Double Digits

On Saturday, Quinn entered the world of double digits when he celebrated his 10th birthday.  It was actually an extended weekend of birthday fun with Nana, Papa, Annie, Karen and the twins visiting us to help celebrate.  Yes, that's 6 extra people, and an extra dog (Nana and Papa's newest addition, Henry) in our little house.  Needless to say, there was no more room at this inn :)  Considering we had 10 people, 2 dogs and 1 cat sharing a house it all went pretty well.  Thank goodness for finished basements!

Quinn's birthday started bright and early with a soccer game.  He had a banner day, scoring 2 goals in the team's 4-3 win!  After that, we had Keely's soccer game and then it was time for some fun.  We headed downtown on the Metro to Quinn's choice activity, the International Spy Museum.  Turns out only Quinn and the twins wanted to see it, so James and I took them while the others checked out the National Portrait Gallery.  The boys seemed to enjoy the museum...it's a pretty cool premise, as it's the only museum dedicated to espionage.  But it's not all that interactive and involves a lot of reading, so the boys zoomed through most of it.  I'm sure their favorite part was spending money in the gift shop.  Even Keely took part in that, despite not having visited the museum.

After the sightseeing, we headed back on a very crowded Metro to our cars and then on to Quinn's choice for dinner, Silver Diner.  He wanted breakfast (french toast, of course) thus the choice of a diner.  Silver Diner has great local food all around, so it was a nice meal for all of us.  After dinner, it was nice for cake and presents.  He got gift cards, Legos (all Harry Potter themed), the HP illuminating wand and a Lego watch.  His cake was store bought at his request, Transformers themed (he wanted HP but didn't like the grocery store choice and all the bakeries were booked up by the time I called to order a special design cake).   

So that was Quinn's big day.  All in all, it was a crazy birthday weekend filled with lots of activity...which tires me out, but Quinn had a blast and that's what matters most.  As for having a 10 year old, I have mixed emotions.  I love the boy that he has become, he is a sweet sensitive child with a zest for imagination and creativity and I really wish time could stand still.  But that will not happen, and sadly we are more than halfway through his childhood (assuming he leaves for college before he turns 18).  I'm sad about that, but happy we are raising a confident well adjusted young man and really love watching him develop and flourish.  He teaches me about as much, if not more than I teach him.  Time will move forward, but I'll enjoy each moment and love him more with each passing day. 

Three Months

It occurred to me last night that we have been living in Virginia now for over 3 months, and that led me to some thinking about how things are going.  With all change comes mixed feelings and emotions.  My emotions about the move are still up and down, ranging from happy to sad sometimes all in one moment.

I miss our house in Utah.  I miss the community that we had around us.  I miss the comforts of a place I had lived for 6 years. I knew it would be hard to start over, and that's been true.  For the first year or so that we lived in Utah, I struggled to get settled and found it hard to integrate in the new area...but that was exacerbated by my working from home, which is not the case this time around.

After three months, we are settled in our house.  By settled, I mean the boxes are all unpacked and most of the pictures are hung on the walls.  But now the list of things that I want to do to the house and yard are growing.  These things all cost money, and with only one salary we have to be cautious of spending money.  Patience is a virtue here, but I always struggle with that.

In contrast to the small town feel of Utah, I feel much like a small fish in a big pond here.  I wonder if it will always feel like that.  I'm sure it won't as we integrate in with the kids' school and activities, and eventually I will get more involved again (i.e. PTA) but for now, I am taking a much needed break. 

The kids seem to be doing fine.  Gone are the days of complaining about leaving Utah as they become immersed in school and new friends, new sports teams and new adventures.  I know that time will help a ton for me with getting to know their friend's parents.  Like it or not, that's how friends in adult life come to fruition. In Utah, it took us a good 4 years or so before we had a nice group of friends to call for help, hang out with and have some fun adult time.  So again, patience is a virtue.

As with any change, there are ups and downs.  I am sure had I been capturing my thoughts after living in Utah for 3 months, it would have definitely been a mixed bag.  I feel all over the place in writing this post, it's really hard to compose my thoughts into a cohesive format. I will revisit the topic in a few months and see how things feel with a little more time.

More Weather Woes

Well, it seems an earthquake and a hurricane were not enough - we endured Tropical Storm Lee last week from Tuesday through Friday.  I'm hoping this completes the trifecta of natural disasters for a while!

It rained seemingly non-stop for those three days, and mostly they were heavy downpours.  The ground was already pretty saturated from Hurricane Irene so there was nowhere for the water to go.  Well, nowhere very pleasing to most homeowners as water flooded basements, garages, etc.  We were safe last time but not so lucky this time.  We took water in the basement...not in the sump...but leaking in from the foundation.  Our wet/dry vacuum picked Thursday to die, so I was one of the many homeowners purchasing one from Home Depot in a downpour on Thursday night.  Luckily, the water in the basement was minimal.  However, there was also flooding in the garage from the water ponding in our backyard - at one point probably 6-8" of water directly behind the garage.  The water flowed from the backyard through the garage and down the driveway.  James was able to unclog the french drains, but they were most likely not really clogged but overwhelmed by the volume of water.  We also flooded in the laundry room a bit as the drain outside the door was clogged with debris.  None of this is good, but it certainly could have been worse.  We had 8" of rain on Thursday, on top of 3" on Wednesday on top of whatever fell on Tuesday (all approximate numbers).  The picture is from an intersection down the street from our house...the park overflowed directly across the street and look closely for the car that got stuck while trying to drive through...oops! 

The rain impacted school and soccer too.  Quinn's first soccer practice and game was canceled.  Back to School Night was canceled.  Schools were closed on Friday.  They only build in 3 "snow" days and there goes one of them!  We talked with the kids about the possibility of schools closing for weather here in Virginia (it wasn't even a thought in Utah) but who knew it would be on Day 4 of the year?!?! 

Jack O' Lantern

Keely has now lost seven teeth total...the last two recently, one in early August and one on Saturday night.  I still have the voicemail that she left me when she lost the one in August saved on my phone because it was so cute.

"Hi Mommy, it's Keely, I just wanted to let you know that the bottom tooth on the other side - I lost my tooth it today, Bye"

She's beginning to look very appropriate for Halloween because her adult teeth seem pretty stubborn to come in.  She's now missing four teeth, two on top and two on the bottom.  As she says, only one more to go until she's done losing teeth for a while!

The tooth fairy is becoming a little passe in our house as well (not that I mind at all).  Keely told me that if the TF did not come the first night with this last tooth, she would not believe in her anymore.  The TF did deliver though...the only cash we had in the house...$1 and a quarter.  The next morning, I asked Keely if the TF had come and she said she hadn't checked yet.  So obviously it's getting old.  Quinn also asked me point blank on Saturday night if I was the TF.  What was a mom to do with a question like that?!?!  I obviously fibbed (that can't be considered a lie, right?!?!), but without looking at him because I have no poker face.  So I'm pretty sure the fairy days are coming to an end in our house!

The Last Hurrah

We've had an incredibly busy summer.  We kicked it off with a move across the country.  We traveled the globe to Ireland.  We flew to Florida while Quinn went to the opposite end of the East Coast.  We traveled to NJ three times.  Wow, I'm exhausted just typing that.  We weren't done though.  We had long planned a trip to visit Judith and the kids for Labor Day weekend, and nothing was going to stop us from doing that - not even a hurricane :)  It would have been nice to see Tom too, but since he is on deployment that wasn't possible.  He calls quite frequently though and James was able to chat with him for quite a while on Saturday morning.

We headed down there on Thursday directly after the kids' open house at school.  We took Callie with us to avoid boarding costs.  We were a bit worried about how she and Max would get along but it worked out great.  They were very friendly with each other and caused no issues whatsoever.  We arrived there a little after 10 PM, it's about a 6 hour drive and we didn't hit much traffic.  Needless to say, the kids were super excited to see each other and we let them run around for a couple of hours before trying to force them to go to sleep.

We visited the beach on both Friday and Saturday.  Friday we took all the kids so Judith had some time to work or relax.  The beach was pretty torn up from Irene.  The shelf of sand that's usually right when you wade in was gone, and you'd walk a few feet and be up to your chest in water.  The waves were also very rough, not rolling in but crashing.  The shells were incredible too, most likely because the storm stirred up things that are usually at the bottom of the ocean.  We must have taken 25 shells back Friday but more like 100 on Saturday!

Other than that, it was a pretty calm visit.  The kids played and played and no one wanted to leave.  Cassidy and Keely love to play dress up and do the girly stuff and Quinn and Aedan played Wii and trains and boy stuff.  Aedan's broken elbow made for some tough moments when he couldn't do the other things the kids were doing (i.e. swimming in the ocean or pool in their backyard or jumping on the tramp) but I know he was happy to see his cousins and enjoyed his time with Uncle James.

Much to everyone's dismay, we decided to leave on Sunday afternoon in lieu of driving back on the holiday.  We figured we would miss some traffic and have Monday to recoup before the big first day of school.  Boy, that couldn't have been a better decision because of what happened on our drive home.  We were doing great, making great time and didn't stop until we came close to Richmond.  As I pulled off the highway, I hear the car make a strange noise and immediately know something is wrong.  We pull off the exit ramp and decide to try and get to McDonald's so we can eat dinner while trying to figure out what is wrong.  The car is leaking some mystery substance at the McD's but we think it's just water, and so we try to forge ahead after dinner.  We get about a mile up I-95 and all hell breaks loose.  The battery light comes on, then another light is flashing and beeping.  The car sounds horrible and we can't imagine what could be wrong.  We seriously thought the car was toast and I'm imagining the worst at this point.  Thank goodness James is driving...he loses power steering and has to manually navigate us off I-95 and onto a side highway and we pull into a closed car dealership.  When we stop, the engine begins overheating and smoke is coming out of the hood.  Meanwhile, I am on the phone with AAA telling them we need immediate assistance and a tow.  The kids are scared, I am shaking and we know the situation is serious. Our top priority is getting home that night, because we know that auto shops are not going to be open on Labor Day.  Also, car rental companies are not open on Sunday nights...but we are lucky, we are near a major airport and that is the only place we could likely rent a car.  I call a cab to take us to the airport, and our tow truck driver takes us and all our stuff to a location right near I-95 so that our cab driver will be able to find us easily.  Remember that us means 4 people, a dog, two hermit crabs (yes, Keely got one in NC) and our luggage.  Crazy!  The tow truck driver was fabulous though, he was there in about 10 minutes and had us dropped off for the cab in about 1/2 hour.  The cab found us and we were at the airport in about 20 minutes.  I had called Hertz and rented a car while we were waiting for the cab.  We did a one day rental, with return to Washington National Airport because we knew we had a car to use at home.  We get in the car and back on the road at about 10 PM.  We were home about 11:30 with no more issues.  So all in all, we made the trip in less than 8 hours even with all the drama of losing our car.  And another thing I am thankful for is smart phones - I seriously don't know how I would have done any of this coordination without that technology!

We found out on Tuesday morning that the issue was the water pump.  It failed and caused a belt to slip off, thus losing the fan for the engine, the battery wasn't charging (causing the battery light to go on) and the power steering to go off (I think that was the other light).  The car was fixed that day, but because it's about 1.5 hours from our house we are going to pick it up tonight.

I'm glad it was not major damage, but all in all the whole night is going to cost us about $1,000.  I guess that's better than a totaled car, or engine trouble, or more transmission trouble - but we were so lucky in so many respects, and so fortunate to be able to make it home that night safely.


Even with all that trouble though, we were happy to visit North Carolina and it was a fantastic end to a very busy summer!

First Day of School

The long awaited day finally arrived.  Keely was super excited, Quinn said he'd rather stay on summer break.  It's a funny juxtaposition because Quinn loves school, Keely not so much - well, I should say Quinn loves learning new things and Keely loves the social aspect.  She was quite eager to make friends.  I was nervous for both of them.  More nervous than them, I am sure.  My favorite comment from James on Monday..."you do know it's not your first day of school, right?" :)

There are so many differences about their new school.  First is the time...they don't start school until 9:15 AM now - over an hour later than they started at BS.  Because of that later start time, school doesn't end until 3:55 PM.  This is public school, so no uniforms.  I miss them.  Not because of Keely's drama about what to wear to school (thank goodness James is handling that most mornings) but because they looked much like any other summer day when they dressed for school yesterday morning.  Aside from the huge backpacks filled with school supplies and sweatshirts because it was cold and damp, they looked pretty normal.  They now take the bus to school.  We are within walking or biking distance but there are buses for all children.  They are on Bus #1 and there are about 8 children at our bus stop.  They've never ridden a bus to school, I have always dropped them off and picked them up.  Again, there were more nerves for me on this front.  I just had to trust that they'd make it to school alright...and they did :)  The bus was really late picking them up and they got to school late but I'm sure it will be more timely after the first day or week passes.  They have much smaller classes than at BS - Keely has 19 in 2nd grade and Quinn has 21 in his class.  We met their teachers on Thursday and they both seem really nice.

I couldn't wait to get home and ask them all about their days.  They both seemed to have good first days, making some new friends and getting adjusted to their new classroom and new schedule.  Keely was much more forthcoming but Quinn answered all of my questions and I think I got most of the details from him as well.

Can't believe another school year has begun.  I'm hoping the good vibes from the first day continue as school goes on.  Life is getting busier too.  Both kids are playing soccer...games are on Saturdays, Keely has practice on Tuesdays and Quinn on Thursdays.  Keely is doing Gymnastics on Monday nights, Quinn is doing a football skills clinic on Tuesday evenings.  Because we are not in Catholic school anymore, they now have to take CCD which is on Sunday mornings.  So there won't be many dull moments as we dive right into a jam packed school year!