As Promised…

04. July 2008 · Comments Off on As Promised… · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

Here’s some pics of Jake from his ice skating lesson at the Cary Ice House today. The lead counselor, Tina, let Timmy and me don ice skates and join Jake on the rink.

Jake is a very careful kid — ergo, he is a very careful skater. He did a great job negotiating the little course Brianna set up for the beginners. But he’s also very very slow…the other kids attempt to put some speed in their course, but also would fall down quite a bit. The other kids didn’t mind falling, but I guess it’s something Jake doesn’t care to do.

Jake proudly told us that he only fell one time all week!

Enjoy!

190 – The Real One

02. July 2008 · Comments Off on 190 – The Real One · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

The current battery count. This takes care of all the boys’ toys.

This weekend I’ll take care of the remote controls and spare
flashlights.

I’ve had to upgrade to a larger storage container.

Monkey Joe’s

02. July 2008 · Comments Off on Monkey Joe’s · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

Out of nowhere, about two months ago, a Monkey Joe’s opened in Cary, one of those bouncy house centers.  Incidentally, it’s around the corner from a place called Jumpin’ Beans, the exact same thing.
I took Timmy today to meet some of his former preschool classmates and he had a blast!! He was incredibly well-behaved, no hitting or any mal-behaviors. He bumped heads with another child at one point and Timmy was in tears asking “Can we go home now?”, but after a couple cookies, he was recharged and ready to continue on!

I’ve been showing a lot of Timmy pictures lately, tomorrow I’m hoping to visit the Ice House while Jake’s in his skating lesson and will try to get some photos of him. Today apparently Jake did a little obstacle course on the ice, I’m impressed!

"Look at me! I’m you!"

02. July 2008 · Comments Off on "Look at me! I’m you!" · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags:

Yes. That’s what he said when he got into my pile of laundry this
morning.

I’ll have to upload the other hilarious poses he did when I broke out
the camera.

A More Substantial Post

01. July 2008 · 4 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , ,

Hi friends!

Okay, okay, I’m sure you’re growing sick of my super-brief postings about the nitnoid things that I’m doing to prepare the house for the move.

Not interesting!

Unfortunately, there isn’t too much interesting stuff going on during the week. This week, Jake is in an ice skating camp. It’s crossed my mind to sneak over tomorrow while he’s on the ice and grab a couple of pictures…he said he’s having a “pretty good time” and today he was skating on his own already, so I’m guessing he might have quite a bit of confidence by his last day, Thursday.

Every weekend has been full of family activities. As is typical just before one of our moves, Dave and I attempt to cram in as much activity as possible…in this case, we’re getting all the North Carolina we can! This past Sunday we went to the beach with the Goldmans. I also have some pictures from our trip, but they aren’t captioned yet. And as always, Maryann’s are much better!

Saturday was the Goldman’s annual “Patriotic Party”, which is placed somewhere in the 2nd half of June between Memorial Day and Independence Day. This is our 3rd year taking part, and as usual, it was a blast!

(Enjoy this precious picture I caught with Maryann’s camera of the boys sharing a Sit ‘n Spin…for once they weren’t fighting!)


This weekend, we’re joining the Warlicks on an overnight trip to the mountains and Charlotte. We’re planning a visit to the Linville Falls, then on to Charlotte where we’re planning a tour of Lowe’s Motor Speedway and then spending the afternoon at the Discovery Place museum.

And the following weekend will be our last Durham Bulls game (sniff sniff!). We’ll join the Warlicks for that too.

Dave’s dissertation work is in the final stages; after the Air Force gives its public release blessing, he gets to release it to the graduate school for official publication. That will probably happen next week.

He was excited to receive an e-mail today from the editor of the Monthly Weather Review, one of our field’s premier peer-reviewed journals (think New England Journal of Medicine for meteorologists!) asking to review an article related to weather phenomena in Korea. Wow! Dave, reviewing MWR articles!

I couldn’t be more proud!

So on tomorrow’s docket:
1.) Buy some bright-colored sticky Post-It Notes to start marking the “Do Not Pack” items.
2.) Schedule canceling utilities in NC
3.) Schedule turning on utilities in NE
4.) Keep Timmy happy. We might take a trip to the pool, maybe I can do the cancellations/turning ons from the pool deck? What a life!

168 oz.

30. June 2008 · Comments Off on 168 oz. · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,
That’s how much beer I just dumped down our kitchen sink.

My current mission: To combine the contents of our garage fridge with our kitchen fridge. The garage fridge is moving with us to NE, while the kitchen fridge will stay here, so I need to get the thing emptied and thawed before Monday.

Most of the contents of the garage fridge was beverages, plus any overstocks on frozen foods (like spare whole fryer chickens and frozen waffles). So beer, soda and juice boxes.

Last summer, towards the end of our Ft. Fisher vacation, Dave and Andy bought a 24-pack of Coors Light.  I think Dave was thinking, “Hey, Andy’s from Colorado, maybe he drinks it.” Nope.

So we kept the extra cans in our fridge from the end of our vacation last July until now. I just noticed that there’s a 2 Sep 07 expiration date on the cans.

14 cans, 12 oz. per can = 168 oz. Down the drain.

Alcohol abuse at the max!

110

26. June 2008 · 6 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

I removed 31 more batteries tonight, from Jake’s electronic keyboard and Timmy’s 8 (count ’em: EIGHT) Shake ‘n Go cars. Wendy reminded me about each of those cars having 3 AA batteries! Phew, I almost forgot!

So the current battery count is 110.

Moving Preparations Continue

25. June 2008 · Comments Off on Moving Preparations Continue · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,
“Oh my gosh, what on earth are you doing with that enormous pile of batteries?”

Um, yeah…this is one of those fine-print sorts of things they don’t tell you about having young kids while in the military.

You know all those cool toys my kids have? The various Christmas, birthday, “gosh, I’ve missed you” gifts? The “congratulations on potty training”, “Preschool graduation” and “You were good today at Target” gifts?

So many of those toys have batteries, and when you have a commercial mover coming in 2 weeks to pack up your stuff, you want to start early on the quest to get as many of those batteries removed as possible.

The packers/movers don’t remove the batteries…you do. When the packer comes across something with batteries…if they’re nice they’ll give you a chance to remove the batteries so it can get packed with everything else. If they aren’t nice, they quietly set the item aside and continue packing around it…and before you know it, Jake’s bedroom is full of sealed boxes with one Lamaze lullaby toy lying in the corner.

What you’re looking at in the picture is a view down into a plastic storage bin of batteries. The bin is about 1/2 full, and these are all the batteries EXCEPT for the boys’ GeoTrax and Tomy “Blue Track” Thomas the Tank Engine sets. Those two train sets will probably triple what I’ve already removed…but the boys are still playing with those sets at least daily, so I’ll wait until just a couple days before the packers come before I tackle that.

The bin currently contains 79 batteries. Most of which are AAs, not enough of which are rechargables. Most of our rechargables are in the GeoTrax, thank heavens.

Also, I came across at least a dozen corroded batteries, so those are discarded.

Ugh.

And let’s not forgot those other “illegal-to-pack” items: light bulbs, cash (i.e., the contents of my boys’ piggy banks), and liquids.

Back to work!

Back from PA okay…

24. June 2008 · Comments Off on Back from PA okay… · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: ,

But just okay.

We got back from Pennsylvania around 5pm tonight. In Richmond, on I-95 right through downtown, a car in front of me rolled over a piece of tire and it whipped into the front end of the Prius. I wish I had more time to react, but I didn’t. Even though Dave and I were thinking about pulling over to check out the damages, downtown Richmond is NOT the place to just pull over anywhere. While our car was driving fine afterwards, two pieces of the 3-piece plastic grill for the air intake were destroyed.

There’s also a slight dent on the right side of the lip under the intake area. Just enough that we’ll probably have to get it repaired/replaced before we can replace the plastic grillage.

As if we didn’t have enough to do before we move… 🙂

Ya know, it’s always so wonderful when we’re in PA — and stuff like this always happens when we get home. In 2006 it was Jake’s broken leg…in 2007 Dave was wrapping up his changing of advisors/offices on campus. I guess this is relatively small by comparison…but certainly par for the course!

Timmy playing at the park with his cousins

19. June 2008 · Comments Off on Timmy playing at the park with his cousins · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags:
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