Back to blogging...Christmas day 2008 brought lots of change for our family. While we had been looking for a new home for a couple of years, we finally found one. We scheduled our closing for December 17th and quickly decided that we would wait to tell the girls until Christmas morning. They knew we were looking and had even gone to see some homes with us, but they had never seen this house. We created an elaborate plan to surprise them. We had been planning to stay in a cabin out in the middle of nowhere for Christmas this year. As far as the girls knew, that was still the plan. We told them we wouldn't be able to leave until late on Christmas eve, but that we would be able to wake up Christmas morning in the "cabin." We packed sleeping bags and presents and headed out for what would be a couple hour drive. And we did drive for a couple hours. As we had hoped, the girls finally fell asleep and we crossed our fingers they would stay asleep as we returned into town. We pulled into our new garage, unloaded the van, and told the girls they would have to go immediately to bed. We "slept" on the floor of our new family room in front of the fireplace, next to the tree I had previously put up. Eric and I did little sleeping as Kallen wasn't keen on sleeping in a play yard and I was too worked up to sleep. Christmas morning, after we had opened gifts, we let the girls investigate this "cabin" with Kora's room being the final room to see. I had spent time between the 17th and Christmas day decorating Kora's room--painting, hanging photos of her, and having her room ready to move in to as we had feared that Kora might take the big change hardest. They walked into her room and quickly turned to Eric and I to ask, "wait, is this OUR house?" We later found out that Katherine had awaken briefly on the drive the night before and had done some puzzling in her head to conclude that we indeed had found a new house and we going to it. Luckily, she chose not to divulge her ideas as Kora remained perfectly surprised! The girls absolutely love their new home and their bedrooms. Kora has barely returned to the old house since--only to get her things. We moved completely into the new home over Christmas break and about a month later, finally put our old house on the market. It's been a crazy ride but we are slowly settling in and loving finally having a basement. The Aunts--Marlo and Melanie--have already come out to visit to help with all the moving. Grandpa and Grandma Beeman will be here next week to see their grandchildren and help with some minor home improvements that I can't tackle alone. Certainly, it was a Christmas to remember and to probably never be topped!!
It's amazingly hard to believe that Kallen has already turned a year old. It's been a crazy fun year. I was determined to let her eat cake on her birthday so I did some research and found a way--egg replacer, soy milk, wheat-free cake mix. It certainly wasn't the prettiest cake since I just don't do cakes but she didn't mind.
Kallen ended up being the only one to really enjoy eating the cake. It's a good thing she doesn't know what a real cake tastes like. I thought the cake was pretty nasty. Kora didn't mind it. Eric and Katherine withheld comments but did eat a piece that day.At her one year check up at the doctor's office, Kallen officially became our largest one-year-old weighing in at 17 pounds, 8 ounces!
