Life in Cincinnati: Our First Week

Beautiful sunrise our first week here.
The day we got here, we drove in from Indiana late Sunday night after each driving our cars. I had just flown in to Chicago from Salt Lake and Jeremy had been with Rob and the combined 9 kids all weekend so we were all a little exhausted. I drove the van with the kids and luckily they all fell asleep quite quickly and then Jeremy and I talked on the phone the whole time. It was pouring down rain most of the three hour drive. Exciting!

So we pulled in to the new house and woke up the kids to show it to them! We all slept on the floor that night and then Jeremy left at 6am the next morning to go to work and the kids and I explored the new house and put the beds away to get ready for the movers to come. They were late (this was a usual thing for these guys - I don't want to talk about it), but luckily they managed to get the job done by about 5:30pm that night - Jeremy got home at 6. Haha. While I was in Utah, I met a guy that was in Singers with my sister Heidi and he grew up in this area. It turns out that his parents are in our ward, so he called them and told them we were moving in, and then they called me while I was still in Utah and invited us over for dinner the night we moved in. I was so touched by that and we were so grateful to have a delicious meal after a long day. They are such nice people. They invited the Stake President over that night too because his wife was out of town (he's in our ward), so we got to meet all sorts of people!

It was also the first day of Spring Break that day and while we were moving in, we met a few of our neighbors who have turned out to be great friends! Across the street is a family with three boys, the youngest of which (Wilson) is in Eli's kindergarten class. They are only 12 days apart in age and they love to play together. Luckily they do a good job of including Connor too. Next door is another family with three kids - two teenage boys and an 8-yr old girl. She is a doll and loves to come over and jump on the trampoline with the kids and entertain Anna (awesome!). She is also very good friends with the 8 yr-old boy across the street, so those two, along with Wilson, Connor, and Eli are often all playing together. They play baseball, hide and seek, nerf/sword fighting, jumping on the trampoline, etc. It makes me so happy to see kids playing outside together! It's been a lot of fun. Anna loves to go across the street and play too because they have a swingset and she cries and cries everytime we have to go home.

The kids helped on occasion with the unpacking. One thing about professional movers is they use a TON of packing paper. The paper in this picture is from ONE BOX of dishes. Eli and I unpacked the dishes and we had a hard time getting the paper back into the box even though all the dishes were out! At least that meant nothing was broken.

 Exploring our woods...

 Day 2 at our new house. We were so happy to have nice spring weather! It was freezing the day I flew back into Chicago.

 The first weekend we moved in, we go tour trampoline set up! Some friends of ours gave it to us last fall when they moved to Mexico, so we've been anxious to get somewhere where we could use it. The kids have loved it! It's also crazy to see this picture because in just a few weeks since there are so many more leaves on the trees. Spring is such a fun time!

Giant sticks - what more could little boys want?