Minnesota is Heaven, But Virginia is Home

Kind of dark, sorry--this is a view of the right side of the church from the main aisle. A view of the left side from the main aisle. There are also benches and smaller "boxes" on the gallery level on both sides. Dim! But check out the three chandeliers over the main aisle--all real candles lit during the service. Last night I had the pleasure of participating in "Christmas on Historic Hill" at Trinity Church here in Newport. For those of you who know Newport, you know that Trinity Church is the old white church in the square off Thames Street. Here is their website: www.trinitynewport.org . There are pictures and a history of the church there...pretty interesting. According to my notes, the church that is currently there was built in 1725. I have been looking for an opportunity to get inside the church. I guess we could have gone to church services there as it is still a fully-functioning church. But. I just don't know what Episcopalians do . I have hea...

Not much to report from this week at the De For household. I have been looking for a job. I know that this happens to coincide with the posts about how much heat costs and how high our San Diego mortgage is, but I want to reassure you all that we are not going bankrupt. Yet. I am merely looking for a job as a way of getting out and spending time with adults, a nice little job that allows me to use my brain and socialize with people who don't know anything about Charlie & Lola or Thomas the Train. Should be pretty easy to find a nice job, right? Wrong. The two interviews that I had this week went fine. Great, in fact. One was to do Accounts Payable at a local timeshare resort. The other was to work for a few hours a week at the local library. Very, very part-time jobs. It wasn't like I was interviewing for Kofi Annan's job at the UN or something (if, in fact, people do interview for that job and it isn't an elected position...please, Hans, no lectures). No ...

The one interior shot I got before the camera went dead. LCDR & Mrs. De For in the front parlor Last night was the Naval War College's Holiday Ball, which was held at the "beautiful Rosecliff mansion" here in Newport. Check out Rosecliff at www.newportmansions.com . Wow, I think I just made a link. I never figured out how to do that on MSN. Cool! Anyway, I've been to Rosecliff a few times, so it wasn't like my jaw was dropping or anything, but it's still kind of a nice house. You know? Rosecliff boasts the largest ballroom in Newport. Last night, it was filled with uniforms from all branches of the service, including foreign officers. Just looking at the uniforms was entertaining. I'm used to Navy uniforms, which are fairly simple and straightforward. There were some uniforms last there that were pretty flamboyant. Not like Zouave or anything, just...red, orange and green satiny lapels, lots of big around-the-neck type medals, spurs. Wow. Lots of fla...

Alex, what is: $300-400 per month? That is correct. Holy cats, it's going to cost us $400 per month to heat this pile. Peder, Sarah, think you've got us beat on how low the thermostat can humanly be set before one starts seeing one's breath? It is coooooold in this house. The radiators in the kitchen don't even work. I was going to complain to our landlady about it, but now that we've gotten our first oil bill, I'm thinking that we'll just run the stove for heat. It's gas, and the gas bill was about $17 last month. What the? And Grandmas, before you start being concerned that the children are going to be affected by the cold, try not to worry. We are keeping them dressed in multiple layers and are running space heaters (for short, closely monitored durations) around them. They are wearing multiple layers to bed and sleeping under layers of blankets. They don't seem to notice the chill in the air. We were (or rather I was, as Hans was out)...

What is up with hair, anyway? Hair really, really annoys me. You would think that after what, at least 16 years of shaving one's armpits, the hair would give up. It keeps popping above the skin's surface, only to get clearcut every single day. You would think that one day, the armpit hairs would say to each other "You know what, I'm just tired of this...I'm not sticking my neck out there again". But no. The armpit hair comes back every single day. Ugh. Would anyone care to get a two-for-one deal at the closest laser hair removal salon? The same goes for leg hair. I mean, duh. I have been shaving my legs since I was about 12. Get the POINT. Hair is pretty dumb. And now that I'm getting older, I'm getting more hair in some spots. For example, I seem to have grown a nice, blonde mustache (I can thank God for at least giving me blonde facial hair) that I didn't even realize had shown up until I tilted my chin a certain way in the mirror. I looked like ...

Thanksgiving was quite a success, if one can judge by pictures alone! I have pictures of the rest of us that look pretty much the same, but Hans and Donna begged me not to post them.

Fireplaces make ideal parking areas. Not as awful as it looks. Really. It's hard to see, but she has a little pigtail on top. You can't see it, but she's clapping.

Well, I finally have decided to move over to Blogger. It's just much, much easier for everyone to view and make comments. Seeing as I enjoy having a comment or two, blogging on MSN was becoming a drag. Thank you to those of you who made it through and commented from time to time. I know it wasn't easy, but it was appreciated. Comments are motivation, at least for me. So, what have we been up to? I blogged about Chad and Heidi's visit (very nice) and our trip to Essex, Connecticut to experience "Day Out With Thomas". Josiah continues to ask me to go and visit Thomas. He's even gone so far as to go and get his shoes and bring them to me, then inform me "Let's go see Thomas!". It's so hard to explain to him that seeing Thomas "in the flesh" like that was a one time only deal. Well, at least for this year, anyway. His passion for all things Thomas doesn't seem to wane. He's upstairs right now, playing with a newly fa...

October 25 Sam We have a new baby to welcome...Samuel Theobald. I think his middle name is James, but I'm not positive. He was born last night. He weighed a whopping 8 pounds 10 ounces and is a surprisingly small 21" long. With two very tall parents, I was expecting him to be 24"! Genevieve and Steve are doing great and it sounds like Sam is already eating like a horse and causing his mother to fall deeply in love with him. It was rather a long afternoon as I got the call that Gen had gone into labor around 1:30 Minnesota time. I picked up the message around 3:00 p.m. RI time...we were all thinking that she was going to have him in a matter of moments because her contractions were so close together right from the start. But he took a few more hours to arrive and ended up coming via ceasarean section late yesterday night. I wish that I could put into words how amazing it is when someone so close to you is blessed in this way. Gen and I talked so many times during these las...

September 13 Home Again Well, here we are, back in Minnesota. Actually, we've been here since last Thursday night. I know, I know...what is the holdup? Why haven't I blogged? The answer is because we've been crazily busy ever since we pulled in. But first: the big trip from Japan. It went well...really, really well. My friend Stephanie dropped all of us off at the bus stop in Yokosuka early on Saturday morning, helped us get all of the stuff out of the van, and then marched up to a bunch of single-looking sailors milling around and more or less ordered them to help me with all of my stuff. It worked, whatever she said to them. I had one wonderful guy who helped me get loaded onto the bus, helped me at Yokota, and helped me through customs at Seattle. I never even got his name, but he was marvelous...truly an angel sent to me for the day. It was a two hour (plus) bus ride from Yokosuka to the Air Force base at Yokota. The only glitch in my day came when I stepped u...

August 27 Josiah's First Pedicure Oh Lord. I just turned around from e-mailing Hans and found Josiah covered in OPI's "You Rock-Apulco Red"! My brand new nail polish is everywhere. Apparently he has been paying attention when I give myself a pedicure and wanted it done for his toenails, too. He actually didn't do too bad a job on his right foot. His left foot looks more like someone stabbed his toe and he bled all over the place. Oh, and he tried to do his fingernails too. He's so ambitious. Thank heavens we're throwing out this rug. It was pretty considerate of him to wait to do something horrifying like this until we are four days from pitching the rug. Not much else to report. Oh, there are a million little things going on. There always are when we are about to move. Just nothing to report. I have very little left to do except sit here and patiently wait for September 2nd to roll around. We're in the house with our beautiful government...

July 30 More of the Usual... As I always say...not much to report from Japan. We had a pretty quiet week. One quick trip to Toys R Us, which I think I chronicled in the last entry. A couple of visits to Yokosuka for mail and diapers, the usual. Well, we did have a bit of an adventure on Friday, having to do with getting the van registered. Of course, it has turned out to be much more complicated than I was led to believe it would be. First, we had to complete a "base inspection" on the van. We did that last week since it was to expire on August 1st. We passed, which still shocks me, considering what a dump on wheels that thing is. Next, take the "passed" base inspection paperwork to the Vehicle Registration Office onbase. I did that, and they told me that I needed to go out and get updated insurance, because that expires as of August 1st. Ugh. Packed the kids back up, drove out there (of course, the two offices, though interrelated, are nowhere near each ot...