too fast for my taste! She will start five day a week Pre-K in less than a month now!

I giggle at how she stands. So ladylike....

Making a fish face of course.

Making conversation with a fish.....yes, she will talk to nearly anyone or anything!

This is her princess pose. She said the fish would only come up to princesses.....oh the imagination of a four year old!

Fascinated by the ugliness of this creature.....um, I should say beauty right?!

Great time spent with grandparents. I know Mom, this isn't the best angle of you two but it's the only thing I saw all morning!

Giving Grandad some time too. Look how tall and thin she is getting!

And, what it felt like she did the rest of the time. I also now fully understand the parents that have DVD's going ALL the time in the car while they drive. It sure did make life easier!

We are back home now, and hope to spend our very first week in our house by ourselves trying to do whatever it is we feel like. It most likely means lots of staying in our pj's until 11, playing in our sun room, unpacking more boxes, trying out new ideas for wall treatments, etc.....

A first before and after.

There will be lots of before and after pictures when we are done making this house look more like our tastes prefer. Here is the first of the wall coverings we've done, many more to work on!

The story behind this is that my mother and I attempted for HOURS to peel the wall paper in this house. Apparently back in the 60's they used some sort of super glue that nothing can break.....so, now we are moving on to wall COVERINGS instead of peeling wall paper to paint. I wanted different, I am getting different!

Our farm mural that was on our dining room wall. Lots of family members have been sad to hear of this leaving, but it is truly not our taste in decor.

And after. I love it! It took about an hour and a half to do this, with dinner break and hugs in the middle. I tore the paper and Steven dipped it and stuck it on the wall. Love it so much I might forego a lot of other ideas and do this in at least one more room!

Caught up.....sort of.

This post is of three things. The new house, trying to show you some of the rooms. My sweet Brooke, who loves to be in all pictures. And my sweet Steven, who has been going non stop for weeks now has been trimming trees all day.

Part of Brooke's room. Is probably as big if not bigger as our living room was at our old house. The joys of a new house. We went from approx 1170 sq ft to 2750 sq ft. Dramatic, and WONDERFUL. The ledge behind her will eventually have something besides a harvest gold cushion I assure you.

The tree limbs Steven cut off yesterday, so now our yards do not seem so jungle like. This was after he strapped them down.

My sweet, sweaty hubby and two of the many trees he made look tons better.

The front of the house, Brooke's windows and another fantastic tree you can now stand under without ducking.

Steven has also been attempting to hang blinds for me, trim hedges and try to figure out how we can add some landscaping to our yard.

Yes, the fence needs to be replaced and that is also on Steven's long list of to-do's which he's created himself. BUT, the trees....love them.

Brooke posing....yes, our sunroom is the perfect play room for her toys and playroom for my elliptical as well. BUT, I feel as though I've gotten so much exercise with unpacking that I have yet to use it!

One of my favorite rooms, MY cedar closet.....I am in hog heaven!

Fourth of July the Brooke way.

All of our friends have been posting really beautiful, sweet pictures of their children on the Fourth of July. I decided to post pictures of our child as she is.....precious, priceless, beautiful and last but not least ORNERY. She has been digging through boxes as I open them, drawers as I fill them and yesterday although she was dressed like a patriotic angel....found the bubba teeth my dad sent us a long time ago. The rest I will just describe as a few of the faces of Brooke.

Later in the evening Steven had sat down to relax for the first time that day and Minnie Mouse had to climb in his lap for some good cuddling time.

Once a Daddy's Girl, always a Daddy's Girl.

We let Brooke stay up WAY past her bed time so we could see some fireworks. I know, we supposedly live out in the country now, but we saw the best free fireworks show we have seen in YEARS right in our front yard. We are right across the street from the Baptist Church here and their big parking lot made for a great place for our neighbors to pop their expensive fireworks. We were outside from 9:30 until 11 (when Brooke finally pooped out) and they were still going strong when we came in! It was great, and made me thankful for the rain because we didn't have to worry about them at all. The best thing of all, other than my wonderful family of course, is that in this great house we couldn't even hear them.....so, Brooke fell asleep and wasn't bothered at all by the chaos outside.

Still trying to catch up.

I am trying to give the grandparents a little bit of a Brooke fix with all of these postings. She is still growing like a weed. I look at her sprawled out, long legs dangling off of things and realize I don't have a baby anymore. She is very independent, most days.....but this move has sort of made her a major momma's girl lately. She has been begging me to sit down and let her lay on me and watch cartoons with her, which is something she rarely did before the chaos of the move.

She is still very much a princess. She wants to wear nothing but dresses, leggings, night gowns, etc. She won't even wear a shirt unless it spins when she twirls around. She seems to be very healthy, and cracks me up all the time. We try to eat healthy all the time around here, but on occasion we like to have something sweet or fried. I asked her today after lunch if she would like a chocolate chip cookie and she said, "Momma, those are yummy but that cantaloupe would be SO much better for us and is still yummy!" Yes, I got the point and we've been eating cantaloupe all day.

Back to the home ownership responsibilities. Steven wants his house COOL. This one wouldn't stay cool enough to keep him comfortable, so he (with Uncle Bro's help in this pic) has already managed to spray tons of insulation in our attic. The new air conditioner and heater will be here tomorrow.

Even when I am exhausted and cranky, this little girl still knows how to melt my heart. She has been such a doll through all of this change.

After the move, I finally found my camera.

Since I packed my camera, and was too worn out to worry about it. I don't have many new house pictures just yet. I am working on it. I suppose I am enough of a neat freak that I don't WANT to take pictures for you before I have things the way I want them, but I will do it anyway.....because it will take me a while to peel wallpaper, paint, hang things on walls and of course UNPACK! I realize it took us nearly a month to pack all these boxes, but I have been killing myself trying to unpack them all in this first week. Yesterday my body finally told me to stop, and I had a day of playing with my sweetie pie. We both needed it. She has been feeling nearly neglected by Momma unpacking and organizing instead of giving her my undivided attention! ;o)

RAIN, we have had a LOT of rain since we moved into our new house. I call it our NEW house only because it is new to US! It was built in 1966, so it has lots of updates we will want to do as we have time and more importantly can afford to, but nothing was structurally wrong with this awesome huge house. I love it out here too. It's so quiet, the people are all so very friendly, and Brooke can do things like this in our front yard without us freaking out about crazy people driving by at 50 miles an hour!

I love this picture because look how her eyes are shut so tightly. She knew she was making a HUGE mess and getting her white tights muddy, but hey.....I wasn't about to stop her fun! This time.

Just enjoying the only sunshine we saw in nearly 5 days. I don't know about the City of Lubbock, but here in New Home we got nearly 10 inches of rain. We didn't mind it until we discovered about 4 days into the rain that our roof has a funky pooling leak. Ugh, yes.....the down fall of home ownership is responsibility!! Steven managed to fix the leak enough to stop it, but of course we are going to let professionals fix it now to prevent this from happening again.

Little Miss Brooke is super proud of "her new big house" and I have almost had to bribe her to get her to willingly drive into Lubbock with me. She loves it out here!

Before the move.

I am really behind on posting anything since the craziness of our move started, so I will warn you now I am just getting started!

Old house, last minute of relaxation before the couch and other furniture started disappearing!

How we spent too many days. I think it was only two, but those days were so very hectic they seemed longer than standard 24 hour days!

Daddy had sweetly promised Brooke that he would make her a make shift tent for our last few nights in the old house. Since I didn't know about this promise I managed to pack up most of the supplies that would have made a really cool tent, but Brooke thought this tent rocked!