A fresh beginning.

Well its been 7 months now since I posted on here, and one year since I started this blog, life has shot by so fast I can't keep up! I am going to try my hardest to get my act together and do the things that I really want to do! (ie... blogging, scrapbooks, baking/decorating, just to name a few of the things that my brain is swimming with) so hope all can bear with me.

Our family is getting ready to take on our biggest adventure yet, the husband/father/provider is moving to Boston in 2 days. As I write this my stomach is flip flopping. I am not sure that I am up for this, but I am going to do it head on, maybe with my head down and eyes closed is more like it! We went up to MA. the past week to set up his new "room", the house is older but cute, it has tons of potential, but with 4 guys living there, the pink bathroom is not getting the attention it needs! I feel better knowing the situation that he is going to be in, so now i can see him in his room instead of imagining what its going to be like. Im going to change the subject now...


This is our first tomatoes. We didn't think that we were going to get anything at all this year, we started a container garden and nothing grew taller than a foot, so we transplanted and still no growth, then finally they all shot up and we got these:

aren't they just beautiful? I cant wait until they actually turn red, I have my mayo, bread and S&P all ready!
Even though the time has gone by, it seems like we are stuck in the same day to day routine, I can't seem to recall anything major happening in Feb. or March, well Lauren turned 16!! wait-that is pretty major! April? May, June? Yeah I have nothing! Maybe if I keep up on this, i will actually recall some life events and post them! tune in to see if that is really going to happen!
So for now goodbye, see ya later, come back soon ya hear....

Wait i do have something for June!!!! Charles was promoted to Chief Warrant Officer!!! however could I have forgotten?
Here is a photo of that:

ok so now i think that i can start anew.

The end of one year...the beginning of another

I'm going to do a quick recap of the last few months so i can get up to speed on our lives thus far... (somehow my previous posts got a little out of order so I'm trying to straighten up!)

December was a blur it seemed. I tried to get it all done by a specific day but you know how those things go, thank goodness for Internet shopping! I hate the idea of giving gift cards so i try to do a little something personal if I can. We have decided that with Charles family next year that we are doing homemade gifts. I'm excited about this and have a few ideas, so we will see!


I ended up not doing all of my baking this year, giving up rum cakes and some cookies. I did do the caramel apples and peanut butter balls so I believe the recipients for those forgave me for not doing the other stuff! My family come over to have a baking party and we also celebrated Madison's 9th birthday along with Christopher's 20th! The kids decorated gingerbread houses as we got down to baking! My brother in law Chris took over the peanut butter ball "station" and decided that he was taking them all home with him! Those are fighting words my friend!

Christmas Eve and day were nice, we spent the time with both of the families. Something that we had not done in 3 years! So we enjoyed it all. (Forgive me, but I am starting to sound like one of those Holiday Letters!!) hahaha I did do one ONCE!! And I am alos happy to say that I got my third tree! Yup its a small white one that we are going to decorate NC style, UNC stlye that is! All Tarheel decorations and baby blue lights! Its going to be beautiful!!!

We brought in the New Years with friends. Charles recently learned that he was picked of for Warrant Officer so we had big decisions to make, because along with the promotion comes a move! To BOSTON!! So we pushed that aside for the night and enjoyed the "sauce" (some more than others~Charles!) and the company.

Now its 2009 and January was the month to make that decision! After knocking this around for what seemed like 100 plus sleepless nights and making pro and con lists and listening to the (unsolicited) advice of everyone, we decided as a family that Charles would be a Geo Bachelor. That means that he will be going to Boston and we will stay here at least until Lauren finishes school. It was a very hard choice to make and it will be a major change in all of our lives, but we feel that now is a good time as any to do this because we have our family support system nearby. We are going to take one day at a time and do this!

filling in the blanks...

Time is flying by us like we are on a ride that we cannot get off! Here it is the beginning of December and the end of a year!
Lauren has gotten her permit to drive and drive us crazy is what she is doing! She wants to drive everywhere! and all the time! rest my little one. She is doing a great job and really we are starting to relax when we are with her!
Caleb has finally gotten rid of the hair! We tried to dye it back to its natural hair color before school started, but we couldn't agree on exactly what color it was so we ended up buying the wrong color! It was way black! So i got a lighter color and it ended up dark brown with a bit of red! He also began cutting the hairs that were out of place and before you know it he started to look like Johnny Depp in the movie Willy Wonka! One day he came to me and said "Mom, can we go get a haircut?" I don't think i have ever moved so fast! He now has an adorable faux hawk! and his natural haircolor!
Its is Halloween and my house is getting decorated with hardly anything, Lauren is thankful, i think she may be getting embarrassed! haha like i am going to care about that! Well we ran out of time and energy so i only put a few large spiders out and a big spider web in the arch. i must say it looked real cool against the white of the house. and don't forget the pumpkins in each window. Caleb dressed up as a goosebumps character, the puppet for the ventriloquist. Madison was a dead goth girl. We had my sisters family and my mom and dad come over. And of course the dogs! Riley was in his pumpkin tshirt, Little boo was an escapee from prison and Molly was a lady bug.

November has come and gone. The most powerful thing i did was vote. It was my very first time voting ever. I had not even registered until this year! I know right! Bad, bad! But I did it and I may even do it again next election. It snowed too! Well just flurries, but there was alot of them so it was practically a snowstorm! I wished it to stay but i suppose so many others wished it away that my wish didn't count! oh well maybe another time.

This was also the month that Charles went through his Chiefs Indoctrination. He had to do many things to become "one of the Chiefs" like make a charge book, which is like a scrapbook of his time in, he made from scratch a hat box for his Chief's hat, that turned out really well! And various other things that they made him do at work. We had a dinner with all of the Chiefs and he got his right to be called Chief! This is our friend Rusty Doggett with Charles and the kids.Thanksgiving was nice and peaceful. We celebrated with my parents and my mother in law, plus my brother and his girlfriend Lena. We fried our turkey like we always do and everyone was on that bird like vultures before Charles even carved it! Needless to say we had hardly any leftovers! Oh well we have 2 more turkeys in the freezer!

Putting up the glitz...

Ahhh Christmas is here, time to deck the halls and and the front yard. When we got this house I put no thought into decorating it for the holidays, (we got it in August so it was HOT! i was thinking pool?!) Little did I realize then that our house is crazy tall and we are a little on the average height side. This is not a decorating house and I am a decorating person! So needless to say that the 2 totes full of icicle lights that i have are useless to me! Yard sale potential?
Sure I can pay someone to make my house picture perfect, but who has that kind of moo la? And you can bet on it that if I did spring that kind of cash for that service, I would keep those lights up until the day we moved away! Oh how the neighbors would love me then.
So we decided to put our low lying decor up. Out came the boxes of net lights, yeah that filled one flower bed! Gosh things in Va are so much bigger than in Cali.! Those boxes of lights did my WHOLE YARD there! Off to the stores we go. It is killing the h to buy more lights when we have so many not being used at home, but what can i do? New house new look, right!
We put up the 2 trees, the big one in the front room window that just thrills the h to no end. He went outside to look at it from a street persons point of view like 3 times and then told me how it looked when he was driving up to the house. That's what its all about: getting excited over the simple things. It made me love him a little more!
Getting the house all done up is a challenge this year with the newness of it all and not having what you need and then again having too much of what you don't, but we got it done and its beautiful and PICTURE PERFECT! And needless to say thats exactly what I failed to get! A picture of the outside of the house! What the heck! haha
So now the stockings are hung by the chimney (well gas fireplace) and the wind has knocked off the window wreaths a few times, but it is still a beautiful sight from 5:30 until 9:30 when the timer goes on and off!
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

The months in between...

So I have not been keeping up to date on my blog and I must say I miss it! I did just post the blog about going back to work that I wrote back in July, just a now. I decided to post it because it is what I really did all summer waiting for our house.

Oh what a summer we have had and I cant believe it is already October!!!Lets see if I can give a quick summary of what went down....

July (end of)-

We both went back to work. I started the travel team at the bank, which means I floated from office to office when I was needed. Really I stayed in downtown Portsmouth for a month because they had back to back vacations! I like to think its because they really liked me!Anyways still the run around on the house and we are steadily freaking out because all our back up houses are gone!

August-

We have back doored our realtor and went on to the sellers realtor, hey you have to do what you have to do sometimes! He is completely amazed that our realtor is being like she is, and tells us that the house is being foreclosed on!!! Mild panic sets in.

We are still commuting from NC to VA and thankfully its not wearing on our nerves too bad!

We give the realtors an ultimatum, if we cant get in by the 11th we walk. He tells us that we can have early possession of the house until closing, and since the bank owns it, we do not have to pay rent! SWEET!!! We call the furniture guys to bring us our stuff... On Monday, as the guys are hauling in the last piece of furniture, the sellers realtor comes over and says, the house is going up for auction on Thursday and that we will have to go bid on it at the court house steps!! (Excuse me while I say some very bad words!) It seems our realtor has known this and has failed to tell us! Thanks. So we really freak and everyone is scrambling around to get all the paperwork done. And we are happy to say that on August 10th we got our house!!!!!!

During all of this Caleb turned 11! And he finally got tall enough to ride all the rides at Busch Gardens!!

September-

Charles and I celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary!! Who would of thought 2 high school lovers would have made it this far? I got a permanent position at the Norfolk branch and we are starting to really settle into the house. We even painted some rooms!

October it is.... man the time has flown by, things are slowing down, only to be rushed by the upcoming holiday season, but I still feel like I have yet to catch up! So thats it in a brief, but not so spunky, summary.

Work for me...

As some of you may have noticed, it has been about a month since my last post. Its not for lack of anything to say, but because I have fallen into a lazy, no job, no responsibilities (except for the occasional "what are the kids up too?" panic) and the no reason to do anything, but sit around mode.

But all that is about to change.

It is time for me to rejoin society and become that adult that I once was and start paying some bills, cooking regular dinners and stop trying to convince Charles that having Mr. Lu's Chinese take out is technically NOT eating out! And I will start watching my children more closely. ( I do watch them, as they walk past me with a soda in one hand and a snack of some sort in the other on their happy way to the pool or the Internet).

(They look content and safe so i leave them alone!)

Charles went back 2 weeks ago, and it is odd not to have him around. We had been together for over a month and he became part of my lazy days, but no more, now he is there and wants things to return to normal because they have for him. Well I move a bit slower than that! I am still getting up after 10, eating brunch while deciding what to do with the rest of my day, hoping the kiddies get up before noon.

I am headed back to the work force to join the rush hour traffic gang and the brown bag lunch crew come this Monday.
I am afraid I do not remember how to be an adult.
I will keep you posted!

Finally Virginia!!

We are here! Virginia!! Almost home, but not quite! We are headed to the Natural Bridge in Lexington and then staying one more night in the KOA.

The Natural Bridge was beautiful. We only went as far as the bridge (we wanted to get to the camp site and set up before dark). There is alot more to see, like the Indian reservation and they have a light show around 9pm. Anyway, the bridge was more than enough. It was starting to sprinkle too! The rumor is that George Washington carved his initials in the rocks. So did alot of other people it seems. Caleb tried to climb up the rocks. he only got about as high as me! The kids saw a snake, so that was more interesting to them, than the bridge.
We ended up just hanging out at the campground, they have pizza delivery there! Then off to bed and a major thunderstorm. Third one in the camper! And of course as soon as it starts, everyone needs to go to the bathroom! haha. I have one umbrella and 2 rain ponchos from a past Sea World visit! We are prepared.
Good morning! We take it slow today because we know its our last 4 hour drive. Then I make a mistake and start talking to a fellow camper, ( I know so unlike me, I talk to hardly anyone! hehe) like 45 minutes later, we finally get on the road.
Oh its a good feeling when you can turn off the navigation system because you recognize the roads!
We are staying with my parents in NC, so its a bit farther of a drive, but as soon as we hit the state line, it was like the Nascar speedway, everyone was excited. We turned down their street and I start blasting the horn to let the world know that we are finally here!!! Did ya hear it?

IT'S GOOD TO BE HOME!!!!