Strawberry Pickin'

A few weeks ago, when the strawberries were ready for pickin' my friend Connie and her kids met us at the Pickin' Patch (original, right? But that is really what it is called...) Prior to going, we wondered if we were crazy. 7 kids + 2 mamas + 239,847 strawberries = CRAZY. But what the heck. And I'm so glad we were brave. The kids were super good, and while we had a few more "pink" strawberries than we wanted, it was a ton of fun. Afterward we headed to Wal-Mart to buy supplies and lunch and then we went back to my parents house and made freezer jam.

FYI - I am not doing any gang signs. Just holding Kaleb's hand down from blocking his face.

Strawberry blob on his head. No idea how that happened.

I wanted to post Tony's brother's address in Iraq for anyone interested in dropping him a line or care package.

Spc. Hyser, Aaron M.
A STB 76 BDE
Q-West Base Complex
APO AE 09351

He loves to get anything fun to occupy his time when things get boring. I sent over a stack of fitness magazines and he enjoyed those. Plus... he can pass them on to other guys when he is finished. We have sent snacks... things that won't melt in 130 degree heat. :) Calling cards are nice -- the international ones. And apparently, donkey food.

Anyway.... if you know Aaron (or don't) I'm sure he'd love to hear from you! And please keep his safety in your prayers! We have our fingers crossed that we will get to see him at the end of July when he gets a week of leave.

Free Stuff

Was reading a great blog and came across this info. If you are looking for baby, kids, or maternity stuff... there is a website called Freepeats.org. Similar to Craigslist, only free. It's free to sign up until July 1st. And only $4.95 for a lifetime membership after July 1st. So you can't go wrong. They have new forums in St. Louis and Indianapolis. I signed up under Indianapolis, b/c that is my closest location right now, but I was able to view all of the other city forums as well.

Who doesn't love a deal? Especially a free one.

The Price was Right

Tony's mom took Andy, his youngest brother and a friend to California for Andy's graduation/birthday present. She got them tickets to the Price Is Right for the morning and afternoon tapings. Much to their surprise, Laura got called up on the morning show and Andy got called up on the afternoon show. Both also made it to the Showcase Showdown. And Laura WON hers. We think it was pretty sweet. You can check out the videos here:


Watch CBS Videos Online

http://www.cbs.com/daytime/the_price_is_right/

Andy's episode aired on the 19th, and Laura's on the 18th.

Come on Down!!!

I wanted to post a few pictures from the week before we moved. Tuesday night we met Ruthie and her boyfriend (yes, they've moved past the "I think you are a cool guy stage" as mentioned here), Chris at Downtown Disney. We ate at Planet Hollywood and then walked through the Marketplace. Ruthie got Kaiya a stuffed Pooh at the giant Disney store. At the end of the walk I let her run around in a fountain (the kind that is built into the ground) and she wore herself out. I was trying to put her in her jammies when we got back to the house and this is what she did. Too cute.

The day that Tony left we went to the park. Here are a couple pictures from that.

In true big sister fashion, Kaiya kindly lets Kaleb ride with her in the swing. She knows that it means she can't swing as high, but she does it so that he can swing. It's very sweet. And we can't seem to keep his mouth off of the nasty swing. We gave up trying. Now I know why... he cut his first tooth the next day. :)

Wordless Wednesday - Looooook at Mama!!!

Dear Kaiya,

Mama really doesn't like it when you take her car keys and poke holes in the avocados I am buying at the grocery store. With the lovely food prices, I just can't afford your creative genius. In another life, the key/avocado sculpture you presented to me would have been beautiful. :) I hope you enjoy your avocado dinner tonight. :) Cause those babies aren't gonna live to see tomorrow and I could not in good conscience bury them underneath the avocado stand.

Love,
Mama

Changes

A picture-less post with an update on all of the changes for our family!

Over Memorial Day weekend we bade good-bye to Florida and moved all of our stuff to Charlotte, North Carolina. We unloaded the truck into a storage unit. Tony found a roommate in Charlotte and the kids and I are staying with my parents in Indiana for the summer. We found a commercial property for Tony's office and he will sign the lease within the next week or so! After that he begins the process of drawing up plans (the space is an empty suite that basically has a concrete floor so we can build it out just the way we want to), meeting with an architect, contractors, etc. Then the permitting process begins and we have to wait for construction to be finished. Tony needs to be present to oversee all of this. We can reduce our living expenses significantly by staying with my parents, so that is what we decided to do.

Tony spent a week with us here in Indiana and I took him to the airport yesterday. Not looking forward to the time away from him, but it isn't that long and it's necessary for us to accomplish our goals. So we're all sucking it up and doing it. :)

And a cute Kaiya story... a few posts ago I mentioned her imitating Cinderella and fake crying. Well, she saw my tears after dropping Tony off at the airport. As I was buckling Kaleb back in his seat she looked over at me and said, "Oh Mommy. Oh No! ELLA!" Translated: Oh, poor mommy, you are acting like Cinderella. I laughed and said, "Did you just call me Cinderella?" She started smiling and said, "Yesh." Translated: Yes.

Kaleb wants real food. Today he managed to grab a piece of lettuce off of my plate and put it in his mouth. He'll be six months old in a few weeks, so we are going to start solids this week. The kid is clearly ready. :)

Dear sister, You should really go to cosmetology school, because that shampoo you just gave me was awesome. You only smeared the bubbles in my eyes 3 times. Love, Kaleb
Kaleb's one hair. We got him out of the bath and he had one little hair sticking up straight. Click on the picture to get it bigger. It looked so funny we had to try and get a picture of it.
Kaiya's LONG hair. This girl has plenty of hair. It is down to the middle of her back when its wet and combed out. Cute, but the struggle to "do" her hair is getting more challenging.

Rally the troops....

Hey guys, tony here, we are in the middle of packing but I saw a newsbreaker that frankly broke my heart. Most of you may know by now, but please pray for Steven Curtis Chapman's family. His 5 yr old daughter was killed today when his teenage son accidently ran over her. His new cinderella song takes on a new meaning after this. Pray for healing, pray for support, but mostly pray for this event to glorify God. I will share a quote by one of my favorite authors that has impacted me through tragedy.

"{Lewis grieving the death of his wife}Bridge-players tell me that there must be some money on the game “or else people won’t take it seriously.” Apparently it’s like that. Your bid—for God or not God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity--- will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high; until you find that you are playing not for counters or for sixpences but for every penny you have in the world."—C.S. Lewis (A grief observed)

It's been a busy week around here. Here's the recap of the week in pictures:

So long, farewall, you've been a good little car...

The little armadillo friend I was talking about. A week ago I noticed that something had dug a hole next to the trash cans. Whenever I took something to the trash I would try to kind of peer in. I wanted to know what it was... and I didn't want to know -- if you know what I mean. One night I mentioned the hole to Tony and we were wondering if there are groundhogs in Florida. Later that night we were getting ready to leave the house and I carried a bag of trash on my way out. I got on the side of the garage, looked down and found this little guy and screamed like a little girl. Then grabbed the camera, of course. :) He didn't seem to mind us much. And Kaiya is convinced he is a rabbit.

This is the position that we find sweet Kaleb in most often. :) He has found his toes and has been having a love affair with them ever since.

This is his second love affair -- Daddy's apple core. Kaiya got within a foot of him and while sucking on the core he reached over to try and grab her apple too.

And our last trip to the beach before the move...

Kaleb's face right after he got wet.

Kaiya & Kaleb's footprints

Who's coming with us???

Tony here... I have been busy finishing up here in florida while trying to open an office several states away so needless to say the newsletter has been a little slow. I am hoping to work on it this weekend. Thought I would post this link in the mean time to tempt all our friends to move by us. Blessings!

http://finance.yahoo.com/real-estate/article/105075/Charlotte-Named-Best-Place-to-Live

Free Money!

I've had a couple people ask me about how legit this offer really is. Since they do ask for SSN and birthdate when signing up. So I did some digging to confirm they are for real. Company has ties to AOL founder, Steve Case. Here are a couple links w/ articles about them.

Article #1 -- Good info about company

Article #2

Article #3

Anyway... there's the scoop folks! And just to leave you hanging... coming soon... armadillo pictures. I told you we are being invaded by Florida creatures. This little guy is creating a nest next to the trash cans. Stay tuned... I'm about to change the name of our blog to Animal Planet.

Revolution Money Exchange

This is big news for anyone who loves FREE money! :) This is a new company who is a competitor of Paypal. I wondered when that would happen... cause Paypal has had the market for online money exchange for quite awhile! But anyway... they are using the Internet and word of mouth as one of their biggest marketing tools right now. If you sign up for an account with them, they will give you $25! Nice, right? But the offer is only good until Thursday, May 15th. And they are giving $10 for every person referred, so if you are interested, make sure to go through this little button here so I can get credit for it. :)

Cute video of the kids interacting with each other. I shot this last week and I'm finally able to post it. Towards the end of the video you will notice Kaiya's sideways eye glance. She does this all the time now when we ask her a question. Usually she will say, "Ummm..." while she is glancing to the side. It's cute -- not sure where she picked that up, but it makes me smile almost every time. We are busy busy busy packing up the house, getting ready for a yard sale, putting stuff on craigslist and eBay. It's exciting!

Ants

Okay... for those of you who have been reading our blog for awhile, you know that we were going crazy w/ bugs (i.e. scorpions, ants) when we first moved down here. I think this house was seriously built on like 999 ant hills. And they know we are moving soon and are determined to make us miserable until we go. Ruthie has been having dreams (nightmares) about these things. Here's where I discovered them most recently while doing some packing...

Giggles

Looked out the front window and saw the neighbors busy at work in the yard. Doesn't this picture just make you giggle? :) Tony and I thought so. They are really cranking neighbors so I think it made it just a bit funnier. P.S. -- It wasn't raining!

Sweet Boy

Rice Cereal and other tales...

It's Kaleb's turn for a post! He has reached several milestones this 4th month of life. The most exciting one for mama is that he is sleeping through the night. This milestone was reached through rice cereal. :) Here are a few pictures with Kaleb's first experience with cereal.

Umm... this is weird... Okay... gimme the spoon!
We had a great family night last night. I was on a quest for new shoes. My excuse: I'll be working in Tony's office for awhile and need something more updated. Mind you the last time I bought new shoes was while pregnant with Kaiya. So... 3 years and no new shoes is frugal enough, I think. So we headed to the Outlet malls and made a stop at Nine West. They had the BOGO 50% off deal going on so I got one black pair and one brown pair. Cute, huh?

After dinner we decided to call Ruthie. Thursday nights she goes downtown to feed the homeless. We've been hearing about this ministry for awhile and wanted to see it first hand. And... truth be told, we also wanted to see the guy in the middle first hand:

I won't elaborate as to why we would want to see Chris Allen firsthand. Only we heard from someone who lives with us that he was a pretty cool guy. You can draw your own conclusions.

And after meeting him -- we agree. He sings pretty good too -- check him out: www.myspace.com/chrisallenbandworship

Anyway... back to our family night. We had about 45 minutes to kill before going downtown and because it was unplanned we had no food for Kaiya. So we stopped at IHOP to grab dinner. And the coolest thing happened. The restaurant was really dead except for an old guy by himself and this lady with her three children. Just before our food arrived the lady w/ the kids googoo-ed at Kaleb and then left. As our waitress was serving us our food she told us that our bill had been taken care of by the lady. And that she said God Bless You. WOW! So cool. Jehovah Jirah=God is our Provider -- it is so true. We've been getting little blessings like this lately. (L.C. - got your package -- it was a hug in the mail, came on the perfect day - a response will come soon!) God is just so good to love on us through other people. And it was a great reminder that we need to allow ourselves to be used and be looking for opportunities to serve others as we go about our day.

In all the craziness of being blessed by a free meal I suddenly feel something warm hit my leg. I know what some of you are thinking. No... while childbearing has altered my bladder control, I wasn't that worked up about the free meal. :) I look down and see hashbrowns on my legs. I didn't remember spilling anything from my plate -- in fact, I hadn't even started eating yet. So I look down at Kaleb who I am holding and he has shoved an entire fistful of greasy hashbrowns in his mouth. Apparently he thinks that now he has eaten cereal he should be eating EVERYTHING! :) Give an inch... he takes a mile. He is more like Kaiya than we realized! :) Hilarious. Tony scoops the remaining hashbrowns out of his mouth and we are cracking up. Kaleb sees us laughing and starts giggling too, which really made the whole thing more funny. The kid sucked on his greasy hand the rest of the meal. We were afraid that he was going to lose a finger or thumb he was sucking so hard. :) It was awesome.

After dinner we headed downtown to the park where we watched the ministry that Ruthie does with the homeless. All these 20 somethings provide a meal for approx 30-50 homeless people and then Chris Allen leads in worship and they have a guest speaker who does a Bible Study. It's a neat thing - and we're proud of Ruthie - she has a compassionate heart. Plus... she is permanently responsible for providing dessert for the group so we are guaranteed something extremely yummy in our house on Thursdays.

Our kids were zonked as we headed home around 10 p.m. Kaiya slept through an entire sponge bath while on the changing table. I washed her hands & feet when we got home and although she asked me for a sticker (which is a diaper changing ritual) she forgot she had asked me about 3 seconds later and into bed she went. Tony and I watched Survivor and called it a night.

Hello, I love you. Won't you tell me your name?...

I've been wanting to create a post like this in awhile. My blog stats tell me that there are quite a few Hyser Family Blog readers out there. And just for fun, I'm curious to know who you are! :) Leave a comment telling me who you are, where you are from, and how you found us! I have changed my settings, so if you don't have a google account you can click on the Name option and just type your name in the spot.

C'mon... Don't be shy!

Cinderella

For the past week Kaiya has been running to the wall and pouting with her arms and head on the wall. It is usually when I tell her something that she doesn't like to hear. I thought it was funny, but didn't think to ask her about. So yesterday we were playing outside and she lost a quarter in the grass. She runs to the front door and leans her head and arms down on the step and fake sobs quietly. I started laughing and said, "What are you doing? Who taught you to do that?" And she very seriously replies, "Ella." And since we have watched this 329 times I remembered that after Cinderella's step-sisters tear her dress to pieces, she runs into the garden and cries on the garden bench until magically her fairy godmother appears. This is amazing to me for 2 reasons: 1) She is mimicking behavior from TV. 2) She answered my question about who taught her that correctly. Just another reminder that she's growing up! :)

I got her to do the Cinderella pose for me... Now look at the pictures and imagine her sobbing quietly to herself. Very cute. She usually runs to whatever she is going to do her sobbing on.

Prayer Request

Many of you know that I (tony) am in a group called Maximized Living. This weekend we are putting together the Maximized Living Makeover. Think Extreme Makeover for your health while doing it the way God intended. There will be about a 100 of them going on around the U.S. The first one started last weekend at Colombine High School with about 1000 people. The rest of them will be taking place tomorrow. Pray that many people's lives/health will be changed. You can get a sample of the Colombine makeover here: (Make sure you click on the "remembering colombine" link)! www.rememberingcolumbine.com

Lots of posts at once...

I feel like I just have to get caught up with this blogging. So I'm posting a bunch at once to catch myself up with what is currently going on.

A week ago Tony had a trip to Charlotte planned. He rented a car and was planning on meeting my dad up there to look at a few commercial properties and secure financing. Saturday morning about 2 hours before he wanted to leave I asked him if the kids and I could tag along. It was totally last minute, but because he rented a car it wouldn't cost him anything to take us along. It took me about 30 minutes to plead my case and rebuttle every reason that he came up with as to why it wouldn't be a good idea but he consented under two conditions. 1) I had to get both kids and myself packed in 30 minutes. 2) The rental car had to comfortably fit 3 adults and 2 carseats. About 2 hours later we were on the Interstate headed to Charlotte.

We had such a blast on the trip. The kids travelled really well, surprising Tony as that was reason #749 as to why it wouldn't be a good idea to take us along. And I was thanking my lucky stars that they were so good since I insisted that they would be angels. :) The trip was very confirming to me that Charlotte is the place that we want to raise our family. It is a beautiful city and I think we are really going to love it. The trip was very productive as we looked at several properties and have our top 2 narrowed down. Tony is just working on negotiating the leases to determine which one is going to be best for us. He was also able to get some really positive feedback as far as the financing goes. We are finishing up paperwork with the bank and should know sometime this week whether everything went through.

I didn't pull out my camera as much as I should have so I really don't have many pictures from the trip. But we are going to head back up in May to look for our housing arrangements, so I'll take more then. I also learned on this trip what an excellent sleeper Miss Kaiya is. We requested a crib from the hotel for her and I was looking at it sit outside the front closet in the hotel room and thought that it would probably fit in the closet. Now before anyone calls DFS on me, it was not a completely enclosed closet. It had a rod about 2 feet from the ceiling with a shower curtain like thing. So I slid the crib inside and then when it was time for her to go to bed we just pulled the curtain closed. She was so good and got herself to sleep each night even though we had lights and tv on. It was great because then we didn't all have to go to bed at 9 p.m. :)

Here we are waiting in the car for Tony & Papa to get done meeting with the banker.

I took this picture about 5 minutes after we hit the road to head back to Florida. She is totally passed out.

So I attempted the near impossible today. Braiding Kaiya's hair. She tolerated it pretty well and kept the rubberbands in all day. I think next time I may only do it partway and tie the band at the base of her head. But she looked pretty darn cute today.

We are tired around here. And clearly don't sleep without one of our children in bed with us. Yeah, that's gonna have to end soon - we still have a fullsize bed. Can you say crowded?
Like father, like son...

Lazy Saturday morning... Kaiya climbed into bed with me around 7 a.m. yesterday. This is how Tony found us around 7:30 a.m. What a little sweetheart. We were so asleep we had no idea that he even took the picture.

We are tenatively planning to move in June. Of course, it could be sooner or later than that depending on how quickly this process takes. When we officially sign the lease on our commercial property I'm sure we'll post a picture. We're definitely getting pumped up about this move. I'm training in the office about 20 hours a week learning how to run Tony's office. I'm feeling good about it, but there are still more things to learn (i.e. - insurance-ick!) So that's the overdue update.

Kaleb & Kaiya with two of Connie's kids, Cassie & Samantha
Kaiya learned how to play (er... make noise) on the harmonica. Here she is in all her glory!

Here Kaleb, you try.

Is she playing with her mouth or her nose? You be the judge... Dear Ft. Wayne Airport:

Thank you for thinking of the parents traveling alone with small children. For that matter, thank you for thinking of ALL parents traveling with children. The wonderful play stations that you have in the terminals are ingenious. Forget standing right near our gate to get our seats as soon as pre-boarding starts. I'm gonna let my little squirt wear herself out as much as possible before being strapped into a stuffy, cramped airplane where I have to buy a drink of water. :) Ft. Wayne Airport... you are my hero.

Sincerly,

Me

These are pictures taken with Tony's dad and grandma. We don't see them very often so it was nice to spend the day with them. Kaiya enjoyed lots of horsey rides on Grandpa's knees and reading books with Grandma. Kaleb is at the perfect age for Grandma Cook to snuggle.

On the car ride home she was tuckered out.