Christmas and Welcome to North Carolina!

We are here! Well, we've been here for a while, about 2 1/2 weeks. Wow, is that all? Seems like forever. We've had so much going on the past month it seems like a lifetime.
Christmas came for us as I'm sure it did for you.  It was the last day of serenity that I saw for a while. Here are a few pics:

Andrew full of silliness.

Lord of the Rings/Hobbit Legos for the little boys.

American Girl Doll that looks like Meri...for Meri.

Snuggies for the boys who didn't have one and jealous of the girls who did.

DS's for the Boys. Very happy boys.

Sarah's new phone that has now become a part of her.

So we flew across the country...during the holidays...with 5 kids. I don't recommend it. Think "Home Alone" but everyone made the plane. Barely.

Sarah and Pete watching TV in the townhouse.

Once here in NC, we stayed in the townhouse we'd rented for Kendall during his stay here without us until the purchase of our new house closed last week.

We put up our AZ home for sale before we left, before we got it cleaned or the carpets done. The Monday after Christmas people walked through the house three times. Right after New Years we got an offer on our house. We haggled a bit, and it took them a week to redo their loan, but a couple of days ago we got an acceptable offer on the house! Yay! Kendall wants to be restrained and wait until the old loan has funded before he will let himself celebrate, but I'm all for shouting it from the rooftops! (Or my blog.) It was a great blessing from the Lord to have it sell so quickly. We COULD have swung two mortgages after 6 months (when the money from Kendall's company ran out) if it hadn't, but it would have been super duper squinchy. And no fun. We really feel like the Lord had blessed us all along this process. As stressful and crazy as it has been some days, it's still been a heck of a lot easier than it could have been. Like the fact that we are still renting a car because our Suburban (which got picked up on the 28th of Dec.) has been delayed and delayed and delayed. It should get here today, but with this weather, I'd be surprised. I miss my car. Just sayin'.

Here are a few pics of our new house. Nice things about our house: family room/kid's area is FAR away from public spaces and my bedroom. The yard is professionally landscaped and gorgeous, even in winter.

Our Charleston/Victorian style home.

Our living room with the furniture we bought from the previous owners. We needed the furniture to populate this room, and they let it go for a song. It's really nice furniture, and it showed me how shabby the rest of my furniture was in comparison. :/

The breakfast nook. New table of solid wood with just a tiny ding on the corner that made it MUCH more affordable. :)

The backyard playset. And patio. And yes, that is a tree growing up through the patio.

The rest of the backyard. There are no fences, but the previous owners used greenery to create separation. Nice, huh?

Bad things: the kitchen is TINY. But that can also be a good thing, since I can clean it fast. ;p There are beautiful wood floors. I hate wood floors. Too temperamental. But luckily I made sure the kids don't walk in the house with shoes on or come in the front door. Which is glass. Crazy. But good for letting in light.

Last but not least is a few seconds of the tremendous rainstorm we had last week. It rained/sprinkled for six days and then just poured for another 24 hours. The final totals for OUR town was 3.25 INCHES of rain in those 24 hours. Total crazy sauce. I've been assured by our neighbors that it was not normal for the area, so here's hoping we don't see that for a while. :p