More Moving In

I've almost eradicated the pink walls. It's taking a long time because I'm only working a few hours a day on it. Things also slowed down once I hit the kitchen and breakfast area because they were painted with satin. It took one coat on the flat darker walls, but two coats on the lighter satin walls.

Once I finished painting the kitchen, I stayed up half the night opening picture boxes and hanging things up. It's starting to look like our house. I also unpacked the sewing room so Jae could play with her new birthday present (an embroidery sewing machine). We spent a couple of house this morning. It's going to be fun once we figure it out.

Still Unpacking

Unpacking used to be quick and easy. With 3 kids, we have more stuff which translates into more work for me. I received an email with our weight today. We moved almost 13,000 lbs. that's a lot of furniture to assemble and boxes to open.

In the middle of unpacking (our second day here I think), I decided to get started on painting over the pink in our living room, kitchen, and dining room...as if unpacking wasn't enough work. I've worked on it slowly over several days. The living room is finished so I hung our cheap-o blinds. I'm in the middle of the kitchen now. It'll probably take 3-4 more days to finish in the middle of unpacking and settling in. The kids' room are finished, but that's it.

Here are a few pictures from my phone. The first is our ginormous basement. Daisy will go where the boxes are piled. Then there's room for a couch and tv and at the very back, where the good light is, is our classroom. I ordered all of or curriculum today!!!! But that's a story for another post.

The second picture is the living room. That pink is hideous. The cream is sort of boring, but I like clean and boring. I'll spruce it up with colorful accessories.

The third picture is an idea from Pinterest. Why has no one ever shared this idea? It's genius, especially for Phase 10 where you have 10 cards in your hand.

And the last picture is at a little county park where I took the kids today to walk in the woods in hunt of a creek a neighbor told me about. We never did find the creek but at least we got out of the house.

Speaking of neighbors...this is the friendliest neighborhood we've ever lived in. Everyone stops to wave and chat as they are out working or walking. I've had lengthy conversations with at least 6 neighbors.

So Far, So Good

So far, this has been a really good move...I'm talking actual packed boxes and delivery from point A to point B, not the Army's inability to get its butt in gear and get us orders in a timely manner. Anyway, we had 3 people come on Tuesday and pack our entire house in 7 hrs. They were crazy fast and after opening all of the kitchen boxes and many of the rest, they were really good too. Wednesday, we had a guy come do the furniture inventory. Thursday, we had 7 guys show up to load. Again, these guys worked their tails off. No smoke breaks, and just minimal lunch breaks. PCSing into and out of Missouri was the only other place we experienced great movers who didn't take a break every hour to smoke. Anyway, they were done loading and were gone before 4. I was able to clean as they emptied rooms. It'll only take me a few hours tomorrow to finish. After loading, we drove to our new house to spend the night. I love our new house. It's much bigger than we need, but I love it. We'll have to put some work into the yard and hang some blinds, but I think we are really going to enjoy it here. There's lots of room for company...hint hint hint. 5 of the guys from yesterday came back today. They are all from Romania. They get 5 month work visas and come work here during the summer months. More Americas should have the same work ethic. Anyway, they went above and beyond and were more than willing to help with anything we asked.

The kitchen is unpacked, but the counter tops are full of stuff to be put away (we have too much stuff!!!). The kids worked hard on their bedrooms this evening. They've all been very opinionated this time about where they want their furniture. Jaelyn even asked if it is okay if she unpacks her room by herself.

Moving week

Its kind of weird to think this move has been 18 months in the making. That's lots of time to anticipate, wonder, and worry about it. I've been a bundle of nerves for weeks. Honestly, I'm ready to be settled and be done with it.

We drove over on Sunday to move our irreplaceable stuff. It's been over a month since we've seen our house. It's huge. It was fun to look around without the previous tenants boxes piled everywhere. We are going to love spreading out, but I'm going to hate cleaning all 3500 sq feet. LOL.

The packers came today and worked their tails off. It normally takes 3 people 2 long days to pack. Today, it took 3 people 7 hours to pack all of our boxes...in our entire house. Normally all of the non boxes items are wrapped in brown paper because our stuff is crated. It'll be wrapped in pads for our door to door move which will be more time consuming on loading day, but saved time on the packing days.

Would you say a little prayer for Allie? She woke up with a fever. My thermometer is at our new house in a tub of medicines so I don't know how high. She's felt bad on and off all day.

Full Steam Ahead

I should be a pro, right?  This is our 13th move in 18 years of marriage.  Craziness.  Things are falling into place, as they always do whether I worry or not.  I have my moving folder organized and my "to do" lists made.  I've scheduled utilities to be turned off and on again.  Pictures are coming down off the walls. Holes are being filled.  Bathroom are being deep cleaned.  Closets have been cleaned out and bags of stuff have been delivered to goodwill.  I have one more week till we move the stuff that can't be replaced.  We actually rented a truck this time instead of a trailer since we aren't going too far. I think that will be nice to pack rather than the neck ache of packing a trailer that's not very tall.  After that, I'll have two days to get the rest of the stuff sorted out.  We are doing a door to door move.  They load here one day and deliver there the next day.  I'll still have to come back to Woodbridge one more time to do a final clean and turn the house back over to the landlord.  I'm ready to have this behind us and get settled in our new house.

I have lots of pictures to upload:  last day of school, Allie's graduation, dance recital.  I'll try to get it done next week before I pack my camera ;).  That last week of school was crazy with normal stuff plus all the extras.  This week has been much calmer.  I've worked around the house and made phone calls in the mornings and taken the kids to the pool in the afternoons.

The kids finished out the year pretty well.  We kind of fizzled out with school after Jaelyn took her SAT-10 because the other kids were playing too.  Her last two weeks, we finished up science, she had a year end review paper to write and we played a lot of boggle for spelling.  Her afternoons were spent sewing.  She ended up with a A/B average in all of her subjects.  Allie ended with Bs and a few As scattered in.  Caden ended up with all As and 1 B.  Caden did really well on his SOLs (what VA calls it's standardized test).  Allie did okay in math, but failed reading scoring in the 23rd percentile, I think.  It's confusing because she got an A in reading on her report card and was marked as "above grade level."  She's been all over the place with math and reading this year.  Next year is going to be a lot of hard work, but I'm looking forward to getting a handle on her abilities.  I don't think her grades or testing reflect her true abilities (whether higher or lower, I don't really know).  I need to get busy and decide what curriculum I want.  It was such a struggle last year.  After a year, you'd think I'd know exactly what I want to do, but I don't.  Well, I do for reading, math, spelling, and science.  I have no clue for social studies and language arts.  I'm thinking of doing a trip around the world for social studies.  Maybe study each continent for  5 weeks???  I tried 3 different things for language arts and wasn't happy with any.

Dan is days away from finishing his thesis.  I'm so excited for the day he calls and says "it's done!"  It's been a long, hard year, but we've survived.  I don't even think anyone will need therapy after the year (hee hee).

I guess that's about it.  It's lunch time and then we are heading to the cheap theater to see the Muppets.  :)

Trying again with the caption

Look what at what I'm working on now. It's called a one block wonder quilt. You take one large print material, align 6 repeats and then cut triangles and sew them together to make a kaleidoscope effect.  It's going to be gorgeous when it's finished.

Sent from my iPhone

My New Project

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Moving Right Along, Sort Of

Tomorrow is the last day of school! We are so excited. Allie had a 5th grade graduation today. It was a nice ceremony. These kids are growing up to fast.

Still working to get our move dates down. Someone is coming Friday for our walk through. Hopefully, he'll be able to give me firm pack, load, and deliver dates then. I'm past ready to move, but I wish we could skip the packing and unpacking and 100 item check lists part and move right on to the settled in part.

Sent from my iPhone

New Quilts

With school winding down, we've been doing lots of sewing. Jaelyn finished her 9 Lives quilt for Baba. There are more pictures of it on my quilts page (tab at the top). I made my dad a stained glass disappearing nine patch quilt. It turned out really well. I also finished Jaelyn new bedding. It turned out totally different than our starting plan. We love how it turned out. 

The Results Are Here

In order to prove that we have met Virginia's homeschooling requirements, Jaelyn either had to score above the 36th percentile in math and language on a standardized test or she had to be evaluated by someone. I chose the SAT-10 and I think I was more stressed about her taking it than she was a couple of weeks ago. I felt like it was an evaluation of me as well as her.

I received her scores last night and I'm so proud of her. Jaelyn entered the year as a low average student. My focus this year has been increasing her reading and math skills. We did science and social studies, but they definitely took a back burner to the other. I'm proud to report that Jaelyn's total reading score was the 50th percentile. Dead center, perfectly average, and I'm absolutely thrilled with that. Her fluency and comprehension has improved so much this year. Her math score shocked me...70th percentile. I had no idea she would score so high. Call me impressed! For spelling, she started the year at a 7th grade level, according to our curriculum. She ended the year at a 9th grade level and placed in the 72nd percentile on the test.  Her lowest score was the 47th percentile in total language arts. Overall, her total battery was the 53rd percentile.   That's a tad bit above average :).

Seeing her scores makes me more excited about next year. I plan to continue doing exactly what we've been doing for reading and math. I'm still on the hunt for a new language arts program. I wasn't happy with either of the two curriculum I tried and I think the test results show it. I'm going to focus even more on writing, which I think we actually did a fair amount of and have seen an improvement. I'll also make sure to put a bigger emphasis on science and social studies. We still have 6 days if school, but other than a reading block, I'm considering our school year complete!!!!

Richmond

We lived outside of Richmond the summer of 2003 when the girls were tiny.  We had a zoo we liked to go to and we visited Maymont House once, but other than that, we never went into the city.  Our friends, Rich and Jennifer, were in Norfolk this weekend; so we drove to meet them for the day.  We visited Tredegar Iron Works National Park (I have that name wrong, I know).  It's a museum and national park on the grounds of what was the largest iron mill during the civil war.  They made 1,100 cannons over the course of the war.  The kids' favorite part was the play area, of course.  

Allie would have loved living during this time for the dresses and bonnets alone.

They had several games that were popular during the civil war.  Pick up sticks has been around for a long time.

The favorite toy was the "gee-haw whimmydiddle."  I promise you, I'm not making the name up.  Depending on how your rubbed the stick, you could make the wooden "propeller" on the end turn.  They used it sort of like a magic eight ball.  I took a few pictures to see if we can't make a couple.

We watched a demonstration cannon firing. That was pretty cool and it would have been a great picture, but I had my fingers in my ears.  Sorry.

Thanks so much, Jen, for taking some family pictures.  They are great!

Next, we drove to Hollywood Cemetery.  Two US Presidents, Jefferson Davis, and several supreme court justices and Virginia Governors are buried there.

This the resting place for James Monroe, our fifth president.  I liked his cathedral like iron works open mausoleum thingie - for lack of the correct terminology.  

Spotsylvania

Another beautiful weekend meant another day out exploring.  Mid-May, we drove down to Spotsylvania National Battlefield outside of Fredericksburg.  This was one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War.  We learned a little, but it was mostly about getting out and doing something as a family.  After our 3-4? mile hike, we drove into Fredericksburg to see the historic district and have scoops of homemade ice cream.  Fun day all around!

Photo bombed!

The Washington Monument

I've wanted to go up the Washington Monument since my first trip through Washington, DC with my Grandpa when I was 12.  I finally got to do it!

The weekend was absolutely gorgeous for a day in the city.  We took the train in and fooled around at my new favorite burger and shake joint and in our favorite sculpture garden before heading to the monument.  

We were all excited!

I'm sure citizens of other countries think the same thing about their flags, but I think there is nothing prettier than an American flag waving on a beautiful day.

You can't climb the stairs anymore...phooey.  We took an elevator to the top.  The views were amazing in all four directions.

I wish I could say the monument was all I expected it to be, but it wasn't.  My visit fell flat, actually.  I learned nothing new about our first president, which I thought was sad.  Most of the other monuments have small museum so you can learn about the men.  This one didn't.  All the history was about the building of the Washington Monument.  If you want to learn about George Washington, go to Mt. Vernon and skip his monument.

After that, we raced to the Newseum to catch a glimpse of our nephew who was in Washington on a school trip.  His chaperones told us we could have spent the day with them, but we didn't want to intrude, we'd done everything they were doing, and we'd already bought those monument tickets before we knew he was coming.  The kids literally got to say hi, give him a hug, and tell him bye as we went our separate ways again.  

We wrapped up our day with a visit to another art museum and the botanical gardens.

There's still so much we didn't see while living in Washington, but we did our best.  Now it's off to new places :).

Our final Day of Spring Break (Two Months Late)

I finally sat down to download pictures onto the computer.  Be prepared for a major photo dump tonight :).  Dan went into the office to work on his huge pile of assignments on our last day of spring break; so the kids and I spent the day with the bunny, Bugs Bunny, that is.  I must say that after experiencing Silver Dollar City for two years with it's friendly, clean atmosphere, I was less than impressed with Six Flags.  It was dirty and run-down.  That didn't stop us from having a fun day, however.  We had a good time riding the big roller coasters now that everyone is tall enough.