Claire's first day

 

Here she is, on her first day of 1st grade, her first day of all-day school, AND her first day at a brand-new school.  That's a lot of firsts.  Check out that brave big-girl smile.

 

And here she is when we picked her up at the end of the day!  Looks like she had a great time.

 And I know this is Claire's post, but I couldn't resist putting up this photo of Colin.  He's getting ready to pick up Sissy in his new raincoat.  I think it is just TOO DANGED CUTE on him and may just make him wear it everywhere we go, rain or shine!

Yep, we have a bird

Well, nobody claimed her so we bought her a cage. And toys.  And treats.

Guess we have a birdie named Isabelle!  Now I have to try to tame her.  Wish me luck!

Editing to add: she's much more active now!  She slept for 48 hours straight after we caught her.  I think the dog kennel may have been a bit dark for her.  Now she chirps happily at the kids and even plays with her toys.  I recently found this audio clip online of wild parakeets (aka 'budgies') in Australia singing.  I may have to download it - it makes her so happy!     

Mom and Dad's Exciting Adventure

I'd like to think that ALL of my parents' visits to see us are memorable and exciting.  We're fun, right?  And I think our kids are pretty cute.  We usually try to find interesting things to do when they come to visit.  But I suppose it's going to happen that some trips rank higher on the exciting scale than others.  I think this last trip will be right  up there near the top.  (Click HERE for a slideshow or click any of the photos)

To start things off right, we packed up and went to the National Mall.  Saw the sights.  Took some pics.  Had a celebrity sighting (Bob Dole).  Visited the National Museum of Natural History and saw lots of neat-o things.  Stopped at the Air Force Monument on the way home.  Whew!  That was a big day.




Then we hit the National Zoo.  We accidentally broke a few laws while trying to park, but then had a great time visiting all of the animals.  The zoo is located on a pretty good sized hill.  We got our workout that day, for sure.



Next up (cue the excitement):  a Pentagon tour for Mom and Dad while the kiddos and I went to the pool.  I dropped them off at the Metro rail station and they took the train into the city like a couple of locals.  I'm sure their tour would have been interesting enough, but then they experienced our 5.8 mag earthquake -- in the middle of their tour!  Some folks would have fled the building in terror, remembering that the building was attacked nearly 10 years ago.  My mom, however, is not one to be discouraged from sight-seeing, and they finished up the last hour of their tour (heehee - just kidding, Mom.  Most of the Pentagon folks continued with business-as-usual so they finished up their tour).  None of us Shea/Dermodys had experienced an earthquake before, so I'm sure they won't forget that tour any time soon!  Phil helped them take the Metro bus home because the rail was not operating efficiently after the quake.  After navigating two forms of public transport, they are officially more seasoned DC travelers than I am.

We also made it to the Udvar-Hazy Museum, which is part of the National Air and Space Museum.  And by "part" I mean the really super-cool part.  There we saw the Space Shuttle Enterprise, an SR-71, the B-29 Enola Gay, and lots of other really neat air and spacecraft.

Then we got to come home and start bracing for the other exciting event: Hurricane Irene.  As we know now, it ended up being nothing more than a pretty good storm in our neck of the woods.  But the forecasters weren't sure how it would go so we stocked up on a few things and prepped our house and yard for heavy winds.  Some friends of ours were evacuated from their house in Dover, DE, so they came to join our little pre-hurricane party too.  We considered buying the makings for "hurricane" drinks, but instead made do with some margaritas and beer.  The next night our friends moved on to another friend's house and the Dermody/Shea clan took to the basement to weather the storm.  We have some REALLY big oak trees with questionable root structures in our backyard and I really wanted as much house as possible between us and them if one decided to fall! 

Fortunately we weathered the storm just fine, though a nice generator is back on our to-buy list (I can't believe we never bought one when we lived in Altus!).

And during their visit my mom found time to do a sewing lesson for the girls and Dad helped them ride their bikes.  Mom did a bunch of crafts with the kiddos.  They even had a grown-up craft this time for us -- we made a bench!  (And by "we" I mean Phil and my parents - haha).

After the storm we were blessed with some beautiful weather, so we checked out the ruins of the Belvoir Plantation on Ft. Belvoir and relaxed a bit (which means we planted a bunch of daylilies in the front and back yards!)  before my parents had to make their way back to Illinois.



They had no idea what they were signing up for when they planned this trip!  But they took the earthquake and hurricane in stride, and they even promised to come back for another visit soon.  Love you, Gramma and Pawpaw!

Sitting on the new bench!

Isabelle

We have a lot of oak trees in the backyard.  This seems to make a wonderful sanctuary for many types of birds.  Phil has taken an interest in them and has been feeding them.  A lot.  Every time he comes home from Walmart or Home Depot he has another bird feeder or bird food or a new bird feeder holder thingy.  I usually just roll my eyes and give him a hard time about spending so much money on bird accessories.

On Monday morning Phil woke me up and told me to check out the new bird on our backyard feeder.  His bird feeder had attracted a beautiful bright green bird.  Bright green as in -- a parakeet!  We had a chuckle and Phil left for work.  (Phil thought that would be the end of the story.  Ha!)

The poor bird was not very outdoor-savvy.  (For the purpose of this blog, I will refer to the parakeet as a "she".  I'm not a veterinarian am not sure what he/she actually is!)  She was trying to hang with a bunch of sparrows, but she didn't know quite when to fly away and wasn't nearly as skittish as a wild bird should be.  She clearly did not have the skills to live out there.  So I decided to catch her.

I used a butterfly net in my first and second attempts at capturing the bird.  A tiny, plastic butterfly net.  It didn't go so well, but I did manage to get pretty close to the bird both times because she was so tame.  My parents were loading up their van for their trip back to Illinois, but they managed to find time to giggle at my efforts.  Finally Dad suggested I set up a box trap.

Yes, a box propped up with a stick tied to a string, just like Wile E. Coyote uses to try to catch the Road Runner.  I laughed.  And then I set one up.  The problem is, the parakeet didn't come back.

Two blackbirds did manage to catch themselves when I wasn't looking, though!

Then I got the bright idea to play some parakeet songs on the computer to attract the right kind of bird.  Sure enough, when I started playing a little parakeet song (thanks, youtube!), she flew right back into the yard.  Twenty minutes later she wandered into my box trap and I caught her.

Woohoo!  I caught her!  

Ummm.  Now what???

We put an ad on Craigslist's lost and found section so we'll see if anyone responds.  And I've been searching all of the lost and found ads I can find to see if anyone is looking for her.  But in the meantime Claire has named her Isabelle.

She named her.

We may have a pet parakeet.

 Here's Isabelle in her improvised cage - Bailey's kennel!

PS - thanks to Heidi for the plastic bin I used for the box trap.  I promise I'll wash it up before getting it back to you, Heidi!

Catching up

I'll get to Mom and Dad's exciting DC adventure shortly - just have a little catching up to do first!  Stay tuned...

Thomas the Tank Engine

Our little Colin-man has definitely jumped on the Thomas band wagon.  He likes his choo-choos and knows them all by name.  It's really cute to watch him play at his train table, since he's starting to make the trains talk to each other.

With just a little bit of research, I discovered that Thomas was actually coming to a train station near us this summer.  Awesome!  The girls had both been to see Thomas before, but they were pretty young.  Needless to say, all three kiddos were pretty excited to see the famous train.
 

It's Sir Topham Hatt!

I think it blew Colin's mind a little when he saw Thomas -- in REAL life!  All through the train ride, Colin kept informing us that we were on Clarabel.  For all you Thomas-newbies out there, Clarabel is one of the passenger cars that Thomas pulls.

Colin is feeling shy around Thomas

Happy to be riding on Clarabel

Then we hopped on a different train - this one was a diesel; Thomas is a steamy - and took a slightly longer ride to an old gem mine. This train's passenger cars were the double-decker type. They looked awfully familiar to Phil and me. When we asked the conductor about them we discovered that they used to be passenger cars in Chicago. No wonder they looked familiar - they were just like the ones we rode on the North Shore line.

At the mine we got to pan for real gems!  Everybody had fun finding their gemstones and then trying to identify them, and we even got to take home our new jewels.  Definitely a fun time.

Luna moth

Check out what we found in our backyard today!

The kiddos were outside playing and I was gathering up sticks to put into a pile.  Yeah, I was gathering sticks.  There are a bunch of oak trees in our backyard and they like to drop large, pointy sticks in the backyard for my kids to hold while running (ack!) or to poke each other.  Anyway, as I was throwing them into a pile I almost threw them right onto a baby Luna Moth!

Luna moths are so BIG and beautiful.  The last time I think I saw one was at my grandparents' farm in Indiana and I was probably somewhere around Claire's or Maddie's age.    

This guy must have just come out of his cocoon.  His wings weren't dry yet and he was looking for somewhere to hang.  The girls helped me get him to crawl onto a stick and we walked him over to a tree.  He hung out there all day long, drying his wings and getting ready to fly.  Here's hoping he has a nice life! 

Just Ducky

It seems like whenever we move we end up with this weird situation in which we:
1) Wish we had less stuff and want to sign ourselves up for the show Hoarders; and simultaneously
2) Need to go out and buy MORE stuff in order to make the new house just right.

I know, it's weird, right? 

Usually the new "stuff" that we require is mostly in the organization category: shelves, bins, hangers/hooks, and maybe a bookshelf or piece of artwork (I use the term "artwork" loosely - we buy from Target and Ikea).

This time we had to buy all of that stuff AND a new shower curtain.  You see, once upon a time we had two fairly tasteful shower curtains.  One for the master bathroom and one for the kiddo bathroom.  We got rid of the one from the master bathroom when we moved to Altus because I got sick of looking at it (it was Phil's from before we got married) and both bathrooms had enclosed showers.  So we were down to one (incidentally, mine from before we were married...) and it went into storage.  When we were unpacking in New Jersey the shower curtain - along with all of our long term storage stuff - was scheduled to be delivered later because that's how the moving company rolls.  We had friends coming to visit and they were going to need to shower so I went out to Walmart to pick up a new liner to make do until the pretty curtain got delivered in a few weeks.  Only I didn't come home with a liner because this cute/tacky ducky shower curtain was on clearance!  Who can pass up a cute/tacky vinyl shower curtain for $5?  Not this gal.  So no need for my old shower curtain -- again!

Awesome vinyl duckies!

The cute/tacky duckies were fine in New Jersey, but here in Virginia they were going to be in our main bathroom.  The one people will use on a regular basis in our home.  Suddenly they seemed more "tacky" than "cute".  So I unpacked every box that my old shower curtain could possibly be in and of course we couldn't find it.  I figured we got rid of it in New Jersey.  Phil had never been a huge fan of it anyway, so we probably sent it to Goodwill.

I set off shopping for another shower curtain, with my old white chenille one in mind.  I finally found one online that was still duckies, but slightly less tacky - they're chenille duckies!  Woohoo!  Side note: Chenille duckies are totally classy.  Really, they are.  I found a free shipping code and with a quick *click* of my mouse it was on the way.

Then Phil unpacked a few boxes from the garage and guess what he found?  My old white shower curtain.  In with my canning supplies, of course.  Nice one, moving guys!  Way to keep us guessing!  Phil, being a guy, announced that it was OK because we could just return the new one when it got here.  Being the good wife that I am, I hung up the old white one and tried to like it.  Thing is, it looked... boring.  And colorless.

 So boring...

Then the new duckies arrived.  Check them out!  So much better, right?

 Admittedly not a whole lot different.  But I like it, dog-gone-it!

And I used the old vinyl duckies as a liner on the other side, so the kiddos can still see them when they're in there. 

Of course, we'll have to keep my old white one, too, because it would look nice in the master bathroom if we ever end up in a house that requires a shower curtain in the master bathroom again.

See?  This is why we have so much stuff.

Our DC-area home

Here it is: the place we shall call "home" for the next few years:

Our neighbors are really nice.  One of them even brought over a plate full of cookies!  Almost all of them have come up to us and introduced themselves - very friendly.  We've completed most of the unpacking.  OK, OK, the garage is still a mess and the guest room is not yet guest-friendly.  But we do have curtains and pictures up, so it feels like home.  And I can close the doors to the garage and guest room and pretend that everything is great.  Now if only the weather would cool down the kiddos could go out and play on the super-awesome playset in the backyard.  FYI: Virginia is hot in the summer.  Who knew?

Vacay

After Phil's graduation he took some leave.  And by "some" I mean "a lot".  It was so nice to be able to laze about for awhile!  But before we did any lazing about, we took a big ol' trip to Illinois to see our families!

Please note: Until Phil can get home and make all the photos clickable for you, please click here if you'd like to see a slideshow from our visit! 

So what did we do?  First off, some of us gals went to the big city.  No, we didn't see the Sears Tower or the Field Museum.  We hit Michigan Ave and went to the American Girl store, of course!

I think we helped the economy a bit there.

We toured a Jelly Belly distribution center (you get a free bag of jelly beans afterwards - woohoo!).  Max and Megan tried a bunch of the yucky flavors, like "earwax" and "centipede".  Ewwww.  The rest of us stuck with the yummy flavors.

We toured the city fire station, thanks to our high school friend, Fireman Jason.

We splashed a bit in Lake Michigan (because it's too cold to actually SWIM in that water!).

And we splashed a bit in the Bruno's pool, because they're so nice and let us mooch.

But mostly we just hung out with our families, which was wonderful and made me homesick.  Even though the Air Force treats us pretty well, I do sometimes get sad that we don't have the option of living closer to home and all of those folks we love so much.  But instead of dwelling on things we have no control over (such as where we live) I will focus my energies on peer-pressuring our loved ones to come visit us.

Hey loved ones: COME VISIT!  :)

Birthday conversation with Colin

We're mostly settled, but I still haven't found the time to sit down and do a real blog post.  I just had to put this little video on here, though, because it's so darned cute.  Colin usually clams up when the video camera comes out, but he was in a particularly chatty mood on his birthday and I managed to catch it:

Look at that cute little farmer!

Tiny little farmer?

Nah, that's just Colin, driving the "tractor" (as he called it) at my grandma's farm.  There are lots more pics from our big Midwestern adventure to come, but we're moving.  And that makes me tired.  And perhaps a bit cranky.  And my kids get cranky, too (the nerve!).  All of these things dig into my blogging time.   But I'll get crackin' soon, I promise!