The boys are moving on up in the world! Or, at least in the area of sleeping arrangements:).

It's official - the crib is GONE from our house! Already been picked up by someone here in Kirkland that had given her crib away after her second child and now needed another one (I told her I wanted her to have it because should we ever have need for a crib again, as in, if the Lord wills it against ALL odds, we would want someone else to do the same for us:)). Nathan has moved up to a toddler bed and Adam is on a twin mattress, currently on the floor. Nathan has done pretty well with the transition! The first few days were like the Honeymoon phase where he didn't get up at all, but he did figure out after a few days that he could now move about the room and took advantage. All in all, though, I have to say it was a pretty smooth transition! A little bit of horsing around, but nothing too alarming. When I tell him it's time for him to have a nap, most days he marches off to his room to go sleep in "ma new bed":). Love that little boy!

We ordered a bunk bed yesterday, so the plan will be for Adam to go on the bottom bunk of the bed for now, until he's old enough to go to the top bunk and Nathan is ready to transition from the toddler bed to the bottom bunk. We know our Lynsey and knew she would NOT want to be left out of the bunk bed shenanigans, so we've told her we will move her bed frame into the other room and she can sleep on the top bunk for now. I think we will move Nathan into the same room as the other two as well so he gets used to sleeping with Adam, which means the party will be on with all three of them sleeping in the same room for a while! If we deem this not to be working we will re-evaluate, and I suspect it will take some adjustment time. What better time to do it than in the summer, right?? We'll see how it goes:).

You might be asking, but why buy a bunk bed and go through all the effort of setting it up if you're only going to be moving in a few months! Well, that's an excellent question! We have actually decided to rent this house for another year. It's funny the process we've been through in the last few weeks as we've come to this decision. We were hoping to sell our Calgary house right away, putting it on the market while the renter was in it. Well, our renter called me the other day and told me in no uncertain terms he would not be agreeable to having showings while he was renting. It was a miscommunication with the property management company, as we were clear with them when we rented it out that we had to put it on the market while the renter was in there. Anyway, after much thought about all the implications of waiting until September to list the house and how that affected our chances of buying here, we decided to just let the renter stay until April 30th (what he really wanted) and putting the house on the market at peak selling season with no one in it to cause any complications, and sign another one year lease here.

There was a time when I would have told you there was no way we would stay in this house another year. It was such a shock at first to go from our nice new house to this "fixer upper", and for several months I just kept telling myself it was only temporary, and that's how I lived with some of the things that drove me crazy. BUT, Brian has gone and planted grass in the front yard, making an AMAZING difference in how the yard looks (seriously, neighbors are applauding the move with enthusiasm!) and it's funny how even one small improvement and investment of ourselves has increased our "ownership" of the place. I think there was a bit of pride involved with my always telling people it was only temporary, that we would be buying something soon (the implication of course always being that we would buy something much nicer!). Living here been a nice lesson for me that I don't have to have the nicest of everything, and in fact, it can be a bit freeing to NOT have the nicest of everything all the time. It's funny, I have become so used to so many of the things that used to irritate me that they hardly bother me anymore. Do I love sharing a bathroom with the kids? Not exactly, but it's completely doable and honestly not as bad as I thought. It's starting to feel a bit like home, and that's really all your kids need, why should I need more than that? So that's our situation for now. Buying will be something we revisit in the Spring when we *hopefully* have a better feel on the longevity of our stay here. Honestly if we only want to stay for another two years, buying isn't worth it because of all the fees you pay to buy and sell here (way higher than Canada). Lots to consider! Thankfully we can put it off for another year:).

Lynsey had her dance recital just over a week ago! She was beautiful and did a great job, but she told us in no uncertain terms that she did not want to do dance again. Okay, that will be all for dance recitals for us then! I don't really mind, if she doesn't love it, I will not be pushing her in that direction! She really seems to like the gymnastics portion of her class a lot so I think we'll continue to put her in just gymnastics classes for as long as she is interested. I am glad I got to see at least one more recital:).