and so it begins...

I have paint in my hair all the time now! I started priming the house last week. I got just about a room a day done. Unfortunately I had to take off Tuesday because of my new calling. 2nd Counselor in YW. We had a super long presidency meeting during Taylor's preschool and then activity night that night. I need to paint Sophie's room next, but she's sleeping in there and when she's sleeping is the only time I can paint, but not her room. Anyhow, I was supposed to do that this weekend, but I had to teach YW so I planned that instead and tomorrow I'm in charge of our activity. Whew. Too much to do.
The unpacking is bascially done. The house is a disaster, I'm running around trying to paint and buy hooks and window coverings and find everything a new place in the new house. I'm going to start a list of things I love about the new house so I won't be so sad about all the things I REALLY REALLY miss about South Carolina (ie: our FRIENDS, the WEATHER, a house that I was done painting, hooks and shelves and curtains already done). This house is great though (will be great). It stays alot warmer (believe it or not), the basement is so fun, great storage and fun play room, fabulous guest suite. We have canned lighting in the kitchen. The fire place is so pretty (and not drafty). The neighborhood is great, we can skate on the pond across the street and we have our very own playset in the backyard and all our neighbors have dogs and kids to play with. It's usually around 11 degrees when we walk to the bus stop in the morning, but this morning the sun was out! See, there's lots of good stuff....

Here's the master bathroom. It is all finished now, but you can see when I took the picture how dark and miserable that brown/red was.

Here's Taylor's room, I primed this one first. I'm thinking we'll do a soothing gray/blue in here. Hopefully not too dark. I really want to paint his bed red. He isn't so sure about that.

Here's some pix of the new house FINALLY!

I tried to post a video I took of the new house but it wouldn't upload. Any thoughts of how to get a longer video to upload? Here are some pix of the kids in the new house. I'll try to take a couple shorter videos of the house to post. I did find the charger to the camera battery so that's gonna help.

The pic of Sophie on the stair is where she likes to watch me make dinner. She is constantly on the stairs. She hasn't fallen down the stairs as much as I anticipated, but still she's take a couple pretty good headers off of them. The rest of the pix are self explanatory. I'll see if the house video will post to facebook!

Here's the rest of the post!

Sorry I had to leave the last post before posting the pix of Chicago (had to get ready and go to church). Here are the pix of Chicago.

Catch up time!

Since you heard from us last we've done a lot of traveling and visiting and hoteling. We visited with the Eichhorns for the last time (for a while) and packed up our stuff (with the worst movers in history) and droves South to visit the Martinez'. Our visit was so fabulous. They have the nicest kids ever, and I'll have you know that I don't usually feel that way about our friends kids. While we were down South we went to Disney World (the Happiest place on Earth), it was probably the coldest day of the year down there, but the crowds were non-existant until the afternoon when it warmed up a bit. I would take the cold over the crowds any day.

You'll notice the pic of Katie pouting and Taylor sucking his thumb, that is right before we went into the park. It's a good thing I was going to Disney World for ME because you can see how excited Katie was about it! We did have a wonderful day though.

I had a goal to see a crocodile in the wild in FL but the ones on the jungle ride at Disney World were as close as we came. So the night ended with a parade and fireworks as every night should. We had to say good-bye to the Martinez' the next morning and head off to the airport to fly up to MI and start our really cold adventure.

After we got up to Grand Rapids we had 17 days of hotel living before us. This would put to the test the kids dream of wanting to live in a hotel. After all was said and done I think they still liked it. I know they're happy to have a basement and a yard to sled in though. Our second weekend in the hotel we were starting to go nuts so we took Laura and Robert up on their offer to have us down to Chicago for a visit. It was so fun and the kids played together so well (and the parents did too!). We also got to stop by and visit Grandma Arends and Aunt Midge. We were so happy when Billy, Laura, Katie and Amy also showed up! Such a fun impromtu family reunion. It's unreal to be so close after being so far for such a long time!

Chez Starkey 2010!

Here are some pix of the house we bought up in MI. The neighborhood is really great. Lots of kids and families. Hopefully that'll offset the colder weather (or atleast make it more fun). Pictures of the bedrooms are missing, but if they had been included you'd have to wear SUNGLASSES to view this blog. They are various hues of NEON pink, green and yellow. I'm gonna be painting for another 2 years. But it's a newer, clean house with a guest room and partially finished daylight basement in a great school district and really nice area! We'll move in January 22nd and be ready for guests any time after that! Make your reservations now!

Sophie's Bday

It was Sophie's 1st Birthday on Friday. What a crazy day! Katie had her last day of school that day also. The whole area was in an uproar because of the mere possibility of snow. Katie's school let out early (abbreviating her Christmas party planned for that afternoon). Anyhow, we did a little party for Sophie in the afternoon.

Check our her HUGE cupcake cake! Cool, huh? Hailey gave me the idea to get the mold to make it! It turned out really cute and pretty delicious too. I made the cake, the buttercream frosting for the top and the ganache for the middle and around the bottom layer. The mint chip ice cream that I filled the bottom layer with was not homemade but it was a good idea! Yum yum!

Sophie really like her presents this year (thanks Ya-ya, Grandma, Auntie Rachael, and Auntie Hailey!) but I think that Katie and Taylor are enjoying them more!! Taylor is obsessed with the airplane that Ya-ya sent. He wants to take it with us everywhere. Luckily, Sophie is really good about sharing!

After Sophie's party we went to the Christmas party at the church. We had a delicious dinner of Honeybaked ham and all the "fixin's" (even cornbread stuffing, how Southern!)and then after dessert the lights went out and we cleaned up in the dark and went home. It was nice to get home before 8pm! It's also been heavenly to have Craig home! The kids are warey of letting him out of their sight!

From the looks of the top picture, she's enjoying being one! Isn't she the cutest baby EVER right now???? We sure think so!

More Holiday Fun!

Get ready for lots of pictures and maybe not enough paragraph breaks! Last week for Family Home Evening we decorated the gingerbread house. Traditionally we do this while listening to the First Presidency's Christmas devotional, but with our computer up in Katie's room we just listened to Christmas music this year. It was a lot of fun though. It's been wonderful that this year we're old enough to do stuff together without making too much of a horrible mess. After decorating the gingerbread house we had fancy cupcakes for our family home evening treats! That was cool!

Tuesday night I had Bunco so the kids got to enjoy a babysitter! Also Katie lost her tooth finally! I guess it came out while she was eating popcorn. She's waiting to show it to daddy before she gives it to the Tooth Fairy.

The pictures of Sophie and Taylor are just because they are so cute. Taylor looks like a kid from the Gapkids commercial this year with my scarf on, and Sophie's little Christmas dress was so cute last Sunday.

This past Friday after having a crummy day, we went out to Red Robin for dinner. (After meeting with Katie's teacher, her speech therapist and psychologist to learn that she doesn't have a learning disability, but yet she is not performing well in school so they think she has ADD) . It was really fun. Taylor was super hungry and ate everything in sight (milk shake first, corn dog and two huge cantalope slices). I love eating dinner at 4pm!

After dinner we went over to Office Max and Katie and Taylor each got a new box of crayons ($.50!)and I got some Christmas shopping done. Then for fun we walked through Petsmart. Katie really wants Santa to bring her a "real bunny" this year, but Santa understands that when a family is moving, it's not a good time to be adopting pets. They did have fun posing where Santa usually sits to get his picture taken with peoples' dogs! HA! That was Katie's idea! "Hey Taylor, let's pretend to be dogs and get our picture taken!!" SO AWESOME!

The picture of Sophie in her carseat is to show off her first experience with a forward facing carseat! Hurray!

The picture of Sophie in the chair with the other two babies is our "second hour club" at church. Two of my friends had baby girls this year and we're usually in the mother's lounge together. I'm so sad to be leaving the best ward ever. I think maybe I'll start wearing all black everyday in mourning or maybe an armband.

The kids looked so cute yesterday at church I made them pose for pix in front of the Christmas tree after church. You can see that Sophie was not loving it. Cute twinner santa dresses on Katie and Sophie, huh! I bought that santa dress for Katie before Sophie was even a twinkle in my eye! Worked out pretty smooth this year though! Taylor's little blazer was a 75% off find at the consignment store last Tuesday! SWEET!