First Four Days

Greetings from the west coast! I am happy to report that our cross-country flight went very smoothly, despite one early escape attempt by a feline passenger. I am so incredibly grateful to be here at our new home. As usual, so much to share but to keep it simple I'll let the pictures do most of the talking. 

Seat-back video screens are possibly the best invention ever, and our long flight looked mostly like this: 

And this:

And this:

With scenery out the window that looked like this: 

Quite the vast, beautiful country we live in. 

I could not have made the trip without the help and company of my brother, and we have spent this whole week enjoying the first extended adult time we've spent together apart from our parents. Seriously good times. 

Our house is beautiful!! The owners updated a 1960 house with great love and care and we found it instantly homey and I've been in seventh heaven arranging and unpacking and getting to know the place. The kids are ecstatic to have their own backyard swing set for the first time ever and since the backyard is completely fenced it has been marvelous to simply send them out to play. 

Yesterday Don took us for a short tour of his new ship. It's the smallest one he's been on yet but he's the XO so that's pretty big stuff. I'm not crazy about boats, but sure am proud of him. 

The views around here are pretty awesome! This is out our bedroom window: 

Honestly, this is only a so-so neighborhood in a so-so town, but right now it feels rather exotic, and our time here is really fairly short, so I can overlook a lot in favor of scenery like this. 

Today we drove to the coast to see the sea lions and took in some really incredible Pacific views. 

All in all, it has been a very good week. Hard to leave my folks and hard to be so far away but glad to be together with Don and to have this awesome opportunity to explore another little corner of the country as a family. 

A Trip in Pictures

Hello again, it is me, the occasional blogger. Sorry for the dry spell. My brain seems to be on summer vacation and very rarely can it put together thoughtful words when I finally find time to sit at the computer each day. And tonight is no exception, as I just erased the several sentences I wrote to follow this one.

So without too much more ado I want to share with you the pictures texted to me from my dear husband as he made his way across this beautiful country with our van and his father. They had a marvelous trip, and though I hope to someday see all these sights for myself, I remained quite happy to simply receive the "postcards" while he logged the miles. I couldn't properly caption each photo, as they are not my moments to recount, but I can summarize the highlights:

A trip begun in eastern CT started west through Massachusetts and New York to Niagara Falls. From there the travelers zoomed through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa as rolling hills flattened to farmland and they turned north along the Missouri River. South Dakota marked the beginning of the sightseeing, with a drive through the Badlands, Mt. Rushmore, and into Montana to the Little Bighorn Battlefield. Back into Wyoming for a few days in Yellowstone and the Tetons. Through Idaho, seeing the Shoshone Falls, then on to Oregon along the Columbia River where they saw Horsetail Falls and had a room with a view of the river and Washington State. Lastly, a mere 30 minutes from our new house - a herd of elk grazing near the road. Please enjoy!

Stay tuned for more updates as the kids and I begin our own westward voyage. And I do hope to jump in before then with one more hodge-podge of pictures from the summer, and I might even take a stab at capturing some of the musings twirling through my head these days. Hope you enjoyed the arm-chair cross-country trip! 

Fireworks

Amy and William got their first real, live fireworks viewing this past weekend (postponed from the Fourth on account of rain) at none other than my very own high school. My dad and I brought them, and Caroline stayed with my mom. Logistics worked out beautifully and the kids were thrilled. Rivaling the actual fireworks were the glowing light sabers I bought from a vendor just as dusk settled in. 

Yes, William is indeed wearing his pajamas - he was quite insistent on this point, since it was going to be dark. Didn't stop him from doing battle with Amy. The light sabers were such a huge hit with these two Star Wars -obsessed munchkins. 

I knew a picture (particularly with a phone) would never do it justice, but the show was spectacular and it was a special little memory to accent our summer and to add to Amy and William's list of firsts!

William's Hats

I'm sitting here scrolling through all the pictures I've taken with my phone in the last three weeks and trying to decide which to use and how to organize a blog post that comes even slightly close to capturing all my favorite little moments of late. I don't think it's possible, so I'll have to catch up in bits and pieces and hodge-podge posts for a bit. 

But there was one recurring theme I found: William sure knows how to wear a hat. 

Hard hat, space helmet, garden hat, blanket, you name it. Something on his head plus his trusty boots and he's ready for anything. Love my boy. 

Christening

I've been a blog-slacker lately, but it hasn't been for lack of material. We've been busy here on our little northern vacation! One of the best days so far was two Sundays ago when we celebrated the baptism of our sweet Caroline Grace. The service was wonderful, she was a doll, and we had the rare pleasure of having tons of extended family over for a light brunch after. It was a truly special day and one that we will remember for a long time. 

Moving

I find it hard to believe it was already a week ago that we left our beloved house in Charleston and began our crazy weekend on the road, ultimately and thankfully ending at my parents' house. What a couple of weeks it has been. 

The packing and loading all went smoothly, but moving is just awful even when it goes well. So much work. So much stuff. So much stress. Yuck. But we survived. The kids were top-notch through it all and we have some funny memories like this:

from hanging around in the empty house. All in all though, not a period I really want to dwell on. It made me sad to see our house packed up. 

But we made it and last Friday night found is in a hotel a few hours north, where we had fast-food and melting ice cream and I even painted my finger nails for the first time in six years (it didn't last long). 

Saturday took us as far as coastal Virginia to visit our really good friends and former neighbors. Sunday we drove a short way from there to visit another set of old friends. Great times had with all, and wished we could have spent more time with them everyone. 

We departed Virginia on Sunday afternoon, kids, trailer, cats and all, with the intent to once again spend the night in a hotel before finishing off the drive on Monday. But we really didn't want to schlep the kids and cats and stuff in and out of the car again, so we made the crazy decision to drive on through the night to my parents. 

The kids did sleep eventually, by I rode the whole time with a knot in my stomach watching the hours tick by and thinking we had made a terrible mistake. Traffic was awful clear till midnight. The cats were howling and the kids were sleeping restlessly, and we finally pulled in past 4:30 am. No fun. But we all grabbed a few hours of grateful sleep and it was such a blessing to have all the driving done. I don't ever want to do that again. 

This has been a busy week with lots of company and getting settled in but I am super glad to be here for a few weeks before we head out west. I haven't bought our plane tickets yet. Honestly I'm still a little in denial. But that's another story. For now it's just about enjoying the here and now. 

Boxified

Just popping in real quick to say hi from the land of boxes stacked to the ceiling. The truck comes first thing tomorrow morning. Ready as we'll ever be, I think!