last year of the single digits!

(apparently the blog has been reduced to a documentation of birthdays, but at least it's something!)

Faith is nine, which means she's beginning the last year in the single digits! It's hard to believe she's grown this much.

And today, she's nine. She is NINE. We love her so!

THREE-NAGER!

our bitty girl is a three-nager now! precocious and sassy, tough and tender. she loves big and fights hard for what she wants (especially if it's something her big sister has)!

this year she has started a new school, learned to potty, and finally realized that biting isn't the best way to get her way. she's the epitome of girly, insisting on pippies and shoes at all times and preferring frilly skirts or princess dresses to regular clothes any day.

this year we spent her birthday exploring legoland with pops and zee, and this weekend we'll have a party at the house with family and friends. what a great way to start her third year! love you, leah jane!

                     11:29 AM

Happy birthday, Faith!

Our big girl turned EIGHT this year, which is just stunning. 

For her birthday present, she asked to get her ears pierced! Drama-filled experience, but she did it!

Zee came down for the weekend so we played hooky on Faith's actual birthday and hit Sea World! So fun!!

She surprised me by wanting to ride the two serious grown-up coasters, and she loved them so much we did them twice!

The shows were awesome too, it was such a good day to go!

And of course we finished the day with cake!

We had such a great day celebrating our big girl!

Back to school!

After an insane summer, the girls went back to school at their new Florida digs! Faith started on Monday, and we are so excited about her new teacher and class. She was put with the one 2nd grade teacher we met on our tour back in June and she just loved, plus the twin daughters of Kecin's new department chair are in her class too! Couldn't have asked for a better way to start the year!

Leah started at her new preschool on Wednesday, and she had a great day! We have been so blessed to find great schools for both girls!

Kevin has been at work since last week, but classes started yesterday, and he is really enjoying the university, his peers and the students. Florida life is good! 

a new state of mind

Last Wednesday, we packed our possessions, including a car, into a semi and waved it off into the sunset.

We said goodbye the the house that's been our home for the last year.

And we embarked on the last 1000 mile road trip we ever hope to make!

After breaking our journey with family in Alabama (where the van got a much needed magnet addition), we drove further south to the place we now call home.

The truck hasn't arrived yet, but in a few days we will fill our new digs with all of the things that will make it feel like home.

It's been a busy, crazy journey, but we are excited to see what our Florida life will bring!

on the move again.

So does everyone remember last summer? July specifically, when we moved from Bartlett, TN, to Beebe, AR? We bought a great house, Kevin started a new job, Faith began tae kwon do. We did all the things you do when you move to a new place, and for the most part, things were good! The girls loved their schools, we found a great church, and we began to make new friends. The job we moved here for wasn't ideal, but it was a job, which is major for newly-minted PhDs. So we adapted. We adjusted. We got settled.

Then something happened.

Kevin has a slight addiction to perusing the online academic job listings, just keeping an eye on things in hopes that one day we'd get to move closer to family or that he'd find a great job at a Christian university.

He found one. In Lakeland, FL. Southeastern University.

Southeastern University is a huge part of his family's history. His parents and brother went there, several cousins, aunts, uncles. His grandfather's name is on a chapel on campus. It is literally across the small lake from where Kevin grew up. You can see it from his parent's front window.

He applied, he phone interviewed, then they flew him down for a series of in-person interviews, and the job was his before he flew back home.

Honestly, you could have knocked me over with a feather. Never in my wildest imaginings did I think he would apply for, much less be offered and accept, a position at SEU, certainly not less than a year after we had moved to Beebe! Obviously God has a sense of humor and knew that we needed something different, something more fitting for Kevin's field and qualifications, something closer to home.

And so, here we are again. Selling a house, packing up our things, planning a move to the Sunshine State. The window we have to get there is small, so we're just praying for wisdom as we decide what to do about housing, when to go, etc. Say a prayer for us! We surely need them.