Month In Review

I start this off by saying "I can't believe it's been a whole month!" but I'd be lying through my teeth! It's been a long month but we're all here: healthy and just fine.

Our last week in Jacksonville was insane, to say that absolute least. The Boone was going to suck every last drop out of John that it could. He worked incredible hours until the very last day. Thankfully, my parents took the kids for about a week while I had the pre-move inspection, packers and then movers. 

We drove down, separately, very late on a Friday night and then spent just a few days in Land O'Lakes with my family. Thinking we were going to meet our shipment, we started our drive on a Tuesday to get to Virginia (with a stop in Charleston, SC) on Thursday. While in Charleston -actually, we were loading up to finish the drive- I received a call from the truck driver. He informed me he was ready to deliver. Fantastic, I'm eight hours away with three kids so that's like 12 hours. I hung up the phone, crying, as I had just thrown out my back and can barely move...and now I have to drive. It was painful on so many different levels. 

Here is the trip, in pictures. I've tried to remove the painful parts and just remember the fun stuff! 

 Stopped in Georgia. We did it old school with picnic lunches. 

Checking out the "shooter guns" at the 'Del.  

Walking in to Daddy's old barracks.  

Lunching in North Carolina 

 Pumpkin pickin' the first Saturday here. 

Since we had no furniture, we took little trips. This doughnut place was in 

Duck, NC in the Outter Banks.  

 Brotherly love in Kitty Hawk.

Eli found a fishing lure and thought he had found a friend

for life.  

He loved that little fishy!

 Of course, he loved it to death...

Baby Deacon, of course, was a trooper; he nursed and fell asleep on the beach.  

Our friends, Dan and Joy, helped tremendously. One night Joy prepared and packed an 

entire meal. The boys had fun fighting...I mean eating on the floor.  

Fall in our neighbor's yard. Our was filled with boxes and paper.  

The truck, finally! 

What is that white, powdery, substance? Oh, why, it's a 10 pound (OPEN!) bag of flour that was packed. Thank you Sir Mover, but I'd rather buy a new bag when I arrive. 

Thank God for VISITORS!

There's nothing worse than a holiday weekend alone, at home, with toddlers. Oh, wait, there is: A holiday weekend alone, at home, with sick and cranky toddlers! Yes, you read correctly, my kids were cranky. *GASP* Yeah, I know, I'm over it too. We've had a cold since the flight back from New Jersey and the boys seemed to have developed pink eye from the 2 1/2 week old cold.

Thankfully, Uncle Chad and Aunt Kate came to save the weekend! They hopped a flight from VA just to come down and check on us. I'm so happy to not only have them in our life but to be able to trust that they love us enough to come down and deal with our beautiful mess!

Kate found these super awesome Marine Corps uniforms and Chad decked them out with 1st LT bars for Turner and 2nd LT bars for Eli. Though, they could have come from Kate since she served as a Marine, too!

Turner even got a Navy Achievement Medal (NAM)!

He loves to dress up in things like this.

Coincidentally, Eli had this "Mom's Major Cutie" shirt on. I thought it went well with the desert camis. You can see his eyes are watery from the conjunctivitis.

On Saturday, we played around the house. Kate and Chad helped me dump out the dead garden: I'm not sure what I was thinking, trying to keep one more thing alive! The tomatoes (a heat tolerant variety from Hawaii) have survived and are now producing fruit so we saved those. The boys seemed to enjoy dumping the dirt so, I guess, no harm no foul. Turner wore his uniform for the second day in a row and could not be bothered to remove it even though it was 90 degrees.

After naps Saturday, we hit the beach at Mayport. The kids were still not up to par so they weren't their usual selves running from the dunes to the water and back. Eli is fairly attached to a truck from the movie Wall-E (though he's never seen it) so he spent the entire hour fighting the waves and screaming at the water for taking his beloved truck.

Uncle Chad, dutifully wiping Turner's face.

The newlyweds!

Kate helping Eli pile mud on his truck so it didn't get washed away.

8 1/2 month belly. Chad seemed a little proud of his, huh?

After the beach the boys and I were treated to one of our favorite places, Tacolu!

This kid would never turn down beans and rice!

Not only did Chad and Kate come down for a visit, the tackled Eli's birthday gift (a train table), and let me take as many showers as possible in two days but they even took the boys out Sunday morning so I could get a few things done and enjoy the Sunday Morning Show on CBS. Now that was a treat!

Sunday Funday

Our friend, Grace, has access to this super awesome splash ground in her neighborhood. It was an 85 degree Sunday afternoon and the Augustines saved me from schlepping the kids to the beach. What is a usually fun task is getting more difficult by the week so I'm happy to take a break any time I can. Even though it was warm, the water was quite chilly (for FL standards!).

The kids, cheesin' for me.

Grace is the coolest girl we've ever been able to hang with.

She's so teenytiny but she is NOT afraid to show the boys that she can hang!

Turner loved the slide.

Eli wasn't a fan of being sprayed on the way up to the slide.

He was perfectly fine with jumping.

Grace even tested out the slide and loved it!

The belly at 33 weeks!

Make Your Own Sidewalk Paint!

When John's home and no weekend duty is to be stood, we're happy to celebrate TGIF. These days, it's more like *sigh* it's Friday. I try to find something constructive to do so we're not sitting around and here's what happened this Friday afternoon.

It's getting hotter by the day so I try to do a project/craft/outing that will eventually involve water. Today, we made our own sidewalk paint. It was super easy and something the boys had a great time with.

Mix equal parts water and corn starch in a bowl. In today's case, I used 3/4 cup of both. Our friend Grace was coming over to play so I wanted enough to go around.

Using something you can fit with a lid, mix the corn starch with the water and food coloring. I happen to have a bunch of Gerber bowls with lids and they worked great.

I tested the bowls before handing them to my eager mixers. Cleaning up a rainbow off the floor didn't sound like fun!

Turner enjoyed shaking up the colors and was, of course, careful.

Eli was just trying to figure out what the heck we were doing

and how soon he could get in to the mess.

Most of the colors mixed in quickly and easily but pink and purple didn't. I was

checking the food coloring package and found it's

from Clementine's Kitchen...in Monterey, CA! Years ago...oops!

Who told this little baby to grow up?!?

Turner, the careful artist.

Elias, the explosive, creative genius.

Right after this picture, someone dumped a bowl over so I put the camera down to show them how to make handprints and other things. Because of the corn starch, the pain dries quickly. We experimented using water to spread the paint and watched the colors wash down the drive way. Eventually, all the paints ended up in the rinse water and they just played in that.

Our sweet friend, Grace, arrived and the boys had already blown through all the paint. Poor Grace, you could tell he knew she was coming over to do something fun. She looked around at the mess like "Thanks for waiting, guys!"

And for our Fun Friday Finale, we brought our friends to our favorite place Ohana Shave Ice right in Atlantic Beach! I could eat this EVERY.SINGLE.DAY. The woman that owns it makes her own syrups and they're unlike anything I've ever tasted! AND, for some reason, the colors don't stain. So, yes, my dear Elias, go ahead and dump the blue ice down your Polo shirt!

Friends and Frogs

Yesterday was full of "firsts" for Turner. It was nice to see him finally break free of the two year old and try to be three for a day.

We were at the smal park in our community and two boys came in the gate. He turned to ask me "Hey, what's hees name?" and I about fell over. This? From the kid who clings to my leg? Wow! I immediately said "I don't know, let's go ask them." We walked up to the two boys and I tried to get Turner to ask their names. He didn't, but their grandmother got the general idea. Not even two minutes later Canon and Turner were throwing a football! It was the most adorable thing I've ever seen. Turner would even say "Yaaaaay Cannon. You caught the ball!"

Canon and brother Mason (3 and 13 months) and Turner ran around and collected sticks to put in a pile. I cannont wait for Eli to run around with his brother. I hate wishing for time to go faster, but I just want to watch them run together!

We came home and along the way collected all the magnolia leaves we could find. It seemed like Turner still wanted to play so we went out back to play and investigate things. In the play house, there was a frog! Just a tiny little rain frog. Turner squated and said "Hey! What is that?" I said "A frog!" And out of nowhere, with Mr. Miyagi-like skills caught the frog with his thumb and index finger! I was so excited, I ran and grabbed the first camera I saw. He caught his first frog! Again, adorable.


After Mr. Froggie had been loved to death (I'm pretty sure he was just stunned.), it was time for a nap. I thought the day had already gone great. When Turner woke up we were talking about changing his diaper and about how big boys go on the potty. Out of no where, he said he needed to pee and he wanted to go on the potty. He went several times and then just didn't feel like it any more. I was caught off guard and didn't have any cool "potty pants" or special treats. I'm hoping when the time really comes it's going to be that easy!