Good Bye Naperville!

This post is about 1 month behind as we moved to New York at the end of July.  We loved Naperville and so it was a bit sad to leave, but overall we were happy for the opportunity in front of us.

We spent our last week or so doing all our favorite things in the area.  The river walk was high on that list.  I spent a lot of time running there and did my last big run along it.  We also went on a family walk a few days before we left town.

We spent a lot of time at the children's museum and at the playground.  This is Grant picking up his favorite stick to bring it to New York with us.  He found it early on at the playground when we moved to Naperville.  He would play with it every time we went to the playground and would hid it under a bush when we left.

These pics are a bunch of diffrent ones of us enjoying our last days in Illinois.

Then, it was time to move.

Lara did a great job packing.  Thankfully I was actually able to help get things prepared for this move.  We ended up having to move ourselves, so here is the moving crew.

I am so thankful Dad and Jase came.  I am not sure how we could have done it without their help.  Thank you guys so much!  The kids did pretty good with the move.  Grant was great with us packing things up and even moving things out of the house.  However when we took the couch, he lost it.  Thankfully he recovered fairly quickly and even though he misses a lot about Naperville, he is happy to be in New York.

And here it is...the last picture in Illinois.  We truly enjoyed so much about the area.  We had great neighbors and I had great colleagues at work.  The town had so many fun things to do, and we loved it.  It certainly was sad to leave, but we never saw Naperville as where we would live forever...and so it was on to New York!    

Where to start?!

I guess the best place to start is early July when we made a trip "home" to look for houses to rent in New York.  Thankfully, our house hunt didn't take long and we had some time to visit family.

Here are just a few pics from our time in PA.

For awhile Grant was being a real bugger to his sister.  Starting on this trip he began being sweet to her again.  In this pic Gracie was walking on the driveway and Grant couldn't believe I wasn't holding her hand on the bumpy road.  He ran to her and walked her back holding her hand.  He often calls her "babe" and "sweetie".

Wow, Jenna's growing up!  No more newborn here.

and it sure looks like her and Gracie could be sisters.

Thankfully we were in town on Ryan's b-day and were able to have a birthday cook-out.

Then, we stayed at the Hetrick's for another day to enjoy a 4th of July barbecue and of course, fireworks.  It was great that Papa Jim and Brenda also made the trip.  It was a unique way to view the fireworks as traffic on the road completely stopped and we were stuck on the road!  Luckily, our cars were stopped right where we had a perfect view of the fireworks.

Here's Clint being just a bit excited about going to see fireworks.

The kiddos were watching the neighbors set-off a few small fireworks.

The next day it was back on the road to Naperville.  We had 2 weeks left to pack and enjoy Naperville before the big move.

 
A few quick notes about the kids:

Grace....
Gracie is still our spitfire.  She is tough and she is full of smiles.  She is putting two words together these days and gets the biggest kick out of saying "bum".  She is great at saying "peas" (please) when asking for something.  She loves animals, especially cats.  Just today she brought out our little training potty to us and so we decided to put her on it.  To our surprise, she used it!  So before her nap I put her on it and she peed again!  We haven't tried to potty train her at all but Grant spent some time trying right before we left Naperville!

Grant...
Grant loves riding his bike.  He is always watching out for his little sis.  He seems to remember everything he sees or hears.  If I forget where I put something I ask him, no joke!  The other day Lara and I were looking for something and we asked him if he knew where it was and he said,"Mommy put that behind the couch this morning."  He is really into space, dinosaurs, and basically anything else.  He is constantly asking what things are and how they work.  He refers to our van as "his friend van".  He has been struggling a bit with naps and especially bedtime lately.  Last night when I put him in bed he said, "Daddy, I am going to be nocturnal".  I think he thought if he busted out some big vocab it might work on me!