Cross Country.....

Our itinerary from FL to OR was: stop in Houston for Thanksgiving, OKC to visit with Aunt JJ, New Mexico for an overnight stay and to have dinner with our friend's the Matuszaks, Las Vegas for Uncle Matt's Weapon's School Graduation, then complete the drive to OR.

TEXAS

Joining Grandpa (a.k.a. the dog whisperer) and the doggies for their walk:

Being silly with Grandpa at Old Town Spring:

With Grammy and Grandpa while Christmas shopping in Old Town Spring:

With cousins Chloe and Logan:

With Uncle Matt, Aunt Amy, Logan and Chloe:

With Grammy and Aunt JJ:

Let the hugging begin!

OKLAHOMA
Downtown OKC:

Sitting on a buffalo downtown (they are everywhere)-it was COLD that night:

Enjoying his first smore's at Aunt JJ's (I was pleased to see the marshmallow kind of grossed him out and he hardly ate any)--marshmallows scare me! Jenette also treated us to PF Changs that night for dinner--and my dear friend Katie dropped by for a visit with her youngest Henry (I forgot to take a picture though!)

W showing off the elephant pancake Aunt JJ and daddy made:

Thanks for the fun visit Jenette!

LAS VEGAS

Family shot at Hoover Dam:

W teasing Aunt Amy by trying to steal her scarf:

The Bellagio

We had to stop in to see the Christmas decorations at the Bellagio...we loved them when we were in Vegas FIVE (I can't believe it was five) years ago:

W watching trains intently.....

....and suddenly, J decides to get an up close and personal view of those trains...and before we know it he is stepping right up on the display.... !

He only crunched a few poinsettias before someone (I don't remember who I was speechless) grabbed him before anything was really damaged......

With daddy before the graduation:

We stayed in a very tiny room on base in Vegas...very tiny being that there were four of us, Katy and Bear and one bedroom with a full-size bed. Luckily there was a pull-out bed in the sofa (about 3 feet away)--and it all worked out. At least temporarily. We didn't sleep very much but we don't sleep very much anyway. =)

The rest of the drive went smooth. We had to detour through California due to snow in northern Nevada but that went well. Mark and Jan drove with us to ferry a car with Katy and Bear and it helped so much.

Before Christmas.........

During Christmas week we were staying at our friend's Alexis and Johan's house and we took advantage of any snow that fell.....

We put the little people to work right away:

We built our first snowman:

We admired daddy's snow angel:

And loved every minute of it...

$1 Cereal

Doesn't everyone do this when they see a sale on Quaker cereal for $1 a box?

And no, these are not all of our boxes...we were staying at our friend's house and this is our loot combined...and our friend K proudly showing off the tower we built.

Train Mountain

I think I could have titled this post "Train Heaven" from the boys' perspective! Someone owns a ton of land and a ton of trains (full-sized, miniature, ride-on, etc.) - I couldn't imagine what an expensive hobby that is! But they had "Train Mountain" open at the holidays for rides, visits with Santa and cocoa. We went with our friends the Gilcreasts and here are some pictures of the day:
All Aboard!


Watching the model trains:

and on the subject of trains...here is J and W watching a train movie with their little friend A:

Playing trains on the window sill:

And saying good-bye to Grammy and Grandpa at the Amtrak train station:

Crater Lake

We have been SO excited to see snow this winter. And we saw some serious snow when we drove up to Crater Lake National Park at the beginning of January.

We.are.freezing.here.

Look at the trees! They look like Dr. Seuss trees to me...I took this from the car while we are driving...that is how high the snow was:

And this is where you stop at the welcome center...I laugh whenever I see this picture. So W...such a character.

**BTW, where we live doesn't get this much snow folks...**

We brought a sled and pulled the boys around a little. There were some amazing sledding spots around the National Park but Geoff and I were severely underdressed for any type of snow activity.

Cocoa break:

I really like this picture...look at those handsome guys!

They were pretty excited to ride in the sled for the first time:

The boys did get to do some real sledding with Geoff, and our friends C and K. Their house is right at the top of a hill so all the boys spent hours sledding right on the street.

Our House

Hi everyone! I had almost 700 pictures on my camera-I just uploaded them all...and seeing all of the photos reminded me of all the places we visited and all of the fun things we have done since Thanksgiving. We are really blessed.

So rather than try to do a mass blog post on the last few months I am going to start small. And maybe do some "rewind" posts in the next few days.
So we will start with our house! After three different offers on three different homes, we closed on our new house a couple of weeks ago.

SOLD! There was never a "sold" sign in the yard but at least we got a "sale pending" picture!

We had been hesitant about this home all along due to various reasons but as soon as it was ours and we walked in the front door Geoff and I both fell in love with it. We have tremendous views:

Katy and Bear enjoying the views:

The boys watching a train:

Our kitchen:

Eating one of our first meals in our house:

Breakfast area:

....and our first project. The builder of the house has been wonderful. This house was built in 2007 and had been for sale since so no one had ever lived in it. Well, there wasn't a door on the master bath and with Geoff's crazy schedules we really wanted a door. So we hired the builder to put one up. He had the frame and drywall up in record time! Now we are waiting for the door to arrive.

This is from the bathroom view:

The house has a gigantic fireplace (I am so excited to have a fireplace...and a garage!) We did inherit quite a landscaping job (as you can tell from the pictures) but have found someone to do it...it involves excavating, terracing, and incorporating a drainage system. But it will be fun to pick everything the way we want it..here is a picture from under the deck.

And Geoff's first big project...he built this "deck" for the dogs in one of the crawl spaces under the house. He will fill it in with cedar (and their doggie igloos) so the dogs can have their own indoor and outdoor space. He also replaced a gorgeous cellar door with an inexpensive door so we wouldn't feel guilty cutting a hole in the nice one for a doggie door!

So happy to be home! Will post more home pictures when we get more settled.

Happy New Year!

Ok...so we have had lots of things going on since the last post! We drove across country with the boys, my in-laws, and the dogs. It was SO much easier being that Mark and Jan helped us with the journey. It would have been PaInFuL w/o their help. Thank you again Mark and Jan!! So we drove to OKC and stayed with Aunt JJ (loved visiting with you Aunt JJ and seeing you and Henry Katie!), drove to NM where we visited friends and stayed the night, drove to Las Vegas where we stayed for 3 nights and Uncle Matt graduated from Weapon's School (yey Matt for graduating and yey Amy for single-parenting-it for 6 months!), and that is where we had an abrupt change of travel plans due to the weather. We were going to drive up through northern Nevada to OR but there was too much snow so we re-routed and went through CA. We stayed the night in San Fran and the boys got to add a new state to their list. I think they have now visited 15 states. Pretty good for just being three!

Anyway, before we crossed into OR the boys enjoyed their first full-fledged snowball fight at a rest stop. It was hilarious and J boldly invited a random big man to join by slamming him with a snowball in his chest. But he showed he was a good sport and laughed heartily.

We checked into our hotel and hit the ground running to begin our house-hunt. It has been much more trying than we thought. We found several houses that we love...but they are either out of our price range, in the wrong school district or have ridiculously high "fees" to live there. We have tried and lost out on three homes so far. So now we are pulling back and will have to look for a rental. We were trying so hard to avoid that route but I think it might be for the best to just wait.

So we stayed in a hotel for a week...and moved out on Christmas Eve Day to stay at a friend's house for another week...it worked out great because they have 2 boys and loads of fun toys...and just moved into another friend's house yesterday (hmmm Michelle and Jason may have to kick us out-can't get over the views!). Everyone has been so helpful and generous. We went over to our friends house on Christmas Eve and had so much fun visiting with friends, eating yummy food and the boys were running around wild with everyone and had quite a late night. They didn't get to bed until 10:30 p.m.! I think that is a first for that. We enjoyed a nice Christmas - the boys got some new trucks and cars that have been keeping them somewhat occupied. We believe they are going through a phase of being very short-patience right now (praying it is a phase anyway) so some of the toys caused them more frustration than enjoyment. Some other friends of ours (we first met them in Japan back in 2003~) invited us over for Christmas dinner. They were quite the hosts...and their girls entertained J and W the whole time. They even had a huge bouncy castle the boys loved.

Our realtor has been so patient with us and her son Shane has even entertained the boys during some of our lengthy discussions in her office. Geoff joined Shane, J and W for an indoor snowball fight (just paper balls) in the lobby of the real estate building yesterday.

We woke up a few days before Christmas to a full view of snow everywhere! It was so fun! And the last few days it has snowed buckets here and it is always magical to wake up and see snow blanketing everything. We let the dogs out this morning and saw Bear gallop through it and dive her face in the snow and take a big bite!

We haven't been able to adventure out too far yet with all the house-hunting. But we did manage to go to Train Mountain before Christmas with Phil, Heather and their boys. It was quite the set-up and I couldn't believe we could ride on mini-trains, have cocoa, and see more trains inside for a mere $5. I have pictures from all of the above activities (of course) but don't really have the means to upload them right now. Will have to work on that. I still have Christmas cards to mail out (I have had them Thanksgiving so I have no excuse) and trying to enjoy the holidays even though we aren't feeling quite "settled" yet. Happy New Year everyone!