Two Are Better Than One

 Seven years ago, I went over to the dark side.  I resisted.  I didn't want too.  I did everything I could to stay in the light, but alas, three car seats would not fit in the back of our Mazda Tribute.  We bought our Toyota Sienna and crossed over to the dark side.  Wednesday night, we did it again.  We traded Dan's Jetta in and bought a 2011 Honda Odyssey EX-L.  It's the nicest car I've ever owned.  While I would tend to make do and take a lesser model, Dan says he works hard and we can afford it. There's no reason we should skimp...and I must say, my man is right.  The Odyssey has leather, a sun roof, power everything, hand free bluetooth, a back up camera.  I love it.  Last night, Dan figured out how to play our Iphone's Ipod through the bluetooth.  No more will I have to hunt for the right fm station to play my ipod through a fm transmitter.  Allie's going to love that feature.  I love that I can answer my cell phone with a push of the button on the steering wheel.

It took us about three hours Wednesday night to do all the paperwork.  Buying in a different state than you are titling in seems to be a pain in the butt, especially if the titling state has a military waiver for sales tax.  In the end, it all worked out and thankfully the kids didn't crash a golf cart through the show room window :p.  Oh my.  Dan seems happy to drive the Sienna; although I have a feeling I had better pay off the Odyssey quickly because he's going to want all of my bells and whistles in a new car very soon.

Not To Be Left Out

Jaelyn has been working on her own persuasive writing assignment.  I would love to scan it so you can see how awesome how penmanship is getting, but it's easier for me to type it than to edit out the last names.

Dear Dr. C (her principal),

In my opinion, I think Mrs. D (her teacher) deserves a trip to a day spa.  First of all, Mrs. D is always stressed out.  In fact, when she is stressed out she spills her tea.  Second, her JOB NEVER ENDS!!  When we leave she is still here working.  Furthermore, Mrs. D likes peep toe shoes.  She will have extra cute toes after her trip to the spa because they will paint them!  As you can see, Mrs. D would love to go to a day spa.

Sincerely,
Jaelyn

Caden has also been working on his writing.  He still needs work, but I can read it and that's the most important thing.

She is spuke.  She is grompy.  She has a blak hat and blak sunglass  She is vare crepy.

Translated:  She is spookey.  She is grumpy.  She has a black hat and black sunglasses.  She is very creepy.

Allie's Stories

Allie brought home a few stories she's been working on in school.  I love her writing.

Have you ever wanted a kitten buy your parent's says no?  Well today I will ask my mom.  But let's talk about taking care of it.  You could lcean the kittey-litter. And you could hold it and it cuttle with you and comfert you.  Plus it would help you go to sleep.  You could lean the kittey-litter more.  And you could teach it trick's and com-fert it more.  Plus you could try to keep it away from peop with alege's to.  Theace are the reason's we should get a kitten.

I think we need to work on her apostrophe usage :).

One evening at 7:00 pm Jessica's family was at the house planning Jessica's surprizing party.  It was good that Jessica had to stay at school for a little bit longer.  But she was realy really bord and annoyed by the loude noise.  So they had time to plane the surpring party.  So meanwhile the finally finished planning out the party.  But wen they were all done putting up the decorashtions and done baking the cake and done putting on the icing they had to pick up Jessica from school.  So Jessica's dad went to pick her up.  When they got home dad ran in side the house with the other's.  The family was inside the house and turned off the light.  But when jessica came into the house there was a big "surprise!"  Wow said Jessica this is the best surpringing birthday every and from that day on Jessica had the best surprising birthday ever.  the end.

Packing and Stacking

It's finally that time.  I got out the boxes and emptied out our storage closet today.  I had to repack all of my collectibles that were packed to sit, not ship.  I have all of this "stuff" that belonged to my grandparents and great grandparents.  It's not necessarily stuff that I want to display and dust often, but I treasure the items and can't part with them.  I guess it's my own little bit of pack rattedness, but it's stored away and contained in 6 boxes.   It was fun to look at the old cameras and glass bottles.  I read some of the cutest poems in my Grandma Molly's autograph book from when she was a child.

I've already disassembled our guest room so I could use it to store our partial dity items (that's do it yourself move for any of you non-military folks).  Curtains and bedding are getting folded and stacked.  I have my "hardware" box out and labeled.

Pictures are coming off the walls.  I'm slowly working on patching holes.  There's still so much to do.  I have 3 full days to work so we should be fine.  I can't believe the packers will be here on Friday.  Where has May gone???

PS - Check out the dust on the top of that mirror.  One of the advantages of moving often is that your stuff gets cleaned really well.  I can't get over how quickly dust and dirt accumulates.

Camping in the Outfield

I'm still recovering from the Girl Scout Camp-out at Ripkin Stadium Friday night.  It was so much fun until about 1:30 am when the girls were still awake, but were so silly and so so tired.

We drove through pouring down rain to get to the stadium, but thankfully, other than a few sprinkles, it never rained again. 

Our girl scout leader and her daughters shared our tent with us.

We are going to miss these girls!

I never did hear the final head count, but there were a lot of girls there. 

After setting up our tents, we went up in the stadium for a hot dog dinner, arts and crafts, and music fun.  the night wrapped up with Yogi Bear on the jumbotron.

Allie got right into the activities.  She never made it on the list to Karaoke, but she did get to do the chicken dance!

Even though Jaelyn's 2 good friends aren't in our troop, they are in girl scouts so she got to pal around with them all night.

I made the girls head to our tent about 12:30.  At 1:00, Jaelyn was still crazy and Allie was crying.  I had to take Allie up into the bleachers to sit until she calmed down.  I slept from about 2-4 and was so glad when 6 rolled around so I could get up and starting packing things back up.

Did I mention Jaelyn was in full giggly meltdown mode?

It was a really fun event and a great memory for the girls to have, but I have NO desire to repeat it any time soon!

The Battery - Blown Up and Possibly Out of Proportion

There were many back and forths between Volkswagen and the roadside assistance claims department yesterday.  We have no answers yet.  The acid was cleaned off and the battery was replaced.  The explosion caused no immediate damage and the Jetta is running fine now.  The engine isn't ruined.  The car doesn't need to be totalled out.  Unfortunately, we have no idea if it'll continue running fine or if things will start breaking.  Time will be the only way to know.  We aren't sure we are willing to wait and take our chances.  Instead we might be trading in the Jetta and car shopping for a new mini-van for me before June 3rd.  Dan might be driving our paid for, never given us trouble, Sienna.  Lots of mights and maybes still...I'll keep you posted.  In the meantime, I thought I'd share pictures.  Please please please be careful when jumping or messing with a battery.  Someone could have gotten hurt so badly that night if the hood had been up.

Breathing Easier

It took 2 1/2 hours of waiting, but I'm still thankful to Dr. M for squeezing Allie in yesterday.  They did a pulmonary function test.  The main numbers were good.  There was one number that was still low, but the doctor said he's not concerned.  She has no wheezing or shortness of breath.  He said to just keep it in the back of our minds as she grows and is involved in sports.  If she does start to have some shortness of breath or any trouble breathing, then we'll need to revisit pulmonary "stuff."  They did draw blood to check her CO2 blood levels, but he didn't think they would be elevated.  We can breath easier with peace of mind knowing that we aren't going to need specialists close by for follow-ups in Missouri.

Battery Acid "Everywhere"

Dan talked to VW this morning and the guy said there's battery acid everywhere.  He's never seen anything like it.  Praise God the hood was down with no one near or someone could have gotten hurt very badly.  I have specific prayer requests.  First, that someone from Roadside Assistance Claims calls me back.  Last night, they told me it takes 2 days to be assigned to an incident manager and then they'll send out an adjustor.  I left a message with them this morning to ask about expiditing the process due to our imminent PCS move.  Second, with battery acid everywhere, we are looking at things going out constantly in the next several month.  The VW guy said it could take 6 to 12 months for acid damage to show up.  Dan has a lot of miles to drive this summer.  Would you pray they'll just total the car out?  That seems like the best and easiest solution to me.

Seriously???

So, yesterday was a crazy day and it only got crazier.  Dan tried to jump his car again when he got home from work with no luck.  The tow truck took over two hours to get to our house, but that didn't stop the automated system from calling to tell us he would be there imminently several times.  The driver managed to get the Jetta started, but Dan had him tow it to Volkswagen anyway.  About 7:30, Dan got a phone call.  The first words he heard..."it exploded."  Seriously...The guy got the car off the truck and decided to try and start it again.  I don't know why as his job was to deliver it, not to play mechanic.  When he turned the key, he heard a loud pop and saw smoke coming out of the engine.  He popped the hood and the battery was cracked completely in half.  We have no idea if battery acid was leaking or if this morning, it's eaten away half of the engine.  We filed a claim with roadside assistance and are currently waiting on VW to call us back with a list, if there is one, of damage done to the car by the battery acid.  We move in 15 days, people.

Your royal highness...can you top that?

Also, the pulmonologist is back in his clinic this morning and is overbooking an 11:30 appointment for Allie.  We might have to wait a while, and leave if it takes too long since I need to get home to get the other kids off the bus since Dan doesn't have a car, but we are going to give it a try.

Bring On the Pulmonologist

It's taken a week and a half, but I finally heard back from Allie's ENT office. The Pediatric Pulmonologist (Dr. M) wants to see Allie before we move to do a pulmonary function test.  The timing is going to be hard.  He's out of town this week and has no appointments available until July.  They are going to try and squeeze us into his Thursday morning clinic hours.  That means either I'll be taking her to Baltimore on the 26th or the 2nd.  That's it.  There are no other Thursdays.  The packers/movers are going to be here the 27th, 31st and 1st. We close on our house and drive out of town on the 3rd.

Oh my!  My life is too insane.  The timing of this and our move have not been good.  And I don't even want to think about negative test results and treatment or monitoring options when we are Lost in the Woods of Missouri.

And to top that, Dan's car is dead as a doornail. 

{tangent - where did that expression come from?  I consulted handy dandy google and here's what I learned "Door-nails are the large-headed studs that were used in earlier times for strength and more recently as decoration. The practice was to hammer the nail through and then bend over the protruding end to secure it. This process, similar to riveting, was called clenching. This may be the source of the 'deadness', as such a nail would be unusable afterwards."}

A tow truck will be visiting this afternoon to take it to the dealership.

Stick a fork in me, I'm done.  The. End.

Cool Hair Day

Today was cool hair day at school for Caden.  There's not much you can do with his short hair (that was just buzzed) so I bought blue hair glue to spike his hair and add a bit of color.  He looked so cute!

DAN IS HOME!

and I don't think I need to say another word about that!

Chances Are



Chances are, if you are having a bad day, inspect your tires, because there might just be a screw in one.  SERIOUSLY!!!  The last few days have been so stressful.  Our home inspection was Friday.  The inspecter missed the great big things that we knew were code violations, but did find several nit picky things.  I waited all weekend for a response from our buyers telling what, if anything, they wanted fixed.  The email came Monday morning.  One of the many annoying things was that it was dated Friday.  Either their realtor or our realtor sat on it for 2 days before getting it to me.  Encase you can't tell, I've lost all faith in our realtor. 

The buyers requested that we fix all the little nit picky things.  I agreed because we want to sell our house and what's $235 more over what we've already lost.  The plumbing repairs had to be done by a licensed plumber.  I had someone out Tuesday to fix all the issues.  I had to go to Home Depot and spend $1.25 to buy 4 knock-out plugs for our breaker box.  I just needed one, but you couldn't buy just one.  I am beyond annoyed.  Seriously, $.32...they couldn't fix that themselves?  I guess I should be thankful they didn't specify that it had to be fixed by a licensed electrician.

Our buyers have lost all of my goodwill.  I was going to leave them all of our left over carpet.  I have 4 huge rolls.  I'm taking it with us.  I have touch up paint for every room in our house that I was going to leave.  I'm taking it with us.  If I don't need any of it, I'll happily throw it all in our trash or freecycle it in Missouri before I'll leave it for our buyers.  My house would have passed a white glove inspection when we moved out, but now I am following the contract specification of "broom clean." 

All the stress of the last few weeks with the house and single parenting have left my shoulder in knots.  I've got a pinched nerve that is killing me.  I've never had a physical reaction to stress before, but as I think about the move or hear one of the kids start to whine at me (and trust me when I say they are feeling my stress and feeding off of it), that muscle tenses up and shoots pain down my arm.   I went to the doctor on Monday looking for some type of medicine.  I consider myself a strong person, but this is too much for me.  My blood pressure is the highest it's every been.  I told Dan I'm hanging up my Wonder Woman cape and being a smart-butt, he told me "Wonder Woman doesn't wear a cape."  Not helpful, Danny-boy.  My doctor gave me a muscle relaxer to help with the muscle pain instead of an anti-anxiety medicine since this is all temporary.  Dan comes home Saturday morning and we close June 3rd.  After that, I can relax at my parents house and let my Mom take care of me. She says she even bought me a lounge chair to lay in the sun in the backyard.

So, back to the moral of my story, when you are having a bad day, you should check your tire, because chances are..you'll have a very large screw in it that requires fixing!

The Estuary Field Trip

Last night was fun, but a little tiring.  While Jaelyn and Allie got the guided tour inside the nature center, Caden and I set out on our own.  We first had to find part one of the geocache with coordinates to the elusive part two.  The first part is located on the canoe launch.  Isn't it beautiful?  We should go there some evening and watch the sunset.

 Caden and I hiked the loop, but the elusive geocache is remaining elusive.  Strike two.  That means attempt three with either be a strike out and third times the charm.

Enjoying My Flowers

Azaleas make me homesick.

"Reach for the sky" ~ Woody

The seeds we've been spreading for the past three summers have finally germinated - everywhere!

Shasta daisies we started from seeds.  I don't think we'll get to see their pretty white faces this year.

I have loved my hostas.

The friendliest vine - a Clematis

My beautiful Iris - it's taken a couple of years, but they are filled with blooms and we get to enjoy them.

Busy Day and We Aren't Done Yet

Today has been a good, productive day.  I started by getting Caden and Jaelyn to school with a tub filled with plants I dug up out of our yard.  I took Allie to her follow-up ENT appointment next.  I'm kind of on the fence about that.  Her sleep study showed elevated levels of CO2 about 20% of the time, but the pulminologist correlated that to her restless sleep.  Dr. S is going to follow-up with our pediatrician and the pulminologist to make sure we don't need to follow-up with any other specialist.  There are no specialists where we are going in Missouri so that could cause orders issues.

I was so excited to see Jaelyn's class out working on their garden when I dropped Allie off so I borrowed a pair of gloves and jumped right in with the planting.  That was fun.  I took all perennials so in years to come, Mrs. D can see our black eyed susans, lilies and shasta daisies and think of Jaelyn.

I made it to the outbound counseling session and filled out all the paperwork to schedule the movers.  That was a feat in itself.  I'm spare the details, let's just say I'm not impressed with the office staff.  While I was at the base I wandered into the exchange and found a really cute bathing suit.  The first one I tried on fit.  Amazing.  I'm ready for the beach and Big Kahuna's in Florida!

Next, I picked up the pottery we painted on Saturday and made it home in time to get the kids off the bus.  We've done homework, read our books and Jaelyn is currently directing "music class."  I have a "concert" videoed that I'll post soon.

Next up is dinner and then Girl Scouts at the Estuary Center.  There's an elusive geocache on a hiking trail that Caden and I are going to hunt for while we wait out the meeting.  I'm sure I'm going to crash just as soon as I get the kids to bed, an hour later than normal!

Our New Playground

Our school playgrounds have been closed since before Christmas.  They started tearing them down in March and opened the new playgrounds today.  Amazing is the only word I can think of to describe them.  The kids convinced me to take them to play after dinner.  We had so much fun checking all the new stuff out.

No Belts No More

The kids had their first Tae Kwon Do testing on Saturday.  They were worried about being able to recite their student creed, but thankfully, they didn't have to recite it individually.  By saying it with the group, they were all able to say it.  The most exciting thing was that Jaelyn and Allie got to break their first boards.  That was a hoot.  Allie brought hers home and wrote "The great Allie broke me" on her board.  Silly girl.  They received their white belts and certificates today in class.  I'm sad that we are just barely getting started and we have to leave.  Their instructor, Matthew, is such a great encouraging teacher.  We close on our house and drive out of Maryland one month from today.  I hope we can find a great place in MO to take lessons so the kids can continue.

I love that Jaelyn smiles through every move.  She'll never scare anyone.

Caden is serious about his moves.

And you know Allie...she's just out to have fun, no matter what.

Her Newest Challenge

Jaelyn is such a logical, spacial thinker.  She started putting together puzzles when she was 3.  She was beating me at Sequence at 5.  She sometimes struggles in math with basic facts, but give her a probability question and she can tell you the answer immediately.  She started playing Sudoku on my phone yesterday.  I played with her for just a few minutes, explaining the logic behind each number as I went and then she was on her own.  She completed a medium puzzle with minimal help from me and was able to explain why each number went where. I'm impressed!

The Clowns' New Costumes

We were bored this afternoon.  Can you tell?  The kids got new clown outfits.  I especially love Caden's new mustache and Jaelyn's "Fascinator Hat."  Yes, we finally got swept away in all things royal.  I also like Allie's Pinky Dinky Do make over.