Ramblings

Lately, I have been reading a lot, instead of doing anything else. I have finished Ladies of Liberty which was wonderful and very interesting. I really didn't know that much about the war of 1812 or how Vice President Aaron Burr was trying to take over the United States and become Emperor of it after he shot Alexander Hamilton in a duel. I would really like to read Founding Mother's now. I also have finished The Timepiece which was typical Richard Paul Evans- tear jerker. I also just finished The Gurensey Literary and Potato Peel Pie society. It was just lovely. I really just couldn't put it down. It wasn't excited per say, just lovely and refreshing. Now I'm in the middle of Pay it Forward which I know is going to be sad, but am reading anyway. There are so many other books that I want to read, but I really have to give it a rest after this and get somethings done!

The boys have found a new toy. Besides the new Chess set they had their Dad buy for them (Joseph beats the pants off everyone!) they also found this Caroom game that we were given a long time ago, but never really did much with. I actually think Rob left it in the garage to get rid of it. They played with it all day!

Have you ever thought is was funny how the brain works. You come up with ideas all at once, not in actual sentences, more like a feeling, but then when you think about telling someone else about it or...well let's just admit that we actually write out blogs in our head all the time, then you have to put that idea into sentences. You already know what you mean, but there you are in your head explaining it in whole sentences to yourself. Am I the only one that knows what I am talking about?

I am in love with anything lemon. I saw this cookie recipe while I was searching for a crockpot chicken recipe today and just had to have them. I made them and I am not exaggerating when I say I ate half the cookies on my own. They were so good! The girl who brought treats for Activity Day Girls brought Lemon bars. It was Lemon Utopia! The calories were not so utopic, though!

Today in Activity Days I had a lady who just moved into our ward from Ohio- the exact ward we are moving to- so exciting- anyway, she came and taught the girls how to take care of their hair. She is a professional stylist. She even did most of their hair for them. The girls loved it! I was told that I would most likely be released soon, though. The scariest thing about getting released is what you will be called to next. We will be one of the last people moving into our new ward, since military wards turn over starting now. I have decided that I want a vote on this whole calling thing!

Well enough rambling for now. That Guernsey book is what did it to me. It is a collection of letters and often times they ramble. We don't write letters anymore, so who do I get to ramble to? I guess to whomever chose to read this to the end! So to you, I say, Thanks for letting me ramble on and enjoy the rest of your day!!

SPT come back- Taking a Break

I have just recently understood the term, "runner's high" even though I have been a runner since High School. I feel so good when I exercise and not so good when I don't . I can definitely tell the difference these days, when I couldn't before. It has now become an essential part of my day. But as all essential parts of our days go, kids, friends, work, etc. end up vying for that time. I am not a very forceful person, so I give in easily. I volunteer at the school during my workout time, I volunteer at the preschool when they call, I go visiting teaching. Just recently, I have started sticking up for myself a little more, though. Today was the first day I called someone back and asked to please switch something they had wanted to do with me. It turned out to be quite a bit of rearranging to get it in today. She asked if I wanted to just do it another day- "well, no. Any day from 9:30-11:00 is my time!" As all mom's of kids going to school know, the minute they get home, it's all downhill from there. If I don't get it in during the morning, it doesn't get done. If I was a better person, I would get up early and do it, but I love the classes at the gym as well as a run, and that's when the classes are. I promise I am not being antisocial and I am not trying to be difficult. I hope others understand it, but getting that workout in makes me feel so much better! Of course if I didn't eat that pound of chocolate every day, I would also feel a whole lot better!

Garden of Eden Baby Shower

My friend Anna asked me a little while ago if I would help her throw a shower for one of our friends, Catherine, who is having a baby girl soon. I said, "yes" and immediately came up with a plan. They had decided to name the baby girl Eden and since my house had nothing in it, I thought it would be a great idea to turn it into a garden of Eden. I made up the invitations that said, "Welcome to Eden." Then we borrowed all kinds of stuff to make our garden. Did you realize that no one does plants in their home anymore. I couldn't find plants to save my life. So instead we met a friend at the church and "borrowed" the trees from the foyers. When we were driving away, Max say, "Mom, we were Ninjas! We took the trees and no one saw us. You and me were good Ninjas!"
This is how our garden looked, complete with green blanket grass and brown cushioned logs and black and brown rocks to sit upon.
We made butterflies out of chocolate. Here is the beginning and here is the finished product on top of the cupcakes. I dipped some strawberries and made lemon bars and we had veggies and dip and apples and dip and punch. Another friend made cake pops and we put them in a green Styrofoam cone and put them in a flower pot. I think it turned out really cute.
A friend helped me punch out a bunch of butterflies out of different paper and color and emboss some of them. Then I hung them all over the house.We made a "Tree of Knowledge of Good and not so Good." This is where we hung our apples that made up our game- The Mommies Minute to Win it Challenge. We did all kinds of challenges from making 4 pb&j sandwiches, to opening a box of diapers and wipes with gloves on, to eating a jar a baby food, to rolling an egg from one end of the room to the next with their nose while crawling, to unrolling an entire roll of toilet paper. We also had color coding candy land pieces, alphabetizing baby books, and putting together 4 puzzles- all done in 1 minute or less. It was great fun.
I think everyone had a great time. And now I have some decorations for my home. Of course the Ninjas will have to strike again and take the trees back to the church, but at least I still have the butterflies and the flowers and vines!

Rebellion

Joseph can not stand to write. I don't know really why. Part of it is probably mechanical- holding the pencil and making all those fine motor movements. But, every week he has at least one writing prompt he must complete for homework. This week it was a story about a lady bug and a caterpillar. He moaned and groaned- literally, but mom refused to give in and he had to sit there until he was done with it. So what does one do when they are forced to sit at a table looking at a blank piece of paper while trying to avoid writing a story. Well draw a picture on the table, naturally!

And if your name is Maxwell, what is your favorite game? Well, 52 card pick-up, of course!
This being a relative title, because there seems to be less and less cards each time.

Confusion

We have caused wide spread confusion in our ward, employment and among our family and friends. They just don't seem to understand our situation, no matter how much we explain it, so I am attempting to once again chronicle our "plight" , but in writing this time so that it can be referred back to by the confounded.
We used a government grant for military families to sell our home. We could not have sold our home otherwise. We lost $250,000 on the sell. I know a lot of the country doesn't understand the housing market crash, because it really hasn't affected them. It has definitely hit the DC area, however- as you can see by how much we lost. Anyway, in order to sell the home without having to short sell, we used this grant, with the stipulation that we must actually be moving out of the state. They wouldn't accept our orders, especially since they say we don't report until August of this year. We sold our home after it being on the market just 1 day, though and so we needed to close for the buyers sake, so we had to submit a bill of lading from the moving company. Therefore, all of our stuff had to be moved to Ohio, without us, 3 months ahead of time. We are living on air mattresses and card tables and folding chairs for the next 3 months. The person that bought our home is letting us rent it back from her until the end of June.
I quit my job this month, because Rob also finished his job as the General's exec and is now going to go to a military school in the area for 3 months. He won't be around much, except the weekends and I didn't want to have to do all of this on my own again and still have to go to work.

So, to sum up: Neither of us is working right now. Rob starts on Monday at a military school- JPME- don't ask me what it stands for.
We are camping out, but in our own home for 3 months.
Yes, we except all invitations to dinner.
Yes, I will call if I need anything.
Alright, that last one might have been a lie, but I will call if I need to borrow a cup of sugar, anyway.
Yes, we are very excited to move and we move as soon as Emma gets done with Girl's camp. In fact we will probably drag her straight from camp on an 8 hour trip to Ohio, unless she stinks too bad.
Yes, we did find a home to rent (notice we decided not to buy this time- hmm, can you think why?), but it is not available until the end of July/beginning of August, so we are coming to Utah and Idaho for July and some people I know should get married in July so we can actually come to the wedding!
Any question?

Whirlwind

Life has been crazy. We zoomed off last weekend for a very quick trip to Ohio to try and find a home. We ended up getting to our friend's home sooner than we thought we would- like 4:30 am sooner, so we settled in their driveway and tried to sleep until a decent hour. We then took the whole day to look at homes. Rob found 2 he really liked. I didn't like either one. I did however, really like one that he wasn't happy with at all. It is so funny, because usually we like about the same things. Sunday we did more of the same and then spent a nice evening at the home of our friends. I was very frustrated by this point though and I think Rob was as well. He kept lecturing me on how we needed to follow the prophets example and save more money. Really we could have saved a lot more money if we had bought a home, but neither one of us felt good about buying in Ohio, so we stayed with that feeling- this time! We got one more appointment set on Monday, but I had already determined to just look for homes online and have our friend go look at them for us. I figured our home just hadn't come up for rent yet. Well, for Rob the last house was the one. It is big and beautiful and more money than all the rest. He had spun me up so much about not spending so much money that I was totally against the whole thing by then. But you see, this house was right near work and school for him and on a golf course. That's all he needed and he was happy. It doesn't have a very big yard, like all the others we had seen. This was the one disappointment for me. Living in a townhome for 4 years, I was really looking for a yard where we could stretch our legs and run around. It is big enough for a small swing set and our trampoline, though. After we got back home we had one day and then the movers showed up to pack us up. Rob helped a lot including taking down the bunk beds with the boys help.This is what our home looked like. See they are moving us 3 months before we are actually leaving! This is due to government red tape. So we will be camping out at our house for the next 3 months. We are on air mattresses. We ate our Easter dinner on a card table by ourselves. We left one TV and one computer- because the kids have to have a computer to do homework, now. (It is so amazing to me how much things have changed. I never needed a computer until college, now even in Elementary school they are required to look things up and download pictures and other things to make projects!) We also kept our washer and dryer, because Rob said, "I am not making you go to a Laundromat for 3 months!" We will have to move all this stuff on our own when it comes time.

The packers took our stuff away, late Friday evening. It was so nice to have my bathrooms back again! Then Saturday and Sunday were conference and Easter and a baptism and the Cherry Blossom Festival. There wasn't much traffic coming up to DC on Sunday, so we thought it was a good day until we go there and there was already a billion people there. It still wasn't too bad, though. The blooms were past their peak, so the wind was swirling with pedals. We had lots of fun trying to catch them all different ways.We watched conference in the "comfort" of our family room floor. The Easter Bunny came, but we didn't seem to have time to get in the Easter egg hunt. We had a beautiful Easter feast complete with homemade rolls- after I borrowed a pan from a neighbor- on our plastic plates on a card table. It depressed me at first, but then I had to laugh. I do love my family and we have a good time together. I look forward to moving to Ohio.