New Job, New House, New Everything!

So I mentioned in the last post that Joe found a job.  We have officially moved to TN!  Joe is teaching at a community college (Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College) and is about to finish his first semester.  He loves his job and his students seem to really like his classes.  Aiden and I are slowly settling into a new routine of library story times and other activities.  We all love our new house with all of its extra space.  Of course, we filled it immediately, but we just have too much stuff!  We still haven't sold the house in Clemson, so if any of you would like to move there (or move back, as the case may be), just let us know!! 

We moved just before Aiden's birthday and my parents helped us drive all of our stuff to the new house and start unpacking and getting everything settled.  On Aiden's actually birthday we painted his new bedroom (it used to be pink) and gave him his gifts.  Most of Aiden's presents were Toy Story related, including a set of Under-roos.  You can see T-shirt in this pic.  I think the big collapsible bus was the favorite present, though!

I don't really have any pictures of the house yet.  I'll try to get a walk through when I decorate for Christmas in the next few days.  You can see from these pictures, though, that the living room is huge (two rooms long, actually) with a wood burning fireplace in the middle.  More on the house later!

This Halloween Aiden decided to be a wizard.  We attended 3 different Halloween activites: the candy harvest at Joe's school, the Trunk-or-Treat at the church, and the Trunk-or-Treat at LMU (Lincoln Memorial University, about 3 minutes from our house).  Here are some of the pics from those!

Candy Harvest SKCTC (Joe's school):

 

About to get candy from Dad.

We were there with preschoolers and kindergartners from several local elementary schools.

Trunk-or-Treat at Church

We added a staff to the costume for the Trunk-of-Treat.

Aiden showing off his wizard's hat.

 

Trunk-or-Treat at LMU:

The medical students got dressed up for Halloween, I think...

The 80's are back!

There were tons of activities at LMU.  Here's Aiden decorating a pumpkin.

Letting a 4 yr. old throw darts... is this a good idea???

There was face painting and a hay ride.

The day ended with a costume contest.  The minor miner on the right won.  Welcome to "Coal Country"!

That brings us to today, December 1st, 2010!

Today was our first snow of the year.  It flurried on and off all day, but nothing stuck.  The first thing Aiden asked me this morning was, "Mommy, is it Christmas?  I think it's snowing outside."  It was snowing, but it was not Christmas (thankfully, b/c I haven't even started making presents yet).

  OK, we're officially up to date.  I'll make a goal to do better this year than I did last year :-)

The Year In Review

OK, so I am officially the worst BLOGGER ever :-(  Here is my attempt to catch everyone up on the last year and a half of our lives without boring you to death!  So we left you in July of 2009.  Here's what we've done since then:

August 2009 :  Aiden's Third Birthday

Aiden wanted a "farm" cake, so we did a farm themed party.  This was the first year we had other kids at the party.  Aiden asked for Mae and Liza Stark, his friends from church, to come.  We enjoyed playing with balloons and playing "stick the tail on the sheep".

 October 2009:  Halloween

For Halloween Aiden and Joe dressed up as pirates and I was a princess.  This is what Aiden requested and our friend Ruth Baugh loaned me some of her garb.

December 2009:  Christmas

We mostly took video of Christmas and we haven't digitized the tape yet, so here are the only pictures from last Christmas :-)

The loot from Aiden's stocking

The calculator is a pencil case and came with colored chalk.

 February 2010:  Real Snow in South Carolina!

Aiden enjoyed playing in the snow again this year and even built his own little snow lady.

March 2010:  Aiden really figures out how to sound out words

All the words on the door were spelled by Aiden without any adult helping him.  Joe wanted to see what he could do, so he asked him to spell the words one at a time and he did!  He was so proud of himself and we were  just a little proud too :-)

May 2010:   Daniel Edwards' wedding

OK, so this is not just a blog about Aiden :-)  Last summer Joe and I were able to go to the wedding of a good friend from college.  We were almost blown off the beach, but we had a wonderful time anyway!  Congrats to Daniel and Ruth :-)

June 2010:  Joe finally graduates! (and gets a job!!)

So in June Joe completed his PhD and had his 32nd birthday.  Both sets of parents were able to attend graduation.  Again, I seem to only have video of the graduation, so no pics.  We celebrated his birthday and graduation with an ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins.

Somewhere in all the madness of writing a dissertation, defending, and graduating, Joe managed to get a job.  So we began fixing up the house in Clemson to get ready to sell.  Many of you know that we had needed a new door frame on the shed door for several years.  Well, my Dad fixed that for us and Aiden decided to help :-)

July 2010:  Annual trip to TX

Somehow I managed to take no pictures on last summer's trip.  *SIGH* I remembered to pack the camera, though!  Maybe I took some video??

August 2010:  Aiden's 4th Birthday

Since we would be leaving Clemson just before Aiden turned 4, we decided to have a huge play day at the park for his birthday before we left.  We invited just about everyone from his primary class and everyone had a blast.  Aiden said he wanted an airplane cake this year, so this is what we did:

This seems like a good place to end this HUGE post :-)  We'll pick up here with the next one!

Aiden's First Zoo Trip

While we were in Texas, Aiden got to go to the zoo for the first time. The temperatures had been over 100 for weeks, so most of the animals were inside. There were still a few out to see and Aiden had a fun time. Here are some of the pictures that Aiden took of the animals at the San Antonio Zoo.




The rhinos were really stinky (as usual), so my mom told Aiden to tell them to take a bath. Aiden then turned toward this rhino and said, "Rhino, you are stinky. You should take a bath and get all clean and then you won't stink any more." When we asked him later what the smelliest animal in the whole zoo was, he said it was the rhino.