In Search of Water

For the first time since the kids were old enough to swim without swim diapers, we have no pool access.  I've heard about two swimming pools, but there's a hefty fee to join that I'm not willing to pay for a month.  Since we can't do that, we've been in search of other places to get wet.  This weekend, we drove through the Shenandoah National Forest to get the Shenandoah River State Park. It was a long windy drive, but it was pretty.  The campground are really nice and the kids had a ball for the 30 minutes we let them float in river.  There were tons of people tubing and kayaking.

Another day, we investigated a lake about 15 minutes from our house.  It advertises a "beach," but you have to use that term loosely.  Their beach was dirt, but I guess it's better than nothing.  The kids still had fun.  I think this was their first experience swimming in a lake.

I've trained them well.  These pictures were all them yelling at me to take their pictures.  They counted down and jumped for me.

I love this one!

Dan's Graduation

I thought I'd posted a picture, but apparently not.  Last Friday, Dan received his Masters of Science in Technology Intelligence from the National Intelligence University!  We are so proud of him.  

There were several dignitaries there.  The keynote speaker was the former director on the NSA.  It was really interesting to listen to them speak about the intelligence community in general and hear their thoughts on what's going on in the world.  It's a scary place right now.

Dan was the last person to receive his degree.  Since they were holding the applause till the end, it was all for him :).  The announcer messed up and called him Danielle before correcting it.  That catcalls and some hooting from his friends.

I am proud of Dan and the rest of us.  It has not been an easy year, but we survived.  Now he just needs to get his tail in gear and get his ILE stuff done ;).

Moving In - Again

These are just a few pictures off my big camera.  You've seen versions that I took with my cell phone.

Isn't that pink horrible???  I'm so glad it's gone.

Jaelyn and Allie did a great job with the numbers.  I didn't mark off a single one!

They loaded our stuff on a HUGE truck.  It was only about 1/3-1/2 full.

And our new house.  I sent out an email this morning with our new address.  If you want it, leave me a comment with your email address and I'll send it to you (and not publish your address).

Allie's 5th Grade Graduation and Last Day of School Pictures

Very late...I have no excuse other than I've been busy moving :p.

Westridge Elementary did a great job with their 5th Grade Graduation Ceremony.  Thayer in Missouri did nothing for Jaelyn's class.  This was a nice change.  It was a hard year for Allie with all the changes, but we survived!

Happy Birthday, Joany

I'm finally pulling pictures off my camera from the last 6 weeks.  Here are pictures of the quilt I made for Joan for her birthday.  It's a Disappearing Pinwheel.  I quilted 4 different stitches on this one.  I love it and so does Joan.  Right now, she has it laying out on her formal dining room table so she can walk by and admire it.  I keep teasing her about the table cloth I made her.  I hope she'll use it when it gets cooler :).

First Mini-Day of School

We are starting off slowly with school. Today's first day was only reading and spelling. We read the first two chapters of Once Upon The End, the third book in a series I've been reading to the kids. I also gave Allie and Caden placement tests for spelling. Allie tested at the end of sixth grade. Caden tested at third grade. He's an awesome reader, but we'll have to do some extra work on spelling.

This afternoon, we went to "the beach" at Chris Greene Lake. I use the term beach loosely. Hopefully our next assignment will put us closer to a coast because a lake and dirt shore just don't compare to our beloved Pensacola Beach.

It's Finished

Photo Dump

We've had another busy week. I finished painting (yea). All of the boxes on the main 2 floors have been opened and the contents shoved in closets if I didn't know what to do with them ;).

I've been looking for a primitive ladder to hang quilts from in the living room. Jae and I want antiquing on Saturday. I couldn't find a ladder, but Jaelyn found some old shutters and suggested we buy one and cut out some of the slats to mimic a ladder. The picture below is my work in progress. Ignore the mess around the shutter. I haven't touched the garage yet. I'm still working on getting rid of packing materials.

I staged my photo wall going up the stairs. I really love it. Zac likes to survey it from his perch on the halfway by the loft.

And my last picture...I'm back up and sewing (because a girl can only spend so many hours unpacking without going insane). Each new quilt is my favorite, and this one is no exception!

Happy 12th birthday, Jaelyn!!!

Her birthday got over shadowed by a move again, but all the grandparents chipped in with us to make it a good one anyway. We finally got to play with her present tonight.

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.