My Birthday Raccoon!

Xoche treed this little guy last night for me. She was very proud of herself.

So I'm celebrating this year's birthday with a membership to the TaeKwonDo studio down the street from us. I'm very excited, I've wanted to get involved with a martial art sonce I can remember and I was literally head over heels for a cardio kickboxing class way back in our Deer Creek days. The Bunny was so impressed by my new Gi (sp?) that she wants to join too. If only I could get dh to start we'd be like the Incredibles. lol
Other than the birthday punching and kicking, I feel like I'm making some headway on making friends. I went on a SeeMommyRun walk yesterday with a nice woman (who also is into TKD incidentally and who encouraged me to start, I bow to her in gratitude for being my catalyst!). She also pointed me toward a Mommy-Baby group that sounds cool. I'm missing today's group at this very moment because Ali G crashed out 10 minutes before it was time to leave and it's raining unusually hard. So, you know, you can't do everything at once. But it's okay. I met another mom who had 9 month old boy twins (who were standing and crawling!! Ali G look away!) at the library and we commiserated about 10:30 being right in the middle of nap time. But there is also a family music class on Thursdays that sounds cool and she invited us to a potluck at her house after this week's class so I'm going to try to hit that with the family in tow, dh too. Poor guy, he's got terrible allergies! I'm praying that they are being brought on by some short-lived pollen and not the house! Please god don't let him be allergic to the house itself! That possibility is too dreadful to consider honestly. This place is my dream home, I would be too sad to discover that it's uninhabitable for dh.
What else? I've volunteered to join a Relay For Life team. I don't know much more then that it is an all-night event and the point is to raise money for cancer research but it sounds like the kind of event that would attract kind and interesting people so, I'll give it a go.

So, that's the update for Birthday 2008. Now it's time to get back to regularly scheduled life, folding laundry washing dishes. Ahh, I love it!

Progress report

Just cuteness

Waiting for Nick and the trailer at Frys

Getting loaded and unloaded

Starting point

In process

Getting there

Evening on the pond

Grandpa and his girls

Hold Up Pony!

Okay so I'm calling a full stop for myself today.
Yesterday I never made it to the shower since the moment I opened my eyes I was on - I know everyone with kids knows exactly what I'm talking about. Anyway, fast forward to 4:45, we're at the supermarket and we see our realtor across the produce section. We've been wanting to invite her and her husband over for a meal to thank them for all the work they did cleaning up this house for us. So anyway, I notice she is doing that thing you do when you're sort of hoping to avoid someone, kind of pointedly looking in the opposite direction like you are totally focused on the beets. Well, had I been alone I would have taken the hint and gone on my way but since the Bunny was shouting "D! D! Over here!" I went ahead with Plan A. So she seemed happy enough to say hi but when I invited her for dinner on Friday she looked truly alarmed and asked, like 5 times, "Are you [I]sure [/I]you're up to it?"

Well. When we got home I thought I'd install this mirror that has been hanging around on the floor for three weeks and when I did, well I would have been trying to avoid me too.

Seriously.

I looked completely insane. An escapee off my meds. My glasses (hadn't had a chance to put in contacts) were crooked and smudged, my hair (unwashed in 4 days? 5 days?) was up in a ponytail but with frizzy bits popping up and away all over making my look electrocuted. My old maternity t-shirt was sporting a big ole coffee stain right over the belly and my muffin toppin' gut was giving it that special silhouette. My jeans were hanging off in that snoop dog way and my fleece vest looked about three sizes too small over it all. And the worst part is that neither dh nor dd1 (our resident fashionista) had bothered to say anything to me before letting me out in public! Maybe I've set my bar so low they didn't realize I'd crossed into the danger zone. So today I am dedicating to showering (check), taming the eyebrows, and tracking down all the clothes that are just plain appalling and turning them into rags. And tomorrow I'm going for Farm Wife Cinderella so our friend can relax and enjoy her food without wondering if she's somehow enabling a nervous breakdown by coming to dinner!

Dingo Meet-up!

Sparkletruck and Plady meet-up!
ABQ 4-10-08

We made it!

And it only took 15 days to move two adults, two kids, one dog, one cat, three vehicles (one disabled) and a trailer 3125 miles from central Mexico to San Juan Island WA!

Apart from the first night out when the truck’s fuel pump died just outside of Monterrey and the next day when the Jeep’s battery gave up the ghost in Del Rio we were miraculously free of mechanical trouble. The VW camper aka Toady rolled right out of the shed where it had been on blocks since 2001. And, though the shed it had been in was riddled with Black Widow webs there was no sign of any inside.

We had no real problems towing either the trailer or Toady though the truck was pushing itself toward its limits on the big mountain passes we had to cross in Idaho and Washington. We had great weather all the way through though the temperature went from 95 degrees in Uvalde TX to 45 in Fort Stockton overnight. We saw gorgeous red rock desert in Bluff UT, high plains in New Mexico, snow 15 feet deep at the top of Snoqualmie pass above Seattle and now, the most beautiful area yet, the fabulous mix of farmland, pine forest, sea coast and snow-capped mountain views that make up San Juan Island. We even got to meet up with a real live Dingo in ABQ! That was cool. It was one of those experiences that is just what you hope it will be. It felt like Sparkletruck and I had known each other for much longer than 1 lunchtime, as I suppose, we have. But it was cool. And somewhere I have a picture which I will load when I find it.

The house was in vastly better shape than any of us had dared to hope. It was relatively clean, mold-free (thanks to our intrepid real estate agent and her husband) and within the first 48 hours we had power, heat, hot water and a stove to cook on. Our visions of camping in Toady and a tent in the yard have come to nothing, we’re each in comfortable bedrooms on cozy mattresses on the floor.

The pond at the house has been a pleasant surprise too. We knew it was there of course but had never investigated it’s depth or clarity. It turns out that it is crystal clear and very deep, well over my head in the middle. We also discovered a floating raft with a paddle that the Bunny has taken to paddling around. She is also an avid angler as it turns out. She has a rod and reel and her first stop on this first Saturday was the edge of the pond where she cast in for over an hour in hopes of bringing in a fish. So far we haven’t seen any but we are planning on having it stocked, with what we don't know.

So it has been a week full of happy discoveries and relative calm. The Bunny is already deep into the first grade here now. We arrived last Tuesday, by Wednesday morning she was begging to go meet her new teacher so we stopped in to sign her up and on Thursday morning she started. The best part is how happy she is getting on the bus when it stops at the end of our driveway!!!! She has already said that she likes this school even more than her old one, I think it was the huge library that won her over but she seems to have already made some friends too and is just as happy as can be. And that tells us that as crazy as it sounded for us to up and leave everything we had been doing, it was the right choice.

What is it with Utah?

There was not one diaper changing table in any public bathroom in Utah. Do mormon babies never need a change or do they just not go out in public?

Three days down, how many to go?

We've made it to west Texas, whew. It hasn't been like the old pre-kids road trips, that much I can say for sure! Our first day we didn't get going until late morning, not the pre-dawn we'd hoped for. Dh wanted to try to get to this little town about an hour south of the border where he felt our caravan would be safe. We stopped for dinner late, just past Monterrey and when we went out to continue on to the next stop the truck wouldn't start. So at 11:00 at night we had to get a mechanic to come check it out. Thankfully it was Mexico where you don't need AAA and a million bucks to get some guys to pop out your fuel pump in the parking lot and the install a new one at midnight. It did not seem like an auspicious beginning to our trip though.

So that was the first night, we finally pulled in to the hotel at 2 am. We got a nice late start the next day, spent a good long time at customs where they x-rayed our cars (who knew?) and then made it to Uvalde in time to catch a little of The Biggest Loser (go girls!!!!) and get a swim in. The pool was just a little one so I swam in place by doing freestyle into the ladder, I don't know if it would count as real exercise or not but it felt good after 700 miles in the car (and in the 95 degree heat!!! Holy Cow is Texas hot already!!!!)

Today we only made it to Fort Stockton. We stopped for gas in Del Rio and when I got back in my car wouldn't start! Again we had great mechanic karma, I hadn't even reached for my AAA card yet when a mechanic came over and offered to help. He had a shop a couple blocks away and quickly figured out that we had a lame-o battery and all the a/c, radio/laptop charging/trailer lights had sucked it dry so we got a bigger battery installed pronto and got on the road again. And here we are in windy Ft Stockton. The wind right now is so strong it is kicking waves out of the pool! Seriously. The last hour of driving today SUCKED> Ali G screamed the entire time. Her carseat is really old, a little too big and just clearly not comfy (nor probably safe). I had a perfect replacement in my hands this morning when we went to get dd1 a booster seat to make her street legal. I can tell you I kicked myself that whole hour for cheaping out and not just buying it.

So! That's our story so far. The dog is doing great, the cat is pretty freaked (and needs a round of antibiotics that I'd been hoping I could skip but don't think is wise to any longer) and dh and I are doing okay. The girls are doing great for the most part but I think 300 miles is our maximum mileage before they go insane each day.