Travel Stories

The FS BRU that’s happening next week is about travel stories. We traveled a lot through the summer, and I mean a lot. And our kids are amazing.
My kids were in five countries, and 17 different U.S. States in less than 4 months. They traveled over five thousand miles while we dragged them on road trips from Dallas to Minneapolis, with stops in Kansas City, Missouri and Des Moines. And then just five weeks later we left Minneapolis and went to Falls Church, Virginia with stops in Chicago, Cleveland, Niagara Falls (Canadian side), New York City, and Philadelphia.

My kids went from their comfortable home in Costa Rica, to traveling all over the States with grace. Then they excelled at long distance travel when we flew from Dulles to Tokyo, Japan (13.5 hours) and were complimented when we arrived. They were amazing tourists in Japan, and then arrived in Manila after another 4.5 hour flight.

My kids were amazing. A.Maz.Ing. There’s no other way to put it.  It gives me a bit of a confidence boost thinking that they were amazing partly due to the fact that we’ve done good parenting. That makes me feel good. But they’re good people. And their personalities are good. I’m so lucky to have such happy and well behaved children. Did they have moments when they weren’t amazing? Yes, absolutely. But they were fewer and farther between then they should have been. And neither parent wanted to pull hair out.
My kids have always been great travelers. I have pictures of all the kids traveling throughout their lives. Unfortunately they’re on an external drive that I have, and the cord for it is missing. But I promise, I have proof that the kids are good travelers.
It’s a good thing, too, because John and I love to travel. We hope to pass that on to the kids.

NOT on Home Leave Anymore

We arrived at Oakwood last weekend. I'm digging the renovations, especially the washer/dryer unit in my  closet. Coming to Oakwood has been great, it was like coming home, and was the first time I'd felt like I was really in my own space since we left Costa Rica in April.

So far I've worked on unpacking the suitcases we dragged across 17 states. The day after I got a good handle on that, the UAB came. I've been dragging my feet with that, but I hope to get a lot accomplished today (while I keep the kids inside because it's going to be almost 100 degrees with 90% humidity). The worst is the clothing. I feel a need to wash every item, and it's not a small amount.

I'm a stay at home mom to three for the first time, and let me tell you...it's not easy. Luckily we're at Oakwood where they have a playground, and a tennis/basketball court, and a sand volleyball court, and a pool.

Home leave was...well...interesting. I guess I could say that overall it was good. I liked seeing family and friends, and the food was amazing (up 10-ish lbs amazing), but home leave wasn't easy. It's hard to have a family of five sharing a house with a family of four. It's hard to leave the place you call home and realize that you're not going back. It was hard on the kids to leave their friends, school, nanny, and house (Simon had a very hard time with this one). It was an adjustment to John and I to not have a nanny for the kids. We didn't go out as much as we're used to because there was no ease of asking the nanny to work a bit of overtime.

The best part of home leave was our road trip. We started in MN, spent two nights in Chicago seeing the sights and some friends, we spent a night in Cleveland and ate at an Iron Chef's restaurant (which I highly recommend. It's called B Spot and is a Michael Symon burger joint. super tasty), we did a night in Niagara falls and stayed in a hotel with a view of the falls, we did two nights in NYC and saw The Book of Mormon (hil-a-ri-ous) as well as doing a bus tour with the kids, and I caught up with a friend, we did two nights in Philly and saw the bell, went to the Please Touch Museum, and had Phillly Cheese Steaks, twice. We ended it here in Virginia, at what we're calling home.

After buying the car in Dallas, driving it to MN, and then VA and all the driving where we stayed going to see people and things, we put over 5,000 miles on the car. It was all worth it. Coen might not agree though - he's not a huge fan of road tripping.

The pictures from Home Leave are still on the card, but maybe after I finish unpacking the UAB I'll be able to work on those. We have some great pictures to share.

A month from now we'll have wheels up and we'll begin our journey in The Philippines. I can't wait to be settled in a place for a little while. The prospect of new work, new friends, a new house, and all the other great benefits of getting to post are all exciting.

I Miss Blogging and A Bit of R&R

And I don't just miss the (somewhat) frequent posts I used to put on my own blog. I miss reading other's posts and feeling connected to other's lives.

This isn't me declaring that I'll be better about it, because I probably won't. I'm just saying. I miss y'all.

We're spending Memorial Day weekend with my in-laws at their house which is on a lake that's West/North West of Minneapolis.  This is possibly the most relaxed I've been since coming home from our Disney/Universal week. There are many memories of spending time here with John before we moved to Texas back in '03. Then we'd come here any time we could on our vacations. Also, there are grandparents here to help with all the grand children (let me tell you...a house full of a six year old, two two year olds, a one year old, and a newborn is really, really crazy sometimes). The littles are really comfortable here because they were in this house when John, Malachi, and I were in FL. Simon was especially excited when he found out we were going to grandma and grandpas house. Coen got in the house on Thursday and proceeded to smile happily.

It unfortunately isn't super warm here. John's parents bought sea-doos right before we came up and I haven't been on one yet since it's so cold outside! Not to mention that the lake water is still super, super cold. That doesn't make for excitement to possibly be thrown in.

Yesterday I drove my first go-kart. It was fun, a bit terrifying, but fun. I think if I was provided a helmet I would have been a bit more adventurous.

Today we're getting together with John's aunts and uncles and cousins whom we haven't seen in years. The last time I remember seeing them was when Malachi was Coen's age. Crazy.

The kids were sick when we got into MN a couple of weeks ago, and I finally am showing signs of a cold. Blech. Hopefully it will go away by next Wednesday when I have the kids to myself for four days.

Still on Home Leave

We've gone to Disney World and Universal's Islands of Adventure
We've seen family and friends
Said family and friends have met Coen, and some even met Simon
We've learned of a fun new game (Dominion) and taught it to family
We've eaten more great food (and we started to eat more meals in my brother-in-laws house):
Famous Daves (MN BBQ is not as good as TX BBQ)
[More] Jimmy John's
Papa Murphy's
Probably others that I can't think of right now
We went to the lake to spend a night at John's parent's house to pick up the kids
We've watched movies in my brother-in-law's home theater
We fish-sat
We puppy-sat (for about a day)
We've done dishes (BTW washing dishes by hands has proven to be very cathartic during Home Leave)
I've washed laundry (and not folded or put away, per tradition)

Once we're done with home leave I'll post more about it and how I feel about it, currently though, the outlook isn't great.

I was going to post pictures, but I can't seem to get the computer to read the card. :/ Hopefully John can get it to work.

My First Home Leave

So far we've...

Eaten at:

Celebration
Campuzano
Jimmy John's
Krispy Kreme (twice)
Mama's Daughter's Diner
Breadwinner's
Hard Eight
Quick Thai Bistro
Papa Murphy's a.k.a Cafe Moore's
Cafe Dunham's

and some insignificant places.

We've seen lots of friends, a few family members, and missed out on some sick family members. We've driven almost 2,000 in our brand new Mazda CX-9.

It's been fun, and it's been exhausting. Being stuck in a small room with all three kids is a challenge. We've said good bye to the littles, and prepared for my and Malachi's first trip to Disney and we take off early tomorrow for that.

I don't know how people keep up with blogs during home leave! It seems like an impossibility at this point.