Our New Jersey home

Here it is - our new home in New Jersey:


It looks big in the photo, but the house is actually a duplex (they call it a "twin" -- doesn't that sound lovely?) so the windows on the far left are part of the next door neighbors' house. Still there's plenty of room for all of our things, even the stuff that's been in storage since Altus. There's even a basement to store all of our extra junk. It's GREAT! We're trying really hard not to get used to the space because we'll probably only be here for a year. But I think I'm already spoiled...


The backyard is small but it's perfect for us. There's a fun little path down the middle that the girls love to play on. It's fenced so the girls can just run outside whenever they get the notion. And my mom planted a bunch of pretty things before they left. Phil has put out a bird feeder and a hummingbird feeder and there was already a bird bath. Hopefully soon we'll have some bird-friends!


No interior pictures yet -- waiting on the rest of our household goods from storage in Altus...

Colin's vocabulary

Colin's vocab as of tonight:

Uh-oh! (usually said before intentionally dropping/throwing something)
Mo' mo' mo' MO'! (More, more, more, MORE! -- in reference to food)
Ahhhhh (means 'thirsty' -- oddly enough, Claire did this same noise for thirsty)
And his newest word: Nigh' nigh' (Night night -- he told his sisters this for the first time tonight as he was heading to bed!)

Getting so big...

What a great day

Today was one of those days where everything just went well. The girls played nicely together. All. Day. Long. Colin didn't nap but he wasn't unhappy about it. He was cute and sweet all day. We went to the store and everyone behaved -- even when it took the cashier at least 10 minutes to ring us up. I accidentally dropped my van keys down the sewer drain in the parking lot and TWO nice couples stopped to help me get them back out.

We went for a walk after dinner and Claire pushed Colin in the stroller. Maddie held Phil's and my hand and jumped over the cracks in the sidewalk and I thought, "This is about as good as it gets." It seems like these moments of contentment can be so fleeting. I wanted to freeze time this evening and just enjoy the day some more. No one was annoyed. No one was being annoying. No major problems in our lives right now. How often does this happen? I go to bed tonight with a smile on my face, knowing that tomorrow it could all go to hell in a hand basket. But today was a great day.

Shopping? Who, me?

So today Maddie grabbed the Barbie toy computer, sat down with it, and began typing furiously. "Don't talk to me 'wight now, Sissy," she said to Claire,"I'm shopping. I'm buying a new 'dwess fo' my baby."

Hmmm... I can't imagine where she learned how to shop online! Alright, maybe she's seen me do a wee bit of shopping on the computer. Although, to be honest, I haven't been doing a whole lot of online shopping since we left Oklahoma. We've been heading out to real-life stores! Today: Kohl's and the mall. Yesterday: Target and Kohl's (yes, I went to Kohl's twice in two days. So?). I'm going to have to give this up before we're completely broke!

The Farm

After our visit in Illinois, my parents were SO sweet and drove out to New Jersey with the girls and me. On the way to NJ we stopped by my grandparents' farm. I spent many a childhood weekend there and it was home to many great memories for me. My grandma hadn't yet met Colin, so this made a great opportunity to visit with her.

Working his charm on Great-Grandma

I think my kiddos enjoyed the farm. We went hunting for morels in the woods but didn't find any. The girls were consoled, though, with the many deer tracks they found. They were also excited because we got to go "camping" at the farm. It was my kind of camping -- in my parent's air-conditioned travel trailer. That's about as rough as it's going to get when Mommy is in charge of lodging!

With Aunt Lisa and Grandma Strong

American Girl Place Chicago

In case you are not familiar with American Girl dolls, the American Girl Place is pretty much OMG THE BEST THING EVER! for a little girl. And my girls are no exception. They had a wonderful time picking out their new dolls (thanks, Grandma Bethie!) and a new outfit or two for their dolls and themselves (thanks, Grammy Sandi!). And after stimulating the economy in the store we went over to the American Girl cafe and ate lunch with the new dolls. It was a very refined meal, complete with pink lemonade, appetizers, a kid-friendly main course, and a beautiful dessert plate. It's such a racket this company has going on, but I admit that I had a great time too. I'm sure that Phil was sad to miss it, and I know that my dad and LeRoy were disappointed that their previously planned golf outing conflicted with our trip. We girls sure had fun, though!

Back to that same old place...

...sweet home Chicago. Or at least, the far northern suburbs. The girls and I parted ways with Phil in southern Illinois -- he continued on to New Jersey and we took a more leisurely route. We originally thought we'd all hurry out to NJ, but our housing plans got changed at the last minute so the girls and I had some time to make a side trip to Chicago. Silver lining, right? We stayed with my parents, but we also got to see Phil's parents and my brother and his crew. Obligatory photos:



And we even had time to go to the big city and visit the American Girl store. More on that in the next blog post.

In the meantime, how about a poll? Does Colin look more like the grandpa in photo A or the grandpa in photo B? We pretty much agree it's a toss-up!

Photo A:

Photo B:

Seeing good friends

On the road to New Jersey we made an overnight stop in southern Illinois. We stayed with our good friends, the P's, and Sarah was SUCH an awesome hostess and cooked us up some crawfish etouffee. YUM! The S crew met us there too and we had a fun evening visiting and catching up with our friends. And we didn't leave any leftovers. Did I mention Sarah's etouffee is awesome??? Anyway, it was great to be able to see our good friends again. It felt like old times in Washington, except now there are a couple more kids in the mix.

But... where was our camera??? I don't have a single picture! Sarah or Dawn -- did you take any photos? Looks like we'll need to make another trip out there to get some snaps!

Dance Recital 2010

As luck would have it, Phil's class dates at his new assignment in New Jersey allowed us a teensy bit of wiggle room for our move dates. With some schedule crunching, we managed to stay in Altus just long enough for the girls to participate in their dance recital. They both did such a great job. Both girls had a tap number and a ballet number. And yes, I'm posting a video for each girl! And pictures too! What can I say? We were so proud of them.

The next day we said goodbye to Altus and started on our journey to New Jersey.


Maddie is second from the left


Claire is third from the left

Maddie

Claire

We're back!

We're back! It seems like we've been moving FOREVER, but now things are getting settled again. We're in our house, we're semi-unpacked, and today the router arrived in the mail so we have wi-fi again. Whew! Let me just say, I had no idea what an impact wi-fi has had on my life until we lived without it for several weeks. Anyway, we can now access the internet without completely ignoring the children (a quite impossible task). For those of you still reading this there will soon be blog updates. Hooray for technology!

Pretty plantings

When we moved into our Oklahoma house 2 and a half years ago I decided it needed a bit of sprucing up on the outside. OK, maybe I was bored in rural Oklahoma. Whatever. It gave me something to do. I did lots of research for a pretty flowering vine for the front yard and a climbing rose for the back yard. I spent hours narrowing the plants down for the proper hardiness zone, amount of light received, color of flowers, climbing capabilities, evergreen leaves (for the front yard), reblooming properties, etc, etc, until I finally found what I thought were the perfect plants: a cross vine (bignonia) for the front porch planter and an antique rose (Crepuscule) for the back patio. I read about them online, and then spent gobs MORE time finding them at reputable gardens for a decent price. I lovingly planted them and then waited for their fabulousness. And waited. And waited some more.

My completely awesome, well-researched, PERFECT plants were not performing!!! Sure, they were growing, but where were all of the flowers? I need quick results from plants because we're never around long enough for me to see just how beautiful a plant will be after, say, 5 years of growth. These poor plants didn't bloom much the first year. I had high hopes for the second year, but was again disappointed. Then...

I walked out onto the front porch one day and saw my beautiful cross vine looking like this:

And few days later my rose set a bunch of blooms too:


I'm so glad I got to see these plants look beautiful, even if it was right as we got ready to leave them behind. Hopefully they will entice another plant-loving person to rent our old house so they'll have someone to love them and treat them well.

Here's Colin with our base-housing iris

Air Show in Altus!

The base hosted another air show this weekend. We had one here two years ago, but this year the Thunderbirds were scheduled to be there. Fun! Of course, they showed up a day early to practice, so we had a sneak preview of their performance on Saturday. The girls spent the rest of the weekend pretending that they were Thunderbirds. I even had to intervene in their play once to confirm that yes, girls can in fact be Thunderbirds.

The day of the air show Phil dropped by our friends' house to retrieve some chairs they'd borrowed and discovered that they had a real life Thunderbird pilot at their house! Yep, #5 pilot Rick was there -- it's a small Air Force and everybody knows everybody else and he's a great friend of our friends. Who knew? Phil took the girls over there to meet him and they were completely star-struck. He was really nice about posing for pictures and was great with the kids.

It really made the performance special, and the kids kept waving at their new friend. Plus we got to sit in the special "Thunderbirds VIP section" for a little shade during the air show -- our friends had a few extra tickets so we jumped on the opportunity.

Turns out Rick is the lead solo pilot, so he gets to do the upside-down flying, and other neat-o stunts. He told the girls that he would do a REALLY loud fly-by, but that it was a surprise so they couldn't tell us parent-types. They were so excited when he went buzzing by! Claire whipped right around and said, "Mommy, THAT was the surprise!" And several kids around us (who weren't in on the surprise) started crying. It was pretty loud!

The day of the air show was absolutely perfect: big blue skies, a few white puffy clouds, and lots of Oklahoma wind to keep us from getting too hot. ;)

Claire even made sure to tell the folks around us during the C-17 demo that her Daddy "used to fly C-17s!"

(Click the pics for bigger, more, and a movie, too!)