Week 51

Christmas Eve
-made cookies for Santa, spent the day shopping for furniture (and did purchase a dining table) and household stuff. Decorated cookies for Santa and the kids got new pjs before bed.Christmas Day
-low key day spent at home, just us. In pjs half the day. Gingerbread waffles for breakfast (of course). Playing with toys and watching movies all day long. Ahhhh. Nice.

Day after Christmas - guess that counts as a white Christmas since it started the evening of Christmas Day
We finished both the kids closets. (with the exception of the drawer fronts. We need to find wider boards for that)

Kaitlyn was coughing non-stop the day after Christmas. So bad that she was gagging and seriously couldn't quit for part of the day. So we spent Monday morning dealing with remnants of the bad weather with the 2 hour delay at the clinic, then fighting our way through the system. All things considered it probably went as smoothly as it could - we weren't in the system so they added us on the spot. Kaitlyn got right into the doc once the paperwork was figured out. The doc quickly diagnosed her with reactive airway/asthma/allergy problems (she said the area is known for lot of allergy issues) and we came home with an inhaler (oh boy was that pharmacy something! they have waiting chairs for at least 100 people), daily allergy meds and some nasal wash stuff. And I'm glad to say it's working and Kaitlyn is back to normal.

And a fun visit from Audrey and the kids for Tues-Thurs. We worked on projects in between having fun. The kids created their own art gallery (and made us buy the pictures), had fun at the Children's Museum in Fayetteville (it was tiny - good thing we had only planned on spending a couple hours there), really enjoyed the chocolate fountain, and played and played.

Week 50

Little bit of Christmas prep (the dipped pretzels were for neighbor gifts - the kids had fun helping me make them. I also sent chocolate chip cookie dough brownies to the base on Friday. And finished up the Christmas shopping - all by myself - on Saturday) some happy mail (we got boxes from both Grandmas with goodies inside one we could enjoy right away - mmm) and a LOT of home improvement projects this week.

-Sam had the week off work so he got busy on the closets. It took the better part of the week, but by the end of the week the master closet was completely finished and the drawers and shelves for the kids' closets were well on their way. I painted Kaitlyn's room Monday. She insisted on the pink wall and when she got home from school on Monday (make-up day for the snow day last week, otherwise she would have had a full 2 weeks off school) she helped paint the pink part. And on Wednesday I tackled painting Tyler's room as well-
*need to add photo of finished closet

With a little time out for fun with friends.
-The kids and I left Sam to work on the wood shop on base Tues and met Audrey and her kids at the Children's Museum in Raleigh. The kids just played and played and didn't want to leave. The big favorite for the older kids was the building section. Kaitlyn designed, built and decorated a chair for Hello Kitty. Ty and Michael loved the balls, the place where you build your own car then race it down the track, and the marble wall. But really everything there was a lot of fun.

It was a great week. A really tiring and busy, but great week. Now bring on SANTA!

Week 48

This week has been a combination of settling into the house and Christmas prep/activities. The elves have been up to their usual mischief. We've found them doing things like sledding down the stairs on a blanket, and having a "snowball fight" with the cotton balls. They must really miss the snow - they had even built a cotton ball snowman.The kids were very excited to start opening their 12 Days of Christmas gifts from Grandma Jackson.We saw Santa at the town hall (photos to be added when I pick them up). But the Christmas parade that was supposed to be that night was postponed due to rain.

The rain/weather hasn't been easy to deal with this week. It's been cold (hovers in the 30s) and overcast or rainy quite a bit lately. In fact, we dealt with our first "snow day" in NC on Thurs. They cancelled school for this. (need to add photo from phone)

I really just have to shake my head at them and wonder what they would think of a real snowstorm. Sam said the roads were icy on his way to work though so I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say I guess we're better off inside than letting people that can't drive in bad conditions out on the road driving our kids around.

I was determined to get the Christmas card photos done though so I made everyone shiver on our front porch for a minute to snap a couple. This one isn't going in the card but I thought it was cute enough to share. As you can see, Kaitlyn was the only one who couldn't quite pretend we were all happily not freezing.

And I snapped a few photos of our newly-turned 4 year old - before he got any older!

One more week 'til Christmas people! (just thought I'd add that because we're getting pretty excited)

Week 47

The elves found us at our new house (Friday morning). Kaitlyn has been anticipating seeing them for at least a week now and both kids were very excited to see they had arrived. They spent the whole morning showing them the house and carrying them around everywhere.

We took Friday morning to register Kaitlyn for school, set up our account with the city, etc then we were off to Audrey's for the weekend. Sam had to work all weekend, we had no furniture - so we were very happy that Audrey was excited to have us :) And we had a fantastic time. Even though it snowed and inch or so on Saturday and we couldn't find any warm clothing for the kids. I have to admit I was a little annoyed - I was thinking we wouldn't be dealing with snow in NC! haha. But it didn't stick to the roads and I'm told at our house it was barely even snowing.

Sunday was Tyler's birthday. We had Birthday Breakfast Cake (coffee cake - worked out perfectly that Audrey had already been planning to have that on Sunday) and candles. And look - their elves showed up that morning!
After lunch we all headed home for Tyler's birthday party with Daddy (the first one Sam has been able to celebrate with us this year). Sam picked up a cake from the grocery store and we stuck one of Ty's toys on it because Ty insisted that this one was his "backhoe birthday." And of course he got presents - a new scooter, Hot Wheels tracks (his first set of what will probably be many many more), and new pants (growth spurt right before the birthday really works out nicely).

Isn't he cute?! This is what a big 4 year old looks like. :) He does that head tilt anytime he poses for a photo.

Monday brought Kaitlyn's first day of school. She likes it and is settling in well. Her teacher told the class that Kaitlyn moved from Utah and brought the snow with her, and I guess since snow is a rare thing they were all pretty happy about it :) We met the 2 households in our neighborhood that have kids in elementary and share the same bus stop and they're very nice. Both kids will have some good friends closeby.

Tuesday the moving truck arrived with our furniture - woohoo! We are still surrounded by many boxes but the house is starting to feel functional and we're very happy with how things are going now. It's a bit hard to concentrate on moving in, and getting ready for Christmas but I think we are balancing it. We put the tree up Wednesday and finished decorating it last night. We also found our Christmas books, as you can see.

What else?
I'm really liking Sam's work schedule so far. He gets an early start on the day and most of the time he's off work in time to work out with his buddies and still make it home around the same time Kaitlyn gets off the bus. It's a long day for Kate because she's one of the first on the bus and one of the last, but so far she's not really complaining. There is just so much going on and so much of it is new and exciting that the kids haven't had a chance to be anything but hyper and happy all the time.

Week 46

Thanksgiving with my family. Low key, easy, and very enjoyable. The kids spent lots of time with everyone and had plenty of attention. We all had tons of fun playing the XBox Kinnect (with the video camera that puts your whole body in the game - cool stuff and VERY interactive). I loved letting Bonnie host - I didn't have to plan meals, or worry about cleaning up or anything. (Thanks Bon!) And I even let Bonnie talk me into working out with her Turbo Kick (kickboxing - she took a class to become an instructor) both days we were there. (I'm so out of shape! I thought I would be dead the next day but my poor old body held up surprisingly well)

And of course, I loved having Sam around after 2 months with him gone. It felt so good to have everyone together and happy.

Then came the long drive to North Carolina. Three full days in the car, which is really really long but it went very smoothly. The kids were real troopers and we had no meltdowns and almost no whining or "are we there yet?"s.

Lots of time spent in a series of Holiday Inn Express hotel rooms. That's just how it worked out, but after the first one we were happy to spot one every time we wanted to stop. By the 2nd day we had it down to a science - who would carry what when we packed stuff into the room, where everyone slept and how to find the pool, how the elevators and continental breakfast bars worked...
And isn't it adorable how I found the kids sleeping yesterday morning?

And there it is - our new house! The closing got delayed a day (which forced the furniture deliver and now we're camping out until TUESDAY), and the day of the closing was hectic and stressful, but we are now the proud owners of a new house! I love it and am so happy that we're not living out of a car and hotel rooms.