Lukey loves to read

I was procrastinating the other day while we were packing and took this video of Luke. He talks so much, but he always clams up when we're around other people. When he's at home with us, he's a little chatter box like Jackson. There's a pause in the middle of the video, but it's cute at the end.

It takes a village...

...to move the Hames. I just want to take this opportunity to thank all the people who helped us move. When we started the process I knew we'd never be able to pull it off on our own, so when our awesome realtor Jennie told us on the day we met her that she'd help us with everything (including painting if it came to it) I knew she was the one for us. That was just the beginning. We had a few days with Jennie in the house rearranging furniture and putting blue tape on everything we needed to pack away or get rid of. We had blue tape everywhere we looked for awhile. I chuckled the other day when I realized that the bottle of shower gel that Mat uses still has a piece of blue tape on it. Jennie was great throughout the entire process. Luckily she and Mat were in charge of negotiating because it became clear during the process that I was terrible at it and all my instincts were pretty much wrong. :-)

Then we had Mat's mom Jackie for almost two weeks helping us pack and stage the house. We had several days over the last few months when Mat's Dad and Wendy took the boys off of our hands so we could work on the house. We had inspectors at both houses and the bug guy too. We had Don the handyman at the old house several times. We had a vist from Keegan the air conditioner man. We had Steve the carpet cleaner, Edward the plumber at least twice, Brandon the disappearing house washer, a random yard crew that Mat recruited from the neighbor's house one day, and Texas Re-Key twice. We had Amy, Robin, Dahlia, and Casey who babysat on various occasions. The mortgage lendor, the appraiser, the title company people. We had Christy who kept the boys while we signed the papers on the new house, and Danny who loaned us his truck so we could make a run to the outlet mall. Doreen and Thomas who loaned us the best boxes in the world. We had my sister Becky who came for two weekends to help pack, move, and babysit, and who had to endure an unfortunate accident in the back yard related to Luke not wearing a diaper while playing in the sprinkler. We had my cousin Donice who spent almost 12 hours babysitting, packing, and moving boxes. We had my parents who came to babysit one weekend before their summer trip to Colorado. There was Rachel the house painter, James the carpet salesman at Lowe's, and Raul the carpet installer. We had two cranky movers, Vickie the house cleaner, the friendly cable guy, and Keegan again before it was all over.

All of this in addition to four work trips between the two of us, one weekend in Rockwall, one wedding in Houston, work, a birthday, an anniversary, Mother's Day, end of the year activities at preschool, a day trip to Blanco, church, etc etc etc. So I can't thank all of you enough for everything you did to help us. I don't know why you did it, but I'm so grateful. Love you guys!!! (Not the cranky movers, but everyone else!)