Upstairs at the Ashworth House

One day, as our move neared, I noticed that my house was semi-clean (although there are signs of the impending move especially in our room and office area). It's weird to me that one day our days in PA will only be vague memories for Nick and Chase and that Cora won't remember it at all. I decided to snatch some pictures of the upstairs of our townhouse, so that they'll remember where we spent five great years and so Chase and Cora will see the house they came home to from the hospital. 

The master bedroom

 Cora's room (which was once decorated for a boy and was Nick's and Chase's room).

 The kids bathroom

 The boys room (Nick and I will NOT miss making that loft bed!).

 View from the top of the staircase (usually covered with my kids artwork, but I had taken it down in preparation for the move).

I meant to take pictures of the downstairs but I never did. At least I have photos of the kitchen and family room from this post after my mom and I redecorated.

I was very ready to leave this house. 1300 square feet, no storage besides a closet under the stairs, no garage, and a smoking neighbor often tried my patience. But now that we're gone I look back at it with fond memories. My kids grew up and all had many very important "firsts" here. We loved our neighborhood and all the friends we made there. The school system we were in was fantastic. I can tell I have some sentimental posts coming up as I sift through our "moving" pictures. Five years is a long time and we were very attached. We'll always love PA.

A summer schedule

As excited as I was for Nick to get out of school it didn't take more than two days for me to be reminded of one very simple fact: MY.BOYS.FIGHT. And it drives me nuts. We only had about three weeks after Nick got out of school before we moved and we had a lot of "lasts" to cross of our list. Some days we were gone all day but other days we just had one activity in the morning or afternoon. I quickly learned that I HAD to have a schedule ready for the kids when they got up in the morning. If I kept them busy and they knew what was next, we were all happier. Here's a sample of our daily schedule:

And here's a picture of Cora in a basket, just because she's so dang cute:

Last Day of School/ First Day of Summer

You may or may not remember how hard Nick's first day of school was for me, so you can only imagine how happy I was for the last day of school to finally arrive. Here's my big kindergarten graduate:

Who loves to comb his own hair in the morning

Walking to the bus for the last time

To celebrate, we went to a cool new park with our best friends, the Smith's, Shades, Shepherd's and Farnsworth's.

The next day, our first day of summer, we went to one of my favorite places in PA. Our friend Shawn was Nick's nursery leader at church and she took a liking to him. Every summer she has us out to her place to pick strawberries and ride her horses and we love it! It's so beautiful and my kids love picking strawberries and they L.O.V.E horses.

Oh, and the night before I was somehow persuaded to carry on our one-time tradition of letting Nick shave his head on the last day of school--

It was the perfect way to bring in summer!

The other preschool

Along with Tuesday/Thursday preschool at the presbyterian church, I also did the co-op preschool with my friends on Wednesday mornings. It was a little crazy (NINE KIDS) but was also really fun. On the last day we met up at the neighborhood playground for an end-of-year party.

 I had to document this moment because Chase always.finds.money. It drives Nick crazy, but it seems that wherever we go he spots pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters on the ground.

 Here are the kids in their silly face picture; although I'm pretty sure this is what Chase was doing in every picture; and I don't know why I don't have a better one than this. Bottom row: Cooper, Lorraine, Bella. Middle row: Chase and Joshua. Upper middle row: Isabelle and Parker: Top: Cole. Rhett is missing from the picture.

 After popsicles and scrapbook pages these boys got to doing what they love best: wrestling! We had the best friends in PA!

Memorial Day 2012

I've blogged about my little towns Memorial Day festivals a time or two before, but as it's something we attended each of the five years we lived there, I couldn't possibly leave out our last Memorial Day HURRAH. We attended the overly-priced-semi-ghetto carnival on Friday night where we smelled-but-did-not-partake-of every fried concoction on the face of the planet, rode some rides, and chatted with our neighbors and friends. 

Chase fell in love with the fun house and spent all of his allotted tickets going through it (except for one...as per above dragon ride picture). He was pretty bummed when all his tickets were gone.

The next night we attended the fancy-shmancy parade, complete with 5 baton twirling groups and about twenty gazillion fire trucks, and that's about it. Oh, except for this tow truck, a real gem that made us all chuckle.

 Doesn't Cora look like my mom in this picture...and all the time?

 It had rained earlier in the day and there was mud-o-plenty for this girl to get into. I think she thoroughly enjoyed herself (the candy being thrown by the gazillion fire trucks helped as well).

We miss PA!