A Season of Last

We have been enjoying a season of lasts- The last whole month before we leave, the last day of school, the last Sunday (where I had to give a talk!), the last time we had to say good-bye to Dad before he graduated from JPME-2 and came home from Norfolk.

The last school projects for the year. Sam's was relatively quick and painless. He did very little research, saying that he already knew everything about Grant. Apparently it was enough for the teacher. His report went something like this, Grant is a very important person in American history. He was born...blah... blah...blah, where he did many important things. He became president in blah... blah...blah and did many important things. That is why he is so important. He had about 10 importants in the report, so I made him redo it. I read it just before he got out of the car to go into school. He had taken out some of the importants and made them into specials or something just as "important!"

Joseph's was an entirely different story. The entire project was way too much to ask a 1st grader to do. They had them pick a subject from the school year. Joseph picked Math and then he had to pick one of the things he learned in math. He chose measurments. Then he was suppose to make a book about it and include a game and a biography of the author (himself.) They were going to use these to help introduce the new 1st grade class to the different things they would be learning that year. Basically, we were doing their work for them. I was not impressed. I ended up doing almost the entire project for him. I had him tell me his biography and I wrote a few of the things down he said that he had learned about measurements. I also let him choose all the pictures we used. Luckily, I think I got an A on my final project!

Emma had her last soccer game and then her last soccer tournament. Their team won the tournament yet again. They got nice trophies. Emma has been on this same team for years. We are excited to see what she can do on another team. I especially was overjoyed to see that her new school has sports. Of course they have all the sports that the High School has, except Soccer!

Rob had his last day at work. They did a luncheon for him. I forgot at first, that the luncheons in the army are more of a roast and got pretty offended before I remembered. There is no way they could do that to a woman as they left or they would go away crying! He got a regular award for his time there and then he also got all the gag gifts.

Some friends of our threw us a couple of goodbye parties . It was so nice of them and we will definitely miss the wonderful people who went out of their way to let us know that we would also be missed. I decided to throw an impromtu end of school, last fling, happy birthday to all three boys at the same time party. We had a bunch of kids over and let them run all over and throw 200 water balloons in a matter of minutes and then have cake and ice cream. It was a lot of fun!

We had our last night in the house and turned the keys over early in the morning. I was glad to have the last of the cleaning done- my hands were toast after all that scrubbing! Thank you Elder's for helping get the heavy, heavy piano loaded!We went to Wolf Lodge and celebrated Sam's birthday then came back and spent one more night in a friend's home in Woodbridge. I picked up Emma from girls camp and we headed out of Virginia for the last time.

It was a good season of lasts and now we are glad they are over, because that means that we are now into the season of beginnings! DC hasn't been our favorite place to live, but we learned so much, got to see so many amazing sites and watched our family grow there. We certainly wouldn't want to take it back, but we are excited for the future ahead!

Playing Hooky

We have continued our Sunday Adventure Days when we can. We are trying to check things off the list now that we haven't seen yet. This time we decided to go see the United States Botanical Gardens. Joseph was very excited, because for school he had just read a book all about killer plants and we got to see some. These are pitcher plants and they drown bugs and then digest them at their roots. By the time we were done walking the catwalk in the jungle and learning about pineapple and potatoes and visiting all the beautiful flowers Washington University's graduation (where Mrs. Obama gave the Keynote address) that was on the National Mall had just concluded. There was people everywhere and no hope of getting home in time to get cleaned up and ready for church, so we played hooky. We went to the Air and Space Museum playing around with the heat sensor. Look how hot headed those children are. And then look at how blue I am. I told you that I was always cold and there is proof!
a picture of the exact calculator Rob owns from college- now that will make you feel old!
and took more alphabet pictures and jumped pillars and went through one of the statue gardens. A cool family photo op!
I just hope we didn't miss Zion.

USS Enterprise

We had a wonderful opportunity that we couldn't pass up this last weekend. We got to go on a tour of the first nuclear aircraft carrier and the 2nd oldest ship in the Navy, the USS Enterprise. Being in the Army we have never had that kind of opportunity- that is before Rob got into this joint schooling. You have to know someone on the ships to take you on board. We didn't know anyone, but Rob asked one of the guys in the class. He knew someone who asked someone to do it for us. She was very accommodating and took us all over the carrier. In fact she took 2 1/2 hours to tour us around everywhere. Since they were about to put out to sea, everyone had been given the weekend off and so we got to see a lot more than normal, I think. When we were told about the tour, we were told "no camera's", so we didn't bring one on board. Everyone on board thought that was all silliness and kept saying "you should have brought your camera. That would have made a great picture!" Double Dern-it (as Max says!) Everyone got to "drive" the ship and sit in the Captain's chair. We got to eat cake in the Officer's Mess and run all over the flight deck. I had them show us the infirmary. We saw the anchor room and Joseph did the unthinkable and walked on the chain. We all tried to lift one of the links- they weigh 350 pounds each. Rob was the only one that could move it. We took a little rest on the Captain's private balcony and played with the charts and computers in the control room. The Lt. was very good to ask people who worked at each place to tell us about it, since she wasn't an expert at them all. This made the tour much more informative and interesting! Everyone had a great time. Joseph shook the Lt. hand at the end and said, "thank you for the cake!" Of course that was the best part of the whole tour for Joseph! She says she can now get us a tour on the newest aircraft carrier- the USS Bush. We are so excited!

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.

Productive

The kids had about 2 weeks off from school, because of all the snow. Usually this would have really bummed me out and caused distress, because I couldn't seem to get anything done, but since it caused most things around the DC area to come to a screeching halt as well, I got all kinds of things done that I had been meaning to do!

I read lots of books- most of which I was not impressed with and will be throwing away. I really have to be more selective when it comes to modern day authors. They like to throw out lots of swear words, throw in a gay couple or two and lots of sex- no matter what the story is actually about. I did enjoy The Tales of Beetle the Bard by JK Rowlings, though. I also enjoyed a book that Emma brought home with true stories about World War 2. I have said before that I enjoy a good historical story, but for some reason World War 2 fascinates me.

We played games as a family and build LegosWe went to the new Percy Jackson movie. I liked the books a whole lot better!

I finally got to making this sign that some of the sister did together in November.

I finished 2 more aprons. One for me and one for one of the winners of my little contest. Rebecca promised to tell me how it went, so let's hear it Rebecca! I still have one more winner to make something for. If I do this again, I may have to give myself less time than a year to fulfill the requirement! A year is just way too much time to procrastinate!

We went and saw the Enola Gay, a trainer Space shuttle, some Top Gun aircraft and other fun things at the Air and Space Museum out by the Dulles airport.

We logged tons of time on the TV, Playstations, Wii, and computer.
We did homework
We played in the snowWe made Valentines- For the primary teachers I just made a sign that said, It takes a lot of ----
to serve the way you do. Thank you from the bottom of mine and then I affixed a chocolate heart on it in the appropriate place. For the kids for school (which may not even happen now!) I bought little things of bubbles and cut out bubble shapes that said, "Valentine's you blow me away."
We played with friends.
We went running in a blizzard, all so that we didn't have to dig our truck out of the snow bank.
It was a good 2 weeks, but I am definitely ready for them to go back, now!!