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.

Chaos

The BRU over at Jill's blog this week is about chaos. Check it out on Friday. My entry is a photo essay. I think you'll understand. 

What did they pack up?!

Crib parts and other random junk

My child's bedroom on a nutshell...or multiple boxes

They took the sheets with everything else!

Suitcase stuff in my closet

They hadn't finished here before their lunch break. 

kitchen is "organized"

Tonight John and I went through every inch of our kitchen and made three lists: UAB (air/fast-ish), suitcases, and get rid of. Anything that didn't make it on those lists is going HHE (ship/slow).

It's nice to have that done, to know what is going where. And that's the only room in the house that's completely organized. But upon thinking about our house, we've realized that we really don't have that much stuff. It feels like we do, because we have a full house. Most of the furniture is from the Embassy, though. We got rid of a ton of stuff at the garage sale, and still have more to get rid of.

We probably won't get close to our weight limit on this end.

But the shopping...

We're going to do a ton of shopping in the States. We might close up the gap in D.C. We also plan on shipping some stuff to ourselves in Manila.

I'm still a bit sad about leaving, but I'm getting really excited about the time we're going to spend in the States. And I'm excited to go to Manila. I really am.

We don't have sponsors assigned yet, that I know of, or a housing assignment but once we hear about those, I'll be even more excited.

I had a job interview tonight for a position in the Consular Section and I'm pretty excited about it. I'd be doing fingerprinting, which sounds like the exact amount of mental stress that I want the next two years: none.

I feel like I did really well, and I look forward to hearing back from them.

Our last CR vacation

The topic for the BRU  this week is vacations.

In February we went to Tamarindo for our third and last time. We dubbed it our favorite place in Costa Rica, and chose it as a good place to meet John's parents who flew into the Liberia airport.

It was fun, but a bit bittersweet knowing that it was our last trip there. We didn't get awesome photos from that trip unfortunately, but I'll share a few.

Simon climbed into Coen's bed

Yes they are...and they're amazing

A cold beer on a hot day

A cold lemonade on a hot day

Simon being awesome

Coen copying Simon