We're In

We're in our new house! Well we've been in. We closed on the house a few weeks ago. However, since then we've been working our tails off getting the house ready to move into. All of this effort comes at expense of blogging about the kids. Feat not because I've taken notes and I'll fill in the blanks when I can.

The day we closed on the house we already started on a project; painting Alyce's room. For the longest time we've been building up the new house to Alyce by telling her she got to pick the color of her room. Almost since leaving our old house Alyce has asked for a dark purple room. Not "pinky purple" like her old room. She wanted "dark purple". Of course Mom and I aren't going to give Alyce unfettered access to the paint chips at Lowe's but mom picked a color Alyce was happy with.

The first time Alyce saw her painted room it was only half finished. Specifically it was only cut in. Alyce said to me later that I missed a lot of places with the paint in her room; everyone's a critic. A few days later when finished Alyce gasped when she walked into her room and then danced in circles around her room.

After closing we grabbed the kids and went out to the new house. We wanted to give them a chance to decompress in their new house. Both Alyce and Luke quickly took to the new house. They ran around in circles, jumped, and rolled on the floor. Seeing their excitement made living in the apartment worth it.

Time For Bed

Since Thursday morning Alyce had been under the weather with a stomach bug. It's the same one that hit Mom two weeks ago. I'm guessing all the effort we went to to keep her healthy was for naught as she picked it up at school.

Today she was on the road to recovery and she was mostly her old self when I got home from work.

After dinner Mom went out shopping with Grams and it was left to me to put Alyce to bed. I let her watch a show before bedtime and I took the opportunity to take a quick snooze on the couch. I find that children's shows put me right to sleep and Bob the Builder is no exception.

Alyce's show must have finished while I was out of it. I was woken up to my little girl standing over me saying "daddy it's time to go to bed".

Alyce's Daddy Book

Tonight when I got home from work Alyce greeted me with her most recent artwork.  What she gave me was probably the sweetest thing I've ever gotten from her or from anyone.  At school the teachers stapled together a few pages of colored construction paper and then let the kids create their own book.  The subject matter of Alyce's book was me!

Every page of the book was a hand drawn picture of me.  In a few of the pictures I was holding hands with Alyce.  I asked her what we were doing when we were holding hands and she said that in the orange picture she and I were going for a walk and in the yellow picture we just got done playing.

Later Mom told me that after Alyce finished her book her teacher put it on the overhead projector and Alyce read / explained the book to the class.  Mom and I were both so very proud of her.



I don't have the words to describe what I felt when she showed me her book; flattered, proud, loved?  I do know that it was great.