Halloween

Last year we started the tradition of letting one of the kids choose a theme for our families costumes.  Last year Carter chose batman.  Carter was Batman, Austin was Robin, Tessa was Catwoman, Zach was the Joker, and I was Harly Quinn (Jokers, jester looking helper).

This year it was Austins turn to choose.  He chose Star Wars(it's talked about, in some capacity, daily).  Zach was Han Solo, I was Leah, Carter was Luke, Austin was Jango Fett, Tessa was an Ewok, and Eli was Yoda.  At our ward Halloween party they had a photo booth so we actually have pictures of us all together.  Wanna see them?  Well, here they are.

You're welcome!

Home

Well, we're officially grown ups.  We've got a mortgage.  That's right, for the first time in our lives Zach and I are living in house that is actually ours.  We had been looking for almost a year before we found it and everything went through just under the wire.  From going under contract to moving in it was about four weeks.  It officially became ours on September 27th and we moved everything in on the 28th (we also cleaned out of our old place and handed in our keys that same day).  Zach was at the new place telling the movers where to put things and I was cleaning out our old place when I got a call from Zach.  He informed me that the kids were playing in the backyard when all of a sudden 5 other kids just showed up.  Before he knew it there were a handful of kids in our house and Carter and Austin had run around the street to check out 3 or 4 of the houses that belonged to some of the kids.  Just what we were hoping for.

We no live just a little north of the city.  Our house is on a dead end street with a bunch of families and kids.  When the weather's nice the kids all run around and play.  The boys love it!  Tessa too.  The back yard is fenced in so I can send them out while I make dinner instead of them circling my legs wining about how hungry they are.  It's glorious! 

The day we moved in a tree up the street fell across the road and blocked everything for a few hours until a crew came out and cleared.  Because of that we checked the trees on our property.  Sure enough there were three large 60 foot trees in the yard that were dead.  Sweet.  That became our first big project, to find someone to come remove them because there's no way we could do it ourselves.  It was quite amazing to watch the crew work.  The first branch on these trees were probably 20 feet off the ground.  I asked the kids how the worker got up into the tree and Carter said one of the guys wrapped a rope around the tree and put his feet against the trunk and worked his way up into the tree.  Once he was up there he would tie branches off and cut them while the others on the ground worked other ropes to make sure the huge branches fell where they wanted them to.  To load up the largest trunk pieces they had a guy bring his truck with a crane on it.  He then masterfully used that crane to pick up and place the pieces precisely into the back of the truck like a big tetrus game.  It really was amazing how nimble he was with that crane.  As soon as the tree crew drove away the clouds opened and there was a huge rain storm.  We're talking sheets of rain.  This helped us learn that the edge of our back yard turns into a pond when there's heavy rain.  Perfect.

Introducing.....

the newest member of team Holmstead,

Eli William.

He made his grand entry on July 16th making everyone wait a week past his due date. Labor however, went rather quickly (3 1/2 hours).  He's my biggest baby so far weighing in at 9lb 10oz and he was 21 inches long.  After 24 hours in the hospital we were both able to come home.

The kids are smitten.  Let's face it, we all are.  Carter can't see him without telling me he's so glad that I had a baby or that Eli's "sooooooo Cuuuuute!" or something along those lines.  Austin want's to hold him all the time.  Tessa has to know where "baby brother" is at all times.  She even tries to dictate his schedule, telling me when to feed him or when he needs to go to sleep.

Everything is going well and we're glad he's here.  Welcome to the team Eli!!

Taco box

Earlier this week a chunk of our plaster ceiling fell.  The workers scheduled to come work on it this morning.  They said it was going to be pretty dusty work so Zach and I decided it would be best if the kids and I weren't here while they worked.  It's rainy so going to the park wasn't an option.  I decided to take them to the library and Target (to pick up a Fathers Day gift).  The kids had a good time at the library and we maxed out my library card and had to put some books on Carter's card too. 

At Target we got a couple of random items on the main floor and headed upstairs to find a Fathers Day gift for Zach.  The last couple of Fathers Days gifts have included something LEGO.  Zach likes it because it's something fun that he can do with the boys.  The boys love it because they practically get to pick out a toy for themselves even though technically it's for their dad.  The boys were all ready to go that same direction this year but they couldn't agree on anything and we really don't need anymore LEGOs right now.  So I told them we were getting him something different.  After a little complaining they agreed.  We ended up getting some games that we can all play as a family.  The last item we needed to get were some tackle boxes, but we're not going to use them for fishing.  We're hoping that they'll help the boys keep the LEGO's we already have picked up and somewhat organized.  When I told the boys we needed to find some tackle boxes Austin asked, "What's a taco box?"  I corrected him saying not taco, tackle, like football players do.  The whole time we were at the store Austin called it a taco box, tack-o box, or a tockle box.  And he didn't just say it a few times, he was singing some song he'd made up about needing a tack-o box, trying to find a taco box the rest of the time we were there.  I couldn't help but chuckle.

The 80's

Today at school Carter had a performance titled "Blaine does the 80's".  It's a fundraiser that the school does every year with varying themes.  This year they were supposed to dress in 80's attire.  I couldn't come up with anything from Carter's existing wardrobe that would work so off to Old Navy Tessa and I went while the boys were at school.  Luckily? Unfortunately?  I don't know which it is but a lot of the styles from the 80's are coming back so it was not difficult to find him a highlighter green polo shirt with a bright yellow lion embroidered on it.  Done.

Fast forward to tonight when Carter was getting dressed for the show.  He put on his bright green polo and some jeans that we then pegged.  Some bright yellow socks, an orange sweater over his shoulders and some gel in his hair, to give it a good wave, and his costume was complete.  He was stoked.  He kept looking in the mirror and saying, "I look soooo 80's!"  My favorite line of the night came from Austin though.  He said, "I don't know if I should say you look ridiculous or stunning.  (brief silence)  I don't even know what stunning means, I just heard it on Dinosaur Train."   Then he walked off.

The End

Eat

This morning when Tessa woke up I asked her if she was ready to eat or if she wanted to go play.  She responded that she wanted to go play.  A little while later as I was doing some things around the house Tessa came and found me.  She yelled "EAT!!"  I said, "Can you ask nicely?"  "Peas eat" she responded.  I told her sure she could have some breakfast.  Then I asked her what she wanted for breakfast.  She paused for just a minute and said, "cookie?" while raising her eyebrows and smiling really big.  She was kind of upset when I wouldn't give her a cookie but calmed down when I pulled the strawberries out of the fridge.

I made cookies on Monday and all of the kids ask multiple times a day if they can have one or two.

Twofer

 Yep, todays post will contain two stories in one quick post.  Enjoy.

First story, we'll title it "Hewp (help)"

On Saturday I'd put Tessa down for her afternoon nap.  As Zach and Austin were getting ready to head out to t-ball their ruckus woke Tessa.  She hollered at me "Mom" as usual and then went silent.  I figured she'd fallen back asleep.  A little while later she started crying, "hewp......hewp" and it sounded a little muffled.  I went in to see what was going on and found here in, what I thought was a hilarious predicament.  She had pulled her pajama shirt up over her head and it got stuck because her arms were still in the sleeves.  She couldn't get it back on or off, so she started calling for help.  Also, inside her bed was all of her hair clips.  She'd gotten them out of her drawer and was playing with them all which had kept her quiet for so long.  Silly girl!

Story number two, we'll call it "Talents"

On Sunday our Family Home Evening lesson was on talents and weaknesses.  Zach was leading the lesson and at one point he asked Austin to list some of Carter's talents, which he did.  Then I listed some of Carter's talents.  When we were ready to move on Carter said that he had a few more that we had forgotten.  We repeated this activity for Austin and his talents too.  Zach said that whenever Carter said something he thought Austin was talented at, Austin would raise his eyebrows and shake his head yes, in total agreement with what had just been said.  Then Zach asked the boys to list some of my talents.  He asked Austin to go first and Austin said that I was really good at doing the dishes to which Carter exclaimed, "Ugh, that was what I was going to say!"  They proceeded to list off all of the chores I do around the house.  (ie: cooking dinner, dusting, folding clothes.....)  One of them also said that I was really good at eating eggs.  During the lesson Zach never asked them what they thought his talents were so I asked them while we were getting dinner ready.  They said things like, he's good at building with legos, and he's good at putting batteries in their toys.  All things that lead to them getting something for themselves in the end.  It was all pretty hilarious and we should have video taped it.  Maybe next time.

Ralph

I was going to title this post "Ookie Pukie" but it seemed a little too gross.  I'm going to have to be honest and say that's exactly how this last week was.  Gross.  Our house was hit with the dreaded stomach flu.

It started with Zach on Sunday.  He left church after sacrament meeting, came home and crashed in bed.  He stayed there for the majority of the week.  He even had to miss his mock trial (KITA) that his firm puts on in DC because the morning he was supposed to fly out he couldn't walk from the bedroom to the front room without getting light headed.  On Friday he finally felt well enough to go into work.

Austin got the stomach flu around midnight, Sunday night.  He came in my room, woke me up and told me he didn't feel well.  He didn't bother to mention that he had thrown up in his bed and that it was all over him.  That was the beginning of the laundry marathon.  Sheets, bedspreads, towels, clothes, so many things needed to be washed.  Austin did fine Monday, no throwing up.  Early Tuesday morning we began round two.  Again, he threw up while he was asleep so I had more laundry.  Then Austin was fine the rest of Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.  He even went to school and a birthday party on Friday.  Saturday morning I woke up at 5:30 to Carter running into my room saying, "Austin's throwing up in his bed!"  Sweet.  This time was the biggest clean-up.  It had dripped down the wall by his headboard and puddled under his bed.  He was fine the rest of Saturday.  I'm sure you can understand why I came to dread the night last week.

Carter got in on the action too.  He woke up Thursday morning but he made it in the toilet. Hallelujah!  That's the only time Carter threw up.

Tessa had a mild fever Sunday night and was fussy and grumpy for a few days.  Thank goodness that's all she got. 

Last week was exhausting!  Caring for four sick individuals and all the demands/requests that come with it had me feeling pulled every direction and quite grumpy at times.  My "To Do" list for the week stared at me from the fridge with nothing crossed off it for the majority of the week.  Unfortunately I let that make me grumpy too.  Does anyone else feel like no matter how carefully you plan or schedule, things never go anywhere close to what you plan?  It seems like my schedule is regularly canceled out or trumped by someone/something else.  Anyway, I'll stop my wining now. 

I tell you what, I am very grateful for a washer and dryer in my apartment and the fact that I never caught the bug.  I'm also glad that everyone seems to finally be over the stomach flu.  We'll see what this week brings.  Over and out!

Ready. Set......

I just put Tessa down for her nap.  Something funny happened that I wanted to write down.  Normally I would write it on the note pad I have on my fridge.  The one that only Zach, myself and the occasional dinner guest get to see.  Today I decided to quickly post it here on the blog, because Zach made a New Years Resolution for me to blog more.  Anyway, short story made long, I was following the usual sleep routine where Tessa & I rock and snuggle in here room for a minute before I put her in bed.  I sat down in the chair and said, "Here's your fuzzy, and your binki, and now your blanket and you are set."  She quickly pulled her binki out of her mouth and shouted "GOOOOO!", because in our house that is almost always what follows "set".  The boys do a lot of racing, be it cars or themselves, and Tessa has caught on to their "Ready. Set. Go." phrase that starts them all.  She's a quick one! (pun intended)

Tessa

I was going to do a big update post.  I even started it two weeks ago.  I just never felt like I had enough time to put it all together so I'm scrapping it.  I've decided to do a bunch of little posts instead.  It will help me feel like I'm accomplishing more.  I figure I should start with Tessa because she's changed the most.  Ready?  Here we go....

This is the most current picture I can find on our computer.  It's from early December and her hair's a mess.

She is all girl.  Anything can become a bracelet or a ring.  She loves stuffed animals and soft fuzzy blankets.  She got a tea set for Christmas and is always ready to have a tea party.  When I'm eating breakfast and can't come to the other room for a tea party she brings me all the cups and saucers demanding we have a tea party.

She started walking around eleven months and talking around one year old.  She will now mimic anything we say whether it's in Russian or English and says a lot of words on her own.  Some of my favorite words she says are applesauce, sweet potatoes, and avocado.  She uses "bla-bla" to make the ending sounds and it's adorable.  She has also recently started saying yes instead of yeah.  It comes out "yesh" with an emphasis on the "sh".  She is saying or understanding something new every day.  It's always amazing how quickly these little ones pick up on everything.

Tessa loves to eat.  Whatever anyone else is eating she wants some.  If she sees someone eating something she starts saying, "bite, bite, bite" until she gets a bite.  She sounds like the seagulls on Finding Nemo.  On Friday night we were out running errands and stopped somewhere for dinner.  As we walked past the restaurants windows heading toward the front entrance she started saying "bite!" and pointing to everyone's plates.

She's also a great big tease.  Her brothers will be folding their clothes and she'll walk over and squat down by the folded clothes to look them in the eye.  Then she grabs the folded clothes and runs or shakes them and throws them back on the floor.  Lately she'll look at us, lean forward at the waist, and then start slowly stomping toward us, like we do when we're going to chase her.  When we act scared she giggles like she's the funniest girl around.  Then she waits for us to do it to her so she can run away.  She has been such an fun addition to our family.  She makes me laugh every day.

Here are a few more pictures of Tessa growing up.

1st air and water show

Morph Suit

This morning I was getting Tessa dressed for church and I put a pair of hot pink tights on her.  Carter came in to ask for help with something and was instantly distracted by her tights.  He scooted as close as he could get and touched them.  Then he said,"What are these?  Are these part of a morph suit?"  I wasn't sure I'd heard him correctly but he repeated it a second time.  I chuckled and informed him they were just tights to match her dress.  "Oh." he said.

When Tessa was all dressed I set her down and she walked out of her room.  Austin saw her and asked/yelled (he's a loud talker) "What are those things on Tessa's legs?"

Mind you, this is not the first time Tessa has worn tights.  They've even seen me wear tights, but they were a boring black color.  For some reason hot pink tights seemed cooler I guess.  Like a morph suit.

Duck Bump

Yesterday Austin was goofing around and fell. He hit his head on his chair which resulted in a big goose egg on the back of his head. Today he was goofing around again and I asked him what happened yesterday when he was engaging in such monkey business. He said he slipped and hit his head. At this point Carter chimed in saying, "Yeah, and you got a duck bump."

And now please enjoy a totally unrelated picture taken of them back in July after hair cuts and a long bath.

Stuff (May-July)

Wow, this is my fourth blog post in 2011. What can I say, I'm really good a blogging. Not really, but I'm going to try to do better.

This post is going to be mostly pictures. I finally downloaded our memory card so I'll probably cover a pretty big chunk of time. Here we go.....

This summer we spent some time at the beach. The boys love going to the beach. Here are some shots we took on Memorial Day.
Austin is our little "dude". It always makes me chuckle when he puts on his hat and sun glasses. He typically walks with a little swagger and has crazy hair but you add the shades and hat and it's a riot. (If you look closely you can see my big pregnant reflection in his glasses.)
Zach was very sweet to play life guard with the boys down by the water while I sat in the shade. For almost two hours Austin filled that bottle up with water and then would walk over to some hole Carter had dug and dump it in. Back and forth for two hours at least.

Carter is a ham for the camera. Almost every picture of him is goofy.

As a reward this summer the boys got to make oobleck (corn starch and water). They loved it. I would recommend making it but play with it outside to save yourself hours of clean-up.

We took our yearly trip to Six Flags. Zach's mom was a trooper to come along. I couldn't go on any of the rides so she got to go with one of the boys. It was great!

While Zach's mom was here we tried to get some updated pictures taken. This is the best we got.

We went to a Cubs Game.

Thanks to one of the partners at Zach's firm they were great seats.

The boys favorite parts were the foam finger/claw and the ice cream they got.

In July we went on a little trip to Milwaukee. It was a nice little escape.

While we were there we went to the Harley Davidson Museum. It was really cool, but hard to get a descent photo in there because of the lighting. This is one of the very few pregnancy pictures we've got of me.

We also went to the Jelly Belly factory. The boys loved it.

Popsicles on the porch are a summertime must.

I think I'm going to have to do this in two different posts to avoid technical difficulties. Watch for more to come soon.

Baking

Long time no update. Sorry. Get ready, here comes an update.

There's been some baking going on at our house. Aside from the kind that results in bread, pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and rice krispie treats (yes, I consider making rice krispie treats baking) I've been working on this little bun for the last 9 months.






Yes, we now have a baby sister at our house. The boys love her and constantly ask me how she's doing. We're all excited to have her here.

Here are the numbers for those of you who are into that ;)

Tessa Anne Holmstead
Born 8:42 a.m. on September 26th
7 lb 11 oz
20.5 inches long

Bullet point update

Here's an update in bullet point form. I'll try to pick up where the last bullet point post stopped.

• Zach's trial was CrAzY!! He was gone for three weeks before he came home for a weekend. He put in some super long days out there. On October 22nd I got a call from him. He said, "Trial's over, I'm coming home!" The judge stopped the trial because an expert for the other side was caught lying. Totally crazy. Zach was home for two days and signed up for another trial. InSaNe!!
  
• Carter turned 5 in October. Zach made it home just in time for his Birthday party. It was Carter's first friend party and he had a blast. (Kind of funny, the big threat at our house is, "You're not invited to my birthday party!" The boys say it to each other whenever they're mad or upset about something. It always makes whoever was un-invited upset and they come and ask me to make sure they can still come. My response has become, "Brothers are always invited")
• We stayed here in Chicago for Thanksgiving. We got together with a few other families and had a splendid time.
• We stayed here for Christmas too. Zach had to work every day up until Christmas. Boo! On Christmas Eve we went over to some friends but Christmas day we stayed home in our pajamas all day. It was nice. One thing I'll do different next year is get myself a book for Christmas so I have something relaxing to do while the boys play with their electronics. (Zach got a play station for Christmas and the boys got games for it too so there was a lot of play station time Christmas day)
• We had a party at our place for New Years. It was a lot of fun. The boys loved that they got to stay up so late.
  
• January 4th Zach left for trial in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He was gone for two weeks before he got to come home for a weekend. This trial hasn't been as crazy as the last one. He's been able to come home for a lot of weekends. It's seemed really long though. I'm sure the fact that it's right on the tail of the last trial hasn't helped. Every time Zach comes home the boys are sad to learn that he has to go back again. Last weekend Zach was basically here for a day. He got in late Friday night, on Saturday we went to the Auto Show, and Sunday morning Zach was headed back to the airport.
• Austin turned 3 at the end of January. We found out Zach would be home a weekend sooner than we'd expected so we quickly threw together a birthday party so he could be here. I made super capes and masks for the kids. It turned out really cute.
  
• ZACH IS COMING HOME FROM TRIAL TODAY. He doesn't have to go back to trial but he does have to go to DC for some training next week but that's just for a few days.
• We're going on vacation. The first two weeks of March will be spent in Utah with our families. We're super excited to have Zach all to ourselves and to see our families.

I think that's it. I'm going to make my next post a picture post. I'll try to get that up before we leave.

Funny things the boys do

I have a small list of things that the boys have done or said lately that I need to write down in one place. They are currently on random scraps of paper all over the house. Here we go...

Carter has really been into drawing lately. He draws the cutest pictures of himself. It's been so much fun to have his pictures hanging on the fridge. The other day he drew a picture of himself really big. On the same piece of paper he'd also drawn a picture of a house that was small in comparison to the picture of him. Austin saw the picture and commented, "Carter, you can't fit in your house!" Carter's reply was, "My house is just a little far away." I had no idea that he understood depth perception like that. Very cute.

Yesterday we were headed to the church for play group with the other kids and moms. The boys were really excited and wanted to be there instantly and were asking how much longer. I started to list off the things that we had to pass to keep them occupied. As we passed the hospital that I had mentioned the conversation went like this
Carter: "I think that's the Chicago Hospital of Science and Industry." (he loves The Museum of Science and Industry)
Me: I chuckled and told him, "No, that's Swedish Covenant Hospital."
Carter: "That means they're sweet!"
Me: chuckled again "No, SweDish Covenant" trying to emphasize the "D" sound
Carter: "Ok, so they're kind of sweet" thinking I'd said sweetish.
Hilarious!

We have been working with Carter on reading and recognizing the sounds letters make. Austin has been paying attention too but he's not quite got it yet. He says things like, "I know what I want. It starts with the letter A, it's ck...ck...ck... CEREAL!!!" Or "I know, it starts with the letter B, it's ck....ck....ck....frosted snow flakes (frosted flakes)" It always makes me chuckle.

A while ago the boys had earned a treat and they had decided on gobstoppers. As I went to retrieve the bag of candy the boys had both named the color they wanted, green. When they looked in the bag there were no green so Carter said, "I guess I'll have red." and took a red one. Austin looked for a minute and saw two purple ones and said, "I guess I'll have two"

We had a Family Home Evening lesson on goals one night. The next day Zach was asking the boys what they're goals were for the day. Carter told him his goal was to have no 'time outs'. When Zach asked Austin we got an answer we were not expecting. With a very straight face Austin informed us that he didn't have any goals, they all died. Then he walked off. Later that day I brought it up with Austin again. He gave me almost the same response. He said he didn't have any goals because they all died and he flushed them down the toilet. I was rolling. He got the whole, "they died and I flushed them down the toilet" because of our fish tank experience. We got an aquarium and fish for Carter's birthday and have had terrible luck keeping the fish alive so we end up flushing a lot of fish. For some reason Austin felt all these things went together.

On a regular basis the boys turn on our Tarzan CD, strip down to their underwear and jump on Carter's bed singing at the top of their lungs. They strip down to their underwear because that's what Tarzan wears. They quite enjoy hanging out in just their underwear.

Well, that's it for now. I'm sure there will be more later.

Sesame Street's Influence on Carter

So, the other day Carter and Austin were watching Sesame Street while I did some much needed cleaning around the house. There was a certain short film that caught my attention and made me chuckle. Apparently, it caught Carter's attention too because we have had several conversations about it since.

That same day as I was combing his hair he said, "Mom, I want a mullet." My response was something like, "Oh yeah?! You thought that was pretty cool huh?" Carter, "Yeah, it was really long like yours but it was short in front so it didn't get in his eyes!" And he said it like it was the best idea in the world!!

Today I told him that I was going to give him a haircut sometime this week. First he started to protest as he usually does. Not because he doesn't want his hair short but because he doesn't want to have to sit in one place long enough for me to cut it. Then, I saw the light bulb go on, his eyes lit up and he asked, "Mom, can I have a mullet?" I laughed and said you'll have to ask your dad.

This next conversation seemed to come out of nowhere. We unexpectedly ran into my friend at the post office last week and this is a conversation Carter struck up with her.

Carter: "Bryn, do you know what I really want?"

Bryn: "What?" No doubt thinking it will have something to do with what he wants Santa to bring him for Christmas in a few days.

Carter: "A mullet!"

Bryn and I both got a good laugh out of that.

And now, for your viewing pleasure, I give you the short film that started it all.....

Sesame street says, be nice to kids with mullets!

Cold

You know it's cold outside when there's ice on the inside of your car windows.

Bullet points

Yep, we're still here. It's been a while and some big things have happened. To get you caught up I'm just going to do some bullet points. Here we go....

• We moved...in July. We live in the same general area but we found a nice place in a really good school district. This way next year when Carter starts kindergarten he'll have a definite spot in a good school. It also cut 15 minutes off Zach's commute. Score!

• We took a trip to Utah. We drove. In our tiny little Honda Accord. We barely fit us and all of our stuff for the two week trip. It wasn't bad. Don't get me wrong, it was long. I mean llllooooonnnnnngggggggggggggggg. But the kids did well and we got to swing through St. Louis on our way home and see some old friends. However, Carter did ask (read state) that next time we go to Utah it be on an airplane. No problem buddy, I'm with you on that one.

• On the drive to Utah our car gradually got louder and louder until it sounded like a jet engine. It seriously gave us a head ache to ride in it that last stretch from Yellowstone to Salt Lake. Luckily it was just rear wheel bearings and a pretty quick fix.

• Did I mention that the first two bullet points happened within a four day period? Yeah, we moved all of our stuff (Thank you Elders Quorum!!!) on July 24th and on the 27th we were all crammed in the car destination Yellowstone (and on to Utah after a few days there) Are we crazy? I'd say most likely

• When we got home from our Vacation (not sure that word's really appropriate but I'm going to use it) all of our stuff was still here. Whew! We were a little worried that someone would notice our nicely pre-packed apartment and decide to make off with the goods.

• The boys have been a little cRaZy lately. With the move and the trip any schedule we kind of had this summer flew out the window and insanity ruled for a few weeks. Luckily pre-school started so we are back in the swing of things. I never thought I'd be so excited to get up at 6 o'clock every day.

• Zach's gone. That trial date that got pushed....(see two posts ago)....is here now. He's in Philadelphia and will be there forever! Ok, maybe not forever but it could go for three months and right now that kind of feels like forever. If it went exactly three months he'd be home December 20th. See, forever. Hopefully he'll be able to come home some weekends once they're a few weeks into trial but we really don't know what's going to happen.
  

Are you all ready for the cherry that tops this all off? Here you go...

• Zach got a new calling at church. Our ward just split and he's now the 2nd counlor in the bishopric. He's very excited but feels bad that he's going to be MIA for the first few months. What do you do? That's how things go sometimes. I don't think it's going to get any less crazy around here any time soon.
  

So, there you have it. You are up to date on the happenings at the Holmstead house. Later!

*I'll try to add pictures in the near future.*