By bounce, I mean Parker. 😉 He went from sick sick sick and just sleeping and laying around all day to literally bouncing off the walls in a week. Hand Foot Mouth is a funny thing, my friends.

I think we seriously ate at In-N-Out about 14 times during this trip. There isn’t one in Albuquerque and we weren’t sure when we would be back to California, so best to soak it all up (meaning the grease), while we could! 😉

Look who we found on our way back home!! Yay! We were SO excited to see Uncle Caleb, Aunt Nicole and Aunt Cayce after sitting in L.A. traffic for about six years! 😉 Parker had reached Blur Status and not just in pictures at this point – after finally feeling better and finally getting out of the car, he basically ran from one side of their living room, bounced off the kitchen counter and ran back over to the living room for about an hour alongside Caleb and Nicole’s golden retriever, Maverick (wish I was joking). Just proved my point that Jon could have avoided a lot of grief and just brought a golden puppy with him to California and introduced the puppy as Parker for the family reunion. 😉

Okay, guys. Eisley LOVES Hudson. Like, she thinks he is the coolest, most amazing thing EVER on the planet. And Hudson is all, “Eh. Hey Eisley. If I have to acknowledge you at all.” Ha! It will be so fun to watch all the cousin dynamics as these guys grow up. Hudson is a cutie head and I adore him!

All the baby-swapping, all the time. We had the BEST (very short) time with our sweet family. We loved seeing their beautiful home and the fun life they lead there. And I’m pretty sure Parker terrified poor Hudson with his blurry-ness. Sorry about that, bud. You have to watch out for those middle children. 😉

Aunt Nicole sent us out the next day with a whole grocery sack of snacks for us to eat on our looooong drive home. Those incredible cookies? Didn’t make it out of the front seat. 😉 Sorry, kids.

Such a fun way to end our California Adventure!!

We made it to Nonnie and Papa O’s right before it was time for everyone to head to the Family Reunion/Rehearsal Dinner for Jon’s cousin’s wedding. Since the kids were basically Petri dishes, I stayed back with them at Nonnie’s house. We did showers for all and then we all were in bed by 8, I’m pretty sure. Which is only 7pm at home. 😉

The next morning was yet another family reunion, but this time it was for Nonnie’s entire extended family. So, Papa O was super sweet and volunteered to stay home with the boys so Jon, Eisley (she didn’t have any symptoms of HFMD, so we assumed she was in the clear) and myself could go to the reunion. So fun to visit! We loved seeing Jon’s cousins and their kids and his aunts and uncles! We spent most of the time with Heather and Tommy, Jon’s brother and our sister-in-law. Love them.

 Heather and Tommy decided that since Lily and Josh had already had HFMD before, they were willing to risk getting it again and brought the cousins over to play. 🙂 The boys had so much fun. Since we had our wedding clothes with us, we dressed up and took a group picture just so we had at least one halfway decent one of everyone. 😉

Then everyone left for the wedding and it was me and the kids again. 😉 The boys decided we needed to do a movie night, so they gathered all the friends at Nonnie and Papa O’s house and got everyone all situated for the movie. See the Elsa doll on the left? The thing is taller than Parker and scared me to DEATH when I walked back out into the living room after getting the kids to bed and found her standing (STANDING) in the hallway.

My company for the evening. 🙂 I could do worse. And Elsa was locked in Nonnie and Papa O’s room by this point because NO MA’AM.

Some Uncle Allen love in the morning. 🙂

In-N-Out shakes and movies on Kindles while snuggled on a blanket in Nonnie’s house just makes everything so much better.

Yay!! We hit the turn for the better on this day and since they were still considered contagious and housebound, Nonnie and Papa O set up the swimming pool for them in the backyard and blew up water balloons. 🙂

Grandma H and Grandpa H risked the disease and came to see us and meet sweet little Eisley. Love this of my girl and her great-grandma.

Uncle John and Aunt Karen came for dinner and after the kids were showered and jammied, he took his guitar in their room and sang and told them stories until they were both asleep. The boys asked for Uncle John every night for a week after that. 😉

Nonnie and Eisley soaking up some early morning coolness in Nonnie’s unbelievably beautiful backyard garden.

The visit went so slowly in some respects, because we didn’t do very much with our sickly children, which ended up being WONDERFUL after our insane last few weeks of packing and moving and transitions. So often, I feel like we cram so much into such a short few days there that we miss out on a lot of quality time, so it was so nice to just have time to sit and visit and hear about everyone’s lives. We loved seeing our family and being there with them. We hate living so far away. 🙁

Time to pack back up the car and head back to our homeless existence. I’m pretty sure Jon and I both had some small panic attacks as we started back out. 😉

There were many times during this week where Jon and I would hold each other tight and say “Okay, if we can make it through this, we can make it through anything.” “Okay, never mind. If we can make it through THIS, we can make it through anything.” And then again, “Okay, scratch it again. If we can make it through THIS, we can make it through anything!” Ha! Sick kids, 24 hours in the car (one way!), homelessness, the looming remodel coming our way and all the joys and sorrows of life can take their toll. But I’m so thankful that we have Jesus and that He gives us the strength for it all. I’m thankful that He gave me Jon to share this life with and these sweet kids to snuggle. And I’m so excited for this new chapter in a new house coming up!

I think that wherever stories are told, this is one that will forever be shared in hushed, reverent tones like when sharing something of sheer terror.

We closed the front door of our sweet little home and found out directly afterward that Mom and Dad’s house had not funded before the title company closed and we were literally homeless. All of our stuff was split between a huge moving van, a storage unit, our two cars and Dad’s truck.

Mom and Dad were also homeless, so we all went to Bryant and Nicole’s and they dried our tears and held our babies and stuffed us with pizza and marble squares and inflated beds in their living room. And it was all okay. We all barely slept and we woke up hoping for good news and it came in the form of Aunt Nicole cooking yet again and making us a gourmet breakfast.

My sweet girl. She was up so early and I just snuggled with her in the bed and we figured out how to handle the day before she fell back asleep. It’s exhausting to worry over the family this much. 😉

Side note, we LOVE the Aunt Nicoles in our family. God blessed us exceedingly with those girls. I hate to brag, but my sisters-in-law are the best. No competition. I was an exhausted, emotional mess and my kids were even worse and Nicole just hopped right in and took over. Love her.

At one o’clock, Mom and Dad’s lenders finally funded and we got the keys to their house house. Mom and Dad walked in and the place was a mess. Nothing had been cleaned, all the bathrooms were disgusting. It was just so sad. And something none of us really had the emotional bandwith to handle that day. But, we put babies down for naps, plugged in vacuums and went to work.

At 1:30am, we finally had things cleaned and had moved in enough that we could at least get kids down for the night and we had a place to sleep. I fell into my mattress on the floor and we woke up at 5:30 with kids who didn’t know where they were, so we headed downstairs and got back to work.

Since we don’t close our our new house for another three weeks, Mom and Dad were gracious enough to let us live with them for the time being. So thankful for that! Even with all the insanity, it was so nice knowing that we at least had a place to be.

We unloaded our moving van into Mom and Dad’s garage that morning, Jon returned the van and picked up a rental car (which ended up being the BIGGEST blessing that week – we were on the fence about renting and Jon decided to just go for it and didn’t rent a van like we’d planned, but a giant Expedition EL. God was totally in that decision!), we loaded up clothes in laundry baskets since all our suitcases were missing in action. And then we started on THE TRIP to California about three in the afternoon.

Yes. We are INSANE.

The Trip started out well enough.

Note the smiles, the happy faces.

About eight o’clock, we stopped at some random gas station in Arizona and changed in the kids into their pajamas, hoping we could get a couple more hours of driving in while they slept. Jon’s cousin was getting married on Saturday and we were hoping to get there in time for the rehearsal dinner/family reunion the night before.

Jon changed Parker and said the words that would start it all… “Erynn, I think Parker feels a little warm.”

Thankfully, I had packed the thermometer in one of our tubs, so I pulled it out, took his temperature and it was 101.5. We both started praying, I gave him Motrin and we got back on the road. I remembered Eryn telling me that Junie had been running a fever the day before, so I texted her to find out how long she’d ran it and how bad the virus was. She wrote back, “Oh, it isn’t so good. Junie has Hand Food Mouth Disease.”

I think Jon and I both honest-to-goodness heard the music along the road. DUM DUM DUM DUUUUM. I started praying out loud.

We checked into a hotel in Kingman and none of us slept. Parker was up off and on all night. When he wasn’t up, Eisley was up. And when they were both semi-asleep, Nathan was up. We finally got up for breakfast and by that time, Parker had been moaning/screaming/fussing for about an hour and I finally got up the nerve to look into his mouth.

And we were greeted by the angriest looking blisters I’ve ever seen.

I think I cried right along with him.

I forced Motrin down his throat, we went down to breakfast, cleared the room very quickly with all our screaming and tired, grouchy kids and I was just sitting down to eat after getting everyone’s food, when Parker climbed into my lap, while screaming, and then threw up all over me. I mean, I have seen throw up and I have seen THROW UP. This was the second. We are talking, soaked-into-my-undies type of thing. My shoes squished it out when I stood up.

I grabbed Parker, Jon grabbed a few towels off a nearby housekeeping cart, I wrapped us both up and took us straight upstairs to the room. I stripped us both down, put us both in the shower and started scrubbing us off. We were almost done when Nathan came running into the bathroom after helping Jon clean up down in the lobby and started yelling, “Oh NO! I have DIARRHEA!”

There are only so many moments in your life when you can’t tell if you are laughing or crying, but this was one of them for me. I started laughing so hard I cried right there in that disgusting hotel bathroom. We dried off, debated whether we should just turn around and drive home and ended up deciding that we were halfway there, we might as well go the rest of the way.

Nathan fell asleep about ten in the morning and by noon, he was running a fever and had sores all over his mouth too.

And then Eisley pooped out everywhere.

And Jon and I self-medicated the only way you can on a road trip with three kids who are all sobbing with a contagious, painful disease on a road trip that will never ever EVER end:

#yes. Please notice I look like death.

We managed to get a smile coaxed out of them when we happened to catch that perfect combo of a cold milkshake on sore mouths right when the Motrin was at it’s highest peak. I seriously had an alarm on my phone and it would buzz and we would pull out the medication and load everyone up.

We made it to Nonnie and Papa O’s house and normally, I don’t know who is happier to see them – us or the kids, but this time, Jon and I basically leaped into their arms and cried sweet tears of joy that we were FINALLY OUT OF THE CAR.

Welcome to Infamy, Trip.

The day felt like it came slowly, but before we knew it, it was our last morning in our little home. And we started on full speed and never stopped.

Jon went first thing in the morning to my parents’ closing and I stayed behind and finished packing up the very “lasts” of the lasts, then he picked me up, we dropped the boys off at our friends the Beechem’s house and we went to our closing.

I had such a weird deja vu moment in the title company’s office. It felt like it had been only a brief second since we’d signed our names on those lines saying we were buying the house! We left the closing, picked up the boys and headed home to finish up.

Playing on their beloved playhouse for the very last time. I was a mess this entire day. I could barely move without bursting into tears.

Love my sweet boys.

Jon was in and out all day trying to figure out stuff for Mom and Dad’s closing and ours and so he would run out and do something and come back and pack in his dress clothes and run back out. We were both completely stressed out by this point because we had no idea where we would even be that night, since it didn’t look like Mom and Dad’s house would close in time. Poor Parker and Eisley both collapsed on the family room floor in exhaustion because their beds were already packed.

Last wrestle in the backyard! It was just about time to go.

This house. We came in as two and we left with full hands. Jon carried me over that doorstep on our first night there and he carried our babies out on our last day there. In this house, we experienced so much. We brought three sweet babies home to this house and we said goodbye to one. We taught a puppy his boundaries and we watched him turn into an old dog who followed us around. We landscaped our backyard 597 times and we knew every river stone by name by the end of it. 😉 We taught a baby how to sleep through the night and taught that same boy how to read. We snuggled babies in our rocking chair every single day. We painted walls, we cleaned up when kids wrote on those same walls and we got teary washing handprints off the back door for the last time.

In this house, we baked cookies and shared them with neighbors. We packed kids and friends in around our tiny kitchen table and when it got too small, we shoved some of those people outside. 😉 We planted a garden and watched our kids’ wonder and excitement as the first vegetables came to life. We took walks and bike rides and said hello to friends and neighbors. We read the Jesus Storybook Bible to one child, then two and then three. We wept with friends who could not have children and then wept again when they came back to our table and told us they were expecting. We hung streamers over doorways to celebrate birthdays and turned the whole house into a winter wonderland for small boys who made everything magical.

In this house, we lived. We laughed (a lot). We cried. And most of all, we loved.

Thank you, Jesus, for our sweet little first home.

Oh this week was so hard, friends. We know that we are doing what we are supposed to be doing – if anything, the twelve hours on the market was confirmation of that. But we have loved this little house. And this little house has loved us.

So we began our last week in this house with lots of tears and lots of trepidation. The tears because we were moving. The trepidation because we weren’t sure where we were going. Mom and Dad’s closing was delayed and we were supposed to be moving in with them for the three weeks before we closed on our new house.

As of right now, we have no idea was is going to happen.

Last Friday night Pizza and Movie Night. My kids count down the week to Fridays so we can have our picnic on the family room floor with pizza. It’s one of our most beloved family traditions. I could barely eat during this one – I was such a sentimental mess. We started this tradition on this floor with just one little kid and now there are three of them.

Last time hanging out on his bunk bed in his first little room! We had to dismantle it to get it through the doorway. 🙂

Moving weekend began with me packing up our whole house like crazy. I found Parker here – he was NOT handling me packing up all our stuff well at ALL. Poor baby. He does much better with gradual change.

Jon picked up the moving truck and THAT was cool, so Parker decided maybe this moving thing was too terrible. The boys loved running up and down the gangplank and yelling like crazy people inside it because it echoed so much. 😉

Almost eight years ago, Jon and I got the keys to our first little home, went over so excitedly that very night and ate peanut butter and jelly on the floor of what felt like a huge, echoey, empty house. So it was only fitting that we closed this chapter the way we began it.

Last dinner in our first home.

How things have changed! We are so blessed. I bawled through all of dinner just thinking about all the things that had happened in that little home.

One, two, three sweet babies sleeping in their first home for the last time.

I rocked Eisley to sleep and I just couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t stop remembering. We started in such an empty, echoing house and the house was suddenly empty of furniture and echoing again. Only this time, all I could hear was the echoes of our time there. Babies giggling, taking their first steps, learning how to play patty-cake, crying because they needed a kiss on their owie. I rocked Eisley, kissed her, tucked her in bed and sat for a long time just remembering.

Oh, how I love this little house.

This is just not possible.

I just cannot believe that my baby girl is five months old! She is just the most precious girl in the entire world. She discovered her voice this month and talks all. day. long.

She LOVES to laugh – and we love to make her laugh! She loves her mama to hold her all day long and only really fusses if she feels like she should be 1) held or, 2) in the middle of something. 😉

She’s a fantastic sleeper!! We transitioned out of the swaddle and she kept on sleeping – a MIRACLE considering her brothers and their swaddle transition! 😉 She is rolling both ways now and is grabbing everything and going straight for the mouth. So much fun with all the toys and packing materials everywhere. 😉

She is still wearing 0-3 month clothes! She loves to screech like a pterodactyl, loves to get those perfect kissing cheeks kissed and loves to be the center of attention (particularly if the attention is of her brothers).

I just love my precious girl!!

It’s true what they say. You know know how much junk you’ve accumulated until you move. And after almost eight years, we have a LOT of junk.

Time to purge!!

The boys have been living in the yard while we’ve been packing up. Parker thought it was hilarious that Kody was drinking out of the hose so he decided to try. Blegh.

I love this so much right now. I read it every day to remind myself that everything will get done, I don’t need to panic and I do need to stop and enjoy the days. 🙂

She helps me remember this too. 🙂

Little laughing love. She smiles seriously all. day. long.

The boys talked me into a movie and a snack in the family room since it was raining outside and Eisley was sleeping. I love how we have a complete outfit between the two of them. #noshirt #nopants

Saturday morning has us all like “nah”.

Baby love. Big love.

Tummy time. I scrounged up some toys from the back of Parker’s closet. Notice how she’s on a blanket in every picture so she doesn’t spit up all over the new owner’s carpet. 😉

I paused packing one afternoon so we could have a little chat. She just talked and talked and talked. Someone has discovered her voice.

My sweet nephew had his second surgery this week. Poor little man. He recovered so well though and so quickly. We were so thankful!

Sweet little boy. This kid is a mess. Hands down mess. But I just cannot imagine loving him more. 🙂

Playing his favorite position again! He looks so little and so big to me at the same time in this picture – how is he this old??!

Buddies. 🙂 Jon and I often talk about how neat it is to watch their relationship grow. They play together so well and I love listening to their conversations. It’s such a blessing to us!

Last week in our little house! Cue the tears. 🙁

Days are getting longer and warmer and crazier and in an effort to keep everyone from freaking out, we packed our week full of wonderful things. 🙂

We met friends at a new park in town and the boys LOVED it. It was such a neat place! It was packed though – by the time we left, the giant parking lot was all the way full!

There’s a whole section where wild little boys can hit things on purpose and make a lot of noise and it’s actually encouraged. 😉 Someone spent a lot of time in this part. Ha!

It’s hard work to be moving, looking at being homeless and playing baseball. 😉 This one never takes naps anymore and yet he was out hard on his way to Little League Night at the minor league stadium. We had trouble waking him up!

Thankfully, he woke up happy. 😉 My boys!

Look who came in town for Mother’s Day!!! 🙂 We LOVE our Nama and we soak up any time around her!! I think Eisley took most of her naps on Nama while she was out here. 😉

What I walked in and saw on Mother’s Day morning. My heart. I adore these two.

All my babies. I am so overwhelmed with how much God has blessed us!! These sweet faces are so precious. This motherhood thing is exhausting and hard and a million other things, but I wouldn’t trade one minute of time with these three for anything. So thankful for them!

Miss Priss and Nama. 🙂 Someone loves her namesake!! When we were tossing around girls’ names when I was pregnant with Eisley, I knew I wanted to incorporate Nama’s name – Eloise – in there somewhere. I saw Eisley as a nickname for Eloise online and it just stuck. 🙂

Love love love LOVE this!!

Playing with the one toy we have left in the house! Ha! 😉 Seriously though. We have very little left here. Every time Parker gets up from nap, something else is packed. He just walks around demanding to know things now. “WHERE MY BOOKS? WHERE MY PUZZLE? WHERE MY BUDDIES?” Bless his heart.

Little Miss was SO proud to be “playing” with the big boys on this day! She was smiling so big the whole time. It just made us all laugh. 😉

We have spent the last many weeks in a slight (read: MAJOR) panic because we have looked at approximately 164 houses and couldn’t find one we wanted to buy. I seriously was checking Zillow like every six minutes to see if anything new in our hoped-for area of town had popped up.

Then, the house we really liked that was in terrible terrible terrible condition but had an awesome backyard and SO much space popped back up on my list – they had lowered the price!! We’d made an offer several weeks prior and they hadn’t accepted it, but we took my parents and Nama back to it, got their thumbs up on the potential of the house and decided to make another offer.

Two of the longest, most nerve wracking, awful days ever passed and then…

SOLD. They accepted it!! There were definitely thankful tears shed! So excited and overwhelmed and SO THANKFUL. We cannot wait to see what this house can be with some love and care. 🙂 And I’m so excited that it all happened when Nama was in town!

My whole goal for the last month in our little house is to pack as much as possible without the kids really noticing or getting all freaked out about it. We’ve had so much change lately. I think this would be best for everyone. 😉

Little Miss woke up backwards in her bed one morning. SO sad because this means the swaddle is about to need to be retired! 🙁

Y’all. My number one question I get when people find out I’m a writer is “how do you do it with the kids?” Some days, this is how. Baby in the lap, word count to meet. I’ve written while bouncing with a baby in the ergo, I’ve written while eating lunch, I’ve written while sitting in piles of laundry or on the back porch so I don’t have to look at the mess and get distracted. 😉 I’ve written while nursing and gotten up (many times) at 4:30 in the morning to have some kid-free time so I can make deadlines. You just do it. 🙂

Sweet big boy graduated his first year in Sparkies! We love Awana – such a fun, wonderful way for kids to learn Bible verses!

My proud boy. 🙂

I asked Parker to put the remote away one morning and then I couldn’t find it the rest of the day. That night, I pulled out this drawer to make dinner and low and behold. 😉 We are head first in the “putting away” stage. I can’t find anything. 😉

We have talked about doing this race that benefits our local zoo for years and so this year, since you know, we had nothing else going on, we decided to finally do it. 😉 We were so excited but when we woke up, we were having the COLDEST, nastiest day ever! Ha! It was raining sideways and FREEZING cold. But, we powered through it! Nathan did fantastic – Jon and I were so proud of him! He did way way better than his mama. 😉

The stroller buddies. Bless their hearts. As a side note, this is the hat I made for Eisley right before she was born that was supposed to fit her as a newborn. It fits her well now. 😉

We finished the race and immediately went straight home to put on dry clothes and get hot chocolate. 🙂

Sleeping beauty. 🙂

She’s got a little bit of hair coming in!! 🙂

This day I had been busy making to-do lists and trying to pack closets and organize and I was so overwhelmed and nervous because the house we found that both Jon and I liked was not responding to our offer and we had looked at a million other houses and not found one we liked as much. We had to be out of our house in 30 days and we had nowhere to go and I was just completely worried. So I cried, put away the to-do lists, got us all popsicles and we played outside in the yard until bedtime. Sometimes everything looks better after a popscicle. 😉

Eisley had her four month check up and got a couple of shots and a clean bill of health. 😉 Our little love is 12 pounds 12.6 ounces, which puts her in the 14th percentile. She’s 23.5 inches tall, which is the 7th percentile and her head circumference is 40.5 centimeters, which is the 36th percentile. After both of our giant boys, we are just delighting in this sweet girl’s littleness!!

Less than a month in our house! I am officially sentimental about everything. 🙁

Sweet little Eisley is four months old!!

She is so precious. We are absolutely soaking up every single moment with our tiny, happy girl. Eisley is the best little sleeper, the best little smiler and the best little spitter-upper out there. 😉

Eisley discovered her hands this month and they are constantly in her mouth, unless she has a pacifier in there. 😉 She loves to be held and loves to be right in the middle of the chaos – and there has been a lot of chaos this month to be a part of!

She nurses every 3ish hours and is sleeping all night! She’s amazing! She is still pretty small for her age and we are working on a few fine motor skills that she was slightly delayed in – but she’s catching up perfectly and she’s actually right on track as far as her gestational age. 🙂

We love love love our Little Miss and I just can’t believe how quickly four months has gone by!! I’m so thankful for her!