Guess I should start with the events we had in March...we renamed our photography business and redid all our pricing. We are now Bear River Photography! Our very talented daughter in law Aurora in sunny San Diego drew our neat logo for us - thanks!! We have yet to get the website updated, that will take a few evenings but is on our long to do list. 

Phillip had a run in with his guitar, it fell out of his closet and onto his head.  Thankfully it wasn't too bad, half a dozen stitches and a few weeks later it is looking really good.  He was a champ through the whole thing, not even moving or crying when they did the shot & the stitches! Here's the damages (the check book looks about the same...):

I am locating flowers in our yard - some mini hyacinths and crocuses mostly.  I have some flower seeds to plant if it ever turns to spring, we had a few snow flakes yesterday! Here's the end of fall and the beginning of spring together:

That was a hyacinth before blooming, here's after:

and a crocus

The boys and I love getting outside, it's been chilly and windy, so we aren't out as much as we'd like yet. 

Did a few portraits in Jacob's room to utilize the house's nice wood floors.  Needed a bit more room, but got some cute ones anyway. Here's one of Jacob, he wouldn't stop crying, thus the oreo...

Dwight moved my laundry upstairs this month, too - from the basement storage room to the beauty shop, now my mainfloor laundry room!  It's very handy, I now have my machines & the big freezer right where I am all day.  Also frees up the rest of the basement room for storage, we seem to have a little bit of that!

Saturday we went up to Dubuque and toured the Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium. On our way there we grabbed a few shots of the historic lime kilns right outside of Maquoketa.  We want to go back to explore these more when it warms up a little.

The aquarium was pretty nice, most of the fish were on the slow, boring side - we loved the aquarium in KC a lot more.  Phillip loved petting the sturgeons, the only real hands-on thing for the kids to do...he loved it so much that's all he wanted to do!  Jacob just wanted out of the stroller and down to run, walk, crawl & explore.  It was a tiring day for us!  We definatly need to get out more! Most of the photos are self-explained, and they're not my best work, hard to be photographer & mommy at the same time!

Phillip fell asleep on the way there:

Hiding

Loved the available light on this one!

BIG 'OL FISH!

The old train depot now serves as the food shack. We had a really good bacon cheeseburger & fries - boys didn't eat much, but that's the norm!

Then we headed outside.  It actually warmed up and was sunny! We moved four hours away just to wind up here:

There were some interesting outdoor exhibits, unfortunately the remote control boats weren't open yet, but we toured a neat WWII dredge boat where photo ops were abundant! Phillip and I went all the way to the top, but Dwight stayed on the main deck with Jacob who had fallen asleep in the stroller.  I remember Phillip being the same age falling asleep at the Steamboat Museum in KC, same stroller, different boy!

There's lots more in the area to explore, so I'm sure I'll have more photo blogs as summer brings more nice days.

Our church search continues.  We've tried two in Davenport, one in Moline, and have one in Dubuque yet to try.  So far, one of the Davenport groups would be ok, but it's a 45 minute drive.  We were really hoping for something more local so we can be more involved.  We'll keep praying & looking - be nice if God wrote on the wall like he did in the Old Testament! But, the Israelites still screwed up, so it must not be the end all solution! Like a friend said, couldn't He just write the zip code at least?!

Dwight's staying very busy with projects at work.  There's never a dull moment and they didn't even do the building project this year! I made it to a few of the first garage sales of the season last week - got a $2 bread machine which put out a nice hot loaf in time for supper last night.  We ate all but one slice.  I don't remember the last time I'd had hot bread with butter, guess it was good!  Found some other good stuff too (church shoes for Phillip, couple of wood plaques for the wall, an old camera, teddy bears for the studio, a deep dish pie plate, etc) all for under $10.  Gotta love it!

Well, Jacob is asleep and Phillip is done playing with playdough so it's his naptime.  I am going to try to get some portraits of Jacob with a birthday cake in the studio, we're offering that for a special 1st Birthday session and he is the closest model I have! Should be fun, but I hope to do it while Phillip is sleeping.  Timing is everything with two boys!

Well, a lot has happened since my last post a month ago! I'll upload some photos of our new house sometime, but for now I'll tell you all about our move.  It's quite a story!

Day 1 Feb 4

We had our loading date with 2 Men & a Truck on the 4th of Feb.  They were to load that day and drive it out the next, while we hoped to drive out to Dubuque that afternoon.  Very little of that actually came to pass!  The moving day started off well, with our cat Teddy unplugging the alarm clock (how???) and we would have woke up really late had he not knocked something off in the floor waking us up!  We were very blessed to have our evangelist's family watching Phillip & Jacob!! I don't know how I could have done it without them!  So the boys played while the movers packed the kitchen, loaded their truck like a sardine, and figured out it wouldn't all fit.  I couldn't believe it!  We had thought that the estimation was a little off already, and this pretty much proved it!  So, we're into the afternoon already, past the time I hoped to be on the road, and we've got to get a Uhaul.  Drove about an hour to Jefferson for a trailer to pull behind the Durango.  Your's truly had never pulled a trailer before!  Brought it back home, loaded it to the gills in the COLD, had the Durango loaded clear full, and our old pickup with the cat inside and bikes, swingset, etc, too.  All it needed was a rocker on top and we'd have been the Beverly Hillbillies!  Can you believe we even had to leave a few other things behind?  Nothing major, but stuff we'd planned on moving.  We picked up the boys in Ogden and were leaving the Woodward area at 7 PM....booked a hotel in Iowa City where we landed at 10 PM.  By this time I'm starting to feel kinda weird...hot, a little light headed (more than just being blonde!) and my throat was funny too.  Not to mention a mouth full of cancor sores that were keeping me from eating due to the pain!  The boys slept good - what 3 year old wouldn't in a full bed all to himself! but I had a bad night. The cat did really well, he had been one of my bigger worries, but he actually was ok with it. 

Day 2, Feb 5

We try to get on the road early, but the tires on the Uhaul had gone flat overnight!  Then the pickup acted like it wasn't going to run at all... we managed to get on the road again at 8:30 in hopes of making it to Maquoketa for our house signing at 10:30.  Just a piece of advice - don't put the move and the signing on the same day!  We did make it, just in time, and the boys were exceptionally good at the lawyer's office.  I had worried about that too, since I didn't have a sitter available for them, but someday I will learn to quit worrying 'cause God's gonna take care of things way better than I ever expect!  So, we signed on our first home!! Scary and exciting at the same time... the movers showed up about noon and started unloading.  At least it warmed up outside some from the day before, but I was going down fast.  I pretty much layed on the floor of Phillip's room while the boys watched movies on my laptop.  I am so glad we had the movers...it made all the difference, especially when I got sick.  They were pretty good too, nothing major broke, and I don't think we lost anything in the move.  I think they were done unloading by 3, but I was a little too out of it to remember.  I think it was some sort of bronchitis, cause the cough has been terrible to shake - Dwight got it too, and had the pleasure of starting a new job sick.  Phillip had a slight cough problem for a little while, and Jacob, thankfully, never got it! I'm not sure the rest of us are 100% yet...

So, we're now in town for a month.  I like it a lot.  I can run to the grocery store & walmart and be back home in an hour.  Our home and garage are really nice...there's always things we'd change if we could, like bigger closets and adding a dining room, but it's a lot better home than what we thought we would be able to find. The neighbor's have a noisy Jeep that wakes us with three beeps & cranks the engine at 4:30 every morning.  That's not so bad compaired to the first Sat morning we lived here and their car alarm goes off at 3 AM - blinking lights, honking horn, right outside our bedroom & Jacob's.  For a half hour.  Dwight had to go next door to wake the neighbor about it! I'm still amazed that the boys slept through it! The neighbor came over later to apologize; I met him at the door & he asks if my dad is home...batting a thousand!  Oh well...always something! But I'm so thankful we didn't get the first house we offered on - it would have been an on-going project for the rest of our lives!  And we're kinda tired of that, already!  Dwight's job is going pretty good, he has some good employees and it's nice to still be close to work. We live on the same road as the hospital, just on the east end while the hospital is on the west.  We are wanting to start looking for a church - all our sickness has put that on a back burner more than we intended.  Most likely be going to Dubuque or Davenport.  I'm trying not to worry about that, too, I know if God gave us a wonderful home, a good job, and a nice town that he'll show us a faithful church, too. 

The boys are calling it home now.  It took Phillip a little while, once the excitement wore off, to realize this was home, but he likes it and is happy with it I think.  They both have their own rooms again, which I really like, and Phillip is potty training this week.  He's doing really good with it and we're so proud of him!  It will be nice not to have 2 kids in diapers!  Jacob is cutting in all four eye teeth, so he's not quite his usual happy self.  They both are enjoying different tv shows in the morning - Micky Mouse, Handy Manny & a new Winnie the Pooh are favorites.  They're still addicted to Nemo, I think I know it by heart too.  We have a school up the street from us and went to the playground last week while it was in the 60s.  Lots of mud puddles to play in, much to Phillip's delight!  It's nice to get out and walk with the boys again - I'm really, really ready for spring.

I'm enjoying a kitchen like never before!  It's amazing what a little remodel does for bringing out the cook in ya!  This kitchen was redone not too long ago, with oak cupboards, wallpaper & extra lighting.  I'm a fan of the garbage disposal now, and love the lazy susan, cupboard with the pan drawers & the divided one for baking sheets.  And then theres the new fridge & stove.  We didn't have a big fridge of our own, and the stove needed to be electric, which we didn't have either.  We decided to get new and I am very happy with what we ended up buying.  The salesman at Home Depot recommended the TrueTemp stove by GE and it's fantastic!  It puts out perfectly browned cookies, cresants, pizza's & more...I need to try a pie soon!  I'm liking the black color, also.

Now if Spring will come for good and let us get out and explore!!  I'm anxious for garage sales, hiking, fishing maybe, the county fair, all that good stuff!

It really was inconvenient this moring! We didn't realize the ice was as bad on the roads as it was, so Phillip and I headed out to church.  Dwight stayed home with Jacob - Dwight's fighting a pretty nasty cold and Jacob was sleeping in after being up from 4-6 (he's kinda fighting the sickies, too I think). Now, our Durango is the nicest vehicle we've ever had. Ever. It's the only good vehicle we have right now, too.  But, the ice after the bridge didn't care about that.  It just was there, and so was I....a little too fast & a little too much correction out of a slide and we were in the ditch. I hate the feeling I get in my stomach when I screw up like that!  My first concern was Phillip. He was safely fastened in his seat belt, but it had him shaken.  The ditch God saw fit to have us land in was free of trees, not too deep, and had an incline that kept us from rolling over.  Our only problem was that a rear tire almost came off the rim and was flat. If not for the tire, I could have pulled out of the ditch, I think.  But, as it is we'll be having it towed and then getting the tire remounted and then aligne everything.  I am so glad that our old beater truck started so Dwight could come and get us.  I'm so thankful for our landlord, who was smart enough to stay home from church and kind enough to venture down to our house to stay with a sleeping Jacob while Dwight rescued us.  I'm so thankful the Durango isn't damaged.  I'm so thankful I have a loving and understanding husband when I mess up.  I'm so thankful there wasn't another car involved, that Phillip and I didn't get hurt, that I didn't land in the river just 30 feet away. I'm thankful we had a full tank of gas and could sit in a warm car while we waited for help (my just-out-of-the-shower hair froze the instant I stepped out to survey the damages, and we weren't exactly dressed warm enough to have walked!). I'm so very thankful for my cell phone.  May I never have to live without it!!! There were two houses nearby should I have had to go for help, but I would have hated to leave Phillip in the car alone.

This is the first, and hopefully last, time I ditch our rig!  It isn't the best start to 2009, I might add.  But, I am trying not to get pessimistic...God really did watch over us this morning in so many ways. I think it's good for me to type them out here. 

Rom 8:28 And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. 

So we won't be going to church tonight...and it will be a day or two before we head to Maquoketa to look for a house. Yep, the hospital house plan is kinda all messed up, too.  Wish it was as simple as replacing the tire! It's looking like we might be buying a house....more on that when I actually know something, right now it's as clear as Mississippi mud.