SO fun. Keane is putting more and more words together. Last night he reached over to give Burke a love and said "Burp! Burp!" So sweet. And Neils is now "Neo." I just love all the fun of watching a child’s personality and language emerge over time. Too cool. Keane LOVES music and outside. Last weekend we spent what we were hoping would be our last weekend working on the Indiana house, and the weather was so fine the boys just played outside all day. Especially Keane. MAN is he an outside boy. Even in Michigan, snow on the ground, he was begging to go outside, and sneaking his way out at any opportunity. In bare feet! Crazy kid. He loves to dance along with any music or rhythm. Evidently he’s always got music in his head, as he is constantly bopping around, humming to himself. He is SO like my Dad. 

Our sweet Neils is learning the meaning of the word "generous." Every time he doesn’t want to finish a meal he’ll push it to the person next to him and say, "Here, you can have it. Am I generous?" He will also take his very last cookie, hand it to his brother and say, "Am I generous?" Last night Conan was explaining that we’ll be making our last weekend trip to Indiana to finish up the house so we can sell it. When asked why we were selling it, Conan replied, "So we’ll have money to buy our new house." Neils promptly jumped up and said, "You can use my money to buy the new house!" He ran to get his savings bank (his spending bank has very little in it, but this one has nearly a half inch of coins he’s been saving) and handed the whole thing over to Conan. "You can take it all, Dad. Is that being generous?" We told him it was very generous, but that he didn’t need to give us all of his money. My first instinct was to say no and just thank him for his generosity, but Conan wanted to let him do it. Who are we to derive him the pleasure and experience of loving sacrifice and giving? He decided he could just give us some, maybe a quarter (the largest denomination of currency he has). When he dumped his bank over, one shiny penny fell out. "Is this a quarter?" He asked. We told him what it was, and he said, "You can have this one, Dad. Maybe that will help you buy our new house." We’re framing that penny.

SO, we’ve been looking at houses out here in Michigan, and we found one we never thought we could afford, but it’s a bank sale, and they evidently just want to get rid of it. Enter, the Heiselt family. We saw it, fell in love with it (and the 9 1/2 acres behind it), and made an offer. 3 days later the bank said, sure, if you can cough up the money (which we can) you can have it. SO, provided we are happy with the results of a VERY thorough inspection, and get an idea of how much it will cost to fix the driveway issue (a long story, but the guy who lost the house did NOT lose the barn. And part of the driveway) we’ll be set. We should close around the end of March or early April. Read the rest of this entry »