Blackberry Farm

One of the many advantages of living here is the great park system! The Fox Valley Park District has fantastic parks along the river and other great places to visit. Today we visited Blackberry Farm. It's a combination of a living history museum, farm and botanical garden with train, tractor, and carousel rides as an added bonus. This weekend the farm hosted a model train show so we thought it would be the perfect time to visit.

The biggest hit was the huge lego train set!

Graham's not going to be a farmer.

Cousins

We unpacked the rest of our boxes this weekend in preparation for our week of cousins. David is in NC with reserve work so Emily and Libby flew in and mom flew down for a week of girl time. It's been great!

Bath time in Mommy's tub with Libby!

Aunt Katie and Baby E came for a visit and for tea on Tuesday.

We have visited many parks this week and enjoyed playing outside. Chicago summers are so much more enjoyable than Durham summers!

After supper tonight we decided to let the kids wash the spaghetti sauce off with the sprinkler. Ignore the weed patch in the background. The house is nearly set but the yard is another story...

Moving In

Bop helped put Graham's bed together the night we got to our new house.

Bea supervised from above

Unloading the truck

The truck was loud when the driver took it away!

Gaga and Bea in our front door

Goodbye, bright green and blue paint! The colors were replaced by a light lavender that was more suitable for the girls' room.

Grandpa Fink put our new microwave in

Bea walked around with stuffed animals, making sure everyone was working

Being silly with Gaga

Installing new appliances

David, Grandpa Fink, and Bop put up the scaffolding

while Graham built a great fort in the living room.

David hung the chandelier

Grandpa Fink and Bop put in the stove.

On Saturday we got to meet our newest family member, baby Elijah! Uncle Tim came to paint (thank you, Uncle Tim!!!) and Aunt Katie, Elijah, and Grandma Fink joined us later in the day.

Inga eyed Elijah with some suspicion...

Grandma made us a tasty supper!

Fantastic cupcakes from Aunt Katie

When David held our new nephew we both looked at each other and said, "I can't believe we're having another one of these!" It was a little bit overwhelming, but mostly just exciting to think about.

cupcakes

The kids played outside while Grandpa and Grandma Fink had their coffee on the patio

Inga, Graham, and Bea missed Uncle Josh so much that they decided to give themselves tattoos in his honor

Graham helped Daddy so much this past week!

We took a break after our company was gone to visit our new neighborhood park

Things are perfect yet, but most of the boxes have been unpacked and some of the pictures have been hung. And for those of you who prayed that we would find our silverware organizer, we found it. So thanks for your prayers!