Day 1 (randomness from day 1 at post)

(written on Wednesday 7/25/12 at 8:00 p.m.)

We arrived at our house today. Doing a rest stop and two days of leave in Tokyo first was a wonderful idea. Though we’re not over jet lag, we’ve made a lot of progress and the kids napped shortly after we came from the airport.

The house is big! It’s by far the biggest that we’ve ever lived in. There’s a hallway that runs from the front door to Malachi’s bedroom that is the longest hallway we’ve seen in a house. Almost all the rooms are big, and the one that isn’t big, is still sizable. The kitchen has room for a table and we’re thinking of having an island made to make up for the lack of counter space.

There is a ton of storage space here! Every bedroom has a closet, and the office/guest room has a large built-in. There’s a walk-in closet in the kitchen as well as a fun pantry in the wall that’s a bit mysterious. There are even two large closets in the hallway! There’s no lacking for space for my towels in this house!

There’s no crib! Oops. This is my fault. I meant to request from housing to have a crib in one of the rooms instead of a bed, and I forgot. This is going to be one of John’s jobs tomorrow. Hopefully they can fulfill this request quickly. Coen isn’t a huge fan of the tent that we have (soooo glad we have the tent!).

The laundry room is outside. This bothers me, but hopefully I won’t be doing much of my own laundry after a little bit. I’m going to call the internet company tomorrow and I’d love to have internet before the weekend.

I gave a very short list of groceries for the sponsor to buy, and I know for next time to make it a bit longer. During the boys’ naps John went out to get some things at a store that’s within walking distance. Though it wasn’t overwhelming for him, it was a bit much, and unfortunately the store he went to didn’t have fabric softener. Bummer.

Our sponsor had us over for dinner. His wife arrives tomorrow from R&R so it was just him and his college-aged daughter. Their nice people and about a 3 minute walk from our house. It’s nice to have Embassy families this close.

There’s good security in the village (gated community) that we live in. I doubted it when I saw pictures, but I don’t anymore.

I really like my house. Though I would be even happier if there was one more room (family room would be awesome), it’s so much space and we’re very happy with it.

The kids were ready for bed by 6:00 tonight. It made dinner a bit hard and frustrating. They were in bed before 8:00 and fell asleep very quickly.

Everyone is happy to be finally in one place for a while. Although, Simon has asked a few times today if we’re going to a train, or a plane. I don’t know if he gets that we’re home.

I love that we’re home. 

Better Mood

I’m excited for the next week. Our car was taken today. That was the last thing that needed to happen here. We leave on Saturday for our mini-vacation in Tokyo. John’s been planning a super fun time there, and has even gotten a babysitter for one night, so the parents can have a night out. This is super special to me, I miss having dates with him.

We found out that we’re going straight to our own house!! This is super exciting news. Thanks to the previous tenants leaving post early, they were able to do what was necessary before we arrive. Our sponsors live just one road over from us, so we’ll be walking over to their house for dinner that night. Learning these things makes the arrival more exciting for me.

Today and tomorrow John and I are trying to fill our time, and well…keep the kids occupied. Today we took the metro over to Ballston Mall and had Noodles & Co. for the last time. It’s not an especially amazing place to eat, but you know what? ALL of my kids eat there. That is not an easy thing to do! Because of that it’s high on our list of places that we will go to.

Tomorrow we’re going downtown to see some memorials. Ones that we didn’t make it to last time we lived here, and have only driven by this time. After naps we’ll be doing final Skype visits with people.

Right now, I’m in a good mood. Let’s see how we’re feeling on Sunday after our trip to Japan. 

So much to blog about...

...so little motivation.


It's curious that my motivation has been lacking since blogging has proved to be therapeutic for me. However, my energy has been going to being the stay-at-home mom to the three amazing boys we have.


I feel like they've enjoyed their time in D.C. Unfortunately because of the ages of the littles it's hard to do too much without another adult around. So, we haven't been in the pool a lot. We haven't been downtown much to go to museums, and we have spent a lot of time in the apartment. It's not how I planned spending our month in the area, but it's how we've stayed safe and (mostly) sane.


We have pack out on Monday and then they're taking our car on Thursday. I think I will miss my car more than my other Earthly possessions. I'm absolutely in love with it. If you're shopping for something for a family take a look at the Mazda CX-9, it's awesome.


We leave for Asia shortly after that. I say Asia because we're doing a rest-stop and a couple days of leave in Tokyo first. We're staying at The New Sanno because we're on orders, and it's saving us a ton of money. Probably enough to eat while we're there. 


We're hoping to go straight to our house when we arrive in Manila, but we probably won't. I hope we get into it before our UAB arrives, but I'm not convinced we will.


I miss my family. I haven't seen them in over a month. And I won't see them for a long time. I fear that all of the moving around is hurting the children. I know that these feelings are normal for people in transition, so I'm trying to push through them. However, it's difficult to do. Today we said goodbye to John's parents, and they were saying they may not make it over until next November. We've never gone so long without seeing them.


We think we're going to like Asia, and so we think we may be spending many years there in the future. I'm wondering if it's going to be harder than I thought to live so far from the States.


I got a job at the Embassy. I'll be taking finger prints of the visa applicants. It's supposed to be mind-numbing, it sounds perfect.


School starts in about six weeks. I hope I do well.


My thoughts have been random. I have many more running through my head ready to make it to the blog, but alas, I have run out of time.

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.