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!!!!

Still Tennessee???

We stopped off in Nashville to see the Grande ole Opry. We didn't go in, actually the kids stayed in the car. It is not what I expected, the Opry house is surrounded by a mall!! So we took a few pictures by the door and headed to the end of Tennessee, see I told you it was LONG.

We stayed the night in a hotel. It was a biker Super 8. There is not much parking for a truck and trailer, so Charles decided to take up 2 parking spots for the trailer and just unhitch it for the night, no problem there. We went out to dinner, where Lauren losses her retainer. She tucked it under her shorts, then went to the bathroom. Moment of panic for everyone, including the couple who had stared at us the whole meal. Charles seems to think it was because we talked funny! haha

So the daughter stands up and says "my retainer is gone!" Its one of those clear retainers that looks like a mouth guard so we start looking in the napkins and on the floor, no luck, back track to the bathroom, nothing. Man I do not want to go through the Olive Garden's trash. I'm imagining myself killing this child of mine over a piece of plastic, that not only does she have 1 but 2 retainer boxes for! Then all of a sudden one of the waitress' comes to us with it in a wetnap! She was like a ortho angel! I am super gluing it in Lauren's mouth as soon as I get some glue!! After all that, we go to the hotel to bed, and when we wake up to get ready to leave, guess what is parked right in front of the trailer??

A motorcycle. Yup, what a nut, did they not see that there was no room? He had to park it sideways for goodness sake! So we go to the hotel clerk and let her know and she says that she will look for the person, then she walks out with us to check things out and she asks Charles this: So you unhitched the trailer from the truck? Charles says yes, and then immediately thinks (as she walks away), No the truck is there, its just invisible, HERE'S YOUR SIGN!!

Well the owner could never be found so my husband had to swing the whole trailer around to hitch it up!

I'm so done with Tennessee!!!

My husband, the protector!

While camping in the pop-up, the issue of security has come up, because those things are basically canvas and velcro. If someone wanted you, they could get you. Well Charles has this big knife that he has had since childhood, that he sleeps with just in case.
But I began to notice that I am always on the outside sleeping!! I questioned this observation and this is what my husband had to say:
The reason why I am sleeping on the outside is so that while the robbers are busy beating me up, he can take the knife and cut out an escape hole for him. I asked about the children and he said that he would try to get them from the other side, if the robbers were still occupied with me. I am so happy to be married to such a wonderful man. He always has a plan.

More of Tennessee

To me, Tennessee is the longest state to drive through! It took us forever to get out of there.
Before we left Memphis, we took the locals advice and stopped at the infamous Beale Street. I fell in love with this place. They close off this street to the traffic and just let the people loose! There are bars and restaurants, shops that sell souvenirs and trinkets and the beers are just flowing! You can walk up to a window, get a beer and walk the street. Its just beautiful.
We went over to get something to eat, the kids wanted to go to the Hardrock Cafe, but Charles wanted to taste the local barbecue. We ended up eating at Blues City Cafe. OH MY GOSH!!! We all ordered ribs, and they were the best ribs ever!! yum, yum
I have no pictures to post of Beale Street, because my batteries where being charged in the camper. I did buy a disposable camera for $10, so if I ever get around to taking that in...
(it took me 3 years to develop the kid's cameras from our trip to CA!!)

Part of a crime scene?

Should I have called the local authorities? This is what I saw at a gas station in Arkansas. Charles was pumping our 9th or so tank of gas and I was trying to clean out the truck from all the kids waste. They are some trashy kids! Anyway I go to the trash can and this is what I see:

Do you see what I see??? I had the whole abduction played out in my head! Scary scene! I said to the kids, if you saw a purse, some shoes and a license plate in the trash at a gas station, what would that tell you? Lauren said it tells her that we need to get the hell up outta here! I agree!!

Graceland!!!

Finally we are in Memphis, Tennessee!! Home of Elvis Presley.

We roll into Memphis after a short 2 hour drive and head to our hotel to drop off the doggie and then go to Graceland. Now you know that did not happen, there has to be some sort of drama. So here it is:

As soon as we get to the hotel area, we begin to notice that things are looking a bit shady and that the hotel was not in the best part of town. I think the broken down buildings and the people hanging off the side of the hotel smoking tipped us off. We didn't even go into the office to check in, we just pulled off on the side and started looking for hotels that accepted dogs, we didn't care how much it cost! Long story short, we ended up staying at the Heartbreak Hotel RV park that is directly across the street from Graceland. Lucky us. Charles believes that our lives were spared that night.

On to Graceland... It was really cool, but not what I expected. Elvis (if he were alive today) would be living in the ghetto!! Its a fabulous house, just not a fab location, and you know that's what its really all about...location, location, location!

No really, the house, grounds and tour where something that everyone should go see, even if you are not a die hard Elvis fan. Just learning about his life was amazing. He bought that house and the 13 acres for 100,000! They let you go all throughout the downstairs, but the upstairs is off limits out of respect to him, because he never let anyone go up there. Too bad, I would of loved to see his bedroom.

We toured his house, then his grounds, his racket ball court is now a trophy room and that was a treat to see, it's covered from floor to ceiling with gold records and whatnot. Then we saw his costumes and his cars and got to tour his plane, the "Lisa Marie". Everything was very retro! But I had to remind myself that back in the 70's that stuff was high class!!

Then something happened at near the end that I was not expecting, did anyone else know that Elvis is buried there? I had no idea, until the audio tour guy told me! He was not originally buried there, but after his grave began to get vandalized, his father had him moved. It is a beautiful resting place, where his parents and grandmother are also.

We ended our tour in the gift shop, like every good tour ends! There we bought Caleb his key chain for his ever growing key chain collection, and some Elvis scrapbook stuff! Now I must really scrapbook!

Rest stops or lack there of...

When you are roughing it at campgrounds and what not, you may find yourself without a "rest stop" nearby. This happens to everyone from time to time, and surprisingly enough it happens on the open road too!

This happened to us a few times (like twice) and really only with a certain 2 kids, which will remain nameless for embarrassment reasons!

Then it happened to me. (sigh...) Yes, its true and disturbing.

We are driving along US 40 which replaced Route 66, and the road is long and dull, nothing to see, and nowhere to go but straight. About an hour before this we stopped at a Sonic and I had to order a large cherry limeade because they are my favorite and I hadn't had one in a year, so I'm enjoying it and sipping it in the car and then all of a sudden (well you get the picture).

So I go to my trusty navigation system and type in gas stations, no gas station for 40 some miles, I start to get a little nervous, so I type in convenience stores, nope, none of those for 40 miles either! Ok panic mode had set in, because you know as soon as your brain realizes that there is nowhere to go, you really have to go and you have to go NOW!

So I start to battle with myself, -do I really need to go? -Nobody can see, we are in the middle of nowhere,- Oh, that's just not what proper ladies do... -my momma raised me better than this-if you hold it you will get a bladder infection... See the turmoil I was going through?

Well needless to say, who won. And here is the punch line:

I do what I have to do, FAST!, then hop back in the car, and as soon as I get in that damn truck and drive not even a mile.... we see a sign that says REST AREA 4 MILES!!!!!

Can you believe that mess???? I guess I should of looked that up in the navigation system! duh!!

Here is what I found at one of the rest stops, guess which one Riley went to.

It's a storm!!!

I forgot to say that at the Koa we had a major storm! It was our first in the camper, so we didn't know if this thing was water proof our not! I mean the lady who sold it to us said it was, but she could of been telling us anything to get us to buy it, ya know?
Anyways it was about 1 in the morning and the rain started, then the thunder and lightning and then the wind!! Oh lord, the wind! It was hurricane force winds. (well in a trailer don't they all feel like those?) So the wind is blowing and the trailer is moving, really moving! I was concerned that it was going to just tip right over. What exactly is keeping this thing on the ground anyway? 2 wheels and some metal feet! Not much there. Well needless to say the trailer did not leak and it did not tip over! We are grounded and dry!
Off to Little Rock, Arkansas we go!

3 States in a day

We finished off New Mexico and headed into Texas, where Lauren wanted to fly on through for fear we would end up dead like the Texas chain saw kids. That didn't happen as you can see. She did however, break the door at the local Dairy Queen. We left fast so they could not pin it on us! Texas is the home of Garth Brooks and the beef capital of the WORLD!! Who knew?

We stopped off at the Cadillac Ranch and defaced the property with cans of spray paint. We are just puttin' a hurtin' on Texas with all of our rebelliousness!!

Now off to Oklahoma! This was a just an overnight stop at the KOA. The kids rented a some kind of 2 person pedal bike and raced through the park, you could hear Caleb screaming for Lauren to slow down through the whole park and kept pulling the brakes!! I asked him if he wanted his helmet, he passed. haha

Did you know that there are people living at campgrounds? They receive mail there?? I was a bit disturbed by this, I still am.

Gallup to Roswell

After we left the Grand Canyon we traveled on to Gallup, New Mexico. This was just a stop over night on out way to Roswell. On our way to Gallup, we got caught in a dust devil! For those of you who have no idea what that is, (like I didn't until it happened) its like a small tornado made of dirt and tumbleweeds! I was driving at the time and saw it off in the distance just a spinning around. It really looks like a tornado. So we are driving and looking and all of a sudden this thing picks up speed and heads straight towards us!! I was a bit freaked out, I had flashes of this thing picking up the truck and tossing it! Needless to say that did not happen, it came right over us, we screamed and then it was over and our truck was dirty! Very cool, I must say.

The campground was nice, just smack off the highway. We were the only pop-up there. I felt like we didn't belong! haha who doesn't belong in a campground!

Here is Caleb as a totem pole:

Now off to Roswell, home of the Aliens. Yeah... we went to the UFO International Museum and Research Center. For $5 ($3 for military, $2 for children) you too can experience the Alien Invasion the happened in the middle of nowhere. And for $1 you can actually listen to vintage audio! (vintage because it is an actual cassette player!) Caleb thought the museum was "pretty kick butt". So the extra 140 miles out of the way was worth it! (to some)

Now we are off the end of New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma. All 3 in one day!

Our home!!

This is a picture of our home.

It has a spacious, open floor plan, with 2 bedrooms and an optional third. A quaint kitchen, perfect for on the go meals! A dining room/living room combo, complete with cable. Heating and air conditioning too!

The large backyard is the best with views for miles and miles!

Can you believe its all ours??

The canyon is Grand

We got to the Grand Canyon on Sunday at about 5:30. After setting up the camper and getting a quick dinner, we set out to see this so called canyon! I say that only because the whole ride to the canyon is trees and mountains. Nowhere is there any indication that any canyons are around much less a grand one! So we are quite sceptical that such a place exists!

Getting to the canyon is a bit complicated, most places you have to go by shuttle, so we hopped on and the sun is quickly going down the closer we get there. We arrive and get off the bus and still no canyon! A short walk up a path and BAM there it is! Even, in the now dark, it is the coolest thing we have seen and cant wait for the morning to come so we can actually see it. Charles and I decide to get up early to watch the sunrise above the canyon. The kids wanted no part of that! We got up at 4:30, and it was so worth it! That canyon is huge and it is really breath taking!

Now we have the kids up and take them and they are in awe of it too. Caleb is a bit afraid of heights so we had to coax him into a few pictures, but he soon relaxed, except for when it came to the dog, he would not let me take him anywhere near the edges for fear that Riley would just jump off!! Crazy, I know!

I took a lot of pictures and we walked around the south rim, until the heat caught up to us all. We almost killed the dog with the heat, he would run from the sunny areas to the shade, rest a bit and then repeat the whole process.

I was actually sad to leave, there is a lot to do and tons of stuff to see, so maybe one day we will get back, who knows!

The journey begins!

So we are off! This is a picture of our home for the next 9 days! Everything is soo big that I was across the street and up a drive way just to get this semi decent picture!

Our first stop is Barstow, California. This drive took us 7 hours. It actually didn't even feel like 7 hours! I suppose its because it was our first day! The drive for the most part was uneventful, I drove about 2 hours, went into a semi-truck parking lot and couldn't get out, so Charles had to do it for me and then he ended up driving the rest of the way. I did not plan it, put it seems like a good scheme to get him to drive!

We did come across some interesting characters along the way... at a gas station there was a bride and groom pumping gas! Yeah that would of been cause of divorce for me. Didn't realize that you where low on gas before the ceremony dear?

Then there was the little boy that decided that the deli case at Subway was either too dirty for him or he was trying to taste the goods on the other side because he licked the whole thing over and over again!

Also at Subway, Lauren decide that she wanted to go live with another family and sat down with her new little brother until I asked her what she was doing! The little boy never even turned his head ( I think he was freaked out!) She was shocked she swore it was Caleb!!

Anyways thats about it for our first day, we are now off to the Grand Canyon!!

This is the sunset in Barstow, California.

128 boxes....

128 boxes, that's all it took to pack all of our most worldly goods and prized possession's! I thought for sure we would have at least 150! Now that doesn't include beds, fridges and washers but you get the point. Shouldn't a family that has 4 people and have been together for 15 plus years yield more stuff than 128?? Because most of those boxes (as anyone who has had professionals pack for them) is stuffed with 80% paper. The actual items are tiny compared to all that wrap. Why wrap up a plastic bowl or a shoe I ask? Well I have stopped asking because this is our 3rd major move and I have dealt with this paper issue before.

So the goods are being packed in a truck as I speak and I am sitting on the floor, with the laptop literally in my lap! We are living out of suitcases and washing our one unpacked cup over and over again! And the one thing I can say about all this is this: I miss ice!

Good times and goodbyes...

The last few weeks have been full of good times and goodbyes. There have been weddings, parties, picnics and ceremonies. We have said our goodbyes to the good friends that we have made here in California, through work, school and community.

Lauren has been promoted to the 10th grade and Caleb is now a 6th grader!! Charles has advanced to Chief Petty Officer, and we are very proud of him. I got to put one of his anchors on at the ceremony and Caleb handed him his new hat.

My work party was a blast. They surprised me with a collage of photos of themselves and some of our regular customers. They also went above and beyond and got me a necklace from Tiffany's! I really did work with a bunch of great people, that will truly be missed!

I hope the people that we all have met, are still part of our lives in some way (even if it's just a Christmas card or a "hey" on the myspace!) for many years to come!

Thank you all for being part of us.

Now I promise I will go back to my "real sarcastic" self! haha

Salute to American Graffiti

A part of the movie American Graffiti was shot in downtown Petaluma. And every year they have a tribute for it. We got the movie as a going away/welcome home gift from Paul and Michele and watched it our first week here on the floor before the furniture came!

This year we decided to go and check it out, being that this was the 35th anniversary. They had 4 of the original cars and tons of classic cars!

welcome to my world...

In years past I have emailed the many "going-ons" of the Inman family, but I have decided to jump on the blog wagon and put it out there for the world to see. (watch out world, right?)

As most of you know, we are headed back to the good ole East Coast after a long 3 years in California.
I wanted to keep the interested informed about our trip across the country and the happenings of our adventures!

The countdown has begun! We leave June 14th!

Im actually looking forward to "sharing" with everyone, so enjoy!!!

Tiffany