Bwahahah!

Apparently a company thinks I am full of crap because they wanted to send me coupons to what basically amounts to a laxative. They slapped a fancy name on it and the claim on the website was that it did not make you sit on the toilet all day, but still the intent behind the product was to "cleanse" your colon. So if any of you are feeling crappy let me know and I will hook you up ;)

Adjusting

I have been making progress with the boxes and with getting settled into our new area. I attended a welcome party for the spouses association in my area. It was nice to meet so many friendly people. I also got a chance to get to know some of the wives that live near me in housing better. It is still a bit strange knowing that all my neighbors are working for the same place.

Harry has been a bit of a brat of late. I am sure that he is just feeling the stress of the move but it is still irritating to have him acting out. I started giving him the choice to act good or bad. I would lay out the consequences for him being bad and continuing the naughty behavior and then ask him if he wanted be good or continue being naughty and get the consequences of that. So far it seems to be stopping the temper tantrums, although he is still ripping toys out of his brother's hands and other general naughty things. At least I can get him to go to his room when he is being punished with out having to drag him there myself.

I think that toddler is my favorite stage. They are a hoot to hang around and they do not talk back quite yet, although Daniel will jabber scold me if I am not paying attention to him. Toddlers are also super easy to entertain. I have no idea why we have fancy toys when he is happy playing with a cardboard box and other items out of our recycling bin (don't worry we have one of those fancy can openers that does not leave a sharp edge).

I plan on taking some pictures one of these days and hopefully I can find the cord to my camera.

Chugging along

I am alive still just very busy. We finally got a phone set up (got Vonnage since the local phone company was highway robbery) so I don't have to walk into town every time I want to make a phone call. That saves me a lot of time but it means I am exercising less. My dryer is now fixed so I am now doing laundry. The last appliance that needs to be put into working order is my dishwasher and that will require a new kitchen faucet. My husband was not thrilled at the amount of time that he would be spending doing the change over but when I pointed out the fact that I was having to hand wash dishes several times a day just to keep the sink clear he saw the wisdom of keeping his wife happy.

I need to take pictures of our new home but since I have not yet located the camera downloading cord thingy it is rather pointless. It is funny how many things are misplaced and how many things I have found again thanks to the shake up of all our stuff.

feeling out of sorts

I am feeling kind of frustrated right now. There are still so many boxes to unpack but so little time to actually do it in. I just want the boxes gone and the stuff magically put away. I don't want much do I?

It really is amazing how much my mood is affected by being in a crowded and cluttered house. I almost had the downstairs whipped into shape and all the boxes out of sight when my husband decided that he had to empty the storage room about an hour and a half before church. Instantly my mood went downhill from there. Not only were the kids distracted by what was mainly boxes of toys but having a ton of boxes impeding my ability to even leave my own house was disturbing. this morning I shoved them all back in *grumble at my husband and suppress urge to murder* and now I am feeling more cheerful.

I just have to keep plugging away at the clutter and hope that the kids don't hinder me too much and hopefully soon I will have a neat and somewhat organized house.

A moment of slience please....

.... for the household items that lost their lives in this move. The casualties are mounting thanks to careless packers and drivers that wanted to save some space.

This has been a hard move for our furniture, nothing has escaped with out some sort of battle scar. It is a good we have mostly solid wood furniture or we might not have anything that survived. I will post pictures once the house does not look like a bomb exploded in it... which may be never.

We haz house!

Now all we need is our stuff. We have arrived at out new home and are settling in. I have begun the process of making new friends and otherwise getting settled in. I just wish I had my stuff with me to make life that much simpler. We are supposed to be getting it on Wed and I am counting down the hours.

My husband's job turned out not to be the one he thought he was getting, it is a much more exciting one (for him) that he had thought. It is a posting that is highly sought after so he had just assumed that he was put in one of the less desirable one, but apparently the other applicants were not acceptable for one reason or another. Most days he will work the normal hours but there is going to be random and unpredictable travel involved, up to 30 days of it at times. Part of the confusion developed because most of his unit is actually away at the moment. I am not looking forward to the times he is away but I have been rather spoiled his last two assignments.

The weather here is amazing!!! It gets chilly at night and really wish that I had remembred to bring a sweat shirt or something. There is a playground steps away from our back yard and there is also a rather nice playground with in walking distance in town. The town itself is a small one, but packed with important things. There is a library, post office and a book store with in easy walking distance. The main deficiency is that there is not a decent (ie non touristy) grocery store in the area. We have to drive about a half hour over twisty roads away to get decent shopping.

My neighbors are nice and friendly. I was reassured that the local school was excellent and that there was a preschool in town for Harry to attend. My ward is nice and happy to have our children to help fill up the shrinking primary.

I will write more once we get unpacked and settled in.

Bleh

We are in California.

The move was crazy thanks to the weather taking a warm turn. My husband handled the movers and I got to wrangle the kids. We got a motel which was nice since we needed a place for the kids to nap during the day when all the hubbub was going on.

We had a semi eventful trip to Utah. My husband picked a long but more direct rout which meant we took longer to get there than we really should have. Daniel kept things fun by having a diaper blowout early on in the trip. I don't think the car seat will ever be the same. We had a nice stay with my family and the weather was amazing which was a nice change from the awful humidity of Kansas.

The trip to California was made eventful by my husband yet again deciding on a more direct route. If he had been headed to our new home things would have been hunky dory but since we are visiting with my inlaws we got a more "fun" route. The roads were insanely twisty and turny. I could not even hand back snacks to the kids after we left the main route across Nevada. Poor Daniel threw up because he got so car sick. We are never ever going that way again... ever, ever, ever again!

In a few weeks we will be headed south and getting settled in our new home.

move

The packers are coming soon. Daniel has decided to start walking and the smile on his face every time he takes a few steps is amazing. He is just so darn pleased with himself. I hope I packed everything we need for the trip, I know that I have at least 6 or 7 skeins of sock yarn to keep my busy. Hopefully we will remember to throw the trash out before the movers pack it up.

Catch up

Time in Kansas is growing short. We are gearing up for the move which I hope will go smoothly. A visit to my husband's cousin gave us a dry run for the long drive that is ahead of us and a portable dishwasher. The house is now being advertised for rent and we hope to have someone in it very soon. This morning we had the fun of a clogged sink. My husband, Harry and I have an annoying hacking cough that I hope goes away very soon, it is driving me nuts.

Summer break

We are settling into our summer routine. Evan is going to have an extra long summer this year thanks to the move so I want to keep some structure going or I will likely want to strangle him by the end of summer. We do schoolwork after lunch, nothing too major but enough to keep Evan in practice.

I really miss the morning quiet time that I used to get when the kids were at school and Daniel was napping. Now whenever I do anything I am interrogated by Harry who has appointed himself the house know it all. He has actually insisted on examining the contents of my mouth when he has suspected me of eating something that he might like.

I am struggling with transitioning Daniel off the bottle. Daniel is very resistant to change and while he can drink out of a sippy cup he won't. The novelty has worn off and unless I hold the cup to his mouth he will not drink from it. We are also having issues moving from baby food to finger food. He won't let me feed him much (except yogurt) but is ultra picky about what he will feed himself. He will not eat much meat to speak of and veggies never cross his lips. Luckily he does drink some milk so he does consume some protein and the cereal he eats (again he is very picky about which ones he will eat) are all fortified. I managed to get him to eas some humus by dipping some cheese crackers into it and not giving him anything he liked better.

I know that Daniel will eventually get better with the eating, but it is a bit frustrating trying to get him to consume a somewhat balanced meal. We as parents get so invested in what they eat at this age.

Yikes!

This month has been stuffed full of events. We had a wave of illness that also coincided with the end of the school year. So I got a nice pile of laundry among other things to help distract me from the sadness of the end of school. The weather has also been rather damp, so the beginning of summer break has not been all that thrilling either.


Below is a picture of Evan with his "girlfriends" who both loved to hold his had as he walked down the hall. One of them even drew him pictures.

Hippo birdy two ewe Daniel!

Today was Daniel's first birthday and we made an effort to make sure it was a fun day for him. We went to the zoo and had a blast!

Giraffes are totally rad!

Harry chasing a squirrel up a tree.

Fish!

I loves de fishes!

The gorilla was out which thrilled the boys.

Petting the goat was a lot of fun! I thought I had a really funny video of the boys talking to and petting this goat, but I hit the wrong button and ended up only recording myself putting the camera away. Bummer!

Flamingos!

The boys in the bear chair. This is Evan's love me pose.

This is Harry's My Name is Earl pose.

This is Daniel's Dr Evil pose.

Daniel playing chew and show with the pizza we bought for lunch.

Daniel lunging for the cake, he liked the candle.

Here is a video of Daniel noming his cake.

Here is a bonus video of Daniel being a silly little boy

Movin on

We are going to be moving to California. It will be kind a sorta near where we were before, I tried to convince my husband that he wanted to move back to the same town we were living in, but the idea of a long commute made him cranky. Plus we have to move into housing, so really there is no choice in where we will live any way.

It is going to be different living in military housing, a new thing for us since before now we have always lived on the economy and been able to pick where we lived. I will greatly miss our back yard and family room. It was nice to be able to shove the kids outdoors while I was cooking dinner and still be able to keep an eye out for them. It is also nice to have a place for the kids to play that is not where we greet and entertain guests. It saves a lot of rushed picking up on my part and I will greatly miss that.

Housing has no dishwashers in the kitchens which is a grave thing indeed. My husband was reluctant to buy one of those portable ones that you hook up to the sink on the grounds that the pioneers washed dishes by hand and they lived happy and full lives. I pointed out to him that there was a reason dishwashers were invented in the first place and if washing by hand was so fun then why did the majority of dwelling places have a dish washer. This afternoon he came to me and mentioned that someone that was moving out was selling a dishwasher so I am sure that my point got through to him.

The call

So, we got the call we had been waiting for but ended up just as un enlightened as before the call came. The guy is giving my husband a choice between a highly sought after area that we personally would not like but an ok job, a not so great job in a place that I would be thrilled to live, a great job in an area I don't know much about that would be in the wrong direction from the one we are hoping to go and there is also the possibility we could not even move but that is not a choice that we can count on due to some issues. Sigh.

Yargh!

I have been absent from the blog due to me holding off posting in the hopes that I would be able to announce the news about our possible move. Annoyingly we are still in limbo.. STILL!!!!!! I want to find a certain person and smack him on the back of the head (with a cast iron pan), say a few swear words and them make him tell us if we are moving or not. This is beyond insane and it is stupid that we still do not know. It is also stupid that this annoying person is still doing this to so many people. If he was a civilian he would have been fired by now for gross incompetence.

Yesterday was my birthday and it was a nice quiet day. Evan was a bit disappointed that I did not get to open presents, he does not yet understand the fun of buying one's own birthday presents. I made a trip to a book store and picked up some reading and plan on hitting a yarn store too. I finished a scarf and Harry was sad that it was not for him, so I promised that I would knit him a rainbow scarf for next winter. I may go wild and even knit a matching hat and gloves.

Later in the evening I had a very nerdy birthday party with my World of Warcraft guild. I figured a cyber party would be more fun since I would not have to clean up after the guests and we could be as loud as we wanted with out having to worry about waking up the kids. We had loads of pretend cake that will not ruin our figures and I got presents of arrows and other deadly items.

The last batch of pictures

These are the pictures from our visit to the state history museum. They were having a special car exhibit that was actually was a bit of a let down in my humble opinion (not enough cars). We made the best of it though and I think the kids had fun.

I kept trying to get a picture of Daniel petting the buffalo fur but he kept looking at the camera and hamming it up. He is so cute it was impossible to get frustrated with him.

Evan and Harry were a little more cooperative.

I was not able to take the stroller up to see the part of the train the boys wanted to see so I kept moving and snapped a few pictures. The boys thought it was super funny to see me down there when they were up there.

Daniel taking a ride on a carousel horse in the children's play area.

Too cute for words!

There was a playground outside so we let them run around while my husband went back to ask about the nature trails that he had heard were in the area. We had a nice walk and the weather was great. Sadly we got snow the next day which made me very sad.

Harry barely paused long enough from his running around to let me take this picture.

Evan mad that Harry is in his rightful driving spot. I pulled them apart before blood was shed.

A harrowing adventure

I have more spring break pics but the camera is upstairs and I am downstairs and I don't feel like fixing the situation so that we are both in the same room.

Today I had a "fun" adventure. On the way back from taking Evan (plus the younger kids) to the big city for a cardiology appointment I got a flat. I was driving on a bridge and felt an odd vibration, at first I thought it was the road since it was under construction but then a guy pulled up next to me and was trying to tell me something. That set off my danger meter so I pulled off as soon as I could (which was not super soon since there were no handy shoulders thanks to construction). I ended up by a toll booth and had to drive on a rim for a little bit to get there.

Evan and Harry were both thrilled when I told them the tire was broken, Harry wanted to get out and see it. Daniel was not happy to be still stuck in his car seat after being stuck in his stroller for so long too. A nice toll booth employee called a trooper to come over and help us get the tire changed. I am a rather liberated woman, but cars are really not my thing and I had a very cranky baby to deal with so I was very thankful for the help.

So tomorrow we get to go buy a set of new tires. We have been pricing them because the tires were getting old, I just wish we had not waited so long, so that this whole thing could have been avoided. I am glad that the Blue and Gold dinner was changed to next week because we would have for sure been late.

Spring break continued

After much weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth the family room was cleaned. What should have taken an hour or so to do took part of the preceding evening plus all morning. The deadline was noon after which I was going to gather up all remaining toys and give them away. Daddy took pity on the kids and assisted them so that they were able to meet the deadline. Mommy was a bit sad that she missed out on getting rid of toys who's only purpose is to be scattered all over the floor.




Previous to the cleanup you could barely see the floor. It is hard to decide if nagging them constantly to pick up after every toy they play with is worse than the massive amount of nagging I have to do to get them to pick up their own toys after a few days of letting things slide. They are more than happy to pick up baby toys or even help pick up other things, but the second I ask them to pick up a toy they have played with it is the end of the world.

Spring break!

To make up for the craptastic winter break the boys had thanks to awful winter weather we have been taking them to see some of the local sights. There is not a whole lot to do besides to go to the zoo (which we did on Saturday) but what there is to do conveniently enough involves vehicles, so the boys are thrilled.

Today we took a tour of the local air museum. Here are some pic as proof that yes we did get out of the house.

Evan and Harry just had to climb up every set of stairs they could. "Look a seat!" and "Look another seat"

Here are the boys ready for an important mission behind enemy lines.

Daniel is coming too!

The outside of the helicopter.

Up, up and away!

Irony

As I am quietly trying not to panic as I attempt to plan the Blue and Gold dinner for the ward I can't help but almost laugh at the irony of me ending up being in charge of it. I have never actually been to one! I have all sisters, so we were not exactly active in cub scouts or boy scouts. Last year we could have gone, but me being pregnant and really not wanting to deal with two rambunctious little boys helped me decide not to go. At least this will be the best one I have ever been to even if nothing goes right.