We are officially Tennesseans, and we have our plates to prove it. Nevermind that I've yet to get a TN license, but hey, I've got a plate, baby. Did you know that in Tennessee, you only get 1 plate? Yeah, they don't have front plates. I find that odd. Just a little tidbit of information for those of you looking for one. I thought it would be kind of fun to leave my CA plate on the front and my TN plate on the back, but I will just opt for hanging the plates up in the garage (once we have one) as a novelty item. Maybe I can find a nice Budweiser poster to put next to it.

Ah yes, welcome to another installment of Adventures. Recently, I've received a few emails (some using strong language, actually) regarding my lack of activity here on the blog. Well, I promise that from now on I will do my best to post more frequent, less verbose Adventures. But for right now, I can only promise that I have a months worth of things to tell you...so less verbose is really not on the radar. I will try giving you the Reader's Digest version where I can...but come on...you know how I am.

SUMMER LOVIN'
Here is Abby's summer in a nutshell: playing, sleep overs, swimming, running boring errands with mom, eating Popsicles and learning all about what it means to be in the middle of sibling conflict.

Sometimes I long to be a kid again...playing in a blow up pool till your fingertips turn into raisins, eating Popsicles and not caring that it drips all over your swimsuit and using your imagination as a source of entertainment. One thing that has really been a treat for me is watching the kids play "imaginary" games. These kids come up with the best stuff! If I had a dollar for every time I heard them say, "Let's pretend that..." - I would be one rich Tennessean. One reoccurring scenario is "plane"...where they all pretend they are on a plane bound to Chicago of all places. The pretend plane is on the stair landing at B & M's house. Someone always has to be the pilot - and on this plane, the pilot also serves food. I don't want to be the one to ask them who is flying the plane if the pilot is off serving tater tots to the passengers... One day they were playing "office" - I overheard one kid saying to another, "give me your account number". HUH? And the props that go along with their pretend scenarios are the best! The etch-a-sketch board thingie they have has been everything from a computer to a patient's hospital chart (by the way, once when playing "hospital" Beka came down with "ammonia" but thank God she's ok now).

Abby's swimming lessons are going...not too bad. Prior to June 10th, my dainty daughter did not like getting her face wet or being in the line of splash fire. Either would result in whinny protest. But, now she's going all the way under water and even doing a not to shabby dog paddle (with fashionable floatie belt around her waist, of course). She's not ready for the 100 meter freestyle or anything, but she's getting more confident in the water, and that makes mama feel better.

A big milestone is ahead for the Little Moon...in TWO weeks she will start school. I think I'm still in denial. I can't imagine her in school 5 days a week for however many hours a day it is. As you think of it, say a prayer for her (and her parents too!)...that we all make the adjustment to school life.

There are so many great Abby stories that I wish I could share with you...those stories are part of the reason that I established the Little Moon blog. I do a horrible job these days of maintaining it....and....something is wrong with the feed anyway. So if you are supposed to be getting email updates from that blog, you probably won't. It's sort of hard to maintain 2 blogs, so I may just shut it down and stay with Adventures...I'll keep ya posted.

THE UNFOLDING HOUSE SAGA

Some exciting news on the home front (literally) is that we are considering a house! Yes, it's a little earlier than we expected. We started praying for "our house" even before our house in California sold. We had no idea what God would have for us, but we prayed in faith that He had one picked out for us...we prayed that he would prepare it and keep watch over it until it was time for us to have it. Since we've arrived in TN, we've seen a series of miracles that have increased our faith and our ability to believe God for provision. So the 3 of us sat down one day and wrote a list of everything we wanted in a house. Every night during our family prayer time, we would take our list out and ask God to bless us with this house. This past week, we went and saw a house that I previously turned my nose up at many times (those MLS pictures can really make a good house look bad!). We walked inside and with every step we liked it more and more. We began to realize that with a few very minor exceptions, it satisfied everything on our list (it was a LONG list!!). Right down to the storm doors that Abby asked for (for some reason, she thinks storm doors are very cool - this house has 2!). It's right at the edge of our price range, but as we started to consider it and feel that this could be the house, 2 separate things happened that put extra money in Mike's paycheck every month. Add to that the fact that BofA has some favorable discounted loan options for their employees and it seems that God is positioning us to claim this house. We decided to take the weekend to pray and wait on it. We'll see what happens next week - it may be that we put an offer on it. We also know that if we don't get this house, we are content with waiting for the right one. If you are interested in seeing pics of the house, check out our dropshots account. Each photo has a comment, so be sure to read those. We'll keep you posted on any new developments!

We hope that y'all had a great 4th of July. The 3 of us spent the evening on the Intramural field at MTSU in our lawn chairs. They had all kind of fun things there going on and then around 8pm the local orchestra played a full lineup of everyones favorite patriotic songs...then, for the finale a great fireworks show. The fireworks were great, but the highlight of our evening (and a number of people sitting around us) was watching Abby do interpretive dancing to the orchestra music. I tell you, I'm not just a proud mama when I say the girl has some serious dancing skills. She burned a few holes in the field there with her happy feet. It was a great time.

Well - I told you that this would not be less verbose...but thanks to those of you that made it this far. We miss our friends and family back home and think of you so often - thanks for all your emails keeping me posted on what's going on with you. Even though I don't respond quickly, please know that I read them (sometimes more than once!) and pretend that you're right down the street.

love and Popsicles,
k