Merry Christmas

 Merry Christmas from the Arrowoods!

 

Plus a little bonus from Christmas cookie decorating with Miss Lindsay!

 

The new normal

In case anyone still checks our blog, we are indeed alive and well, just busy trying to figure out how to do life in a new city, with a totally new schedule, and a baby. Here are a few snapshots of what we've been doing to keep busy and enjoy our new house and especially our HUGE yard, which we all love! 

 There has been lots of tree climbing going on. Krieg could probably go another 10 feet up this one if I let him, but I'm just not that brave!

 Both some pretend camping in the front yard, sleeping bags and all, and one night of real camping out back for Krieg and Kevin. Krieg LOVED it!!

And lots of loving on little Reagan. She continues to be the sweetest, most smiley, happy baby around. Except I can't seem to get her to smile for the camera since she can't see my face! And in case anyone was wondering, we did finally get Krieg's mop of hair cut. 

The house we are living in right now has an awesome yard, lots of shade, a long, flat driveway, a pear tree that was producing fruit when we moved up here, as well as a wild persimmon tree that we go and pick persimmons from every day. I never knew what we were missing out on not having a nice yard to play in. Krieg and Karis entertain themselves outside for hours a day, literally. It is awesome! 

I'm slowly finding my way around here, with a lot of help from the GPS. After living in small towns for the last 7 years, I still get a little overwhelmed by all the people and traffic on Saturdays! But we've managed to find some great parks, get acquainted with the library and find a few friends' houses and check out some churches. All in all, we are enjoyed being here, but missing all of our friends!

So glad...

...that this guy is home from Charlotte for the weekend! There have been a few kiddos around here who have needed some Daddy love and snuggles!

a few smiles

 Poor Reagan, such a third child. Having time to pull out the camera just doesn't seem to be happening these days. But I finally managed to get a few pictures of her sweet smile that has been making its appearance lately. Plus a few extras of the girls' first matching outfit thanks to Emily!

Krieg is still loving holding Reagan any chance he can get!

our crazy life

Celebrating one month with our sweet Reagan!

 

I have known for a long time that life was about to become just slightly crazy and chaotic. Well, it has arrived. Going on in our lives right now is keeping up with our four year old, a two year old- who is in every way acting like a two-year-old...exerting her will, being over-dramatic, emotional, testing us, etc, then comes the newborn, who thankfully has a much more relaxed temperament than the other two did. And now enters The Move. We are leaving staff with Campus Outreach after 7 years, and headed to Charlotte where Kevin will be working with BB&T. He starts work next week, and we will be following him up there a few weeks later. Which means, packing, packing and more packing. At the same time, we still have our house on the market, so once or twice a week we get a nice phone call asking us to have our house looking nice and presentable! And that is why my life is crazy!
But amidst adjusting to life with three kiddos and packing up our house and anticipating moving and getting adjusted to a new city, I'm trying to be thankful for all the smaller (and bigger) things lately. Here are just a few I've been keeping mental notes of...

• The growing friendship between Krieg and Karis that has really developed a ton the last few months. 
• Their imagination taking off as they role play and go on imaginary adventures all throughout the house (and create the biggest disasters possible!)
• Lots of meals from friends at church so I didn't have to dirty up the kitchen, do dishes, or in any way think about feeding my family!
• An incredible husband who cleans the house from top to bottom when we have to show it, does lots of playing with the big kids, and anything else he can think to do to make my life easier
• A baby who only really cries when she's tired. 
• A great temporary housing situation in Charlotte until we sell our house. 
• A God who is sovereignly caring for our family's needs, sanctifying us, and revealing more of himself to us in the midst of all of our craziness.

Embracing the Mess

I am not a natural lover of things getting messy-especially when I know I am going to be the one cleaning it up. That has certainly translated into hesitancy in doing activities with the kids that involve huge messes for me to clean. But with a little inspiration from a few blogs that I've been getting ideas from, and a little letting down of my desire to control, I've slowly been embracing the idea of giving Krieg and Karis freedom to be kids and make creations and use their imagination to explore the world! Here are a few pictures of the fun they've been having lately...

 Today's adventure- Moon dough. the original recipe called it Cloud Dough, but Krieg and Karis have been pretending to be astronauts a lot lately and have taken many trips to the moon, so Moon Dough seemed like a more appropriate name. They played with it for a good hour at least and were COVERED in flour, as was the floor. But they certainly enjoyed themselves!

 This was a spontaneous mess initiated by Krieg, when he decided to take out his saw and go to town on some styrophome that came in a box the other day. He worked on it on 3 different occasions, probably for 2 hours. Kevin taught him how to saw on an angle, which actually allowed him to saw through it pretty effectively. Krieg then proceeded to try and teach Karis how to saw, which obviously wasn't exactly successful, but it was so fun watching them work together. This was by far the biggest mess to clean up, three different times, but it was so worth seeing their satisfaction in actually sawing something with their own tools.

 This was our Oobleck experiment from last week. So simple and they loved it. We will be doing this one again soon- probably outside, and with more, plus a little food coloring! 

While we were in Myrtle Beach, I spent a lot of my free time blog-hopping trying to come up with indoor activities to keep us busy during July with a new baby and 100* weather. I stumbled upon a whole slew of play-dough ideas, and we have spent hours upon hours playing with it recently. This picture was in our hotel room making Wild Things, using mostly Mr. Potato Head pieces. Since then, we made a huge batch of home-made play dough, which the kids love because they get a ton more of it to use at one time. Plus the process of mixing it was really fun for Krieg and his friend Lydda Grace.

So here's to a lot more mess-making, memory-making, exploring, creating and cleaning!

Welcome to the world, Reagan!

 Meet Reagan Glory! She made her appearance on Tuesday and we are loving having her around. Especially these two kiddos, who can't get enough of her, literally. They beg to play with her, hold her, read to her, anything, just so long as she isn't napping or eating. Sorry kiddos, that's mostly what a newborn does! Since there isn't much playing going on, Karis has happily embraced her role as diaper changing helper. She loves when I tell her Reagan has a poopy diaper. If only she could actually change them herself!

And just to give them a little something fun to do, they made "Oobleck"- ie, cornstarch and water, and had lots of fun making a mess!

A few beach shots

This was all before we had a student come to try to take some family pictures as part of a class assignment, and bonus for us. Naturally as soon as he arrived, Karis flipped out and started screaming, hence ruining yet another attempt at getting a normal family photo! At least we got some cute ones of the two of them!

Swimming Lessons

 I finally got some new batteries in the camera so it made it's appearance in my hand for the first time in weeks. It's not as if I haven't had plenty of fun things to take pictures of. We are at the Leadership Project  with 100+ students, playing, swimming, exploring and trying not to have a baby while we're down here! The kids love having so many play mates, and we are extra lucky that this year one of our staff friends is a certified swim instructor, so Krieg got his first official swim lessons. Learning how to swim was probably the thing he was most excited about coming down to the beach. Apparently I did a good job of hyping it up! Here are a few shots I took of our little fish in the water. It's amazing how quickly he picked up on it, and was swimming a good 7-8 feet by the end of his lesson!

Strawberries

We were so thankful that strawberries have come in a little earlier this season. That means more picking before my baby-belly gets too huge to make it worth the effort. Yesterday we made a trip with some friends for our first round...

 And of course we ended the morning with a little peanut butter and jelly picnic! The kids had a great time picking, and eating the oh-so-sweet strawberries, that just put store-bought ones to shame. This morning we made our first small batch of homemade strawberry jam. It is SO good. I can't wait to go back and pick more in a few weeks to store away jam in the freezer. I think I'll be bringing a friend to help me pick though!

the month in pictures

Apparently blogging is just not high enough on the priority list these days, so here is a recap of our last few weeks in pictures, starting with the events of the night...

Testing out the new bunk beds! Krieg is asleep up on top and Karis is in the pack and play in the room with him. We're still waiting on her mattress to come in.

Taking a break from playing at the water table

Honing his dribbling skills. Our sun room has officially become an indoor basketball court, which is totally fine by me!


SWU baseball game

Sporting the pony tail- which her hair is almost long enough to pull up in.

It's been a crazy month! I am loving this SC spring weather. We have been outside A LOT! They are both becoming expert bike riders. I am desperately trying to get Krieg to master his training wheels bike so that in the fall I can run with the girls in the double stroller and have him ride along side! We've been taking nature hikes, making our rounds at the parks, doing our fair share of yard work to help Kevin, and having fun watching 2 hawks nest in our oak trees. I love that they both can identify a hawk by sight and sound!

And next up is Krieg's big 4 year old birthday this weekend...

Growing up

Yesterday we celebrated Karis' 2nd Birthday! We started the day with cinnamon rolls and singing with the Stewarts, who were visiting from Cullowhee. And finished off with a few families over for spaghetti and cupcakes. Karis loves being "two now!" as she says often, and we love the big girl she is becoming!

The craziness

January has been a crazy month. Our house has felt a little bit like a revolving door with people constantly coming in and out, along with us taking a few weekend trips. I am consistently exhausted, which would account for the lack of blog posts, so I figured I'd just post a few pictures to play catch up, with hopes that I might be more consistent this month

The one big news worth sharing though is that we found out we are having a baby GIRL! The whole crew got to come to the ultrasound and see her moving around inside of me. So Kevin and I will be busy trying to come up a name for our sweet baby girl!

the kids beg for me to make mohawks every time we take a bath. Lately they have been trying to make their own.

Their current favorite clothes are basketball jerseys and Bob the Builder PJ's.

Our Angus Lost dog house

And this weekend we went up to Banner Elk for a retreat with a few students. Despite the fact that there was no snow on the ground, we did go sledding on a tiny hill with man-made snow. Krieg loved it!