Just call him "Mr. Wizard"

Cory and Rafe had a "scientific" morning. First they made a volcano then they ended by making squishy bugs. Nothing like the smell of vinegar mixed with coffee in the morning!! (Please notice the lovely costumes they are both wearing!!)

Buck - The Librarian

Rafe has had this chair in this room since he was born. Buck has NEVER sat in it or even seemed to notice it until we moved. From the very first time Buck went into Rafe's new room he has started sitting in Rafe's reading chair. Rafe has now named Buck the Librarian! He scans Rafe's books before Rafe is able to read them. Can't you tell how much Buck enjoys this??!!

Valentine Cookies???

Rafe and I made very unusual Valentine's Day cookies this morning. They were not shaped like ordinary hearts. Oh no, Rafe cut his cookies out in the shape of pumpkins, bats, ghosts and dinosaurs. He is SO hung-up on Halloween!!! The main thing is they tasted great! Happy Valentine's Day!!

I'm BACK!!!

Well, I am FINALLY back on the internet. Let me just tell you it has been EXTREMELY hard to be without television, phone, DVR and, mostly, internet for THREE WEEKS. I guess it is a blessing in disguise because I had a lot more time to get things done at the house that I would have otherwise spent on the computer. However, I feel like so much has happened in the last three weeks that I was not able to share. We are slowly but surely getting settled into the new house. Rafe LOVES his green room and enjoys climbing up the brick wall around the pool and pretending to be Spiderman. I will send lots more pictures as we get everything into place. I guess you can expect to see them this time next year!

We are still here!

Hello to all of my blogger friends. Yes, we are still alive just experiencing "technical" difficulties with our internet. I am SO frustrated with Charter and have called them daily waiting on my internet to be up-and-running again. We are loving our new house and will enjoy it a lot more once all of the boxes are unpacked. When will that be??!! Anyway, just wanted to post a quick update to say I hope to be back in business next week. I will post some pictures of the house then.

Birthdays, birthdays and more birthdays!!

What an extremely busy weekend we had. We took a few breaks from packing and moving to attend THREE birthday parties this weekend. They were all A LOT of fun. Saturday night was Rafe's cousins, Nicolas and Bella's, birthday party at one of Rafe's favorite places: Chuck E Cheese! He had a ball. This one was in Asheville so they had different games and he loved every minute of it. He came away with some valuable prizes!

Yesterday morning before church we were treated to a nice surprise: SNOW! Poor Rafe, he is so desperate to play in the snow he was outside catching snowflakes in my flour sifter. It snowed pretty hard for about 30 minutes but by the time we left church it was all gone. We have our fingers crossed that the forecasters have predicted it correctly for tomorrow. Hopefully I will have LOTS more pictures of us actually getting to sled!

Yesterday afternoon we went to a birthday party at Pump It Up. This is Rafe's other favorite place to go (well, Rafe AND Cory!!) I don't know who has more fun. This party was extra special because the children got to do the rock climbing wall. Rafe and Cory raced to the top, but Rafe stopped about half-way up. I am sure he would have won though! After Pump It Up we went to Nana and Papa's house for the January family birthday party. The kids were WAY to wild for me to photograph but they had a great time running around the house. I am sure Nana and Papa crashed after 5 kids left. It is quite crazy over there!

This morning Rafe and I painted his Triceratops he got for Christmas. Of course we painted it green, but then Rafe added a few more colors to the mix. We had a lot of fun painting and I think it turned out very cute!!

Car Wash

Cory and I were putting Rafe to bed tonight and he was trying to gather all of his stuffed animals. Rafe bent down to pick one up and said, "Oh my goodness, Daddy. Your feet are SO STINKY. You need to take them to the car wash!!"

I about fell off the bed laughing.

Bathing Beauty!

This is Rafe's idea of shaving his "face"!

He shoots, he scores!

Today was a VERY exciting day for Rafe. He scored his first goal in basketball. I don't know if he has ever heard all of us cheer that loudly. Well, maybe he has, but needless to say his Daddy and I were very proud. What made it even better was Rafe had actually stolen the ball from the other team under their goal and decided to shoot it. Well, as luck would have it the ball went in - for the other team!! Of course Rafe did not know he scored for the other team and he doesn't need to. I will never forget the look on his face. He was shocked and excited all at the same time. Rafe's confidence has come so far since we moved in June. I would not have expected him to even be on the basketball court six months ago. What a special day. You would know this was the one game I left my video camera at home. I'm sure that's why it happened today. Congratulations, Rafe. We are so proud of you.

Closing Day

Today was a big day at the White house. (which one you might say??!!) Yes, as of today we have THREE places to call home. We currently live in one, we still have our house in Charleston (hopefully not for too much longer!!), and we closed on our new house today. Needless to say we were all filled with nerves and excitement today. We did not waste anytime cleaning up the outside of the house. There were HUGE piles of leaves in front of the house that were driving Cory crazy. So we didn't make it home from closing good until he was out there with his rake and in no time bagged up 8 bags of leaves. The bad part is he probably has at least 8 more to go, he just ran out of bags. Rafe absolutely had a ball outside. He was able to help his Daddy with his brand-new leaf blower courtesy of Santa. The highlight, by far, was all the worms he found under the piles of leaves. You have never seen so many worms. They were huge! Of course Rafe had to pick everyone of them up and they are now at our house #2 with his other worm collection. He is OBSESSED with them. My only regret about today was that I did not have my camera to take pictures of all the work Cory and Rafe did. Don't worry, there will be lots more to follow!