A New Semester Begins

Morgan started his last year of Law School! Yay!! I'm SO glad we are almost done! Morgan's enthusiasm is overwhelming, obviously. 

We have been enjoying the Virginia sights with our extra free time before the semester. Here we are walking Monticello trail. Eva of course is collecting rocks along the way.

Jack loves to play peekaboo and thinks pushing his face against glass or see through plastic is hilarious. I have to agree.

Jack also has THE cutest Sunday clothes.

Trip to Philly

We visited Aleisha and James in Philly in August and barely got any pictures to document it (boo). We had so much fun. It was super hot and we walked a lot and ate a lot and watched lots of 24. We love have Aleisha and James and cute little Grace close to us! Here are some pictures of us at the Philly Children's museum (which was awesome). 

The streets and houses are super crammed in Philly and can be quite adorable. This bright red door was on a church a couple blocks away from where we were staying.

...and that was all we took. Just take our word for it that is was great. 

Our First Car Accident

Fun fact to start this out: Morgan and I have perfect driving records. No tickets and no accidents. We got in our first accident when we were driving back to Virginia from Colorado. However, since it wasn't our fault I count our records as still clean.

We were about 2/3 into our drive. Only 9 hours from home when we stopped to get gas and pick up dinner at Subway. The plan was to pick up the sandwiches to eat in the car for dinner so we could push through and finish our drive that night. As we pulled up to Subway, we realized they had a drive through (who knew), and so we decided to take advantage of that convenience. After we placed our order, paid and picked it up we started to pull forward when I spotted a semi out of the corner of my eye. I motioned for Morgan to stop so the semi could go first and so he did. So, first fact we were at a complete stop. The semi cleared us on the front end but as the bed of the truck pulled around it turned out the corner was too sharp (which should have been obvious to the trucker, we still don't know what he was thinking) and so his back wheels caught the front of our car and ripped our front bumper off. I heard the crunch and saw everything fly off and quickly jumped out the car to assess the damage. I just looked at it and cried. I know i'm weak. All I could think about at that point was that we weren't going to get home that night and how disappointing that was!

We pulled forward into a parking spot and the guy got out of his car (obviously mad) and asked why we hadn't seen him. Well, we didn't hit you buddy, you hit us. He then called the police so they could come and assess the situation. Now because we have never been in an accident, Morgan and I had no idea what we were doing in this situation. Do we call 911? What information do we get out? Do we need to get his information? We had no clue, we were accident rookies after all. Turns out there are some really nice people in this world that helped us through all that. The police officer was super nice to us. He called the towing company and helped us get transportation to a shop for a temporary repair so we could continue our drive (we made it home that night still, huge blessing!). He named the trucker as the at fault vehicle and then told us that we needed to call our insurance company to file a claim. At the towing office, they told us that the truckers insurance would pay for our repair and our tow bill. Then when we went to get it fixed in Charlottesville, the auto body office told us that his insurance company would also pay for a rental (thank goodness).

So, in summary, although getting in an accident was not fun, it was an experience peppered with blessings. No one was hurt we learned a lot, got to drive a 2016 Camry for a week (which was sweet!) and now we are finally back to normal life.


Here are some pictures after the temporary fix that allowed us to get back to Charlottesville.

Silly Sayings with Eva

Eva talks SO much now and has reached the pretending stage which is darling! The other morning she was in our room as we got ready for church and she curled her blanket up on the ground and then said it was her crocodile and said, "Come here little crocodile" over and over. She then decided it was a kitten and that said kitten needed it's makeup done and it's hair did.

We got in an accident moving back across the country (another post on that later) and she could repeat her side of the story perfectly...for days...too many times...
She would say, "Truck hit (or smashed) my car, my green car. Broke my car, now get fixed. I cried." The end. We kept joking about what a perfect testimonial she would give in traffic court if it was deemed necessary.

She also can give a perfect retailing of her accident that happened two days ago (see previous post). She says, "I fall off rocking chair, hurt teeth, mom take me to doctor and they make it all better!"

I teach a toddler music class and we had our first lesson this week. Eva sang the Tahn, Tahn, 1, 2, 3 song that we learned that morning all day long. She even clapped along just like we do in class. Side note: Jack usually sings when he hears music. He furrows his brown and just lets out a long and loud 'ah'. So, whenever Eva sang her little song, Jack would usually join in as well.

Lastly, she has finally started to act afraid of 'scary' things in movies. We watched an episode of Sofia the First yesterday with a swamp monster in it and she cried because she was so scared. Morgan told her to say allowed, "I'm not scared of you swamp monster!" Which she did multiple times that night and then would follow it up with, "Take leave off your head!" (apparently that was what scared her most about the swamp monster). She also has repeated several times that, "swamp monster scared me in my house." over, and over and over agin. Repetition is key to learning right?

An Unexpected Twist: Starburst Style

I definitely had an over-reaction mommy moment the other day. You know how when an emergency happens you are suppose to act calm, whelp, I failed that bit of advice miserably.

I was sitting on the couch holding the little gal I nanny every day while Jack was screaming and trying to clamber his way up to me. Of course, his crying caused her to cry. So, I was trying to hush two little babes, when I saw Eva leap off the rocker in our living room onto the floor face first. She screamed super loud and so I set the crying babies on the floor and rushed over to her. I asked if she was ok, and then proceeded to examine her nose and mouth. No blood from her nose, so that was good. Then I checked her mouth. There was a little blood, but nothing to worry about. I then had her tilt her head up so I could look at the top of her mouth and that was where I lost it. There was a bump on her hard palate right behind her teeth. It was a weird color and I was sure something was broken or she'd bitten off her tongue (nope checked that, she was fine). Enter the reason I could never be in the medical profession: I went super pale suddenly and couldn't bare to look any closer at her injury. I shakily put her on the couch and then picked up my phone...and it was dead. Panic set in, I could tell I was losing it and I knew Eva could tell and so she was freaking out. I plugged my phone in and then went over to her to ask how she was doing. She looked at me and tearfully said, "I can't talk" in a weird voice. Of course that had me worried more so I paced around not knowing what to do with myself until my phone finally charged enough for me to call the doctor. During all of this all three of the kids were screaming in the background.

I got through to the doctors office and they said to have me come in right away. I loaded up Eva and headed over. They took us back to a waiting room and took Eva's vitals and then the nurse had her look at the ceiling to check the top of her mouth. After a few seconds she said all looked normal, but that she would send in the doctor anyway. At this point I was like, "what?! You don't see that crazy bump up there in her mouth?" After the nurse left the room I had Eva sit on my lap so I could look into her mouth myself. Much to my surprise it was all back to normal. Well, almost she had two loose front teeth, but everything else was the same. I looked at her and asked if she had swallowed anything. She replied cheerfully, "Blue starburst, pink starburst. My daddy" Haha...I suddenly realized that Morgan had given her a couple starbursts about 10 minutes before the said accident and what I saw when I looked in her mouth was the blue starburst pushed up on her hard palate! I was slightly embarrassed to tell my story to the doctor and nurses, but also very grateful that there wasn't anything more serious going on. Just another crazy mommy moment for the books.

Playing Dress-up

I love having a little girl and more specifically a little girl who loves to do all things girly. I had so much fun dressing her up for church last week. This darling dress is a hand-me-down from one of Eva's older friends.

The request for hair today was 'Elsa hair'. So, I did my best. My braiding skills are a work in progress. I love that Eva's hair is long enough to braid so I can practice though.

Denver Children's Museum

We  headed up to Denver on Monday to go to the Children's Museum. It is awesome and Eva loves it. This trip our good friends the Bushes joined us. We have missed them this summer and are SO sad they won't be our next door neighbors next year. Happily, though we are planning to live in the same state so we'll have to make traveling to Denver a regular thing for sure! The kids had so much fun exploring and playing together.

 This arrangement worked out well. The girls wanted to swing and Grayson wanted to push. 

 This little play area had animal dress-ups that were SO darn cute. 

 Jack was happy just to be there. He could watch people all day. 

 Eva at the building station. What an enthusiastic smile. ;)

 The outdoor water area is Eva's favorite. 

 The girls were giggling about having 'boat hands'. 

What cute kids. We were so happy to get to see the Bushes this summer and will miss them so much. Until next time friends!