Grandma and Grandpa's living room

 Grandma and Grandpa's recliners were positioned on this side of the room...

 The view out the front window...

The view from the side window...

Grandma and Grandpa's den

 The couch used to be along this wall, and the tv used to be in the corner where the cords now remain. I slept on that couch when we moved from Sydney to Warsaw, and I remember practicing my flute in this room every day after school when I was in the eighth grade.

 Grandma and Grandpa used to have a beautiful roll-top desk along this wall. They sold it before Grandpa passed away, and I was so bummed because I had hoped for it to remain in the family.

The view from the den out into the back yard...

Grandma's room...

Grandma's dresser was against this wall, and her bed was at an angle across the room. I'll always remember her vanity against the third wall as we walked in the room. Chelsea has that vanity now in her room, and I drove over, in part, to get Grandma's bed and dresser for our house. Just couldn't bear  to think of those items ending up somewhere else.

Grandpa's room...

On March 27, 2013, I drove over to Indiana. My mom had an offer on Grandma and Grandpa's house on Buffalo Street, and she thought that they were going to close on that Thursday. (The deal fell through at the last minute.) As I walked through the house, so many memories kept flooding through my mind... I didn't spend much time in this room... As family rumor has it, my great-grandmother passed away in this room. In his later years, Grandpa slept in here because Grandma didn't want to be disturbed when Grandpa got up early to go to work at Walmart.

March Madness 2013=Busted Brackets (March 24, 2013)

Well, in addition to celebrating our fourth anniversary with Ellie-Kate (Family Day 2013), we spent the week-end with basketball-- lots of basketball! The four of us did brackets, and, well, Emmy was the winner in terms of the first round. However, generally, our brackets were pretty busted... Let's just say that Ellie-Kate took it more personally than the rest of us!

Family Day reflections...

Hi everyone--

We just had such a wonderful, relaxing family day! We loved hanging out at COSI, savoring time in the little kid area and realizing that our days in this exhibit are nearing an end... (Kids over kindergarten age aren't allowed in the exhibit...) The girls really enjoyed Chuckie Cheese as well, and Ellie-Kate was just fearless around Chuckie this time-- very cool! She used almost all of her tokens on the basketball hoops, and she earned lots of tickets with her expertise :)

During lunch, though, we were talking, and Ellie-Kate once again expressed her desire for a baby brother. I said that we were too old to go back to China, and Ellie-Kate said that I could just have another baby in my tummy, just like her. Roger and I just looked at each other... We really thought that she understood that we adopted her from China, but we realized that she didn't truly grasp what that meant. She knows that she's from China and that we all flew over to get her, but she obviously didn't get that she wasn't in my tummy on route to China or that someone else was involved. We're praying that the conversation that we so evidently need to have with her will go smoothly and that she'll really be able to understand a very complicated situation for a little five year old... Kind of a bittersweet realization to an otherwise extremely good day.

Need to head off for bed now! More very soon :)

Christie

Continuing our family day adventures at Chuckie Cheese!