Audubon, IOWA

this seems to be the most efficient way of communicating to everyone now so i am grateful for the fellow bloggers who inspired us! we have no internet at my mom's house so i'm not sure how often this will happen here in IOWA and then i fear colorado will be even less???? i hope we don't lose friends over the lack of communication. phone service isn't so great here either but know that miss the california crowd like crazy.
i just left the boys to plant flowers with grandma and i am sure they will chase the birds, squirrels and spiders they are finding left and right to their amazement! and hazel and i ventured uptown to the bank. we started a bank account and it only took 15 min. and 10 of that was talking with the lady about our lives now! i love small town for that reason! just because they know me i can get a bank account! yeah!
i also had to drop off a pair of shoes for my niece hannah at the middle school this morning and it was funny to enter the building after such a long time. everything seemed smaller than what i remembered it. i guess i have grown :D
greg and my brother clint are mosaicing at the moment and i am holding hazel on my lap. she is screaming to all of you in there and saying "ki...ga...ki...go" cuz we just saw pictures of malachi and gavin and she wants to return to that page...not this boring writing! how we miss our little people too...pictures don't cut it and they want to "play" with old friends too

what else do you talk about in a small town, but the weather...it's humid...chily...yet hot...it's hard to wear the right clothes...and it looks like it's going to storm ever since we left kansas...wierd weather...and i know that cali is better cuz i talked to chrissy and she was headed for the beach...whatever
one other thing is that it's fun to see people i knew back in the day and they look exactly the same! old teachers at a track meet,...they just have gray hairs now...people i went to school with and them having kids in school with my nieces and nephews...i see them working around town doing grown-up jobs...i don't feel grown up yet...but they look it.
the kids are loving the hang out time with thier nieces and nephews...my sister lives on an farm with animals so that is the best when we get to go over the "bumps" (hills) to get to their house to see the baby kitties and 4 dogs and sheep and a horse. my brother lives behind the houses across the street from my mom so it's easy to get there and we do or they come over cuz gavin is our social light inviting everyone everywhere. the kids are settling so that makes life easier when they are happy. my mom's house is referred to as "iowa" and if we are away from it...they want to return to "iowa"

so much to say and yet i don't even have the words to describe our hearts yet. we mourn, we hope, we get excited, we anticipate, we mourn again so i guess this is a time to be processing and maybe that is another reason why it's hard to communicate? but we still need M&M's to keep the thoughts of JOY running...God is so faithful to us and we feel and see His hand so in that we reassure ourselves that life is good and this process is needed to move on.

Pheonix to Quinter, KS

i guess you have to be a little patient with us. this is the first i have been able to add anything and i can't figure out our emails either. soooo....this is our communication since saturday! but here is life since then.. we said goodbye to grandma and grandpa in LA and left at 6:30 on sat morning going towards pheonix. we weren't gone more than 1 1/2 hours and the boys were already asking "are we in iowa yet?" so we started the countdown...in hours and minutes...and 7 hours later we got to pheonix where we swam in our friends (old superintendent from indonesia) pool and hung out there until we left for Colorado Springs about 8:30 pm...we drove the night switching every 2 hours or so until we got to our hotel in CS about 11am. the kids did great at sleeping most of night on the road. paul and i were up together from 3-5:30am watching the sun rise over the mountains and talking the WHOLE time. we were having a race to see who would see the sun first and just as it rose over the mountain i looked back to let him know it was there and he had just fallen asleep...oh well...quietness is good too! when we got to the hotel we all checked out the pool and then took a quick nap and went to garden of the gods to climb the mountains there...this was our 7th anniversary and several times we got a good laugh at how we were spending it! we all went to bed at 7pm and woke up at 8 am...what a great night! the next morning we checked out focus on the family and let the kids play in "oddessy" and we bought new stories to listen to while we drive with the money grandma and grandpa gave the kids to "buy something special with"...so then we went on to kansas...just a measley 4 hour drive...but it was difficult...stopping nearly every hour to appease our 3 kids in the back...good thing we are doing most of this trip at night! the skitters have come in handy at rest stops to just run and run them! so keep reading...i know this is getting long but here comes the good stuff! we got to quinter...a town of 900 people on monday afternoon. the kids were so excited about this area. we weren't even here an hour before they saw the cat dig a whole next to them in the dirt and poop right there and cover it back up! a first for them! amazing! we walked 2 blocks to visit another aunt and uncle (the uncle is 102 years old!) and we heard him play his harmonica and sing a song so the boys each sang a solo! another first for them! in kansas everyone has basements because of the frequent tornadoes (or tomatoes as paul calls them...he really believes we are talking about huge spinning tomatoes) but the boys were extremely excited to sleep in the "basement" so they were eager to go to bed...until they got down there...then the shadows and all became very scary and not so cool but yet another first to sleep in a real basement. the next day we visited grandma chestnut in the long term care center and the boys were amazed at all the older people living in one building. we did sittercises while we waited for our lunch with all the residents and played dominoes on the floor. later in the day the sky became dark and the clouds began to circle...we thought for sure we were getting a "tomatoe" so we stood outside admiring the weather going on around us... the lightening wouldn't stop lighting the sky, the thunder was constant and we even had some hail...all of these new to the boys! we did end up going to the basement but only briefly after realizing that the whistle that had blown was for 6 o'clock supper and not a tornado warning...silly. well, all the weather stopped us from having a big family picnic in the park so we met at an activity center instead and that was good fun to see everyone including 2 new babies! so now today we are awake and getting ready to go see grandma and aunt patti who has a super cool little yippie dog and then we will head out to salina where we will see greg's two other uncles and their wives. after we have supper with them we will drive the night to audubon. only a 6+ hour drive from salina. so we are nearly done driving and i'm glad! roadtripping with 3 little ones isn't like it was in college! but we are surviving and missing southern California people already. thanks for all the phone messages...we aren't ignoring you...we will call back! i must go...there is a real live bunny in the backyard and they can't wait to show it to me! kansas is great!!!!!!

so we are sitting in an empty house that echoes too much. my hands are really dry from all the scrubing i have been doing tonight...never knew how much the kids had crayons in their hands as they were walking past the walls :D i can not quite believe that we are coming this close to leaving. my stomach says "this is too much" my head says "are we sure about this? cuz i'm already wiped out" and my heart says "keep going...the best is yet to come" ...so which one do i listen to? gotta choose the JOY...gotta keep going...gotta listen to my kids as they keep having fun with pretty much nothing around the house. but paul did say to me today after i was explaining to him that he needed to share his stick, "but mom, i don't want to share anymore cuz if i let go...i don't get it back." and my heart sank for him. he feels all this too...and i just hope they don't start hording "things" cuz everything is temperarily gone. i guess i am mostly sad to leave this place. it has been good here. it will continue to be good here. and our kids love it here. but they adjust quickly so i am going to try to keep up with them. play like them. yell like them. i wish i could sleep like them, but that will come too! don't know where i will be the next time i write...but right now i am at 16712 Reeves Ave, Bellflower, Ca 90706.

gavin, paul, and hazel play in the mud