::intruder::

We were getting ready to leave the house yesterday evening for a night on the town when Kris spotted this little intruder.

See him?
He's the first lizard I've seen out here, though Kris and Max claim to have seen more--Kris claims to have seen big ones. He's going to have to prove it to me before I believe it though!

He wasn't very fast, so Kris was able to nab him with a cup and some paper and put him outside.
I guess that's the price we pay for keeping the doors open for the lovely cool air to flow in.
But I don't mind that little guy. I thought he was pretty cute. Now, a big snake? That I would mind.

Then this morning Max caught a lizard in his room.

Yes, the lizard was made out of stretchy rubber, but he was a lizard nonetheless.

Silly.

::halfway through::

This is a hard and fabulous post for me to write for many reasons, but let's just get to the meat of it.

Baby #2 is finally due to come to our family in November. This has been such a long time coming. We are so glad and excited and I'm so relieved that everything is going well. We're a little more than halfway through (22 weeks) and that feels great! November 11th is the official due date!

It's so hard for me to make that announcement for a couple of reasons. After nearly three years of struggling with "unexplained infertility" I've been rubbed pretty raw. And then add a miscarriage in there (pretty early) and I've been frightened the whole time that something was going to go wrong. So talking about it seemed overly optimistic and almost arrogant. I just didn't want to tell anybody so I wouldn't have to explain why I'm so "cautiously optimistic" to put it mildly.

Also, after dealing with all those struggles and feelings for a few years I know how it feels to never have success month after month. And every friend/acquaintance/stranger that has good news breaks your heart--even if you love that person to death and you're truly very happy for them. It's almost as if it feels like there are a finite number of babies in the world and everybody else is using them up before you can get to them. And like time is running out. And like your 1st will be 20 before he has a sibling (if it ever happens). And a zillion other things mixed in there. It's really complex.
So I would hate to cause anybody pain.

And if anybody is reading this who has been struggling, I hope you can take our story of a 2 plus year struggle with a successful outcome (so far) and think of it as an encouragement.

I haven't ever talked about this on the blog before because I just didn't know where to start. I'm also not a great writer, so I can't express myself super eloquently like some of my friends do. Anyway, it's just not something I've ever wanted to get out there--which is another reason why it's been hard to write this post. Where to start? Where to end?

But anyway, it's great news for us. We're so happy and excited!
Thanks for your support and love everybody, and we'll keep you posted.

(also...this may not be big news to some--it's already been out in the cyberworld because I had to make the facebook announcement earlier than I was thinking. But at some point it was necessary to tell people that actually see me, so they didn't just think I was overeating or something.)

::mail boy::

Our mailbox is way down at the end of our curvy dirt driveway.
So these days, if we want the mailbox checked we have to call the mailboy.
If you "call" him on the pretend phone, he will check the box for you. He does it on his bike, helmeted of course, and usually takes his awesome green backpack to carry all the mail.
He's good at his job.
And he's very serious about it.
And it occupies him for at least a couple of minutes, and right now that's very nice.




He's too big for his bike now, isn't he? When we bought that bike I thought it would fit him forever. Time files as they say!

::more skies::

Here are some fun sky photos I took after a rainstorm the other night. The sky looks different like every 10 minutes out here!
From the dining room french doors, looking out over the garden.

Looking down the turny dirt driveway.

No, it's not a volcano--just clouds over the garage!


Some pink sky over the neighbors house. We just found out he's a blind sculptor. Max loves to go and visit them on his bike.

And to end it all, another crazy sunset.

This place is beautiful!

::before & after::

We have this TV stand that Kris found for a killer price at some point. I think it's hideous. I never want to use it in the house because I feel like it clashes with our taste so bad.
But we felt like we needed to use it for this house, rather than drilling intensely into the wall to hang the TV.

So we thought we'd pull a Megan and spraypaint the dang thing! I figured I couldn't like it much less, so the paint could only be an improvement.

Before:


During:

Kris is utilizing the desert for a good spray-painting space. Can you see Max camouflaged in the bushes?

I guess this space Kris is using could be termed our backyard. Crazy to have a huge amount of desert as your backyard, but we've got it!!

After:

I like it so much more now. It's still not my favorite piece of furniture by any means, but at least it has some character and adds something to the room instead of making me feel like I'm living in a crummy bachelor pad.

Spray paint is awesome, that's all there is to it!

::happy 4th::

We were lucky enough to be able to get together with some new friends from church for some yummy food and fireworks viewing tonight.
Then we let Max do a couple of sparklers in his PJs.

I hope everybody else had a great Independence Day/weekend.

::tonight::

After I put the little guy to bed this is some of the stuff that I saw.

Muddy muddy feet after a bike ride.


Flowers from a friend.


A different angle on the house for you--in the dusk.


Just for Linda-see? We do have neighbors! And Kris and Max met a couple of them today and they were very nice.


And then the sun set and I went inside.

::unpacking::

and unpacking, and unpacking and unpacking........




At least somebody's having fun!

::and here we are::

This isn't going to be a play-by-play of the day, just a quick overview of what happened and some (hopefully) fun pictures.
Thursday morning we met the landlord bright and early at the new house so we could get ready for the moving truck to show up at 8AM.
It was sunny and then it was cloudy. It kind of switched off every 10 minutes or so.
Max was in heaven exploring the surroundings.
Almost the very first thing that happened was that we found an awesome stinkbug on the door--can you see it?


More Max exploring pictures--well I was trying to capture him exploring, but I just kept ended up getting him making weird expressions. I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to follow him around while he explores. He's been doing it every extra second.


Here are a couple of pictures of the house--from one vantage point anyway. The clouds blow my mind against the blue sky.


You can see the gate into our little garden in this picture. We like the garden and I'm sure I'll have some pictures of it to post soon.

The car is the landlord's. I mostly took this photo for the sky--it was just so beautiful!

Then the movers showed up. And the driver was all stressed out by the surroundings, of course. We have a longish windy dirt driveway, and there was no way the truck was coming up there.

He tried driving the truck over the "wild country" and pulling up to the back door, but he felt all bad about running over cacti, so he went back to the bottom of the windy drive.

The poor movers had to bring everything up the drive, what a ton of work.
The driver thought they'd be done by noon, but it took until 4PM. 8 full hours of unloading. I didn't even have to carry any boxes and by the end of it all I was totally exhausted. I thought my feet might fall off. I'm just totally worn out from this whole adventure (ordeal, whatever you want to call it.)
I was so glad when they finally got it all in and left so I could lie down on the couch.

It was really nice though, that the moving guys checked with us as they brought in each item and put it exactly where we wanted it. So we haven't had to do much box shifting around which really helps.

We're enjoying the house so far. It's nice and the air is so clean and clear up here. It's quiet and beautiful.

At Max's bedtime there was a big huge thunderstorm. It smelled heavenly.
And then it went away. I could see it on the horizon when I looked out our french doors, streaming rain out on some other part of the desert.
Isn't it a lovely view?