Hide and Seek

Henry's favorite thing to do lately is play hide and seek. Many times, I've been calling for him and it isn't until he decides to give himself away that I know where he's been hiding. It's usually in the drapes, but he's silent and won't come out until he wants to.

Binkies Be Gone

Saturday night Eric snipped off the ends of Henry's pacifiers before bed time. He's been wanting to do it for a really long time, but I finally agreed that after we moved and got settled, he could do the deed. Henry's been using Avent pacifiers and it's given him an open bite. When he puts this teeth together, his front teeth don't touch. So it's bye bye binkies. Henry cried for a couple minutes that night and kept saying Binky got broken. But surprisingly didn't wake up during the night and has done fine ever since at night and during naps. So I hope he continues to do well and this will be the end of an era. Henry is not a baby anymore! Now we've just got to get rid of the diapers to make it complete. We've just started working on it. It doesn't look like it'll be a fast or easy process.

A New Beach

We finally got to the beach (Jalama Beach) last weekend and got reacquainted with the Pacific. We followed a very windy road to get there and paid ten bucks to park. I was carsick by the time we got there and wasn't in a very good mood, but the sound of the waves and the smell of seaweed did their job to cheer me up. Lillie looked for seashells, Henry chased the seagulls, Max dug in the sand. Eric and I talked about how we were unsure if we could ever settle down away from the ocean. It was a good trip.

We're Still Alive!

We made it! Driving over 2000 miles in 4 days was not something I will ever want to do again but wasn't as bad as I was expecting. And what about traveling with a puppy? Max was great, best behaved one of the bunch, something about driving puts that dog to sleep. Seriously he slept 95% of the time we were in the car. Lillie and Henry were great too. The highlight of the trip was when we were able to spend half a day with our amazingly awesome friends, the Adams, in San Antonio. I seriously didn't want to leave. And neither did the kids. We love them and had fun hanging out like the good old days... The day we arrived in Lompoc, all the hotels in a two hour radius were completely booked. No joke. Except for one smoking room. So of course, we stayed there and it wasn't so bad. Thank goodness, because we were super tired after having driven like 9 or 10 hours that day, the fourth day of traveling in a row. We were not looking forward to getting back into the car to drive back to Los Angeles to find a place to sleep. It seemed like we were living a nightmare at that point. Turned out ok tho. After 18 days without our stuff and 17 days living in hotels (which was got REALLY OLD), we finally moved into the house we will be renting! It's a cute little house, built in the 60's, so its older but still a decent size and has a good yard, which has been our favorite thing. The couple who owns it seem great and we have been BUSY this week unpacking boxed and trying to get moved in. We have much less storage than we had in our last place, so we've got a bunch of stuff we're not sure where it will go, but hopefully we'll be all settled by the end of this week.

Match Made in Heaven

If you are friends with Eric on facebook, then you probably already know about our new pet, a mini Dachshund named Max. Henry and Max were so funny at the beach the other day. They were both so excited to be out of our little hotel room, to run around, get dirty and dig. This dog is going to be a digger!!

Proof that I can be Happy

After that last post, I feel like I need to prove that we are a loving and usually happy family!

i hate moving

You know that saying from Thumper the rabbit: "If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all." That keeps coming to mind whenever I think about blogging about what has happened over the past week. Let's just say, it was the hardest week of my life. Movers packed and loaded our house the second part of the week and I've spent every spare moment cleaning. We are currently living in a hotel and will be for at least a couple more weeks spread across the bottom of the country. Yes, it could be worse, but honestly, I REALLY want my boring old normal life back. I'm about to start another week that will take the top spot as worst week ever. Traveling across the country, through the freaking hot and boring desert of the southwest, with a husband, two toddlers, and a puppy in a stuffed full car. TORTURE.

Jody and Randy's Wedding

A month and a half later, here are a couple pictures from my little sister, Jody's wedding. I was lame and didn't take any photos myself so I had to wait until I got copies from my mom. It was a wonderful trip, so lucky to have been able to be there to celebrate with them!

 All of us

 These four girls were all born within a year of each other.  They were so cute together!

 I put in this picture to show the beautiful Saddle Mountains

 Henry and Reggie are two weeks apart in age.  They are all boy!

The happy couple!

Playing with Friends

 Splash pad and playground fun!

 Farewell Beach Party

 Kids with Hermit Crabs

 Should've brought their swimsuits, they were soaking wet.  Thank goodness the air and water are so warm that they didn't get cold.

 Playing in the warm water

 Picture of dental residents' children, except the Willison's

Dental resident wives at our Girl's Night Out, dinner at the Half Shell Oyster House, my redfish was SOOO yummy!  We went to frozen yogurt for dessert, and endured a CRAZY thunderstorm/rainstorm.  These women are some of the best I have ever known.  I wish I could take everyone of them with me.  We have so many great memories from the past year together.  I'm going to miss every one of them!

Moving is a Major Stressor

Things That I Will Miss about MS:
Great Friends
Nice House
Kroc Center
Living on Base
Warm Water in the Gulf
Friendly People
Newk's, Moe's, Pepe's, The Shed
Cheap Gas

Things That I Won't Miss about MS:
Distance to WA
Humidity
Heat in Summer
BUGS incl. Spiders
Obesity

Things That I Am Looking Forward to in CA:
Proximity to WA and UT
Pacific Ocean
Temperate Weather Year Round
Being done with AEGD
H&M

Things That I Am Not Looking Forward to in CA:
Everything is EXPENSIVE: housing, gas, food, preschool, etc.
Not being able to live on-base
Living off-base in a small, old house with no young kids around
Not being able to find a good, affordable preschool
Buying a second car
Not being able to take our friends with us, and therefore, having to make new ones... again.
Cold water of the Pacific


I am glad that I am heading back West, I liked our 4 years spent in CA previously, so I know I will probably LOVE these next 3, but for some reason I am not happy to be moving.  I just don't want to do it.  I know that when all our friends leave next week, I will have more motivation to move on, but for right now, I wish that I could just stay put.  I sure hope everything works out because right now it's all up in the air!

Gone Fishin'

Last night we took the kids out fishing and actually caught two fish.  Our first ones caught out on back bay.  Lillie and Henry loved taking turns reeling in the poles.  Gonna miss the bay when we're gone.

Jumping Beans

This morning we went to the jump house!  Lillie and Henry were in HEAVEN!!!  It was Lillie's best friend's birthday party, such a fun way to celebrate!

Fourth of July 2012

To celebrate the holiday, we invited friends over to have a bbq and swim before heading over to the beach to watch and set off fireworks.  The food and conversation was really great but the highlight of the night was heading over to the beach.  Fireworks are legal on the beach and so there was hundreds of people there setting off, sometimes very large and dangerous, fireworks. (One large firework fell over in the sand and was shot right over our heads, very grateful that no one got hit!)  It was loud and crazy, I've never experienced anything like it!  I'm surprised that Henry wasn't afraid of the huge fireworks that were going off all around him.  I mean, he wouldn't let us put him down, but there wasn't any crying, which surprised me.  Lillie had fun running around with her friends, holding sparklers and glow sticks.  I think they were pretending to rescue the world and the fireworks were in celebration of them saving the day.  Ha!  It was a really cool experience, it made me really sad about not being around to celebrate the fourth here again.  Our pictures are terrible in comparison to the awesomeness of the night.  Oh well!

 The moon was an orange-ish red, probably because of the smoke from all the fireworks in the sky.

 Kind of a neat photo, showing someone's firework in flight.

Photo of our Group

Daddy Bear Hunt

I want to write this story down because even though it will not seem funny to any one but me, it was dang funny at the time.  Last night as we were finishing up reading a few stories before bed, I pulled out
"We're Going on a Bear Hunt" as the last book to read.  The family travels all over before ending up at a cave with a bear inside and the bear chases them back to their house.  Anyway, after it was over, Lillie said, "The Papa should have pulled out a gun and shot the bear" (I think she's been watching too much "Swamp People" with us).  So I talked to her about how we don't shoot bears unless they're going to hurt us, because maybe the Mama or Daddy bear has little baby cubs at home and they would be all alone.  And she said, "Well, the little bears only need a Mama so if it was a Daddy then we can shoot it."  This wounded her Daddy's ego!!

Weekend Warriors

We've been busy this week!  Last weekend, somehow one of us lost Eric's set of keys, not going to place any blame, but that meant no more work keys, no scooter keys, no mail key.  So, after tearing apart our house top to bottom, with no luck of finding them, Eric spent quite a few hours taking apart his scooter to get out his ignition, taking it to a locksmith, and reassembling it after getting the keys made.
The rest of our time was spent preparing for a yard sale that we had, with some friends, on Saturday.  It wasn't an amazing turn out, but we made a bit of money, which made it all worth it.  And now I've got less junk to drag with us to Cali, so that's nice too.  I'm moving in like a month... so crazy.
Also on Saturday, because we're crazy, we decided to build this child-sized picnic table.  We had gotten the plans off of Ana White's website a couple months ago and got the supplies, but it had been sitting as a pile of wood until now.  We're throwing a 4th of July bbq so I thought it was time for us to get our act together so that they kids could have a fun place to eat.  And it turned out so amazing, we love it!!!!  We were worried about it during the process, seemed a little wobbly and flimsy, so we added extra screws and carriage bolts and now it's sturdy as a rock!  Still it took a lot longer to build than we originally thought, mostly from having to switch out drill bits, etc., but it wasn't really difficult.  It will fit three kids on each side comfortably and our kids still have to grow into it a little bit.
Eric has already been talking about what we should build next.  I think he's getting addicted.  :)