It's official. The Haderlie's are moving to Iowa. My heart is breaking for me and my kids, even though I know that this will be a good thing for them and their family. We've known for a while that this was coming, and for even longer than that- that it was probably coming. We've been spending as much time as possible with this favorite family of ours - hoping to take advantage of the time we have together before we are 1,196 miles apart. My heart is a little heavy right now, so I thought that I'd sit down and blog about some of the things that we've been up to together.
Valentines Day and Decluttering
A couple of weeks before Valentines Day, the kids wanted to have a party and Jenna and I said that maybe we'd have a little Valentine's Party together. The kids took those words as gold and held us to them. Our party was a little late, happening the week after Valentine's, but we had heart shaped pizza and just played together for a couple of days. It was really fun because usually when we are sleeping over together it's for one of two reasons: 1-We have an event or holiday that is going on, usually a family event, or something that takes most of our time OR 2-We are dropping our kids off at the other's house so that we can have a weekend date or something of the kind. This time our stay was purely focused on hanging out and spending time together. We didn't have anywhere to go or anything to do. So of course we decided to pull out every single box of baby/toddler clothing and go through it, keeping only the good things and trashing the rest. (We both got lots of hand-me-downs and then I gave all my extra hand-me-downs to her so she had a lot of really old and worn out things.) There's a craze sweeping the nation about a book-turned-tv-show by Marie Kondo and we giggled as we decluttered with the best of her followers. I can't believe the amount of stuff we went through! It was so fun to sit at a task and talk while the kids played.
Golden Spike Exhibit
We wrote a whole blog post about this in February but I thought it was worth noting in our Haderlie Post. These kids had a great time exploring together and it was fun to get a picture of all the Walker grandkids together (although Matt and Brooklyn facetimed with us and told us that they are expecting a baby! whooo! Another little cousin!!)
St George Walker Trip
This also has its own post - but what is better than spending a weekend in sunny St George with your cousins? Nothing!
The Final Week
This last week, we crammed as much Haderlie time in as we could. Camille and Jason came down and stayed at our house for a couple of days while Jenna finished cleaning their house in preparation for moving. My mom came down, too, which was wonderful. I just tried not to cry anytime I thought about not being able to spend so much time with these kids.
After Jenna officially moved out of their house, her plan was to go to Morgan for one more week before driving out to Iowa. So we came to Morgan for that week, too. Because, you know, at that point I was following her around like a little puppy dog. We had a great week. Making bread with Grandpa Walker, taking a day and going to visit Grandpa Great on the Ranch,
(The kids love this tire swing, they beg to be pushed harder and higher until they bump the tree and then they yell "Ping Pong Kids!"
These kids.
Iowa is really far away. Really, really far away.
I've been ignoring the reality of them moving, because I'm so sad about it. Now that it's really happening, I'm just feeling a little low. But thank goodness for modern technology, especially Marco Polo to make it so that we can still talk all the time. We are already planning our first trip out to see them and that's going to be really fun. This will be a good thing for them, and so even though selfishly I want them to stay - I'm trying to be supportive and look on the bright side of things. My kids are lucky to have these kids as cousins. I'm so incredibly lucky to have Jenna as a sister. She is kind and good and patient and funny and she makes me feel just a little brighter every single time I talk to her because she has a special way of sharing her light.
It's a blessing that we have such wonderful family.
So we will cheer them on - and do our best to keep this special cousin relationship close.
