Meet The Neighbors

I want to introduce you to Nicole. Chances are if you've talked to Ethan much in the past few months you've already heard this name a few times.

Nicole lives behind us and a little to the left. She is 5 and just started Kindergarten, but at a different Catholic school in town. She has 3 siblings and Ethan has enjoyed playing with them all...but he & Nicole are what you might call "tight."

It's adorable to watch her standing by the edge of our property waiting for him to come outside. They both do this when the other one is eating or otherwise occupied inside. Then they head to the clubhouse for "secret meetings."
They are quite the duo and it's fun to imagine what their relationship might be like ten years from now. As we were sitting on the back porch watching Ethan play with the neighbors last night Nate said to me, "This is exactly why we moved here." I agree.

The Clubhouse

Meet my new clubhouse. This odd structure was in our backyard when we moved here and it's now mine. This is where we have secret meetings and hide stuff we don't want our parents to find. Dad thinks it is an eye-sore because you can see it from a mile down the road, but I think it's cool.

Our New House

It all started back in March. When Mom got better after the infection, Dad says she got the "itch" to start house hunting. This of course was before they were ready to put our house up for sale.

So they drug me to a lot of houses and after one failed attempt (a nice house with not enough storage) they found what they were looking for. Only problem was the location. Not exactly in the area they were looking, but close.
After a lot of talking they decided it would be a good place for us and for me to go to school. It's a small community of about 1,300 right outside of Evansville. The house has a huge yard and is on rock road out in the country. But there are several houses on our street - all families with young kids. So I will have plenty of people to get in trouble with.
It is about a 15 minute drive to work for Dad and about 30 minutes for Mom. It is your basic ranch with 3 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms on the first floor. There is a full basement with a full bathroom that we will finish out. There is a window (for fire escape) and that can be made into a 4th bedroom. We'll also make another family room down there.
But it has the top 4 things Mom insisted on - 2 bathrooms, laundry room upstairs, dishwasher and attached garage! Plus a large dettached garage.
We decided to paint and re-do a lot of the flooring before we move in, so most of our weekends and weeknights have been spent working on the new house and praying our old house sells quickly!