Today

PS- this is a picture of Brad and Jared after their awesome trip to a local amuzement park for Jared's birthday. HE LOVED it.

I think I am FINALLY caught up to today! So, today was really great. I took the kids to the rec center which is less than a mile from here. It was AWESOME! They have a bucket pool, kiddie beach entry pool with slide, a lazy river, and two HUGE, amuzement style water slides - just in the pool area! Of course, we spent most of our time in there. But, they also had an indoor play park, a huge gymnastics room, a climbing wall...and oh, yeah...you could work out there too - if you want, I guess.

We also got the house settled a lot today and put together our little play loft for the kids. We hung pictures. We also got this killer attachment to our surround sound which allows us to have ipod jacks all over the house. So, I can just plug in my iPod and pump the sound into the speakers in the room. Rick and I REALLY dorky about that kind of thing so we are TOTALLY psyched about this. And...you know...they put in some lights in the garage - Rick is in heaven. :)

Moved in...sort of

Here is Brian, showing his utter excitement about our move-in day. The kids, fortunately slept through much of the closing and the move in. They weren't super thrilled about their rooms, to tell ya the truth. They did LOVE the water park that is close by and they love their new basement play room.

The Willards Move In

I am kind of working backwards here so some of this is old news...BUT in case you want to see the pictures of our progress...here are some shots of our first day in our new pad.

Here is the real official day we closed on the house. That day, we brought over some essentials...some toilet paper, towels, and wine (what else do you need) and we cruised over to the house for the first time as the real owners.

Willards make it out to the Wild West

On the afternoon of the 3rd day, we are home! The kids liked the path behind the house, the basement, and the appliances. They couldn't possibly have been less interested in their rooms! Oh, well. They also rolled around on the carpet and pushed all the buttons everywhere. Tomorrow morning, we close on the house.

Day 3 in Idaho Springs

We are in Idaho Springs, Colorado here. They have a killer pizza joint where you dip your crust in honey. We 'dominated' that pizza - there wasn't even a crumb left for the local rodents to enjoy.

Day Two

Here is our little Brian at 'Park Discovery' in Cedar City, Utah. This park is absolutely the coolest park we have ever seen. Thanks, Laurie for the hot tip! We let the kids play until they were too tired to walk and then took off for another day on the road. The park even had a Wells Fargo Stagecoach (we assume some money exchanged hands to make this happen). It had forts, tunnels, slides, dinasaur sand pit for bone excavating, and a ton of cool nature lessons all over the equipment.

First Stop

Close to Vegas (at the Nevada/ California) state line is a super fun casino called Buffalo Bills. I guess this was a fitting stop as we head out to the great plains. We had a great time here and there were awesome rides for the kids. Here is Brad on the Frog Bouncer ride with some new friends. Too bad he was so bored, huh? We also rode a log ride (Brad loved it - Brian not so much) and a monorail which was totally lame but the kids were into...and finally we hung out in the arcade which the kids loved for whatever reason. Brian walked around like 'big man on campus' checking out all the arcade games. We hung out here for a couple hours and let the kids run their wiggles out. After that, we drove until about 10:00 at night into Cedar City Utah. We stayed at a pretty weak hotel but it was a very short stay so we were cool with it.

Here we are loading up our caravan and kissing Tom and Deb goodbye (for now). :( Luckilly, they get out to Colorado a lot so we plan on seeing them bunches. We also will invite ourselves to stay there when we come out to California because it was just too great! They shouldn't have spoiled us so much.

Here we are in Dana Point after loading our car for the big trip. The DVD player is cued up and our bin of movies is loaded. This picture was taken at Tom and Deb's place. They took great care of us - gave us a super place to stay and filled our bellies for the big trip.

We are here

Today is our 4th official day in our new home. We are having fun - especially in the basement! Yes, I said basement. That is a very new thing for us. Rick had so much fun telling the movers to put all the boxes in the basement. We set up these play huts in there and the kids ran around with the huts wrapped around their waists - saying 'we are doggies'. Go figure! They sort of looked like Cirque de Soile characters and also just a little bit nuts. The boys are adapting well to the move. Brad loves his new room and is looking forward to meeting some neighbors today. We made them cookies - isn't that what you are supposed to do? By 'we' I mean 'I' made them cookies. They were interested in the process for 30 seconds or so. We are scouting out the houses with swing sets in order to enhance our odds of finding playdate opportunities. Here goes!