It's Good to be Home

This week has been great! Gabe took his final Boards exam back in St. Louis last weekend, so it finally feels like we are here and settled in. Saturday night and Sunday were Stake Conference, and we saw so many friends and family members there. Then we spent Sunday evening out at James and Kelli's and I got my hair cut again (yay!). Monday and Tuesday we babysat for James and Kelli while they were out of town. Taking care of 7 little kids really is a lot of work! It always makes me feel good about myself that I can handle all of them without a problem...and then somewhat overwhelms me when I think of having to do that EVERY day, not just for a few, haha. Being a mom to a bunch of young children is a lot of work! And very mentally exhausting, haha. It is truly a self-sacrificing labor of love. You moms are awesome. Also, I can tell how good of friends we are with them that Gabe was so willing to do it, when just 2 or 3 months ago he commented on not wanting to do anymore overnight babysitting for a long time after a 6 day stint for a family in our previous ward (the one with 4 kids that pretty much all took care of themselves, lol).

So I thought I might take today to sleep in, relax, and get caught up on my housework after being gone for 2 days, but I woke up to a phone call from Mom, saying that they were ready to start painting the new house today. That phone call was also basically as Gabe was getting ready to walk out the door for work (which is a whole other tangent on how awesome, laid-back, and generous Sam Sanders is and has been as Gabe interns with him). So I quickly got dressed and grabbed my stuff and headed out to Mom and Dad's. I ate breakfast with them at their house, and Mom and I got to the new house around 10-10:30. We had to start with scraping the walls to smooth out the texturing, and then when Hyrum and Baylie (I was just getting used to spelling Bailee...I wonder how long it will take me to get Baylie right :P ) showed up, we painted the two bedrooms and the bathroom downstairs with primer. After cleaning up, Mom and I left right around 4. It was a pretty good day of work!

Gabe was done by the time we got back, so we headed back into Springfield to go home. After cleaning up from my day of painting, we decided to go out for Gabe's birthday. We tried a new Indian restaurant downtown, Zayka's, and it was delicious! It was fun to go out with my sweetheart. :) Then of course we had to have some Andy's for desert. ;)

It has just been so nice to be back home again, nearby and available to help family and just spend time with them and be a part of their everyday (or at least weekly) lives. We're getting settled in nicely, too. All of our regular-use things are unpacked downstairs - we just need to organize our books and storage things in the upstairs bedrooms. I love having a house to live in. And James and Kelli are giving us a fridge this week to replace the old, small one here. They also have a dishwasher we can install and a board to use as a counter top for our "bathroom vanity turned kitchen cabinet". Again, it's so nice to be around family, so that they can help us out, too! :) Gabe's parents are also coming down to replace the old window ac unit in the living room with a new one that works better so that the house stays cool this summer. It's just so nice to be home!